The Bush Administration has used government power to reward its special-interest supporters by appointing industry leaders as regulators and by dismantling public safeguards altogether.
Read Special Interest Takeover, a new report by CSS documenting a systematic attack on public health, safety, and environmental protections over the last four years. Who are these special interests, and just how much have they taken over?
http://www.sensiblesafeguards.org/sit.phtml
http://www.sensiblesafeguards.org/pdfs/finalbrochure.pdf
When science finds a serious health or environmental problem, there is frequently public pressure to respond through regulatory action, which the administration is loath to pursue.
To take one example from the report, the Bush Administration delayed a Clinton-era proposed rule on Listeria and eventually only issued the rule in a much-weakened form. While this was happening, the Department of Agriculture, led by administration officials with close ties to the
meat industry, ignored a federal inspector's repeated reports of food safety violations at a Pennsylvania Wampler Foods plant. In 2002,
Listeria-contaminated turkey meat from the plant killed eight, sickened more than 50, and caused miscarriages and stillbirths, prompting one of
the largest meat recalls in U.S. history.
The report concludes that, "Special interests have taken over our government from top to bottom, turning back years of progress on health,
safety and the environment. That this puts the public and our natural resources at significant risk seems to be of little concern to the Bush
administration. Rather, the administration appears to view government as an instrument to enrich its political allies."
Wish I could say I was surprised.
