At Home He's a Tourist

"Live and Let Die"
by Jason Pancake

In the latest act of saying “f- you” to the environment and credibility of American government, Pres. Bush used a recess appointment to name extreme anti-regulation supporter, Susan Dudley as his top appointee in charge of uh, government regulations. This has kind of slipped by the radar of the mainstream media, but it has major implications! The LA Times has a good story of what happened: “President Bush on Wednesday appointed as his top regulatory official a conservative academic who has written that markets do a better job of regulating than the government does and that it is more cost-effective for people who are sensitive to pollution to stay indoors on smoggy days than for government to order polluters to clean up their emissions. As director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Susan E. Dudley will have an opportunity to change or block all regulations proposed by government agencies.”

Dudley’s job is important because as mentioned, she can change or block all regulations proposed by government agencies that affect everything from health, safety, pollution, car airbags, clean air/water, and business practices. This is dangerous because her career is built around deregulating any safety or consumer protection that might interfere with companies earning the very top profit. She calls public health regulations a “hidden tax that hinders profits”. In her article, she actually criticizes the fact that people’s children have to wear “Consumer Product Safety Commission-approved pajamas” that might cost them 2 cents more to buy and hurts the pajama producer’s profits! Doesn’t she understand why people want consumer safety laws? Without laws, what would keep companies from producing dirt cheap pajamas that easily catch on fire or have harmful chemicals in them? There are always stories on the news about unsafe toys and other products.

This report by OMB Watch.org has comprehensive information about Susan Dudley and her think tank, the Mercatus Center. This group that Dudley leads is corporate-founded (and corporate-funded) and whose donors have included companies with long records of pushing for deregulations, such as BP Amoco, Exxon Mobil Corporation, General Motors, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Pfizer, and State Farm Insurance. Their whole philosophy is that the free market/businesses should control all aspects of how things get done and that safety regulations get in the way of profits.

Here are some of the things Dudley has argued:

· She argued that air bags should not be required in cars, but just requested by consumers who are willing to pay extra for them. Her argument is that in a free market, if people really want air bags, they will pay for them or car manufacturers will put them in because it would make more people buy their cars. Of course, the reason laws requiring seat belts and air bags were created in the first place was because car manufacturers weren’t doing anything to keep people in crashes from unnecessarily dying. At that time (as well as now), it’s common sense that leaving the price of air bags to the car makers meant that many people who might have really needed the safety feature were not able to afford them. Car makers forced consumers to pay five times more for air bags as optional features than for air bags as standard equipment in a car. For example, let’s say the cost of air bags as a standard feature is $1000 (out of the total cost of a $21,000 car). Without this regulation, if you wanted the optional air bag, it would have cost you $5000 (making the car total $25,000). If you’re paying for a $20,000 car, you can probably afford the $1000 cost to save your life in an accident. However, if you had to pay $5000 for overpriced optional airbags, it would be a lot harder to afford, especially for poorer families.
· She opposed stricter limits on arsenic and other chemicals in drinking water, which even goes against what the Bush administration was saying. She has argued that the Environmental Protection Agency's calculations of the costs and benefits of clean water did not take into account that that the lives of some people should not be worth as much, particularly older people with shorter life expectancy. Seniors (who tend to vote the most) were outraged and politicians called this a stupid theory. Even though she values an older person’s life less on an economic level, it doesn’t make sense in this argument because you would be measuring the deaths caused by a polluter’s negligence. If someone killed ten people, it doesn’t matter if the victims were all 35 or 65 years old. The criminal still killed ten people.
· She wants to reject a rule designed to protect consumer privacy which limits financial institutions’ ability to share your private customer financial information without proper consent. Basically, she is saying that banks should be allowed to share your financial information with whoever they want, but that according to the “free market,” people who don’t like having their financial information shared with other companies should just work it out with their bank. People probably wouldn’t even know what was happening. Her solution would be to wait on hold for an hour on the bank’s “Customer Service” number if you have a problem.
· Her Mercatus Center think tank created reports opposing measures to curb global warming, stating that the "evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and...if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles. Taking 'precautionary action' to protect human health based on a series of tenuous linkages would likely create a new set of risks." Basically, this says that global warming is good because it will keep the temperature warmer at night and in the winter. Yikes.
· And finally, she says that the government shouldn’t force polluters to try to prevent smog but that instead, we should just have a pollution warning system "so that sensitive individuals can take appropriate 'exposure avoidance' behavior" — mostly by remaining inside”! If you have asthma (or get asthma due to smog) stay inside because it hurts the profits of polluting companies.

With a Democratic majority, there was very little chance Dudley would have been confirmed. Even last year when the Republicans still ruled both houses, Bush couldn’t nominate her because many groups opposed her nomination. This year however, Bush used a recess appointment, which meant that he was able to appoint an official for that term of Congress without getting approval from the Senate. He has bypassed the Senate with this rule over 100 times, most notably with controversial UN Ambassador, John Bolton. When even Joe Lieberman is unhappy about Dudley’s appointment and calling it a misuse of power, that is pretty bad.