Another one bites the dust

Oops. It looks like that lobbysist who used to run the National Association of Manufacturers won't be heading up the Consumer Product Safety Commission after all. Michael E. Baroody has withdrawn his name for consideration after some Senators rightly voiced concern at his nomination by President Shady McCrook.

As I presciently suggested more than a week ago, the scandal here wasn't that Baroody was getting a fat $150,000 farewell payoff from the NAM (although that certainly raised suspicions), it's that he would even be considered by George Bush to run the agency that tries to protect consumers against his former cohorts in the manufacturing world and their worst instincts to make a fast buck by putting shoddy goods on the marketplace (flamable children's pajamas anyone?)

Hey, maybe Michael Brown is available. He did such a heckuva job running FEMA.

Seriously, after Colin Powell left, has Bush appointed anyone competent enough to run the purchasing department at a midlevel suburban department store, never mind a federal agency with a life and death mission statement?