Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [67]
In an interview Moll said he was disturbed by how little the USDA had learned since the Bil Mar suit two years earlier. “I talked to employees when I was working on that case,” he said. “They told me the USDA was basically working for the company.
“You have got to give USDA more power to force a recall. I went to Washington, D.C., to a public meeting. I was very much on the side of USDA. I said they need power to recall. The power to shut down a plant. They need to be able to fine companies. They need stiff fines that will affect them. They don’t have any of those powers right now.”
Nor is it likely that the USDA will get those powers under the Bush administration. The Bushies believe government’s role “is to get out of the way and let business and entrepreneurs do their work,” as the president often says. If Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove have their way, much of the power Ken Moll has in a courtroom will be eliminated as well.
Tort reform—limiting the access people like Lois Wagner have to the courts—is one of Rove’s passions. “In my opinion there are too many lawsuits . . . and the legal system is jury-rigged. And it’s rigged in a certain way.”
Bush fixed that lawsuit problem down here in Texas.
He’s committed to fixing it in the other forty-nine states.
9.
Dick, Dubya, and Wyoming Methane
I’ve run an oil company.
—PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
I’ve run an oil-service company.
—VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
Reporters describe deputy interior secretary J. Steven Griles as having had a “checkered career.” We’re as ready as the next journalist to throw down a cliché, but this one seems to miss badly. In fact, Griles’ career has been singularly consistent, a monochrome in the primary color of American business—Wall Street Journal gray. Like most of the gray suits doing time in “public service” in the Bush administration, J. Steven Griles is all business.
It’s not unusual for presidents to hand over the management of federal departments to corporate executives or corporate lawyers—though most draw the line at actual lobbyists. Bill Clinton appointed a Wall Street insider, Robert Rubin, to run Treasury, although when it came to public lands, he appointed Bruce Babbitt, a Westerner with genuine understanding of the fragility of arid country. Clinton also appointed former Texas land commissioner Bob Armstrong to help ride herd on the federal ranges. Both Babbitt and Armstrong had spent their lives in government, and both were deadly earnest about being stewards of the public trust. They even tried to increase the bargain-basement fees Western ranchers pay to graze their cattle on public land, a sure political loser.
Griles had also put in time in government before Bush II; he’s a Department of Interior recidivist. He left his first gig at Interior when the Reagans moved back to Santa Barbara, although he hung on to that job long enough to try to get rid of the man regulating the coal company that was offering Griles a big private-sector paycheck. Hey, we’re used to the revolving door, but you’re supposed to wait until you get to the outside before you start working for the corporate world. This embarrassing little story resurfaced in The Washington Post twelve years later when John Mintz and Eric Pianin took a critical look at the man George W. appointed to the number-two position at Interior. Here was career public servant Carl Close, one of the last no-nonsense officials remaining at the Office of Surface Mining after the Reagan years, trying to get United (coal) Company to comply with federal law. And there was Reagan political appointee Steve Griles, headed out the door for a job at said United in 1989, quietly trying to oust Close from OSM. The Post, which loves a Washington-insider story like few other papers, had covered Griles in the