By Stephen Fox, 2/10/2009
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?e296abc9-675c-4090-b2ec-0daf23ad7846NBC's Chris Matthews on Howard Dean: “How come he's not the HHS secretary? He's getting squat from the president. Howard Dean is the chairman of the Democratic party....he had a big hand in bringing this victory that you all enjoy this year; he's a medical doctor; he succeeds in so many ways in building your party up and raising money and doing everything right; he began this populist thing back in the last election....he’s getting nothing!"
The massive grassroots support piling up in comment columns and in phone calls and emails to President Obama in support of Howard Dean to take the place of Tom Daschle in the Cabinet is extraordinary. I always liked Dean for this job, above all; I never once felt Daschle's proximity to Congress was that important to success in this job, although, Obama had and still has a big plan to get through Congress and that plus Daschle's keen and long standing focus on reforming Health Care, are the primary reason he picked Daschle.
I don't agree that Dean ever was too "abrasive" for the HHS job; anyway, I like "abrasive," personally, especially when it comes to the obvious long overdue imperatives of getting medical prevention through to the Neanderthal and oblivious junk food eatin' and aspartame guzzlin' portion of the exalted American public, and not just perpetuating grandiose schemes of Health Care, etc.
This is what both the FDA Commissioner and Health and Human Services Secretary should be conquering, not ignoring, beating down and responding with corporate pleasantries to citizen's petitions, as the FDA has done for almost 3 decades since aspartame was forced on the market. I have written bills that will ban aspartame and they are proceeding handsomely in the Hawaii Senate right now with 14 members of the 25 member Senate having signed on as cosponsors, including almost all of the key Committee Chairpersons. New Mexico’s Senate has Senate Memorial 9 carried by Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, which asks the FDA to voluntarily rescind approval for aspartame, with 11 cosponsors.
Why indeed should this kind of consumer protection effort and many other related efforts (occurring all over the USA in courts in reaction to the excesses of Big Pharma) have become alien to the FDA, given the purpose of its original legislation back in 1937? Why should FDA be adversarial to efforts to correct it? This goes to the heart of what the American people need for Health and Human Services Secretary as well as for FDA Commissioner, consistent with the Change and Reform they expected when they voted for Obama! Most find it somewhat shocking that HHS oversees the FDA, which tries to oversee the full 25% of the US Economy that is either food or drugs. The entire matter of vetting Daschle and others over taxes is absurd in comparison with the way that Cheney and Rumsfeld continually profited off the US at war and by doing so, channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into private enterprises like Blackwater and KBR and Halliburton.
Stephen Fox is the Political and Consumer Editor for the New Mexico Sun News.
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