On HC and other staff appointees...
Posted By: sm on 2008-11-19
In Reply to: Please see message. - Marmann
I will reserve comment momentarily on the "increasing number of former Clinton staff," to see if you have further comment on my OP. To some extent, I share your concern about HC, but my feelings about her are pretty mixed. Her behavior during the primary was predictably brutal and I am sure she still has her own political aspirations for the future. SOS position would be a definite feather in her cap toward that end IF she meets the expectations as laid out during Obama's campaign in terms of troop withdrawal from Iraq, a more surgical focus on the Afghanistan/Pakistan front, A 2-state solution in the Palestine/Israel conflict and more open diplomacy overall.
Should she "go rogue" on Obama in this regard, she would be doing herself more harm than good. The SOS serves at the behest of the president and what the president giveth, the president can taketh away. Case in point, Colin Powell. In terms of Obama's strategy, I truly believe Obama the fox is in charge of that decision. As a senator. HC has the potential to affect policy on a much BROADER range than she does has SOS. In any case, there seems to be a log-jam of sorts over the vetting of HC in terms of conflict of interests with Bill's financial dealings, so this is still in the wait and see mode.
Again, will reserve comment on the staff picks to see what you have to say after reading the OP. On the economy, I want a little bit of both. I think it would be wise for Obama to select people who are innovative and open to new approaches and even sweeping systemic reforms. I agree with your observations about the current cronies. So far, there is not much to say about this since the only economy-related selection so far has been Orszag, who did serve on the Council of Economic Advisors under Clinton during years that were not exactly disastrous in that respect. In fact, a balance budget was achieved then and in that respect, he probably tried to err on the safe side with this pick.
I think you may be selling Obama a bit short on the cabinet/administration relationship. It is not a foregone conclusion that the cabinet runs the leader. I believe Obama's style will be more or less the "iron fist in the velvet glove." That too remains to be seen. You may want to consider that even former CLINTON people may be interested in propelling themselves into the future world and shaking these types of perceptions. I also do believe there is plenty of room for those fresh faces that we both would like to see step forward, but it is not difficult for me to understand his focus on experience and name recognition in these top key posts. HC has some of the former and much of the latter. If she is not as experienced as some of the other potential picks, it could just be that she would be less independent in this capacity and, by necessity, would have to look to her boss for guidance.
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If they were Bush appointees
Would never hear about it.
If these were Bush appointees, the dems would be
nm
Maybe if the O appointees paid their taxes.....sm.
This is from the Washington Post. The name of the article is titled: Federal Insider: Staffing Shortage Hinders Treasury's Progressþ
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/09/AR2009030902807.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
do you honestly think only these appointees are not paying taxes?
These are only getting caught because they are being thoroughly investigated for their positions. How many do you think are cheating and not getting caught because nobody seems to give a darn at the IRS about the big government people, only us little people who are being taxed to death anyway!
No, it is not just political appointees cheating on taxes,
It simply comes to light when they get close to be putting charge of seeing that the rest of us do not cheat on our taxes. The excuse that everybody else is doing it does not hold much water.
Not a whole lot of us could sail through all the extra scrutiny that goes with the politcal vetting process. But I think that by the time someone reaches the level where he's running for a high office or being considered for a presidental cabinet post, he's probably already quite experienced at misdirection, scratching backs, bending rules, fudging numbers and managing information.
I don't think it even occurs to some of these people that they should have been playing by the same rules as the rest of us all along. All they need to do is respectfully decline the honor of the nomination or the appointment. But instead they go ahead, because it does not occur to them that they will actually get caught. Greed followed by arrogance coupled with stupidity. Priceless!
who said it is staff?
I saw that one week was for 7th and 8th graders that were hosted for a black history month affair, then one night was congressman, etc. (I think they were they ones that did the conga line; I don't think anywhere I have read did it say that it was for staffers.
I sense a recurring theme with the Obama appointees...
THEY DON'T PAY TAXES!!!
What happened to "CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?"
I wish I could get away with not paying my taxes.
As I stated before, I am so glad I didn't drink the kool-aid.
When he was WH Chief of Staff...
he said he knew nothing about ML servicing old Billy boy under the desk....right under his nose. Just think how he'll run the CIA! He's either a fool or a look the other way kinda guy, take your pick!
Obama staff will say cu l8r 2 IM
In W.H., Obama staff will say cu l8r 2 im
By: Ben Smith
January 17, 2009 09:16 PM EST
Barack Obama may get to keep his Blackberry, but David Axelrod is losing his IM.
The lawyers broke the bad news to Obama aides at a briefing Friday morning convened by incoming Deputy White House Counsel Cassandra Butts: Not only are they leaving the modern world to enter a White House where some of the clunky desktop computers still run Windows 2000 but—worst of all—they'll be forced to surrender a form of communication staffers have relied on for the last two years to communicate with each other, outside allies, and the press.
From Axelrod, the chief campaign strategist, down to junior staffers in the press office, Obama's campaign relied heavily on software many of them began using in high school—AOL Instant Message and Google Chat. Instant messaging, though little mentioned, is—perhaps as much as email—deeply woven into contemporary politics and media, whose fabric is the constant, quick, gossipy transmission of spin and information. But a calculus that's perhaps one part security, one part law, and two parts politics, has long barred instant messaging from the White House.
"They just told us flat out we couldn't IM in the White House," groused one senior staffer Friday.
"It sucks. It's really going to slow us down," complained another, saying that lawyers had warned that, along with Instant Messaging, White House software will restrict users to a range of sites roughly "like your average grade school."
The clunky technology is standard issue for government offices, but the bar on instant messaging is particular to the White House. Legal and security experts say it is dictated by the fear of embarrassment if IMs were to be disclosed. The Presidential Records Act requires White House documents to become public five years after a president leaves office, and most lawyers think it would apply to any instant messages discussing government business.
"People have to be conscious that when you put something on paper you think it through," said former Clinton White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. With IM, he said, "you think you're talking but you're really writing."
The Bush Administration has been rebuked by federal courts for the apparent destruction of emails sent by political aides on non-governmental accounts, and Obama's aides are intensely aware that any instant messages written must be preserved, and will become part of the permanent record, which may not be desirable.
"They're going to realize, once you go inside the bubble, it becomes much more difficult to maintain contact with the outside world," said Reginald Brown, a former associate White House counsel for President Bush. "IMng encourages a kind of casualness in conversation that will be the bane of the lawyers down the line. The reality is that if you want to engage in the equivalent of IMing, you have to pick up the phone."
Brown noted that, along with entering the permanent record after the presidency, the IMs could become public sooner in response to Congressional subpoenas or lawsuits.
"These lawyers - [incoming White House Counsel] Greg Craig in particular—come out of a law firm environment and knows how onerous e-discovery has been for clients," he said.
Instant messaging—like email—also brings security concerns, though Beryl Howell, an lawyer who specializes in cyber-security, said it would be "feasible" to encrypt IM and block potential avenues for viruses.
Others called the policy a reasonable, and perhaps even helpful, way to avoid public embarrassment—and even to inspire more sober thinking.
Hillary Clinton's former chief strategist, Howard Wolfson - who exchanged pleasantries with Axelrod on IM even in the heat of the primaries - emailed that the ban is "probably a blessing. Less distractions."
The instant message ban is just part of a maze Obama's lawyers are preparing to enter, as the 1978 record act faces up to contemporary technology. Lawyers believe, for instance, that any government-related content Obama's aides put on social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will be covered by the act and must be preserved.
And the difficulty of Obama having email isn't just that he will have to be careful about what he writes; any message, however embarrassing, that
is written to him must be preserved.
Many veterans of the Bush White House—who have been accused of channeling compromising political conversations to outside email accounts, which they deny—say they've found it intensely frustrating.
"Did you all think the White House just didn't know that Facebook at Twitter existed?" asked Almacy, blaming the lawyers for the archaic feel of White House web operations.
A current Bush aide said the law didn't contemplate the shift of hallway conversations to instant message and email.
"Do you really want every one of those hallway conversations preserved for the official record?"
But the controversy over the Bush emails, and Obama's promise of transparency, make it unlikely that the new president and Congress will pass legislation lowering the veil of secrecy over new technologies. So for now, Obamas aides will have to cope with telephones and email alone, a shift that will afflict Axelrod—whose habit of using punctuation and complete sentences in his IMs amuses young staffers—as much as any.
Asked by email about the impending technological downgrade, he emailed: "I will reply to this by registered mail."
"I don't' think it was necessarily a national security issue—I think it had mostly to do with the records act," said David Almacy, the former Bush White House Internet Director, who noted that to keep IM, a White House would probably have to "work with an external contractor to preserve all that communication in real time."
Obama's lawyers told staff Friday they'd be reviewing current White House information security policy, and the IM ban drew mixed reviews from outside experts, with some saying that could cast the staff into some of the same isolation that Obama, by insisting on keeping his Blackberry, is seeking to avoid.
"Does there really need to be a trade off here? The net effect is that the president and all of his top staff are going to be put into a bubble," said Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archvie. "There should be ways for the President's staff to take advantage of the latest IM technology—otherwise they're living in the hothouse, and strange plants grow in hothouses."
Hard to believe the White House is still using Windows 2000!
Chief of Staff or Enforcer?...
Here are a few thing I've found just after a short search about Mr. Emanuel:
Mr. Emanuel, who received training in ballet as a boy, has shown no lightness of step in his political career: would-be enemies are advised to heed the story of a pollster who wronged him and promptly received a large, decomposing fish in the mail.
The intense, eventually successful campaign took a serious toll on him. Colleagues reported that amid a discussion over a celebratory dinner about which political figures had earned the new president's enmity, Mr. Emanuel became so enraged that he grabbed a steak knife, stood up and began reciting a list of names, plunging the knife into the table and shouting "Dead! Dead! Dead!" after each one.
Reflecting on his own foul-mouthed, attack-dog style, Mr. Emanuel has said: "I wake up some mornings hating me too." Commentators have suggested that Mr. Obama, who ran a lofty campaign based on national unity and bipartisanship, has recognized the need to employ a tough enforcer to push through his policies.
You would prefer he not have staff on day 1? Or have a plan of action? sm
He has done nothing that previous Presidents-elect have not done in the days between election and inauguration.
Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff disturbs you how?
could you please expand on your concept of the Chicago political machine? I must have missed those posts in the past.
The President's Chief of Staff is basically an administrative coordinator who oversees the white house staff. He manages the president's schedule, Under his supervision are his own deputy, White House Counsel and the White House Press Secretary. Sounds like an executive butler to me. He has experience as a political staffer and advisor, a successful campaign director and fundraiser on both the state and national levels. Senior advisor to Bill Clinton on political affairs, policy and strategy. Returned to the House of representatives from the 5th district in Illinois 4 times. He must be doing something right.
Though he had expressed his interest in staying in the House and possibly aspiring to Speaker of the House, he has now decided to leave the legislative branch and become part of the executive branch. He seems to be imminently qualified for the job and does not have any direct legislative powers. Please tell us what it is you find so foreboding about the appointment of this White House butler guy.
Bush Chief Of Staff To Obama...Put On Your Jacket
On Wednesday night former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card told "Inside Edition" that he's not pleased with President Obama's lax Oval Office appearance. (Obama has instituted an even more relaxed weekend dress code.) According to the Inside Edition website:
"There should be a dress code of respect," Card tells INSIDE EDITION. "I wish that he would wear a suit coat and tie."
Card is the first member of the Bush administration to bash Obama, and he's going after him for forgoing a coat and tie.
"The Oval Office symbolizes...the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I'm going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it's appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President."
Card continued, "I don't criticize Obama for his appearance, I do expect him to send the message that people who are going to be in the Oval Office should treat the office with the respect that it has earned over history."
MSNBC dissected the dress code controversy on Thursday morning, and pointed to a similar fashion "faux pas" by President Clinton while in office:
Video
Unfortunately for Card, the New York Times dredged up this picture:
It seems the former Chief of Staff is as wrong as he is bitter.
Link
Bush staff wanted bomb-detect cash moved
(Almost five years after 9/11, just how committed is Bush to keeping Americans safe?)
Bush staff wanted bomb-detect cash moved
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 11, 5:56 PM ET
While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.
Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.
Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course, Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.
The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security, the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.
Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short.
They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using, Sabo said.
Homeland Security said Friday its research arm has just gotten a new leader, former Navy research chief Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, and there is strong optimism for developing new detection technologies in the future.
I don't have any criticisms of anyone, said Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary for transportation security. I have great hope for the future. There is tremendous intensity on this issue among the senior management of this department to make this area a strength.
Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department's research and development effort is bogged down by bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely.
The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.
The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.
The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights was to involve liquid explosives.
Hawley said Homeland Security now is going to test the detector in six American airports. It is very promising technology and we are extremely interested in it to help us operationally in the next several years, he said.
Japan has been using the liquid explosive detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo and demonstrated the technology to U.S. officials at a conference in January, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said.
Homeland Security is spending a total of $732 million this year on various explosives deterrents and has tested several commercial liquid explosive detectors over the past few years but hasn't been satisfied enough with the results to deploy them.
Hawley said current liquid detectors that can scan only individual containers aren't suitable for wide deployment because they would bring security check lines to a crawl.
For more than four years, officials inside Homeland Security also have debated whether to deploy smaller trace explosive detectors — already in most American airports — to foreign airports to help stop any bomb chemicals or devices from making it onto U.S.-destined flights.
A 2002 Homeland report recommended immediate deployment of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in his attack in December 2001.
A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively, and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions.
Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security's explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.
It is not that expensive, said Fainberg, who retired recently. There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn't deploy it.
Fainberg said research efforts were often frustrated inside Homeland Security by bureaucratic games, a lack of strategic goals and months-long delays in distributing money Congress had already approved.
There has not been a focused and coherent strategic plan for defining what we need ... and then matching the research and development plans to that overall strategy, he said.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners, like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.
It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats, he said.
The administration's most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T's 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.
Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the top two lawmakers for Senate homeland appropriations, rejected the idea shortly after it arrived late last month, Senate leadership officials said.
Their House counterparts, Reps. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Sabo, likewise rejected the request in recent days, Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Brost said. Homeland said Friday it won't divert the money.
___
Associated Press writer Leslie Miller contributed to this story.
Abramoff Attended staff-level meetings at Bush White House
White House Silent on Abramoff Meetings
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2006
(AP) The White House is refusing to reveal details of tainted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits with President Bush's staff.
Abramoff had a few staff-level meetings at the Bush White House, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. But he would not say with whom Abramoff met, which interests he was representing or how he got access to the White House.
Since Abramoff pleaded guilty two weeks ago to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion charges in an influence-peddling scandal, McClellan has told reporters he was checking into Abramoff's meetings. I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that, he said in his press briefing Jan. 5. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon.
McClellan said Tuesday that he checked on it at reporters' requests, but wouldn't discuss the private staff-level meetings. We are not going to engage in a fishing expedition, he said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, along with three other Democratic senators, wrote Bush a letter Tuesday asking for an accounting of Abramoff's personal contacts with Bush administration officials and acts that may have been undertaken at his request. The American people need to be assured that the White House is not for sale, they wrote.
McClellan has said Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, but corrected himself Tuesday to say there were only two _ in 2001 and 2002.
McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it's possible the two met at the holiday receptions.
Abramoff was one of Bush's top fundraisers, having brought in at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election campaign and earning the honorary title pioneer. The campaign took $6,000 of the contributions _ which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes he represented _ and donated it to the American Heart Association. But the campaign has not returned the rest of the money Abramoff raised.
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