For government officials, is anything more important than making the boss(es) look good?

by Ken

This story is left over from late last week, but I don't think that, in the time it has taken me to get around to it, it has lost its topicality. It got a certain amount of attention, but it needs more.

It's one of those periodic stark reminders of how the world so often doesn't run quite the way we naively think it does, or at least should. And it puts me in mind of a plot line last season on Blue Bloods involving Police Commissioner Reagan's daughter, Erin (Bridget Moynahan), who's an ADA in the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

Erin, coming from a police-saturated family (including not just a father but a grandfather who was the commissioner), is naturally a criminal-justice straight arrow, who sees her job as a prosecutor as serving the ends of justice and integrity and all those good things, until she finds herself suddenly being fast-tracked for Big Things in the office by a new superior, which is great until she's faced with compromising a case because, as the boss explains to her, nothing in her job is more important than making the boss look good.

It had a really uncomfortable ring of reality to it, and probably all of us who pay any attention at all to the workings of government have caught glimmerings of this mentality: that making superiors look good is not only a part of the job of many (most?) government officials, but sometimes almost seems as if it is the job. And it seems to me well to remember that, given the hierarchical nature of government structures, while most people have subordinates they can look to to make them look good, they also have superiors whom they have to make look good.

I think this item from the Washington Post's "In the Loop" column speaks quite well for itself. Since it was the lead item of the column, I'm guessing it was written by Loop-master Al Kamen, but the column was bylined "Al Kamen and Colby Itkowitz."

HHS official pens a caustic resignation letter

Frustrated by a federal government bureaucracy that was "profoundly dysfunctional" and that left him "offended as an American taxpayer," the director of a Department of Health and Human Services agency detailed his grievances in a pointed resignation letter.

For two years, David Wright ran the Office of Research Integrity, responsible for reviewing any misconduct in research projects. But Wright, in a letter obtained and published by ScienceInsider, said the role was "the very worst job I have ever had" the majority of the time.

Wright describes his inability to obtain approval to spend $35 to convert old cassette tapes to CDs. He tried to fill a vacancy in his office, but an HHS deputy secretary said there was a secret priority list and couldn't tell him where his open job fell.

Wright asserts in the letter, addressed to Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, that government officials care more about their own advancement than the public good:

"Since I've been here I've been advised by my superiors that I had 'to make my bosses look good.' I've been admonished: 'Dave, you are a visionary leader but what we need here are team players.' Recently, I was advised that if I wanted to be happy in government service, I had to 'lower my expectations.' The one thing no one in OASH [Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health] leadership has said to me in two years is 'how can we help ORI better serve the research community?' Not once."

Wright alleges in the letter that Koh himself described his office as operating in an "intensely political environment."

No comment so far from OASH, HHS or the White House on Wright's takedown.

In an admittedly quick search, I found a number of outlets that had picked up the story, but I still didn't find any comment from OASH, HHS, or the White House.

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Is Barack Obama Still Listening To People? Or Just Emanuel?

Howard Dean once told me that if a president can just keep the country going and accomplish one major goal on top of that, he would be a successful president. He told me his major goal-- the reason he jumped from a family medical practice to politics-- was reforming the health care system. At the time he was polling in the single digits, the low single digits, in the national polls. It's been quite a trip for him since then but no one, except perhaps an intellectually dishonest Rahm Emanuel, could say he was anything less than the best chairman the DNC has had in recent memory. Governor Dean and his 50 state strategy certainly contributed to the Democrats taking over the House, the Senate, lots of state legislatures and governors mansions and, now, the White House.

Obama doesn't owe anything to anyone. That's the way it should be. Oh, except the American people. He owes us someone who understands health care and how to reform it. His first choice was a consummate Washington insider whose very GOP-like modus operandi revolted the whole country and forced the new Administration to beat a hasty and shabby-looking retreat. For many of us, it wasn't just the tax problems which, after all, may possibly have been honest mistakes, but, as Frank Rich put it in yesterday's Times, but "his post-Senate immersion in the greedy bipartisan culture of entitlement and crony capitalism that both helped create our economic meltdown (on Wall Street) and failed to police it (in Washington). Daschle might well have been the best choice to lead health-care reform. But his honorable public record was instantly vaporized by tales of his cozy, lucrative relationships with the very companies he’d have to adjudicate as health czar." We expect that from George Bush. We expect that from Republicans. We elected Barack Obama because we thought the end of that kind of corruption was part of the Change he was promising.


He can easily make up for that slip-- very easily. But not by nominating some HMO shill like Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen who spent his time as governor stripping 170,000 people of their health care-- the polar opposite of what Howard Dean accomplished when he was governor of Vermont. In the last few days some of the members of Congress most committed to universal health care, Tom Harkin (D-IA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have asked President Obama to appoint Dean to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

I don't know how you can say who's the very best member of Congress but I do know that if you had to make a list of half a dozen senators who live and breath representing working families first and foremost you couldn't do it without including Bernie Sanders. And today Bernie sent President Obama a letter asking him to appoint Dr. Dean. Here's what Senator Sanders had to say about it on his website:

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said today that he supports Howard Dean to head the Department of Health and Human Services. 

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Sanders wrote that the physician and former Vermont governor is “eminently qualified” for the key post in the president’s cabinet.

“Governor Dean's background as a physician and as a governor makes him eminently qualified for this extremely important position. 

“Governor Dean understands, as you do, that all Americans are entitled to health care as a right of citizenship, and that we must pay far more attention to the needs of our children if we are to have a healthy and prosperous society.

“As a result of Governor Dean’s leadership, Vermont has developed one of the strongest health insurance programs for children in the country, the Dr. Dynasaur program, and has also been in the vanguard in a number of other health-related areas.

“As you well know, reforming our health care system will not be easy.  It will take somebody with determination and focus to lead that effort.  I think that Howard Dean is that person.”

Sanders is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee.

Meanwhile Emanuel is frantically leaking that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has the gig. She certainly wouldn't be a bad choice by any means... it's just that many Democrats were hoping she would be the next senator from Kansas. Unlike Bredesen she's probably more on the side of the people than the insurance companies and HMOs. But she's no Howard Dean. If you care enough to want to help, why not join one of the Howard Dean for HHS Facebook groups-- or both! And here's the new DeanForHHS website that's keeping all the news on this flowing. Hasn't Emanuel already done enough harm to the new Administration in the first month?


UPDATE: THE MOMENTUM FOR HOWARD DEAN KEEPS BUILDING

I guess there are a lot of Democrats who aren't afraid of Rahm Emanuel after all. Another progressive fighter for working families, Pat Leahy, endorsed Howard Dean for HHS Secretary today:

"I think Howard Dean would do a great job," Leahy told the Huffington Post at an event at Georgetown University. "He is a physician. As governor he had to deal with everything that went right with HHS and with everything that went wrong. He can tell us that these are the things that a governor has to face, Medicare especially and other things, he is very knowledgeable. He would be very good ... And he is obviously a tireless worker."

From DWT's 'So What Else Is New?' Dept.: What's the point of having disasters if Republicronies can't make a buck (or a million, or 11 mil) off them?

Former HHS Sec'y Tommy Thompson -- our next president?

"It is ironic that former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's firm won the contract to provide the services, given the history of delay from the Bush administration when he was secretary and now. But I am glad these heroes are finally getting the help they deserve."

--Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

Unless, of course, Secretary Thompson's company provides the kind of performance that HHS did while Secretary Thompson was running it. (And of course who can forget the galvanic campaign that came so close to winning the former secretary this year's GOP presidential nomination?)

The Associated Press's Devlin Barrett reports:

Ex-Bush health chief's firm wins Sept. 11 work

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As President Bush's health chief, Tommy Thompson was criticized for not doing enough to help workers exposed to toxic debris from the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center.

Now, a company he leads has won a $11 million contract to treat some of those workers who responded to New York's ground zero.

The contract awarded by the Centers for Disease Control is aimed at tracking the health of between 4,000 and 6,000 workers who live outside the New York City area, where a separate health monitoring program is in place. The CDC is part of the Health and Human Services Department, which Thompson headed in Bush's first term.

Internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show that the one-year contract went to Logistics Health, Inc., a La Crosse, Wis.-based company where Thompson is president.

While health secretary, Thompson was pressed by New York lawmakers to take a more active and aggressive role in tracking and treating Sept. 11-related health problems.

Of course there was nothing amiss in the contract-awarding process:

The CDC contract was awarded after the government received proposals from four different companies, including Thompson's, officials said. The contract went to Logistics Health based on "an evaluation of everything from cost to technical abilities to past performance," CDC spokeswoman Bernadette Burden said.

Because, as we all know, where the Bush regime is concerned, nothing matters but performance. (Now, now, laughing that hard is apt to lead to physical injury.)

As for the nitty-gritty:

Logistics Health will provide annual examinations to World Trade Center responders around the country, diagnose and treat Sept. 11-related conditions and provide a pharmacy benefit to those responders.

Late last year, the government halted an effort to organize health monitoring for ground zero workers spread around the U.S., saying the program could cost far more money than Congress has provided.

Estimates for how much treatment ground zero workers need -- and how much that treatment will cost -- vary widely. New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have put the figure around $400 million a year, but that amount includes treating the much larger group of patients who live in and around New York City.

According to New York City officials, some 400,000 people were exposed to ground zero dust, and 71,000 have enrolled in a long-term health monitoring program for people with and without health problems. Health advocates believe the number of people sick years after their exposure is in the thousands.

Now, Representative Maloney has been outspoken in the fight for proper care for 9/11 victims, starting with those first responders, and if she's satisfied that this contract will accomplish its stated goals . . . well, maybe she's right.


BREAKING NEWS: LESS THAN 7 YEARS AFTER 9/11, NYC HIGH-RISE WORKERS HAVE AN 'ACTION PLAN' FOR NON-FIRE EMERGENCIES

While I was cobbling the above item together, everyone on my floor of our Midtown Manhattan high-rise office building was summoned to a fire drill. By law we have these on a regular basis, at some stated interval -- I always forget what. It's always an event of some jocularity, but we also take these things seriously, since we get regular reminders on the evening news of how vulnerable we are, packed into these giant death traps, in emergency situations.

But this fire drill was different. The gentleman who conducted the drill, who introduced himself as a now-retired 21-year veteran of the Fire Department (which certainly got my attention; like many New Yorkers I have mixed feelings about the NYPD but an admittedly sentimental near-reverence for the FDNY) explained that for the first time the fire drill wasn't about fire-related emergencies. As a result of the 9/11 Commission's discoveries about emergency preparedness, or lack of same, laws were passed which mandated the development of an Emergency Action Plan for non-fire-related events.

I'm not sure I grasped the limited amount of detail that was thrown our way, but I'm certainly glad to know that we now have a plan for dealing with all those other emergencies that may arise. And to think, it took less than seven years to accomplish it!

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