We’ve focused recently on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s historic conflict of interest. Although the name and peculiar autonomy the Commission enjoys would both suggest that it is a scrupulous servant of the public good, whose sole function is to ensure that all aspects of nuclear energy production in this country are held to the highest standard of safety; it has long been apparent that the NRC is primarily a servant of the industry it is charged with regulating.
In another example of a regulatory agency that seems to be corrupted by its intimacy with the industry it monitors, we are learning that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) spied on the personal e-mail of a group of six of its scientists and doctors who raised concerns to Congress about medical devices approved by the FDA, that might cause injury to patients.
All six of the spying victims have experienced harassment or dismissal since their whistleblower status was discovered through the e-mail surveillance.
This revelation, that the FDA mistreated whistleblowers at the possible behest of industry, comes just as a petition is circulating online to once again demand that the President withdraw his appointment (made in 2009) of a former VP and lobbyist for Monsanto, Michael Taylor, to serve as Food Safety “czar” to the FDA.
It was Mr. Taylor’s lobbying efforts that were central to allowing Bovine Growth Hormone (rGBH) to enter our milk supply.
With industry so deeply embedded in our federal regulatory agencies, it begs the question: how far can we actually be from the regulation-free landscape that Republicans have been clamoring for for years?
“I’s still waitin’ on the Double-Nought Spy job the U.S. of A. Department of Interior writ ta me about. Miss Jane at the Commerce Bank sehs the U.S.of A. Department of Interior is actually the CIA. Hot Dang! That’s good because Ellie May thinks I wants ta go a Double Nought Spyin’ on critters in the woods. Oh, and by the way, I’ve had a lot of that rBGH stuff over the years. I likes to pour it on my cereal whens I eats at the Fancy Eatin’ Table. Ellie May wouldn’t let me give any to her goat. But there’s nothin’ wrong with me. Is there? ‘Ceptin’ I seems ta have to wizz a lot more lately. Glads I don’t have to deal with an outhouse anymore. Ifs I don’t get the job with the U.S.of A. Department of Interior, I’m gonna ask Mr. Drysdale ta ask President Obama ta make me one ‘a them there CZARs. I’ll gets Granny ta knit me a Russian hat.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
So, my first reaction is a cynical, “yeah, and what’s new?”
Second reaction is that when we lose the capacity for outrage or at least the urge to express how outrageous such behavior in a government entity is, then the spyers, the let’s-not-regulate-anybody-except-queers-and-Planned-Parenthood gang, the power-hungry deniers of their nefarious agenda group, have won.
We must hang on to our outrage, and thank goodness we’ve got such a grand role model in Independent Senator Bernie (“It’s-an-outrage!”) Sanders.
NanuqFC
In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. ~ George Orwell
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, none ever will. ~ Thomas Jefferson