Sten Gazette

In a recent syndicated column, “shrill lefty” Molly Ivins takes the Republican administration to task for a long series of what she calls Petulant Pique (PP) appointments. These are “Bush appointees named during the administration’s frequent fits of Petulant Pique…in the immortal childhood spirit of “nanny-nanny boo-boo, I’ll show you.” The context for the article was appointment of a male veterinarian to head the women’s health section of the FDA. Which came right on the heels of the Heckofa Brownie Affair, in which a clearly incompetent administrator was removed from his post. Or not– turns out Mr. Brown is staying on as a consultant, specifically tasked with “investigating” the mess he made. Ouch!

Ivins has a point, although her Petulant Pique appointments are really due to something much worse than pique. Especially when you consder them alongside appointees who are simply being rewarded, and those who are simply incompetent.

We think a better term for Ivins’ “petulant pique” appointmentsthem would be AV appointments, for “Administrative Vandalism.” Vandalism covers a wide range of sins, from spray-painting your name on the side of a bridge for reasons of vanity to the deliberate destruction of someone’s property, whether it’s because you enjoy breaking things in general or you are exercising a sneaky hatred of the person who owns the property. In a perfect world, all appointments would be the best available person for the job. In the W world, all appointments seem to be the result of vanity, vindictiveness, or cronyism. And any such appointments will tend to vandalize the agency. In most cases such appointments are basically a private arrangement, a reward if you will, and the public is none the wiser. In other cases it’s actually humorous, as in the appointment of vet to take over women’s health. In a few cases there is potential for tragedy or at best a Heckuva embarrassment.

You’re welcome to read Ivins’ column if you like. You’ll find it here, but note you will need to scroll through the archives and look for September 22nd because Creators Syndicate does not facilitate a permalink. In the meantime, we’ll summarize the appointments that Molly specifically mentions:

Appointment: Department of Labor, assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.
Appointee: Edwin Foulke… “a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers’ health and safety.”

Appointment: Forest Service.
Appointee: “a timber industry lobbyist.”

Appointment: Public Lands
Appointee: “a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional.”

Appointment: Head of the clean air division at the EPA
Appointee: “A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country.”

Appointment: Head of the Superfund
Appointee: “a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations.”

Appointment: No 2 at the EPA
Appointee: “A Monsanto lobbyist ”

Appointment: Council on Environmental Quality
Appointee: “A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute”

Appointment: investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies
Appointee: “a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco”

All that and no mention of John Bolton!

Are we seeing a pattern here? Ivins obviously thinks so, and ascribes the pattern to fits of juvenile pique on the part of the president. It’s a comfortable analysis for those of us who see an element of childishness in our 43rd president. But the reality is much more serious– far more than pique, it’s deliberate vandalism.

–SG

What do you think? Please enter a comment below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Issues, Politics, The President. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.