Recess Appointments

Dear Friends,
I was pleased to see that President Obama took advantage of the Congressional recess to make some recess appointments.  Since the Senate seems to be completely dysfunctional, I applaud President Obama's move.  Unfortunately, he only made 15 recess appointments and at least one of them is a complete disaster and completely refutes any idea that change and hope will carry the day in Washington.  A friend sent me a post from buzzflash.com entitled, "Monsanto in the White House Garden: One Recess Appointment That's Toxic" by Meg White (here).  I will not cut and paste the entire post, but you should read it.  Here is a small portion of the article:

One of the 15 installed was Islam Siddiqui, who just left his post as vice president of science and regulatory affairs for CropLife America, the lobby group representing pesticide and biotech crop producers and distributors.
As far as PR goes, CropLife's basic goal is to replace the term "pesticide" with "crop protection" and "genetically-modified crops" with "science." CropLife's clients include Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta and DuPont.
Siddiqui managed to pass through his hearing with the Senate Finance Committee back in December, despite his being a lobbyist for some of the most feared and reviled companies in the world. But as the Center for Biological Diversity (one of more than 100 organizations that actively opposed his nomination) points out, it's not just the word "lobby" that tarnishes Siddiqui's image (emphasis mine):

As undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Siddiqui oversaw the development of the first national organic labeling standards, which allowed sewage sludge-fertilized, genetically modified, and irradiated food to be labeled as organic before public outcry forced more stringent standards. Siddiqui has derided the European Union’s ban on hormone-treated beef and has vowed to pressure the European Union to accept more genetically modified crops.

CropLife America, formerly known as the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, lobbies to weaken the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, claiming that pesticides are not pollutants because of their intended beneficial effect and that pesticides positively impact endangered species. The group has lobbied to allow pesticides to be tested on children and to allow the continued use of persistent organic pollutants and ozone-depleting chemicals.

This appointment is wrong on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  He is a lobbyist and this was suppose to be the Administration devoid of lobbyists.  He was a lobbyist for some of the worst world wide corporate conglomerates that have been shown to value profits over everything including human life and the future of our planet.  Does President Obama think that we won't notice?  Well we should be sure that he knows that we do notice.

One other point made by the post is that President Obama did not include Dawn Johnsen, a great nominee for the Office of Legal Council, in his recess appointments.  The New York Times speculates that she was not included because President Obama "did not want to go too far in inflaming partisan passions" (see).  When will President Obama learn that any thing that he does will inflame partisan passions?  Maybe we need to tell him.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal