New Criticism Of Obama’s Czars - he has 18 of them!!!

image by rees

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
by Laer
June 10, 2009

Sen. John Barrasso delivered a bit of a barn-burner at yesterday’s Committee on Oversight joint hearing on “Scientific Integrity and Transparency Reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency.” He’s been carrying this particular flag for a while, all but ignored by the Dem power structure. Following are excerpts from his statement:

I am concerned about the shadow cabinet position of Energy and Climate Czar. This vague position “coordinates” energy and climate change policy in the cabinet. This person is not confirmed by the Senate. How the EPA Administrator and the Czar work together remains highly ambiguous. The person appointed to this post is Carol Browner. Browner, coincidently, was the EPA Director under President Clinton. By appointing Browner, the Administration now has two EPA Directors, one confirmed by Congress, the other not. One accountable to Congress, the other not.

Obama has now appointed 18 czars - imagine what the Left would have said if “Bushitler” had done the same. They’re all problematic, but Browner is particulary so, especially given the economy-crushing global warming agenda Obama is pushing. Barrasso details some of the more nefarious acts Browner undertook while she was Clinton’s Congressionally overseen EPA chief:

She [a Washington Examiner reporter] stated that “Browner ordered Virginia to reduce the amount of ambient nitrogen oxide, not because levels were anywhere near dangerous, but because that was the only pollutant that had not declined in the past 25 years.” She stated that that Browner proposed banning chlorine, used as a disinfectant in 98 percent of municipal water treatment, “in the absence of any evidence that chlorine leads to cancer or birth defects.” Indeed, the author points out that Peru was suing the United States for classifying chlorine as a possible carcinogen “because then Peru removed chorine from its water supply, and the resulting cholera epidemic killed thousands.” She also cited Browner’s attempt to get the Food and Drug Administration to ban anti-asthma inhalers because the EPA "considered it more important to get rid of devices that release trace amounts of chlorofluorcarbons than to allow 30 million Americans to breathe easily.” She stated “public outcry, not science, caused the EPA to back off.” These are just a few examples in a larger column that cites many more.

Now this woman is operating in Jack Bauer-like fashion, with no hand, save Obama’s, constraining her. This is not exactly the model of that transparency thing Obama promised during the campaign.

The Czar positions that the Obama Administration has created seem to be designed to not be transparent. We won’t ever know whether or not politics is trumping science because we can’t get the Czar to come here and testify. Everything will be done in secret, behind closed doors, out of the view of the American people.We need not look much farther than Energy and Climate Czar Browner’s actions over the last few months.

Want an example of how untransparent the czar process is? Barrosso provided a gem:

The New York Times ran an article in May entitled “Vow of silence key to White House-California Fuel Economy Talks.” The article stated that there was a simple rule for negotiations between the White House and California on vehicle fuel economy – “Put nothing in writing.” Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, stated that Browner “quietly orchestrated private discussions from the White House with auto industry officials.” The paper said Nichols and Browner “decided to keep their discussions as quiet as possible, holding no group meetings and taking care to not leak updates to the press.” Nichols was quoted as saying “We put nothing in writing, ever.” This is unacceptable Madame Chairman.

How are we, the oversight committee, able to do our job with Administration officials putting nothing in writing, holding secret meetings in the dark of night without other officials present. All of this occurring outside the prying eyes of the people. This is not transparency. This is not good government. This threatens scientific integrity.

I wonder how that Times story would have run if it had occurred during the Bush admin and they caught an uncomfirmed Bush appointee saying “put nothing in writing.” We’ll never know.

The good senator concluded by repeating his longstanding request for committee hearings into Browner’s role as energy czar, a request committee chair Babs Boxer ignored. Fat chance any such hearings will happen any sooner than January 2013, when, hopefully, a new Republican majority will rule the Senate.

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Member of Obama's Trip Team in France diagnosed with swine flu

image of Obama Team Member French Kissing Swine

from Breitbart
May 29, 2009
By ANGELA CHARLTON
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - A U.S. official in Normandy to prepare President Barack Obama's upcoming visit has been diagnosed with swine flu and is being treated in a hospital, French authorities said Friday.

Eleven other members of the U.S. delegation were placed in isolation for 24 hours in their hotel rooms and given medical treatment, said an official at the Calvados region administrative headquarters. The official was not authorized to be identified publicly.

The 54-year-old American woman was hospitalized in the city of Caen, and will remain for about a week, the official said.

The hotel where the delegation was staying, in the seaside town of Port-en-Bessin, is not far from the beaches where Allied forces landed June 6, 1944, in the D-Day invasion. Obama is coming to the area for the 65th anniversary of the invasion next week.

The swine flu incident comes as veterans, visitors and French, British, U.S. and other officials are streaming into the area for the anniversary.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement "the French authorities are taking the appropriate action" in the Normandy swine flu case.

The World Health Organization reported Friday that its global tally rose to 15,510 swine flu cases in 53 countries, including 99 deaths, most of them in Mexico.

In the United States, officials reported 8,975 confirmed cases Friday and 15 deaths. France has 20 confirmed cases.

In April, a U.S. security aide helping with arrangements during Obama's trip to Mexico became sick with flu-like symptoms and three members of his family later contracted probable swine flu.
The employee, who was not identified, was an aide to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
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White House issues advisory after Obama Mexico trip - Obama's staff is spreading the flu

from Politico.com
By CAROL E. LEE & JOSH GERSTEIN
04/30/09

The White House has issued a health advisory outlining "protective measures" for anyone who traveled on President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico after a member of the U.S. delegation came down with flu-like symptoms – and tests on his family showed they’re probably infected with the swine flu.

The individual – an advance security staffer for Energy Secretary Steven Chu –appears to have spread the flu to his wife, son and nephew. All three have tested probable for swine flu, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

Gibbs, who did not name the security aide, said he did not work closely with Obama, didn’t fly on Air Force One and is back at work at the Energy Department.

But the staffer was at a working dinner Obama attended with Mexican officials April 16. The aide “was asked specifically if he ever came within six feet of the president, and the answer to that was 'No,' " Gibbs said.

“The president has not experienced any symptoms,” Gibbs said. He said Obama and other aides are “highly, highly, highly unlikely” to develop such symptoms now because of the time that has passed since Obama’s visit on April 16 and 17 and the relatively short incubation period for the flu virus, known as H1N1.

The disclosure of the likely flu case in the president’s entourage was startling because Gibbs said earlier this week that White House physicians believed the flu had posed no risk at all to Obama when he visited Mexico. “The doctors have informed me… that the President's health was never in any danger,” Gibbs said Monday.

Also on Monday, Gibbs had said no one traveling with the president “in either governmental or press capacity has shown any symptoms that would denote cause for any concern."

Gibbs said Thursday that Chu’s aide developed a fever while in Mexico and that several of the aide’s relatives subsequently fell ill with flu-like symptoms. The aide has not tested positive for swine flu, probably because so much time has elapsed, but tests on his three relatives came back as “probable” cases on Tuesday, Gibbs said.

The man flew back to Washington on a commercial United Airlines flight that landed at Dulles International Airport on April 18, Gibbs said.

Gibbs said Secretary Chu has shown no flu-like symptoms and has no plans to be tested for the virus. [Why, just as a precaution wouldn't he want to be tested? Why wouldn't the White House insist that he be tested? That makes no sense whatsoever. The White House is trying to play the angle that there is nothing to worry about - my comment]

Gibbs said a White House physician reported that about 10 staffers who traveled to Mexico visited him. But Gibbs said, “None of those people, however, came back with any positive tests.”

The press secretary said officials don’t expect any more cases related to the trip because of the time that has passed.

The White House advisory echoes the advice of the Centers for Disease Control – and even the president himself at Wednesday’s news conference – including urging workers to stay home if they suspect they have the virus. But the advisory also paints that advice as a way to make sure the White House can keep functioning, no matter how serious a global flu outbreak gets.

“Limiting influenza exposure within the buildings at the White House Complex will allow normal operations to continue, even if the world-wide influenza outbreak becomes more widespread,” the advisory reads.
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White House aide's family likely has swine flu

DON'T BE KISSING ANY PIGS!

Apr 30 01:13 PM US/Eastern
from Breitbart.com

WASHINGTON (AP) - A member of the U.S. delegation that helped prepare Energy Secretary Steven Chu's trip to Mexico City has demonstrated flu-like symptoms and his family members have tested probable for swine flu.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that three members of an aide's family are being tested to see if they have the same strain of swine flu that is threatening to become a pandemic. The aide worked in presidential advance, which is responsible for planning and preparing trips.

Gibbs said that Secretary Chu has not experienced any symptoms. The spokesman also said that President Barack Obama also has had no symptoms of the virus and doctors see no need to conduct any tests on his health.
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Swine Flu - Do's and Don'ts - Mostly Don'ts

Biden would avoid subways, planes after swine flu outbreak

from Politico.com
by Politico Staff
4/30/09

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would not recommend taking any commercial flight or riding in a subway car “at this point” because swine flu virus can spread “in confined places.”

““I would not be, at this point – if they had another way of transportation – suggesting they ride the subway,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.

That contradicted more restrained advice from President Barack Obama and the federal government, and could hurt tourism during a recession.

The administration said a clarifying statement is forthcoming.

Host Matt Lauer had asked the vice president: “This is by no means a ‘gotcha’ type of question. … But if a member of your family came to you … and said, ‘Look, I want to go on a commercial airliner to Mexico, and back within the next week,’ would you think it’s a good idea?”

“I would tell members of my family – and I have – I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden replied. “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico. It’s [that] you’re in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. …

“So, from my perspective, what it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field when someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

To keep from getting sick, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends: “Try to avoid close contact with sick people. If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.”

Obama said at his news conference on Wednesday night that “individual families [need to] start taking very sensible precautions —that can make a huge difference.

“So wash your hands when you shake hands,” he advised. “Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference. If you are sick, stay home. If your child is sick, keep them out of school.

“If you are feeling certain flu symptoms, don't get on an airplane, don't get on any system of public transportation where you're confined and you could potentially spread the virus. So those are the steps that I think we need to take right now. But understand that because this is a new strain. We have to be cautious.”
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Officials confirm first US death from swine flu - It's started and you can't stop it!

from Yahoo News
by Lauran Neergaard
AP Medical Writer
April 29, 2009

WASHINGTON – A 23-month-old Texas toddler became the first confirmed swine flu death outside of Mexico as authorities around the world struggled to contain a growing global health menace that has also swept Germany onto the roster of afflicted nations. Officials say the death was in Houston.

"Even though we've been expecting this, it is very, very sad," Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday of the infant's death. "As a pediatrician and a parent, my heart goes out to the family."

President Barack Obama said this morning that Americans should know the government is doing all it can to control virus. Obama also says schools should consider closing if the spread of the swine flu virus worsens.

Canada, Austria, New Zealand, Israel, Spain, Britain and Germany also have reported cases of swine flu sickness. Deaths reported so far have been limited to Mexico, and now the U.S.

As the United States grappled with this widening health crisis, Besser went from network to network Wednesday morning to give an update on what the Obama administration is doing. He said authorities essentially are still "trying to learn more about this strain of the flu." His appearances as Germany reported its first cases of swine flu infection, with three victims.

"It's very important that people take their concern and channel it into action," Besser said, adding that "it is crucial that people understand what they need to do if symptoms appear.

"I don't think it (the reported death in Texas) indicates any change in the strain," he said. "We see with any flu virus a spectrum of disease symptoms."

Asked why the problem seems so much more severe in Mexico, Besser said U.S. officials "have teams on the ground, a tri-national team in Mexico, working with Canada and Mexico, to try and understand those differences, because they can be helpful as we plan and implement our control strategies."

Sixty-six infections had been reported in the United States before the report of the toddler's death in Texas.

The world has no vaccine to prevent infection but U.S. health officials aim to have a key ingredient for one ready in early May, the big step that vaccine manufacturers are awaiting. But even if the World Health Organization ordered up emergency vaccine supplies — and that decision hasn't been made yet — it would take at least two more months to produce the initial shots needed for human safety testing.

"We're working together at 100 miles an hour to get material that will be useful," Dr. Jesse Goodman, who oversees the Food and Drug Administration's swine flu work, told The Associated Press.

The U.S. is shipping to states not only enough anti-flu medication for 11 million people, but also masks, hospital supplies and flu test kits. President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion in emergency funds to help build more drug stockpiles and monitor future cases, as well as help international efforts to avoid a full-fledged pandemic.

"It's a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable," the WHO's flu chief, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told a telephone news conference.

Cuba and Argentina banned flights to Mexico, where swine flu is suspected of killing more than 150 people and sickening well over 2,000. In a bit of good news, Mexico's health secretary, Jose Cordova, late Tuesday called the death toll there "more or less stable."

Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities, has taken drastic steps to curb the virus' spread, starting with shutting down schools and on Tuesday expanding closures to gyms and swimming pools and even telling restaurants to limit service to takeout. People who venture out tend to wear masks in hopes of protection.

The number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States rose to 66 in six states, with 45 in New York, 11 in California, six in Texas, two in Kansas and one each in Indiana and Ohio, but cities and states suspected more. In New York, the city's health commissioner said "many hundreds" of schoolchildren were ill at a school where some students had confirmed cases.

The WHO argues against closing borders to stem the spread, and the U.S. — although checking arriving travelers for the ill who may need care — agrees it's too late for that tactic.

"Sealing a border as an approach to containment is something that has been discussed and it was our planning assumption should an outbreak of a new strain of influenza occur overseas. We had plans for trying to swoop in and knockout or quench an outbreak if it were occurring far from our borders. That's not the case here," Besser told a telephone briefing of Nevada-based health providers and reporters. "The idea of trying to limit the spread to Mexico is not realistic or at all possible."

"Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva, recalling the SARS epidemic earlier in the decade that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy.

Authorities sought to keep the crisis in context: Flu deaths are common around the world. In the U.S. alone, the CDC says about 36,000 people a year die of flu-related causes. Still, the CDC calls the new strain a combination of pig, bird and human viruses for which people may have limited natural immunity.

Hence the need for a vaccine. Using samples of the flu taken from people who fell ill in Mexico and the U.S., scientists are engineering a strain that could trigger the immune system without causing illness. The hope is to get that ingredient — called a "reference strain" in vaccine jargon — to manufacturers around the second week of May, so they can begin their own laborious production work, said CDC's Dr. Ruben Donis, who is leading that effort.

Vaccine manufacturers are just beginning production for next winter's regular influenza vaccine, which protects against three human flu strains. The WHO wants them to stay with that course for now — it won't call for mass production of a swine flu vaccine unless the outbreak worsens globally. But sometimes new flu strains pop up briefly at the end of one flu season and go away only to re-emerge the next fall, and at the very least there should be a vaccine in time for next winter's flu season, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health's infectious diseases chief, said Tuesday.

"Right now it's moving very rapidly," he said of the vaccine development.
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Glenn Beck - What can we learn from '76 flu debacle?

World closer to swine flu pandemic

Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:49pm EDT
By Alistair Bell

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A new virus has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and the World Health Organization moved closer on Monday to declaring it the first flu pandemic in 40 years as more people were infected in the United States and Europe.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert level for the swine flu virus to phase 4, indicating a significantly increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

The last such outbreak, a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic in 1968, killed about 1 million people.

Although the new flu strain has so far killed people only in Mexico, there were more than 40 confirmed cases in the United States, including 20 at a New York City school where eight cases were already identified.

In Mexico City, fearful Christians paraded a centuries-old statue of Jesus, believed to protect against disease, through the streets for the first time in more than a century.

The swine flu is not caught from eating pig meat products, but several countries imposed import bans on pork from the United States. Stocks in companies such as airlines were also hit as investors worried about the impact on travel.

Spain became the first country in Europe to confirm a case of swine flu when a man who returned from a trip to Mexico last week was found to have the virus.

Texas health authorities confirmed a third case of swine flu at a school near the Mexican border and California said it now had 11 confirmed cases.

The U.S. State Department and the European Union urged citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico and other areas affected by swine flu.

Mexico relies on tourism as its third biggest source of foreign currency and millions of Americans travel there every year.

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the outbreak was now suspected of having killed 149 people and warned the number of cases would keep rising.

Thirty-three million Mexican schoolchildren will be off school until the middle of next week as authorities seek to contain the outbreak. Schools in the sprawling capital had already been closed but the government ordered classes canceled across the country until May 6.

Most of the those who died were between 20 and 50 years of age, an ominous sign because a hallmark of past pandemics has been the high rate of fatalities among healthy young adults.

Worldwide, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people in an average year but the new strain worries experts because it spreads rapidly between humans and there is no vaccine for it.

A New Zealand teacher and a dozen students who recently traveled to Mexico were also being treated as likely mild cases.

In the first confirmed cases in Britain, Scotland's health minister said two people tested positive for swine flu and were being treated under isolation near Glasgow.

Suspected cases were also reported in France, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Israel.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Maggie Fox, Emily Kaiser and Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Helen Popper and Miguel Gutierrez in Mexico City and Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong, Writing by Kieran Murray, Editing by Frances Kerry)
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Is swine flu 'the big one' or a flu that fizzles?

By MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writer
Sun Apr 26, 8:03 pm ET

ATLANTA – As reports of a unique form of swine flu erupt around the world, the inevitable question arises: Is this the big one?

Is this the next big global flu epidemic that public health experts have long anticipated and worried about? Is this the novel virus that will kill millions around the world, as pandemics did in 1918, 1957 and 1968?

The short answer is it's too soon to tell.

"What makes this so difficult is we may be somewhere between an important but yet still uneventful public health occurrence here — with something that could literally die out over the next couple of weeks and never show up again — or this could be the opening act of a full-fledged influenza pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent expert on global flu outbreaks with the University of Minnesota.

"We have no clue right now where we are between those two extremes. That's the problem," he said.

Health officials want to take every step to prevent an outbreak from spiraling into mass casualties. Predicting influenza is a dicey endeavor, with the U.S. government famously guessing wrong in 1976 about a swine flu pandemic that never materialized.

"The first lesson is anyone who tries to predict influenza often goes down in flames," said Dr. Richard Wenzel, the immediate past president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

But health officials are being asked to make such predictions, as panic began to set in over the weekend.

The epicenter was Mexico, where the virus is blamed for 86 deaths and an estimated 1,400 cases in the country since April 13. Schools were closed, church services canceled and Mexican President Felipe Calderon assumed new powers to isolate people infected with the swine flu virus.

International concern magnified as health officials across the world on Sunday said they were investigating suspected cases in people who traveled to Mexico and come back with flu-like illnesses. Among the nations reporting confirmed cases or investigations were Canada, France, Israel and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, in the United States, there were no deaths and all patients had either recovered or were recovering. But the confirmed cases around the nation rose from eight on Saturday morning to 20 by Sunday afternoon, including eight high school kids in New York City — a national media center. The New York Post's front page headline on Sunday was "Pig Flu Panic."

The concern level rose even more when federal officials on Sunday declared a public health emergency — a procedural step, they said, to mobilize antiviral medicine and other resources and be ready if the U.S. situation gets worse.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say that so far swine flu cases in this country have been mild. But they also say more cases are likely to be reported, at least partly because doctors and health officials across the country are looking intensively for suspicious cases.

And, troublingly, more severe cases are also likely, said Dr. Richard Besser, the CDC's acting director, in a Sunday news conference.

"As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease," he predicted. "We're going to see more severe disease in this country."

Besser also repeated what health officials have said since the beginning — they don't understand why the illnesses in Mexico have been more numerous and severe than in the United States. In fact, it's not even certain that new infections are occurring. The numbers could be rising simply because everyone's on the lookout.

He also said comparison to past pandemics are difficult.

"Every outbreak is unique," Besser said.

The new virus is called a swine flu, though it contains genetic segments from humans and birds viruses as well as from pigs from North America, Europe and Asia. Health officials had seen combinations of bird, pig and human virus before — but never such an intercontinental mix, including more than one pig virus.

More disturbing, this virus seems to spread among people more easily than past swine flus that have sometimes jumped from pigs to people.

There's a historical cause for people to worry.

Flu pandemics have been occurring with some regularity since at least the 1500s, but the frame of reference for health officials is the catastrophe of 1918-19. That one killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people worldwide.

Disease testing and tracking were far less sophisticated then, but the virus appeared in humans and pigs at about the same time and it was known as both Spanish flu and swine flu. Experts since then have said the deadly germ actually originated in birds.

But pigs may have made it worse. That pandemic began with a wave of mild illness that hit in the spring of 1918, followed by a far deadlier wave in the fall which was most lethal to young, healthy adults. Scientists have speculated that something happened to the virus after the first wave — one theory held that it infected pigs or other animals and mutated there — before revisiting humans in a deadlier form.

Pigs are considered particularly susceptible to both bird and human viruses and a likely place where the kind of genetic reassortment can take place that might lead to a new form of deadly, easily spread flu, scientists believe.

Such concern triggered public health alarm in 1976, when soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., became sick with an unusual form of swine flu.

Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans. The pandemic never materialized, but thousands who got the shots filed injury claims, saying they suffered a paralyzing condition and other side effects from the vaccinations.

To this day, health officials don't know why the 1976 virus petered out.

Flu shots have been offered in the United States since the 1940s, but new types of flu viruses have remained a threat. Global outbreaks occurred again in 1957 and 1968, though the main victims were the elderly and chronically ill.

In the last several years, experts have been focused on a form of bird flu that was first reported in Asia. It's a highly deadly strain that has killed more than 250 people worldwide since 2003. Health officials around the world have taken steps to prepare for the possibility of that becoming a global outbreak, but to date that virus has not gained the ability to spread easily from person to person.
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