To the extent that media attention is given to the sins of the Bush administration, it is to the more conspicuous that airtime and newspaper space tends to be devoted, unhappily to the exclusion of other stories of official malfeasance or nonfeasance.
Among the recent examples that deserve more attention than they have gotten:
* A Washington Post story about how Bush political appointees had ordered a Justice Department lawyer to weaken a case against the tobacco industry.
* A New York Times story about how IRS agents are pressed to close corporate tax cases prematurely, "allowing billions in tax dollars to go unpaid."
* An Associated Press article relating that FDA food inspections declined by 47 percent between 2003 and 2006.
* Another Post story about how the FDA is allowing antibiotics to be used in animals, a practice that can ultimately cause the development of human resistance to those drugs. This has already happened to a drug given to poultry that was effective against anthrax and serious forms of diarrhea, but to which humans have developed immunity by eating poultry products.
* A Times story about how the Bush administration has let an industry lobbyist "edit government climate reports to play up uncertainty about a human role in global warming, or play down evidence of such a role."
* Still another Times story describing how the IRS is "asking tax lawyers and accountants who create tax shelters and loopholes to take the lead in writing some of its new tax rules." The article quotes Paul Light, a professor of political science at NYU: "It's the fox designing the henhouse."
Charles Peters is the founding editor of the Washington Monthly and the president of Understanding Government, a nonprofit dedicated to better government through better reporting.
Source Citation: Peters, Charles. "Bush scandals you may have missed.(Tilting at windmills)(President George W. Bush)(Brief article)." Washington Monthly 39.5 (May 2007): 8(2). Academic OneFile. Thomson Gale. Brigham Young University - Utah. 8 Aug. 2007
