OSHA Gets a Real Winner

While the world's attention is taken up by the upcoming Iraq elections and Dubya's "Dance While the Troops Die" party, the old boy is still busy appointing new people to key positions in the government. One of the more recent ones was a new person to head up the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA has long been the watchdog for the people of this nation, both in terms of concerns for labor and general health safeguards in industry. The qualifications for someone to hold this important office should be fairly obvious.

But according to Molly Ivins, perhaps they weren't quite so obvious to The Worst President Ever. ™

Jonathan L. Snare has been named to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Just the guy we would have chosen ourselves, because his background is so relevant.

No, he's not an expert in health or safety, but he used to be the lobbyist for Metabolife, the ephedra diet pill that attracted so much unpleasant attention. Ephedrine was finally barred in 2003 after the Food and Drug Administration decided it had caused 155 deaths.

I guess we're lucky that President Bush didn't put Snare at the FDA. According to The Washington Post, Metabolife spent more than $4 million lobbying the Texas Legislature between 1998 and 2000. Snare was also general counsel to the Republican Party of Texas from 1999 to 2001 and has extensive experience in election law.

How this qualifies him to head OSHA is unclear -- maybe he's a quick learner.

Raise your hands if you're shocked.

But wait! As usual, as with any slight of hand operation coming from the West Wing, there wasn't just one appointment made to OSHA. There were two. Maybe the other person is a far better choice and will balance things out against Snare, eh? Or... maybe not.

Snare is the second fox assigned by Bush to guard this particular hen house. The assistant secretary is John Henshaw, a former health and safety chief for the chemical company Monsanto.

In 40 months on the job, Henshaw axed three dozen proposed regulations from the agency's agenda, according to National Public Radio -- toxic chemical exposure regs, metalworking fluids regs, flammable and combustible liquids, reactive chemicals that kill people, and so forth.

While this will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly, we are once again seeing how the Bush administration places no value on experience, qualifications, or performance when making decisions such as this. Value is only given to loyalty and a willingness to set aside the public interest in favor of the neocon agenda.