You Can't Keep A Bad Bush Down

As Genevieve argues, the Bush administration's post-election neutering has led them to redouble their efforts to cause havoc by way of executive orders. What that mainly means is screwing with the country's regulatory structure, tilting it towards business and away from consumer protections. So now, an administration political appointee* rather than career civil servant has to approve all regulations before they go into effect, a fairly chilling prospect. Additionally, market failures now need to be identified, a problem as not all regulations are aimed at correcting market failures -- some are directed at privacy protections, or quality of life increases.

*This isn't bad simply because it opens the process up to political distortion, but because political appointees often lack expertise. I recently sat next to a Department of Energy political appointee whose experience for working on nuclear power was being a member of the Bush/Cheney reelection team. It's easier to reject regulations when you're both ideologically opposed to them in principle and don't actually understand the failures they're remedying.