As Obama Restores Safeguards, How Will He Toss Out The Safety Saboteurs?

This weekend the WaPo reported Obama’s transition team will restore Federal safeguards the Bushies tossed overboard (or never even allowed onboard) during their misrule. Should the WaPo report prove accurate, we’ll have a lot to celebrate: the article plots a 180 degree course reversal for the White House. The good news? Obama’s reportedly planning to restore American safeguards for us all. Qui bono? All of us who eat food, drink water, breathe air, go to work (or love someone who does), or may fall ill (or love someone who may). Every living American, in other words. The bad news? When Obama takes the helm, he’ll assume power over Executive Branch bodies staffed with some of the very saboteurs who tossed Americans’ health and safety over the side. What plans does Obama and his crew have for the saboteurs?

Here’s more detail about the reported good news:

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration….

The list of executive orders targeted by Obama’s team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush’s appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy….

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush’s controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research….

The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion….

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.

So far, so good — assuming, of course, the WaPo report accurately describes what Obama will direct his crew to do once he is in the White House. Assuming President Obama really will confront corporatist power.

Reversing the corporatist course the Bushies, Rethugs, and DLC plotted for us all from below decks in the Executive Branch goes part-way towards protecting our health and safety. To finish the job, Obama’s crew will have to root out the corporatist saboteurs stowed away in the Executive Branch. Where should they start looking?

Where would corporatist saboteurs have the most power to toss out Federal safeguards that protect us? The Federal courts are one place. That’s why the Rethugs packed the Federal Bench with judicial nominees from the Federalist society: the corporatists’ wholly-owned finishing school for attorneys planning on lucrative (if recumbent) careers as capital’s prostitutes. [Future posts will have more on strategies for removing the most egregious saboteurs from the Federal Bench.]

Where else do corporatist saboteurs find the greatest power to throw away Federal safeguards that protect We The People? In the Executive Branch, they’ve wormed into the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Why? OMB is where the Executive Branch attempts to control the Legislative Branch’s work. How? OMB claims review power over all the regulations (rules) Federal agencies devise to implement the legislation (laws) Congress passes. When Big Coal or Big Poison or Big Toxic Food can’t buy off the House and Senate votes required to prevent a bill from becoming Federal law, they turn to OMB and the relevant Executive Branch entity (Energy, Agriculture, FDA, EPA, etc) and the corporatist saboteurs they’ve planted there and try to block regulations that would really implement whatever legislation Congress may have passed.

Under Reagan, Bush the Spook, and Bush the Torturer, OMB has been where regulations that safeguard all Americans (and the resources we and our children depend on for our very survival) go to die. This won’t be any surprise to Senator Obama: the Senate and OMB battle each other regularly. The corporatist servants at OMB who were Bushie political appointees will be out the door January 20: the corporatists hired on as permanent Federal employees will remain in place.

Once Obama’s at the helm, what will he and his crew do to protect all Americans from the corporatist saboteurs the Bushies hired on as permanent Federal employees at OMB? President Obama will find Bushies salted away corporatist moles as permanent Federal employees throughout the Executive Branch: Interior, Justice, Agriculture, Energy, FDA, EPA, BLM, Forest Service, CDC…every possible instrument of Federal power to preserve our health, safety, and natural wealth.

What will Obama and his crew do to wall off the corporatist moles the Bushies left behind to sabotage the regulations we Americans require to remain safe and healthy?

Related posts:

1. Kraft Says We Can Haz A Food Safety Bill
2. Obama Wants a Trigger, So Keep Calling Reid
3. Obama to (Finally) Fulfill One Promise, Release WH Visitor Logs
4. Obama Embraces Patriot Act: Where’s the Outrage?
5. Memo to Jay Cost: Obama Won a Larger Percentage of the Popular Vote in 2008 than Reagan in 1980