REICH & SCALIA
Bush slips in two right-wing appointees
By John Catalinotto
With a show of arrogance that has become typical for this
administration since Sept. 11, President George W. Bush has
appointed two far right-wingers to important posts without
consulting the Senate. He slipped them in while Congress was in
recess. In doing so he exposed his administration's class bias
against working people and for the rich, at home and
abroad.
Against labor union and some Democratic Party opposition,
Bush appointed Eugene Scalia, the son of the Supreme Court
justice, to be lead attorney at the Labor Department. This is
truly a case of the fox guarding the chickens. Scalia has been
an outspoken opponent of laws that promote safety and wellbeing
in the workplace. He especially has attacked ergonomics
regulations, describing them as "quackery" and "junk
science."
Bush also appointed the Cuban-born rightist Otto Juan Reich
as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.
Reich's anti-communist record has made him a favorite of
William Buckley's National Review magazine. Latin America
solidarity groups view him as a friend of right-wing
terrorism.
Unions oppose Scalia nomination
With the Scalia appointment Bush not only slapped organized
labor in the face, he demolished any illusions that his
administration would make some concessions to the Democrats in
exchange for their faithful support of the war abroad and
repression at home.
In the fall, Scalia's nomination had aroused strong
opposition from organized labor. In a letter to the Senate,
Charles M. Loveless, director of legislation for the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME),
wrote the following:
"Mr. Scalia's record shows that he is a staunch opponent of
initiatives to protect the health and safety of America's
workers. The radical nature of his opposition proves that he is
not the appropriate candidate for this important post. He
played an instrumental role in preventing federal and state
agencies from implementing strong protections from the nation's
biggest workplace safety and health threat--ergonomics."
Loveless continued, "But Mr. Scalia's anti-worker reputation
is not limited to defeating ergonomics regulations. As an
employment and labor attorney in Washington, D.C., he has
compiled a long record of advising and defending clients who
have been charged with violating laws on minimum wage,
overtime, equal employment opportunity and labor
relations."
Loveless concluded by asking the senators to vote against
Scalia's confirmation.
The job Scalia has been appointed to was described by Sen.
Paul Wellstone (D-MN) as "really the workers' lawyer for the
whole country. He or she is responsible for enforcing the most
fundamental worker protection measures on the books, won
through decades of struggle and sometimes even with blood.
Minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, occupational safety and
health, mine safety and health, workers comp, family and
medical leave--the Office of Solicitor is responsible for more
than 180 federal laws that cover roughly 10 million employers
and 125 million workers."
Scalia, he continued, "seems to have been opposed throughout
his career to what I see as the very mission of the solicitor
of labor."
Bush has opted to continue on a confrontational course with
organized labor and with all working people at the same time as
he is pursuing an aggressive military policy in the so-called
war on terror.
Reich, Bush back terrorist
In this war, there are some terrorists the Bush
administration favors. One is Orlando Bosch, the anti-communist
Cuban exile who master-minded the bombing of a Cuban civilian
airliner in 1976 that killed 73 passengers, among them the
entire Cuban Olympic fencing team.
Bosch had been held in prison in Venezuela from 1976 until
1986 in connection with the bombing. Reich was U.S. Ambassador
to Venezuela from 1986 to 1989. Soon after Reich arrived,
Bosch's case was reopened and he was released. A close
collaborator of the CIA, Bosch was eventually given asylum in
the United States where former CIA head, then president, George
Bush pardoned him for various other illegal acts in 1990.
From 1983 to 1986, Reich had run the State Department's
Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD). According to Jeff Cohen of
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, this department's "main
mission was to inflame fears about Nicaragua and its left-wing
Sandinista government that had come to power by overthrowing a
corrupt, U.S.-supported dictator.
"By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to
journalists, Reich and the OPD sought to trump up a Nicaraguan
'threat,' and to sanctify the U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas
fighting Nicaragua's government as 'freedom fighters.' The
propaganda was aimed at influencing Congress to continue to
fund the Contras."
Cohen wrote that Reich passed along false stories that
Nicaragua was receiving Soviet MiG fighter jets, stirring talks
of an air strike against Nicaragua. Reich also "promoted the
fable that Nicaragua had acquired chemical weapons from the
Soviets" and that "high-level Sandinistas were involved in drug
trafficking." There was no evidence for any of this.
Reich's office worked closely with the CIA and with Col.
Oliver North. He was closely implicated in the Iran-Contra
conspiracy.
Reich, who has been most recently a corporate lobbyist for
Bacardi--which has tried to get back its Cuban sugar
plantations ever since the revolution instituted land
reform--and for Lockheed Martin, helped draft the Helms-Burton
Act, which tightened the blockade against Cuba.
With his appointment of these two ultra-rightists, without
even the fig leaf of congressional support, Bush has thrown
down the gauntlet to all working people and to all those who
oppose U.S. aggression in the hemisphere.
Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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