I am disgusted.
i wish i read the news more often. especially going to france in a week, knowing i'll be expected to have some savvy about the current situation (so i can participate wisely in political discussion about how fucked up U.S. policy is getting to be...)
This article especially hit a cord with the future sex-educator in me (yes, it is a potential career path i've been considering).
Read on and cringe...
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/05/sauerbrey/print.html
A disastrous appointment
Bush's backdoor choice of unqualified right-winger Ellen Sauerbrey to
head the U.S. refugee-response team raises the specter of Michael Brown.
By Michelle Goldberg
Jan. 05, 2006 | One of the Bush administration's favorite ways of
rewarding its Christian right base is to seed the foreign policy
bureaucracy with its allies. Because appointments to international
delegations or deputy-level State Department posts get little
mainstream attention, there wasn't much uproar when Bush made Christian
radio host Janet Parshall (host of the hagiographic documentary "George
W. Bush: Faith in the White House") a U.S. delegate to the 2005 United
Nations conference on women. Only a whimper was heard when Bush tapped
Paul Bonicelli, former dean of academic affairs at the fundamentalist
Patrick Henry College, to be deputy assistant administrator at the
United States Agency for International Development, putting him in
charge of many of America's programs for promoting democracy in the
Middle East.
But Bush couldn't slip his nomination for assistant secretary of state
for population, refugees and migration under the radar. It's too
important a position. With a $700 million annual budget, the department
formulates America's response to refugee crises all over the world. So
in October 2005, when Bush picked Ellen Sauerbrey, right-wing social
conservative with little background in international affairs, to
replace Arthur ("Gene") Dewey, a career foreign policy official,
newspapers all over the country -- including the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the San Antonio Express-News, the Miami Herald and the
Charlton Gazette -- came out against her. During her October Senate
hearings, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said, "It doesn't appear that you
have very specific experience." Given Sauerbrey's weak résumé for the
position, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., convinced the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee to put off a vote on her nomination until after the
winter break. At the time, there seemed a slim possibility that the
appointment would be defeated.
Rather than fight it out on Capitol Hill, Bush chose to circumvent the
confirmation process. Yesterday, with Congress out of session, the
president made more than a dozen recess appointments, granting
positions to several controversial nominees. Julie L. Myers was made
head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the
Department of Homeland Security, despite criticism by Democrats and
Republicans that she lacks experience. Tracy A. Henke became executive
director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and
Preparedness; as the Washington Post reported, "She had been accused in
her politically appointed post at the Justice Department of demanding
that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks
in traffic cases be deleted from a news release."
Sauerbrey is already being compared to Michael Brown, the hapless
former head of FEMA who famously worried about his on-camera wardrobe
while New Orleans drowned. "If she is confirmed by the Senate, think of
her as the Michael D. Brown of the refugee world," opined the
Washington Post. Her lack of qualifications are so glaring that two of
the last three people to hold the position -- Democrat Phyllis E.
Oakley and Republican Julia Taft, both of whom served under Clinton --
signed a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposing her
confirmation.
"Her job description is to help coordinate humanitarian assistance
across the globe, but it's clear that her first concern will always be
to appease America's extreme right," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.,
tells Salon in an e-mail. "There's a reason the president had to sneak
this appointment past the Senate. I am sure when her appointment ends
in a year, the president will proclaim that she did a 'heckuva job,'
just like he told Michael Brown, but I fear that the world community
will be telling a different story."
The comparison to Brown may be misleading, though, as Sauerbrey will
have to deal with significantly more complex crises involving wars and
disasters all over the world. Oakley, who held the position from 1993
to 1997, describes some of her responsibilities. "We had, of course,
Rwanda and continuing problems in the Balkans, plus Haiti, plus Cuban
refugees," she says. "It really does depend upon the world situation."
Oakley speculates on some of the challenges Sauerbrey might face. "I
don't have a crystal ball but there are things like the tsunami, and
natural disasters are always there. Watching the news today in Iraq,
with problems in the Middle East, the illness of Ariel Sharon,
instability in Lebanon, in Syria, one can just imagine that there could
be big refugee outflows again. In Africa as well. You just have to
expect that there's going to be serious humanitarian problems that the
U.S. is going to have to deal with."
Previous assistant secretaries, Oakley stresses, have had decades of
experience. "Gene Dewey, Julia Taft and I have all had different
experiences but we had seen how U.N. organizations -- the mix of NGOs
and governments ? work," Oakley says. "I've been a foreign service
officer dealing with Afghanistan, and served for a year as the
principal deputy assistant secretary under Warren Zimmerman, the former
ambassador to Yugoslavia. We knew, all three of us, how to get things
done, the people to call at the Pentagon, what you needed to do at the
National Security Council. You don't have time to consult widely.
You've got to know the background, what's possible and how to get
things done quickly." Sauerbrey, Oakley says, "doesn't have any of
that."
What she does have are friends in the GOP. A darling of the religious
right, Sauerbrey lost two races for the Maryland governorship and went
on to become a TV talk show host and Maryland chairman of Bush's 2000
presidential campaign. She had no international experience until Bush
appointed her U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of
Women. There, she was notorious for her active opposition to programs
that expand women's access to contraception. She infuriated
representatives of other countries by working to scuttle international
agreements that codify women's right to reproductive healthcare. In
March, she was loudly booed by delegates at a U.N. women's conference
in New York -- a rare occurrence -- for her comments endorsing
abstinence education as the best way to fight HIV.
In the past, Sauerbrey has made no secret of her opposition to
reproductive freedom. She began a November 2003 address to the
right-wing group United Families International by saying, "I always
feel when I'm being introduced as a representative of the United
Nations that I have to say I'm a conservative; I'm not a feminist." She
continued, "Sean Hannity, this morning, talked about visions and the
differences in visions. My perception is that this prevailing vision at
the U.N. is one that is based on rights, but rights without
responsibility. Family, whatever you want it to be. Sexual freedom,
anything goes. Practically every resolution that goes before the U.N.
... somebody tries to figure out a way to put in 'reproductive
services.'"
As she spoke, it became clear that her objection to "reproductive
services" encompasses far more than just opposition to abortion. "So,
what is our vision? It is certainly recognition that government
policies have to be supported with the family," she said. She added
that "we have to look at ourselves and recognize that government tax
policies, government welfare policies ... no-fault divorce, [and] sex
education have not been healthy to the promotion of the family."
Sauerbrey's opposition to sex education and safe sex initiatives will
likely have profound effects on America's refugee policies. "The first
issue is whether she is fully supportive of family planning efforts for
refugee women, including things like emergency contraception, which has
been unbelievably controversial in this administration," says Jodi
Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender
Equity, an NGO focused on international reproductive rights. "In
refugee settings, 80 percent of refugees are women and children. There
are extremely high rates of sexual violence and coercion in refugee
settings. You have a really, really high need for effective
reproductive and sexual health programs that would include access to
emergency contraception and HIV prophylactics and that kind of thing."
With Sauerbrey, Jacobson says, "You have a person in there who A)
doesn't have any experience dealing with refugee movements, refugee
resettlement, refugee crises, and B) has an ideological agenda against
the single most important health intervention for refugee women."
-- By Michelle Goldberg Salon Media Group, Inc
This article especially hit a cord with the future sex-educator in me (yes, it is a potential career path i've been considering).
Read on and cringe...
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/05/sauerbrey/print.html
A disastrous appointment
Bush's backdoor choice of unqualified right-winger Ellen Sauerbrey to
head the U.S. refugee-response team raises the specter of Michael Brown.
By Michelle Goldberg
Jan. 05, 2006 | One of the Bush administration's favorite ways of
rewarding its Christian right base is to seed the foreign policy
bureaucracy with its allies. Because appointments to international
delegations or deputy-level State Department posts get little
mainstream attention, there wasn't much uproar when Bush made Christian
radio host Janet Parshall (host of the hagiographic documentary "George
W. Bush: Faith in the White House") a U.S. delegate to the 2005 United
Nations conference on women. Only a whimper was heard when Bush tapped
Paul Bonicelli, former dean of academic affairs at the fundamentalist
Patrick Henry College, to be deputy assistant administrator at the
United States Agency for International Development, putting him in
charge of many of America's programs for promoting democracy in the
Middle East.
But Bush couldn't slip his nomination for assistant secretary of state
for population, refugees and migration under the radar. It's too
important a position. With a $700 million annual budget, the department
formulates America's response to refugee crises all over the world. So
in October 2005, when Bush picked Ellen Sauerbrey, right-wing social
conservative with little background in international affairs, to
replace Arthur ("Gene") Dewey, a career foreign policy official,
newspapers all over the country -- including the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the San Antonio Express-News, the Miami Herald and the
Charlton Gazette -- came out against her. During her October Senate
hearings, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said, "It doesn't appear that you
have very specific experience." Given Sauerbrey's weak résumé for the
position, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., convinced the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee to put off a vote on her nomination until after the
winter break. At the time, there seemed a slim possibility that the
appointment would be defeated.
Rather than fight it out on Capitol Hill, Bush chose to circumvent the
confirmation process. Yesterday, with Congress out of session, the
president made more than a dozen recess appointments, granting
positions to several controversial nominees. Julie L. Myers was made
head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the
Department of Homeland Security, despite criticism by Democrats and
Republicans that she lacks experience. Tracy A. Henke became executive
director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and
Preparedness; as the Washington Post reported, "She had been accused in
her politically appointed post at the Justice Department of demanding
that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks
in traffic cases be deleted from a news release."
Sauerbrey is already being compared to Michael Brown, the hapless
former head of FEMA who famously worried about his on-camera wardrobe
while New Orleans drowned. "If she is confirmed by the Senate, think of
her as the Michael D. Brown of the refugee world," opined the
Washington Post. Her lack of qualifications are so glaring that two of
the last three people to hold the position -- Democrat Phyllis E.
Oakley and Republican Julia Taft, both of whom served under Clinton --
signed a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposing her
confirmation.
"Her job description is to help coordinate humanitarian assistance
across the globe, but it's clear that her first concern will always be
to appease America's extreme right," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.,
tells Salon in an e-mail. "There's a reason the president had to sneak
this appointment past the Senate. I am sure when her appointment ends
in a year, the president will proclaim that she did a 'heckuva job,'
just like he told Michael Brown, but I fear that the world community
will be telling a different story."
The comparison to Brown may be misleading, though, as Sauerbrey will
have to deal with significantly more complex crises involving wars and
disasters all over the world. Oakley, who held the position from 1993
to 1997, describes some of her responsibilities. "We had, of course,
Rwanda and continuing problems in the Balkans, plus Haiti, plus Cuban
refugees," she says. "It really does depend upon the world situation."
Oakley speculates on some of the challenges Sauerbrey might face. "I
don't have a crystal ball but there are things like the tsunami, and
natural disasters are always there. Watching the news today in Iraq,
with problems in the Middle East, the illness of Ariel Sharon,
instability in Lebanon, in Syria, one can just imagine that there could
be big refugee outflows again. In Africa as well. You just have to
expect that there's going to be serious humanitarian problems that the
U.S. is going to have to deal with."
Previous assistant secretaries, Oakley stresses, have had decades of
experience. "Gene Dewey, Julia Taft and I have all had different
experiences but we had seen how U.N. organizations -- the mix of NGOs
and governments ? work," Oakley says. "I've been a foreign service
officer dealing with Afghanistan, and served for a year as the
principal deputy assistant secretary under Warren Zimmerman, the former
ambassador to Yugoslavia. We knew, all three of us, how to get things
done, the people to call at the Pentagon, what you needed to do at the
National Security Council. You don't have time to consult widely.
You've got to know the background, what's possible and how to get
things done quickly." Sauerbrey, Oakley says, "doesn't have any of
that."
What she does have are friends in the GOP. A darling of the religious
right, Sauerbrey lost two races for the Maryland governorship and went
on to become a TV talk show host and Maryland chairman of Bush's 2000
presidential campaign. She had no international experience until Bush
appointed her U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of
Women. There, she was notorious for her active opposition to programs
that expand women's access to contraception. She infuriated
representatives of other countries by working to scuttle international
agreements that codify women's right to reproductive healthcare. In
March, she was loudly booed by delegates at a U.N. women's conference
in New York -- a rare occurrence -- for her comments endorsing
abstinence education as the best way to fight HIV.
In the past, Sauerbrey has made no secret of her opposition to
reproductive freedom. She began a November 2003 address to the
right-wing group United Families International by saying, "I always
feel when I'm being introduced as a representative of the United
Nations that I have to say I'm a conservative; I'm not a feminist." She
continued, "Sean Hannity, this morning, talked about visions and the
differences in visions. My perception is that this prevailing vision at
the U.N. is one that is based on rights, but rights without
responsibility. Family, whatever you want it to be. Sexual freedom,
anything goes. Practically every resolution that goes before the U.N.
... somebody tries to figure out a way to put in 'reproductive
services.'"
As she spoke, it became clear that her objection to "reproductive
services" encompasses far more than just opposition to abortion. "So,
what is our vision? It is certainly recognition that government
policies have to be supported with the family," she said. She added
that "we have to look at ourselves and recognize that government tax
policies, government welfare policies ... no-fault divorce, [and] sex
education have not been healthy to the promotion of the family."
Sauerbrey's opposition to sex education and safe sex initiatives will
likely have profound effects on America's refugee policies. "The first
issue is whether she is fully supportive of family planning efforts for
refugee women, including things like emergency contraception, which has
been unbelievably controversial in this administration," says Jodi
Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender
Equity, an NGO focused on international reproductive rights. "In
refugee settings, 80 percent of refugees are women and children. There
are extremely high rates of sexual violence and coercion in refugee
settings. You have a really, really high need for effective
reproductive and sexual health programs that would include access to
emergency contraception and HIV prophylactics and that kind of thing."
With Sauerbrey, Jacobson says, "You have a person in there who A)
doesn't have any experience dealing with refugee movements, refugee
resettlement, refugee crises, and B) has an ideological agenda against
the single most important health intervention for refugee women."
-- By Michelle Goldberg Salon Media Group, Inc