Obama appoints Tim Roemer of the anti-EPA ambassador to India

[Joanne98]

President Barack Obama, not so long ago the hope of progressives, has named Tim Roemer of the anti-environmentalist, anti-regulation Mercatus Center as ambassador to India.
Obama may be a smoother talker than any of us could have imagined. The appointment of Roemer, a Democrat in name only, as ambassador to growing superpower India should be shocking to lefties and even moderates. So far, not a peep out of environmentalists about what you would think would be a controversial appointment to one of the world's biggest and most important countries.

Unless they've forgotten the furor in 2004 when the Wall Street Journal revealed the major role the tiny Mercatus Center (largely funded by the oil and gas industry) played in helping George W. Bush dismantle EPA rules and other government regulations on business and industry.

Go back and re-read the WSJ story, "Rule Breaker: In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation":


In 2001, the new Bush White House sought suggestions for government regulations to kill or modify. A small think tank called the Mercatus Center named 44 it didn't like — among them, rules governing energy-efficient air conditioners and renovations to electric-utility plants.
Ultimately, 14 of the 23 rules the White House chose for its "hit list" to eliminate or modify were Mercatus entries — a record that flabbergasted Washington lobbying heavyweights.

Now, five years later, Obama's crew House has spun the truth clean out of this, describing Mercatus — the bane of the EPA — this way in the White House's mini-biography of Roemer in the official notice of his appointment:


As a Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Congressman Roemer works with Members of Congress and staff to improve public policy outcomes by teaching on the legislative branch and policy analysis.
Mercatus is regularly described by environmentalists as evil. The Clean Air Trust, for example, described Mercatus during the Bush Era as "an increasingly influential, anti-regulatory 'think tank' created by and subsidized by polluter money." That was in 2002, when the Clean Air Trust named former Enron board member Wendy Lee Gramm, the director of the Mercatus "regulatory studies program," as its "Villain of the Month." (Gramm is the wife of fanatical anti-regulator ex-senator Phil Gramm, who played a major role in abolishing the protections of the Glass-Steagall Act.)

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http://www.thesmartasset.com/2009/05/obama_appoints_tim_roemer_of_t.php

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. I'd be far more shocked and appalled if he were named to an EPA post.

But being sent halfway around the world to deal with issues that have marginally to do with the environment? That sounds like a win and a neutralization of an opponent to me.