President Bush today nominated industry lobbyist Michael Baroody to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) drawing heavy criticism from public interest groups.
Baroody, the incumbent vice president for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), has spent most of his professional life as a lobbyist and political operative on behalf of corporate interests, according to not for profit organization Public Citizen.
The group claims that Baroody is extremely ill-suited choice to lead an agency charged with protecting Americans from dangerous products, many of which are made by the manufacturers he is accustomed to representing.
Public Citizen described the nomination as the latest example of the Bush administration’s systematic attempts to gut federal agencies by replacing regulators with corporate cronies.
They stated that the President's decision to nominate Baroody is "spectacularly and arrogantly inappropriate."
In 2000, Baroody successfully lobbied Congress to derail the ergonomics rule, put into place by the Clinton administration to prevent 300,000 workplace accidents and injuries.
In 2001, backing polluters, he lit into the Supreme Court for upholding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) powers to limit smog and soot.
The EPA was attempting to provide relief to the growing number of asthma sufferers, now about 20 million, saving them from breathing polluted air.
Public Citizen points out that before joining NAM included stints as a Republican National Committee speechwriter and as President Reagan’s head of public affairs.
In 2004, he was the chief spokesman for his organization’s drive, the Prosperity Project, which under the guise of voter education, pushed employees of NAM members to vote for Republicans.
The public interest organization contends that Bush’s nomination inappropriately treats the CPSC as a reward for this partisanship and would give corporate insiders a chance to do lasting harm to the agency.
Public Citizen described Baroody’s nomination as a slap in the face of the Senate commerce committee, and urged them to reject Baroody's nomination.
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