Have you noticed that Salazar and Napolitano haven’t been getting much Gulf face time these days ?
Have you noticed that – except for Coast Guard Admiral Allen – nobody from Team O has a clue how to take charge of the situation ?
All completely predictable from the Team O resumes – all lawyers, academics, and political hacks – nobody who has run anything but a campaign.
Here’s a flashback to last December that saw this one coming. Only suspense was what the ‘event’ would be.
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Originally posted December 4, 2009:
https://kenhoma.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/help-wanted-no-private-sector-experience-required/
This analysis — reported by AEI and sourced to JP Morgan researchers — examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy.
It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.
AEI, Help Wanted, No Private Sector Experience Required, November 25, 2009
http://blog.american.com/?p=7572
In the Obama administration over 90 percent of the players’ prior experience was in the public sector, academia, or law practices. Virtually no “business experience” per se.
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Ken’s Take:
(1) Quibble with the numbers, but directionally the conclusion fits — which is why the Faux Stimulus didn’t work, why the spending is out of control, why there’s sloppy implementation (think Cash for Clunkers), and why businesses refuse to rebuild their payrolls.
(2) Note that the analysis was sourced to JP Morgan. I’ve heard from my sources that off-the-record boardroom commentaries re: the Obama administration has turned very, very negative. But, public commentary is constrained by fear of vindictive government retribution (think pay caps, voiding of contracts, etc.). Surprised me that JPM is associated with the analysis.
(3) Liberal blogs have marshalled to debunk the 10% number for Obama’s advisers. Their rebuttals are laughable — largely claiming that private sector experience includes having had a parent who had a real job. having been a lawyer with at least one private sector client, having run a campaign, or having been a university administrator. For example, here are a couple of my favorites:
Vice President Joe Biden – Private experience: Yes. Biden’s father worked in the private sector his entire life — unsuccessfully for a critical period. Biden attended a private university’s law school (Syracuse), and operated a successful-because-of-property-management law practice for three years before winning election to the U.S. Senate. Running a campaign is a private business, too — and Biden’s first campaign was masterful entrepreneurship.
Secretary of Interior Kenneth L. Salazar – Private sector experience: Yes. Besides a distinguished career in government, as advisor and Cabinet Member with Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Salazar was a successful private-practice attorney from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1994 to 1998 when he won election as Colorado’s Attorney General. Salazar’s family is in ranching, and he is usually listed as a “rancher from Colorado.”
Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis – Private sector experience: Yes. Solis’s father was a Teamster and union organizer who contracted lead poisoning on the job; her mother was an assembly line worker for Mattel Toys. She overachieved in high school and ignored her counselor’s advice to avoid college, and earned degrees from Cal Poly-Pomona and USC. She held a variety of posts in federal government before returning to California to work for education and win election to the California House and California Senate, and then to Congress.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – Private sector experience: Yes. Duncan earned Academic All-American honors in basketball at Harvard. His private sector is among the more unusual of any cabinet member’s, and more competitive. Duncan played professional basketball: “From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia with the Eastside Spectres of the [Australian] National Basketball League, and while there, worked with children who were wards of the state. He also played with the Rhode Island Gulls and tried out for the New Jersey Jammers.” Since leaving basketball he’s worked in education, about four years in a private company aiming to improve education.
To verify the above examples — and for a few more chuckles — check out
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/obamas-well-qualified-cabinet-conservatives-hoaxed-by-j-p-morgan-chart-that-verifies-prejudices/
The Homa Files 
June 15, 2010 at 5:33 pm |
The guy who came up with the 10% numbers disowned it. Indeed come read my blog.
Can you imagine what sort of job Brownie would have done? We’re luck as hell Bush was gone an Obama was on the job.
And isn’t it funny as hell watching the Republicans? 17 months ago Bobby Jindal said the Obama budget was too swollen in emergency services and environmental monitoring, and said oil drilling was over-regulated and Obama should back off.
But now? “Where’s Obama! Why hasn’t Obama saved my tail!”
It’s a horrible tragedy with enough blame to go around for all of us. Have you sold off your car yet? Yeah, it’s your fault, too.
June 16, 2010 at 5:19 pm |
P.S.: One way we can tell this is a crock: Back then, the complaint was that Ken Salazar was not enough of a tool of the oil interests, and that he might toughen regulations on mineral extraction, especially off-shore oil drilling. Clearly, that was incorrect, we can say for certain here in June 2010, after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
July 1, 2010 at 11:17 am |
When I turned on the TV last night, the oil still appears to be gushing out of the well – so I’m not sure what Obama has done based on your comment. It’s easy to blame other people – a lot tougher to actually lead and get results. All I know is that Obama is in charge and the oil is still spilling.
And your premise about “enough blame to go around”…I have no issue with oil as a means of energy – so why would I sell my car? The left continually harps on oil companies but rarely, if ever, give up the myriad of products they use based on petroleum.
Bottom line – get the hole plugged, and quit blaming everyone else in an effort to protect an incompetent president.
July 1, 2010 at 11:27 am |
In a post where you unfairly and inaccurately blame Obama, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, experienced legislators and good businessmen for a raft of sins they did not commit, you then ask me to stop blaming others?
I asked a simple question: What have you done to stop the demand for oil that has sent BP into deep waters to drill? Obviously, you’ve done nothing.
Step up and share the blame with the rest of us. Accepting responsibility for your own actions is the first step toward recovery.
July 6, 2010 at 1:57 pm |
Um, the reason BP and other oil companies have to drill in deep waters (where extraction is MUCH more difficult and perilous) is because ANWR and shallow water drilling have been declared off-limits by liberals.
July 7, 2010 at 11:12 am |
Jim S, there is no indication from anyone, anywhere, that oil companies would not be exploring deep water drilling, even were we to sacrifice all of Alaska.
There’s not enough oil in Alaska to avoid deep water drilling. Otherwise, how can you explain deep water drilling in Mexico? In the North Sea?
It’s our collective thirst for petroleum that takes the oil companies to deep water, and you can’t blame that on environmentalists.
Who is to blame? Got a mirror? You can see.
July 8, 2010 at 1:06 pm |
It must be nice to be so holy.
Hate the economy lately?
July 8, 2010 at 1:09 pm |
Indeed, the more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find. If only we were allowed to go and get it.
Federal lands are critical to the energy policy debate because most of America’s onshore energy is located in the West and in Alaska, where more than half the land is under federal control. Such lands, the Interior Department estimates, “contain 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.” Thirty-one billion barrels of oil represents 50 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to supply all of America’s households for 46 years.
However, “just 8 percent of onshore federal oil and 10 percent of onshore federal gas are accessible under standards lease terms,” Interior notes. The rest is either restricted outright or subject to considerable amounts of red tape. Among the former: Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil lies beneath a few thousand acres at the edge of this nearly 20 million acre refuge.
Granted, few Americans want unrestricted oil and natural gas wells in our treasured national parks or other areas of scenic, environmental or historical significance. However, the drilling restrictions on federal land far surpass such reasonable limits.