Wolfowitz is gone and Gonzales, rubber-legged and glassy-eyed, is clinging to the ropes. After a drubbing like that, you would think the President would be more careful in who he appoints to high government office. You would be wrong.
Mr. Bush has done it again. He has nominated the least appropriate person he could find to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission. As senior lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, Michael E. Baroody has spent the last 17 years in unrelenting attack on every consumer protection measure the government has suggested.
Just in case some dim bulb failed to get the message, NAM wasted no time in sending Baroody a check for $150,000, so he shouldn’t forget his friends when making consumer safety rules.
If your kid suffers serious burns because his pajamas caught fire, thank Mr. Baroody.
Grand dad having trouble breathing and even more trouble finding health insurance because of the asbestos he breathed while working in a shipyard? Mr. Baroody has fought tooth and nail to make sure the shipyards have no obligation to look after their former workers. New York thought it would be a good idea if cigarettes were less likely to cause fires. Not a good idea said Baroody. Apparently, he enjoys seeing people standing outside their smoldering apartment houses with all they own on their backs.
Baroody’s argument against the cigarettes? The states should not make consumer safety laws. That should be left to the federal government, the Consumer Products Safety Commission. It is a specious argument. States are allowed to set their own standards, and, as long as those standards are more stringent than the federal standards, they prevail.
Mr. Bush has decided that the best guard to set for the henhouse is a fox.
Tom Gordon
Tsg0008@scbglobal.net
Mr. Bush has done it again. He has nominated the least appropriate person he could find to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission. As senior lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, Michael E. Baroody has spent the last 17 years in unrelenting attack on every consumer protection measure the government has suggested.
Just in case some dim bulb failed to get the message, NAM wasted no time in sending Baroody a check for $150,000, so he shouldn’t forget his friends when making consumer safety rules.
If your kid suffers serious burns because his pajamas caught fire, thank Mr. Baroody.
Grand dad having trouble breathing and even more trouble finding health insurance because of the asbestos he breathed while working in a shipyard? Mr. Baroody has fought tooth and nail to make sure the shipyards have no obligation to look after their former workers. New York thought it would be a good idea if cigarettes were less likely to cause fires. Not a good idea said Baroody. Apparently, he enjoys seeing people standing outside their smoldering apartment houses with all they own on their backs.
Baroody’s argument against the cigarettes? The states should not make consumer safety laws. That should be left to the federal government, the Consumer Products Safety Commission. It is a specious argument. States are allowed to set their own standards, and, as long as those standards are more stringent than the federal standards, they prevail.
Mr. Bush has decided that the best guard to set for the henhouse is a fox.
Tom Gordon
Tsg0008@scbglobal.net
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