Bush' New Regulatory Chief - Cheaper For Asthmatics Stay Inside Than To Improve Air Quality

[hatrack]

No, I'm not making this up.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Wednesday appointed as his top regulatory official a conservative academic who has written that markets do a better job of regulating than the government does and that it is more cost-effective for people who are sensitive to pollution to stay indoors on smoggy days than for the government to order polluters to clean up their emissions.

As director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Susan E. Dudley will have an opportunity to change or block regulations proposed by government agencies.

Bush also named a researcher at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank in Washington, as deputy director of the Social Security Administration. Andrew G. Biggs has been an outspoken proponent of converting Social Security benefits into self-directed retirement accounts, which Bush favors but Democrats have stopped cold. Bush nominated Biggs to that post in November, but the process stalled in February when the Senate Finance Committee refused to hold confirmation

EDIT

Although Dudley's new job is more obscure than those to which Biggs and Fox were appointed, it is also potentially the most powerful. The budget office's regulatory shop acts as a funnel for all regulations emanating throughout the government. In congressional testimony, Dudley has favored dispensing with costly air pollution controls and initiating a pollution warning system "so that sensitive individuals can take appropriate 'exposure avoidance' behavior" -- mostly by remaining inside. She opposed stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water, in part because she argued that the Environmental Protection Agency's calculations of the costs and benefits overvalued some lives, particularly those of older people with a small life expectancy. She has argued that air bags should not be required by government regulation but requested by automobile consumers willing to pay for them.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-ne-recess5apr05,1,6382618.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[wildflowergardener]

1. stay inside

So are they going to give people disability payments for asthma since they can't go to work anymore?

Also, I'd guess that all of us are affected by dirty air - so are they going to pay us to all stay home on days when the smog is bad?

Meg

[Diane R]

2. As a person with Asthma, I find this devastating.

I wish I could stick a straw in his mouth and tell him that's all the air he gets.

[whistle]

3. The asthmatic says, "Doctor, every time I breathe I wheeze and cough and have trouble

....getting my breath!"

The republican doctor replies, "Well, just don't breathe."

[Sapere aude]

4. Seems like he has great conservative idiology creditials .

I wish these greedy little fuckers had to suffer under their own directives.

[AnneD]

5. I'm sure the kids will understand

why recess is cancelled :mad:

[KoKo]

6. Are these the TWO OTHER Recess Appointments along with Fox?

Congress needs to try to do something about this. He's really more out of control every day.

[HereSince1628]

7. Just as it's more cost effective to drink beer than clean up the water

The economic strategy of this administration is clear...externalize business and outsource jobs.

It's a recipe for maintaining maximum profitability while promoting societal collapse.

[bdamomma]

8. OMG, there ignorance and arrogance is above anything else

huh? I hate their arrogance and ignorance, hopefully, those two disgusting traits will catch up to them.

[Eugene]

9. Wow! This ranks right up there with "ketchup is a vegetable."

Each BushCo recess appointment is even worse than the one that preceded it.

Dudley's concept of cost is extremely narrow (but all too typical).
Asthma costs in increased medical care and decreased productivity,
but that doesn't necessary show up on a balance sheet.

[pscot]

18. more of a "let 'em eat cake" moment

Do they still make guillotines, or are we going to have to improvise?

[wakeme2008]

10. read more here, the "lady" is a nutjob.

The below link has links to her docs.

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/2140/38

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Dudley: The Missing Docs
Well, it didn't take too long at all -- the Mercatus Center has silently restored the documents OMB Watch identified as missing from Susan Dudley's profile page.

Now you can read for yourself why she hates the Davis-Bacon Act, thinks that giving the public a right to know about the toxic hazards it is exposed to should be eliminated or weakened in the name of fighting terrorism, and believes that improving standards for arsenic in the drinking water is an unwelcome distraction from the task of protecting the water supply. That, and more.

[KT2000]

11. Cancer too

Once upon a time these libertarian idiots said it was cheaper to cure cancer than prevent it.
Can anyone say "health care crisis."

This is one of the main reasons for universal health care.

[Shoelace]

12. Dudley Do-Wrong and her Koch Oil connection - heads up folks!

arrgghh, another appointee with too much power and connections to Koch Oil!

See link for details - this person is a creep! Somebody warn our congress about her - investigate please!!

"According to a post at Think Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress, Dudley, as the director of regulatory studies at Mercatus, has:

Opposed EPA plans to set tougher public health standards for smog.
Opposed lower-polluting cars and SUVs and cleaner gasoline.
Opposed air bags in cars, preferring to leave public safety decisions "to the market place."
Opposed stronger regulations for arsenic in drinking water, claming that there "is a wide range of uncertainty in the science surrounding the health effects of arsenic in U.S. drinking water supplies."
Opposed measures to curb global warming, stating that the "evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and...if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles. Taking 'precautionary action' to protect human health based on a series of tenuous linkages would likely create a new set of risks."

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=138

[nashville_brook]

15. opposed air bags -- why does this not surprise me

i suppose those lead paint restrictions were bogus too.

[rodeodance]

13. REC.

[fed-up]

14. 5th-would be MUCH more cost effective to LOCK UP BUSH and cronies nt

[depakid]

19. History will not look kindly on the far right

or on Congress, for failing to uphold its Constitutional duty and impeach both Bush AND Cheney.

[Hun Joro]

16. This makes me think of The Running Man

Not the movie, but the novelette by Stephen King, in which "asthma" had reached epidemic levels, but wasn't really asthma but usually emphysema or lung cancer, caused by air pollution and diagnosed as asthma by the government.

[hunter]

17. I hope the sewer backs up into her house and ruins everything.

If she thinks that's a problem she can simply go outside.

[halobeam]

20. Any troops w/ asthma?

If so, then bring them home and thats a start, for that whole mess. Onto the next mess.. Do these appointees ever use a brain cell? Are they required not to? Or are they required not to have any, to begin with?

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a poorly written novel.

[eppur_se_muova]

21. Cheaper to keep soldiers home than to fight a war -- same logic. nt

[XemaSab]

22. XemaSab to new regulatory chief: cheaper for yo' ass to stay inside than go to the hospital

after I give you the beatdown you richly deserve for making such an ignorant, cruel statement. :o

[donsu]

23. may Susan get asthma

and may she fall down and not get up

[Robbien]

24. Dudley also believes companies should make the regs not the gov't

and she believes it is too costly to lower the levels of arsenic from water especially since only the infirm and aged are likely to die from the current levels.

She also was instrumental in getting OMB's rules changed in January which makes it almost impossible to set up climate change regs. Any climate change reg will now have to pass through several levels of review and the final okay will be in her new office.

http://scienceblogs.com/integrityofscience/2007/04/white_house_offices_twofisted.php