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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Mismanagement Failing to Keep America Safe
The dramatic (and heavily covered) speech by former State Dept. Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson is most noted for its reference to a White House "cabal" that drove America into war with Iraq, but it's worth noting that Wilkerson's speech addressed a fundamental problem of mismanaging government that has not just international but also domestic policy consequences:

Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita -- and I could go on back -- we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. . . . Read in there what they say about the necessity of the people to throw off tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do. And you're talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don't get our act together.

Underlying it all, according to Wilkerson, is a failure to engage the bureaucracy: "When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions, more or less out of the blue, on that bureaucracy, you can't expect that bureacuracy to carry out your decision out very well. And furthermore, if you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster."

The Bush administration's answer to the problem of a resistant bureaucracy appears to have been cronyism: installing people who are loyal to the administration, especially to its anti-regulatory, pro-corporate agenda, at the head of every agency and program in order to shove that agenda through as firmly as possible. Adbusters asks about the consequences of this approach: "in a crunch, just how many of Bush’s appointments can actually be trusted to do these jobs, both competently and with impartiality?"

When "truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic" happens, we'll find out the hard way.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:37:54 PM

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Your Safety is at Stake
More than 5,000 people are killed every year in crashes with big rigs on the nation's highways, and a major cause of these accidents is fatigue -- that overworked truck drivers are forced to drive way too many hours at a stretch. Now Congress is poised to make matters worse.

The Bush administration put us all in peril with a change to the rules governing the number of hours that truck companies can force their drivers to work. The Bush administration's rule allowed companies to game the system and force truckers to work up to 77 hours in a seven-day period. When the rule was rejected by a federal court, the administration ran to Congress and won a temporary legislative reprieve. Instead of taking the time to devise a better rule that would keep America safe, the administration has been pushing its vision of a free-for-all for trucking companies. The White House endorsed industry's request for a Wal-Mart rule -- special rules for companies not specifically in the trucking business but which hire drivers -- when compiling its latest anti-regulatory hit list, and it used Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to waive hours of service regulations for operations related to Katrina recovery.

Now the heat is on, and Congress is responding. Public Citizen and other highway safety groups have called on Congress to resist pressure from the trucking industry to codify the administration's rules in the Transportation/Treasury appropriations bill. Click here to find out more about the issue, get the latest developments, and take action.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:02:17 PM

Monday, October 17, 2005

Tracking the Precautionary Principle
We've mentioned before that the Environmental Research Foundation, which already publishes the excellent Rachel's Environment and Health News, has launched a new newsletter focused on the precautionary principle. If you haven't subscribed to the email version, note that it is now available online: Rachel's Precaution Reporter.

Posted by Robert Shull, 09:24:40 PM

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Learn More About the Precautionary Principle
The Environmental Research Foundation, which publishes the excellent Rachel's Environment & Health News, is now producing an email newsletter dedicated to the precautionary principle. In the latest edition, there's a link to a nice web tutorial on the precautionary principle, which you can find here.

Posted by Robert Shull, 04:42:56 PM

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Groups Demand Better Protection for Katrina Cleanup
From Medical News Today:

Gulf Coast Cleanup Workers Must Be Protected from Serious Health Hazards
The U.S. Congress should immediately act to protect the health and safety of workers and residents engaged in the cleanup of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, according to a group of more than 100 of the nation's foremost labor, religious, environmental, community, public health and public interest organizations and more than 100 academic, medical, religious and public health leaders.

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:52:48 PM

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Yet Another Reason to Distrust Reorg Power
For another case example proving the point that government reorganization is not merely a technocratic exercise but is, instead, fraught with potential consequences for all of us, check out today's Progress Report:

NATIONAL SECURITY -- ADMINISTRATION WEAKENS STATE DEPARTMENT'S ARMS CONTROL CAPABILITIES: When Congress took its summer recess in July, the Bush administration tried to "quietly eliminate" most of the State Department's arms control offices and merge them with the nonproliferation units. Congress disagreed with the move, temporarily putting a hold in August on the reorganization. Despite this block, the State Department has once again begun quietly reorganizing its arms control and nonproliferation bureaus, which would "effectively complete an eight-year, Republican-driven process of dismantling the State Departments once sizable infrastructure dedicated to [nonproliferation]." This shift away from arms control comes at the same time that Harvard professor Graham Allison and other members of the national security community agree that "if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the [proliferation] threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade."

As we have seen already with FEMA, giving the Bush administration the power to re-make government in its own image can prove dangerous for us all. We need Congress to continue to exercise oversight over these important questions of government function and organization, so that the people's representatives will make sure that we are doing what it takes to keep America safe.

Posted by Robert Shull, 11:39:22 AM

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