Key Bush admin. response official resigns

[MaineDem]

WASHINGTON --One of the Bush administration's principal advisers on bioterrorism and other public health emergencies has resigned.

Stewart Simonson, assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness, told the president in a resignation letter Monday that he had accomplished what he had set out to do, and it was time to move on.

Some Democrats, and a key Republican, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, had been critical of Simonson's work, saying it would be better to have a medical expert serve in his position rather than a lawyer. Davis is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/03/14/key_bush_admin_response_official_resigns/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News

[NanceGreggs]

1. Deserting rats ...

... sinking ship.

'Nuff said.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness

DUH?????? Or maybe someone who worked with Arabian Horses?

it would be better to have a medical expert serve in his position rather than a lawyer

[gkhouston]

3. public health emergency preparedness??

So, are we about to find out that BushCo has done jack shit to prepare for bird flu? Or is this an opportunity to put in a different crony? Or is it Yet Another Spending Scandal?

[BrklynLiberal]

5. The only thing that we may find out is how many million$ Rumsfeld has

made from his Tamiflu stock holdings...

[uppityperson]

11. do ya think?

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Wow, one a day lately

I hope the trickle soon becomes a flood.

[katty]

6. Last call for lifeboats on TitanicBush

[rodeodance]

7. bye bye

[BR_Parkway]

8. Does that explain the new meme " they're all tired, been in office

6 years now" so that as all the rats bail on the sinking ship it looks like it was planned?

Or do we find out that the man has totally destroyed another science based program based on ideology and religious determination, only to bail out and cash in on some board of directors or lobbying group?

Or do we find out that the former asst secretary is getting criminally charged with something?

Or do we find out that the former asst secretary lied on his resume and got the job through campaign donations/connections?

[wordpix2]

13. one or the other or a combo

[NYC]

15. Or he's afraid there WILL be a bird flu epidemic,

and he doesn't want to be the fall guy.

[Xeric]

9. the guy is a hack

"If I was in charge, he wouldn't be in that position," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "We don't have the best and brightest in the key positions, and this leaves us in a very, very precarious situation."


So how is it that Simonson ended up in a position that could impact the lives and health of millions? Simonson's qualifications can be summed up in two words: Tommy Thompson. Simonson was a protégé of the former Health and Human Services secretary and longtime Republican governor of Wisconsin. Thompson hired him out of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1995 and put him on the political fast track, eventually naming him as his legal counsel. Thompson then used his influence as chair of Amtrak's board to place Simonson as the rail service's corporate counsel. When Bush named Thompson as HHS secretary, Simonson again went with him, and he has been rising through the ranks of the Administration and the Republican Party ever since. "He's a political hack, a sycophant," says Ed Garvey, a prominent Wisconsin attorney and the state's former deputy attorney general. "People just laughed when he was appointed to Amtrak, but when the word came out that he was in charge of bioterrorism, it turned to alarm. When you realize that people's lives are at stake, it's frightening. It's just one of those moments when you say, Oh, my God."

more at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/scahill

Typical Bush appointee. Unqualified. Politically connected. No doubt we'll be seeing him again screwing up something else unless he resigned because he's been caught doing something illegal.

[wordpix2]

14. how many more of the$e unqualified screwup$ are there in Bu$hCo

to leave the sinking ship of mis-state?

[CrazyOrangeCat]

10. sayonara, baby . . .

[Orsino]

12. Women and children first, jerk. n/t

[tanyev]

16. He's just been hired by a canned tuna and powdered milk conglomerate.