Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
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Uncivil Service
Posted on January 17, 2004 in Accountability
A former corrupt Republican political boss — Chester A. Arthur — is the man who was responsible for our present civil service. Prior to Arthur’s administration every position — down to the lowliest janitor scrubbing the floors — was treated as political pork-barrel. Job-seekers flooded the White House begging for appointments from the President. In 1881, one of these, Charles Guiteau, shot President James Garfield.
Arthur ended political patronage in the civil service, setting an example which would last nearly 100 years.
The eventual result was a federal administration which was free to disseminate the real facts about the economy, the environment, unemployment, etc.
Ronald Reagan began to undo Arthur’s reforms by appointing officials well down into the bureaucratic structure. A recent move by George W. Bush via the Office of Management and Budget threatens to make those federal agencies little more than propaganda organs for the Bush Administration and corporations:
WASHINGTON — Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis….
There is wide concern among those in the science offices at the EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration that their agencies’ responses will be based more on political realities than on the genuine merits of the OMB’s proposal.
Even those critical of the OMB’s plan agree with the need for peer review. The practice, which has been accepted for decades, demands that before scientific, medical or technical findings can be determined to be effective and safe for use or published in professional journals, they must be evaluated for merit by other specialists in the same field….
The OMB’s attempt to take control of the release of emergency information surprises even its critics.
There were headlines across the country when the EPA’s inspector general confirmed that the White House’s counsel on environmental quality had forced downplaying of actual hazards from the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. And the OMB was faulted in congressional hearings for preventing the EPA from declaring a public health emergency regarding asbestos contamination in Libby, Mont.
“Incredibly, OMB’s response to this widespread criticism about political interference in public health decisions is to come right out and explicitly propose to take authority over release of emergency information away from health, safety and environmental officials and transfer it into the hands” of John Graham, said Winifred De Palma, regulatory affairs counsel for Public Citizen.
In public statements on its proposal, the OMB did not cite specific cases where the existing peer review didn’t work.
This isn’t civil service. This is plain rude and an affront to the American people to whom the government is supposedly accountable.
