The Centers for Everything But Disease Control
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
So now the federal health bureaucrats in charge of
controlling diseases and pandemics want more money
to do their jobs. Hmph. Maybe if they hadn’t been so
busy squandering their
massive government subsidies on everything but
their core mission, we taxpayers might actually feel
a twinge of sympathy.
At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014
budget is
nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in
2000. Those
evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC
funding increases in January
larger than what President Obama requested.
What are we getting for this ever-increasing amount
of money? Answer: A power-hungry busybody brigade of
politicized blame-mongers.
Money, money, it’s always the money. Yet, while
Ebola and enterovirus D68 wreak havoc on our health
system, the CDC has been busying itself with an
ever-widening array of non-disease control
campaigns, like these recent crusades:
Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. CDC Director
Dr. Thomas Frieden appoints a 15-member “Community
Preventive Services Task Force” to promote pet Nanny
State projects. An obscure Obamacare rule–Section
4003(b)(1)–stealthily increased the task force’s
authority to study “any policies, programs,
processes or activities designed to affect or
otherwise affecting health at the population level.”
Last year, the meddling panel extended the agency’s
reach into
transportation safety with a call to impose a
federal universal motorcycle helmet law on the
country. Is riding a Harley a disease? Why is this
the CDC’s business?
Video games and TV violence. At Obama’s behest, in
the wake of high-profile school shootings, the CDC
scored
$10 million last year to study violent video games
and media images, as well as to assess “existing
strategies for preventing gun violence and
identifying the most pressing research questions,
with the greatest potential public health impact.”
Whatever that means. Why is this the CDC’s business?
Playground equipment. The CDC’s
“Injury Centers” (Did you know there are 13 of
them?) have crafted a “national
action plan” and funded countless studies to
prevent boo-boos and accidents on the nation’s
playgrounds. Apparently, there aren’t enough
teachers, parents, local school districts, and
county and state regulators to police the slides and
seesaws. Why is this the CDC’s business?
“Social norming” in the schools. The CDC has funded
studies and campaigns “promoting
positive community norms” and
“safe, stable, nurturing relationships (SSNRs)”
in homes and schools. It’s the mother of all
government values clarifications programs. So bad
attitudes are now a disease. Again, I ask: Why is
this the CDC’s business?
After every public health disaster, CDC bureaucrats
play the money card while expanding their regulatory
and research reach into anti-gun screeds,
anti-smoking propaganda, anti-bullying lessons,
gender inequity studies and unlimited behavior
modification programs that treat individual
vices–personal lifestyle choices–as germs to be
eradicated.
Here’s a reminder of what the CDC does with money
that’s supposed to go to real disease control. In
2000, the agency essentially lied to Congress about
how it spent up to $7.5 million earmarked each year
since 1993 for research on the deadly hantavirus.
“Instead, apparently without asking Congress, the
CDC spent much of the money on other programs that
the agency thought needed the funds more,” The
Washington Post found. The diversions were
impossible to trace because of shoddy CDC
bookkeeping practices. The CDC also misspent $22.7
million appropriated for chronic fatigue syndrome
and was investigated in 2001 for squandering $13
million on hepatitis C research.
As I pointed out years ago, the CDC has its own
private funding pipeline in the form of “Friends of
CDC,” an Atlanta-based group of deep-pocketed
corporations, now including ATT, Costco, General
Motors, Google, IBM and Microsoft. To date, the
entity has raised some $400 million to support the
CDC’s work.
Too bad some of those big bucks can’t be earmarked
to find a cure for bureaucratic obesity and a
vaccine for mission creep.
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2014