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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

Parting Shots from the Bush Interior Department

By Joan McCarter, 11-18-08

It’s hard to come up with a word other than despicable to describe what the Washington Post reports about the outgoing Bushies:

Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department’s top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies—including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions—into senior civil service posts.

The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called “burrowing” by career officials, creates federal sinecures for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs....

Most of the personnel shifts have been done on a case-by-case basis, but Interior Solicitor David L. Bernhardt moved to place six deputies in senior agency positions with one stroke, including two who have repeatedly attracted controversy. Robert D. Comer, who was Rocky Mountain regional solicitor, was named to the civil service post of associate solicitor for mineral resources. Matthew McKeown, who served as deputy associate solicitor for mineral resources, will take Comer’s place in what is also a career post. Both had been converted from political appointees to civil service status.

In a report dated Oct. 13, 2004, Interior’s inspector general singled out Comer in criticizing a grazing agreement that the Bureau of Land Management had struck with a Wyoming rancher, saying Comer used “pressure and intimidation” to produce the settlement and pushed it through “with total disregard for the concerns raised by career field personnel.” McKeown—who as Idaho’s deputy attorney general had sued to overturn a Clinton administration rule barring road-building in certain national forests—has been criticized by environmentalists for promoting the cause of private property owners over the public interest on issues such as grazing and logging.

One career Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his position, said McKeown will “have a huge impact on a broad swath of the West” in his new position, advising the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service on “all the programs they implement.” Comer, the official added, will help shape mining policy in his new assignment.

Remember back in early 2001 when Bush White House staff leaked the rumor that the outgoing team of Clinton staff had pried the “w” keys off of computer keyboards? It was, of course, a big lie. Never happened. But the kind of attitude that created that myth is the kind of attitude that leads to such brazen and ultimately destructive actions as this.

The Bush team has shown that they have little respect for the American people and none at all for the Constitution. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of their last acts are aimed at completely repudiating of the will of the people and our system of government. They are leaving their permanent mark on the country, one that they hope the Obama administration won’t be able to erase. They’ve done it in a litany of ways: the deaths of thousands of American men and women in an unnecessary war; torture; warrantless and unwarranted spying on American citizens; all stains on this nation that can be ameliorated, but never removed.

But what they’re doing to our public lands is a little bit different, because the permanent mark, the big ol’ W that’s going to scar millions of acres of our land with drilling rigs, clearcuts, mountaintop removal, can’t be erased. All of the displaced and threatened species of plants and animals on those lands could end up being lost forever. That all sounds very hyperbolic, and it should. Because this is precisely what the Bush administration is attempting to do, in perpetuity and in our names.

These are two of the key positions in Interior that have the capacity to open up the remainder of our public lands to drilling and to gut the Endangered Species Act (McKeown famously called it “hospice care” at a convention of the Property Rights Foundation in 2004). That’s our public lands and the species put into our care because the government over the decades, acting as our agent, decided that these were national treasures worth managing very carefully, with an eye to the future.

Back in 2004, Bush declared “elections have consequences” when he was claiming a mandate in the election and announcing his plans to gut Social Security. That didn’t work out so well for him, so I guess the administration had to figure out a sneakier way to go about dismantling the federal government, one piece at a time. Apparently only one election had consequences in Bush’s mind, the one that brought him back into office. The unintended consequence of that election, however, is Bush ending his term as the most unpopular president in our history.

Well, elections do have consequences, and 2008’s decision is no exception. Perhaps the first consequence of the new Obama administration should fall in the Interior Department, where Comer, McKeown and all the other “new” civil service employees also get new job descriptions and pay grades in the mail room.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.

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