PHA-Exchange> Bush's new chief of staff

[Claudio]

From: "Todd Jailer" <todd.jailer at sbcglobal.net>

> Here's a short posting on Josh Bolten, Bush's new chief of staff who
> replaces Andrew Card. The job is not subject to congressional or any >
other kind of approval or accountability.

>
> Remembering Josh Bolten
>
> James Love
> Huffington Post
> March 29, 2006
>
> Josh Bolten is one of the most powerful officials in Washington,, DC,
> but he is also among the most secretive. These are a couple of notes in
> areas where I have seen his work.
>
> In 2001, President Bush's top trade official, Bob Zoellick, sent a
> message that he would not be an uncritical backer of the trade agenda of
> Pfizer and other big drug companies.
>
> He recommended Bush keep a Clinton Executive Order (EO 13155) that
> protected Africa from trade pressures involving patents on medicines for
> AIDS, and he was constructive in the negotiations on an important 2001
> agreement on patents and medicines (the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and
> Public Health). Public health groups were pleasantly surprised.
>
> But by the Spring of 2002, USTR chief Zoellick became large irrelevant
> on these issues, as CEOs of big companies forged close ties with three
> officials in the White House -- Karl Rove, Josh Bolten and Gary Edson.
> Bolten and Edson had worked together at the USTR during George W.'s
> father's presidency, along with Daniel Price, who became a key lobbyist
> on trade issues, representing pharmaceutical companies.
>
> Working closely with the drug company CEOs and lobbyists working for
> Daniel Price, Rove, Bolten, Edson put enormous pressure on the USTR
> professional negotiators to take a hard line on the negotiations to a
> follow-up agreement involving the rules for exporting generic medicines
> manufactured under a compulsory license. Pfizer and other big pharma
> companies knew they were going to have to give some ground on patents
> for AIDS drugs, but they wanted any new agreement to be limited to a
> handful of diseases, and to create complicated procedures that would
> discourage its use.
>
> By the end of 2002, right before Christmas, the US government was
> isolated in the negotiations --- to the point where the Vatican reminded
> the US negotiators that promises the poor "must be keep."
>
> Bolten refused several requests to meet with public health groups to
> discuss the White House opposition to WTO measures that would protect
> public health interests. Later he left the White House to run OMB.
> During his OMB term Bolten effectively ended work on several issues that
> his predecessor, Mitch Daniels (now Republican governor of Indiana), had
> pursued.
>