Ryan Grim of Politico has a damning summary today of all the regulatory positions at government agencies currently vacant. This has been reported on before, but Grim gives a complete scorecard, and explains the bickering between President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Grim concludes, "The federal government is running on fumes, and roadside signs suggest the next gas station won’t come until January 2009." Read Grim here.

The F.D.A. is belatedly investigating production of the blood thinner heparin by Baxter International at a Chinese plant the agency forgot to inspect. F.D.A. regulators made a trip to the plant last week and released a heavily redacted report about a drug now linked to as many as 21 deaths and more than 400 adverse reactions. The New York Time’s Walt Bogdanich lays out the multiple places that the problem could have started — at the point of unregulated Chinese family workshops, wholesalers or the factory itself. Baxter International has recalled essentially all of their blood thinning products as the disconcerting probe into the blood thinner supply system continues.  Read Bogdanich here.

The New York Time’s Julia Preston chronicles the Department of Homeland Security’s insistence that Boeing’s $133 million contact to create a virtual fence on the Mexican border went just fine. DHS officials say that while the fence can’t extend across all 2,000 miles of the border, a 28-mile pilot project in Arizona passes muster. But the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s independent auditing arm, says something different: Boeing’s design “resulted in a project that did not fully meet user needs.” The GAO says that the rush to produce 21^st century security technology has resulted in 20^th century problems like cameras perpetually out of focus.  Read Preston here.

Will the recall of 143 million pounds of beef from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. produce reform in what cows enter the food supply? The message coming from Agriculture Secretary Ed Shafer is probably not. The Washington Post’s Christopher Lee reports on a Congressional hearing, where Shafer said he had no plans to ban beef from downer cows, or cows that cannot stand on their own. Many cows at Westland/Hallmark could no longer stand upright after facing electrical shocks, and the jury’s still out on how much of Westland/Hallmark’s grisly practices are an aberration. Read Lee here.

If this isn’t an example of preventive journalism people should pay attention to, then nothing is.  Dan Frosch of the New York Times reports on a massive abandoned mine tunnel near Leadville, Colorado that has filled with runoff over the last two decades and is now very likely to collapse, flooding nearby homes and the town of Leadville with highly toxic water.  The site has never been cleaned up due to a disagreement between two federal agencies — the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Environmental Protection Agency — over who has to pay for the work.  The picturesque city of Leadville — the highest city in America at more than 10,000 feet and a tourist destination for fanciers of the Wild West — may soon be underwater as a result.  Read Frosch here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac come by their quasi-governmental reputation honestly.  Though these are private corporations owned by shareholders, they are subject to oversight by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), whose operation the government funds by assessing a fee on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The two corporations underwrite more mortgages than any other financial institution in the U.S.  Now the government has decided to help them out. (more…)

Deborah Platt Majoras seems to have skirted the stereotype for pro-business regulators in the Bush administration.  As John R. Wilke describes her legacy in the Wall Street Journal, Majoras, who chaired the commission, coordinated a balanced approach to the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing consumer protection laws.  Wilke writes that "under Ms. Majoras, the agency stepped up federal enforcement of data-security laws . . . worked to curtail identity theft and pressed advertisers to curb junk-food pitches to children."  It also went to court, suing major pharmaceutical companies for alleged efforts to stave off competition from generic drugs.  Read Wilke here.

Monica Davey of the New York Times reports that regional governments surrounding the Great Lakes are calling for greater federal assistance to deal with environmental and infrastructural problems posed by these bodies of water, which represent 20% of the world’s fresh water.  City leaders, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, say the lakes are more than a local issue and should be viewed on a par with "assisting the New Orleans region after Hurricane Katrina or restoring the Everglades in Florida."  Read Davey here.

Senator Barbara Boxer has released correspondence between senior staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and a former head of that agency, William Reilly, aimed at preparing Reilly for a planned conversation with the staff members’ boss, present EPA administrator Stephen Johnson.  Matthew Wald of the New York Times writes that present senior EPA staff wanted Reilly to explain to Johnson that, if Johnson were to reject California’s request to be able to set higher auto emissions standards, he would damage "the credibility of the agency we both love."  Boxer’s release of these letters must have come as an unpleasant surprise to present staff members, who were apparently unable to muster the arguments needed to convince their own boss about doing the right thing.  Read Wald here.

We can’t say nobody warned us.  That’s the key to preventive journalism, and one of the reasons Understanding Government will be giving away $50,000 to the best piece of preventive journalism published in the year-long period ending on June 30, 2008.  And there’s no shortage of potential topics, as Alex Prud’homme’s column in the New York Times makes clear:  even after Hurricane Katrina, few journalists are looking at the threat posed by America’s aging network of levees and earthen berms. (more…)