USATODAY.com – Oversight board has detractors

So now the Shrub Maladministration proposes another government agency to oversee the FDA, to make sure that drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex don’t make it to market and kill a bunch of people. Excuse me, but then what exactly is the Food & Drug Administration doing, anyway? This move must have originated at the Department of Redundancy Department.

It’s yet another move in the through-the-looking-glass Bizarro world of the neo-cons. Remember the good old days when Republicans hated bigger government and more bureaucracy? Now whenever Bush’s agencies screw up, the answer is to add another agency. The CIA & FBI missed terrorists training in our country, learning to fly planes but not land them, and for six months ignored 52 dire warnings about the catastrophic hijackings of September 11th? Well, then, create a Department of Homeland Security. The intelligence agencies severely overstated the threat of Saddam Hussein? Well, then, create a secret Pentagon-level spy agency. The FDA is in the back pocket of Big Pharma and allowed drugs to market that killed a bunch of people? Well, then, create a Drug Oversight Board.

In BushWorld, the buck doesn’t stop anywhere, it actually reproduces and creates more bucks. Our bucks, that is, we taxpayers who have to pay for these extra government layers. If only there could be another governmental layer: the Presidential Oversight Board.