WELLBEING:
Healthcare | October 13, 2005
ANOTHER
CRONY?!
IT'S
ENOUGH
TO
MAKE
YOU
SICK.
OR
DEAD.
By
Douglas Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive
Thinking" As
Posted in "GordonTalk",
"Comments
From Left Field", &
"OpEdNews"
And
Quoted by UPI
"The New
Republic" is running quite a cover story, about our "Hackocracy"
-- our government of, by, and for the political hacks, cronies,
or whatever else you want to call 'em (other than "well
qualified" for their appointed plum positions) -- and while
Michael "You want me to be this superhero" Brown got
his sorry butt kicked outa FEMA before the TNR list was made
(but not soon enough to save the folks down South from drowning
in the sewage), and while the Number One spot on the TNR list
was reserved for none other than our beloved Supreme Crony
nominee, Harriet Miers, Number Seven in this rogue's gallery is
Number One by me.
Meet Stewart
Simonson, who -- as "Assistant Secretary for Public Health
and Emergency Preparedness, Department of Health and Human
Services" (who thinks up these titles anyway?) -- is in
charge of "matters related to bioterrorism and other public
health emergencies."
And just who is
this individual charged with safeguarding the nation against a
devastating attack of smallpox from Osama Bin Laden or a
cataclysmic pandemic of bird flu from Southeast Asia? A graduate
from the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University?
Someone who, say, ran the Office of Emergency Management
for New York City? Perhaps the leader of the George Washington
University Response to Emergencies and Disasters Institute?
Uh, no, that would
be the
fellow whom Simonson replaced, Jerome "Jerry"
Hauer, one
of the nation's leading experts on bioterrorism and emergency
preparedness, who complained after getting the boot that
"the decisions being made [at the agency] do not appear to
have a sound basis."
Well, Jerry,
you'll excuse me for saying so; but that sounds like it just
might be some sour grapes on your part. I mean, surely Mr.
Simonson brings to this position -- with the responsibility of
protecting the health and lives of some 300 million Americans --
his own resume of expertise.
Well, as the TNR
article puts it, Stewart Simonson's experience is "not in
public health, but ... public transit": Before becoming
Assistant Secretary for yada, yada, yada, Mr. Simonson was head
of Amtrak.
Uh, oh.
You see, good ol'
Stewart was brought onboard the Health & Human Services
train by its "conductor", Tommy Thompson, who had
previously been on the board of Amtrak.
And before that,
Simonson had been the staff lawyer working on prison policy for
then-Governor of Wisconsin Tommy Thompson.
That's right,
folks: The person in charge of our country's public health --
that's your health and mine, John and Jane Q. Public -- in the
event of any sort of bio-emergency is a lawyer, not a doctor or
anyone else with an iota of formal training in the field.
Perhaps that's why
even though Simonson has, according to his official biography,
"supervised policy development for Project BioShield"
-- to build-up the nation's pharmaceutical armamentarium against
biological, chemical, and radiological attack -- the project
itself is on the critical list.
And perhaps that's
why -- as
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has documented, with his own "top
crony list" -- just one day after Simonson assured the
Congress that his agency had sufficient funds to buy flu vaccine
and anti-viral medicines, they had to go back to Congress and
ask for another $150 million to buy flu vaccine and anti-viral
medicines...and a few months later Congress gave them another $4
billion to buy flu vaccine and anti-viral medicines.
So, after reading
on the (virtual) front page of The
New York Times earlier this week that "a plan developed
by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of
pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared
for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's
history" -- "like
having a Category 5 viral hurricane hit every single state
simultaneously" -- I now learn that a world-class
expert on public health has been replaced as "Assistant
Secretary for Saving Our Bacon from Bio-Apocalypse" by some
guy who knows more about malpractice suits than decontamination
suits.
It sorta makes me
long for the good ol' days of the Arabian Horse Association.
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