Pretty clear that no one wants to be on his sinking ship:
Three of Barack Obama’s nominations for key government positions have withdrawn from the running on a single day in another blow to his faltering attempts to fill his administration.
They are the latest in a string a appointments to back out of senior jobs since he came to power just six weeks ago.
The nominee for deputy in the United States Treasury Department withdrew herself from consideration after weeks of intensive vetting
Annette Nazareth, a former senior staffer and commissioner with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was said to have made “a personal decision” to pull out.
She had faced criticism for her SEC role in creating what Mr Obama himself has lambasted as lax oversight of the banking industry and her confirmation hearing threatened to be contentious.
The gap leave Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, battling the worst economist crisis since the Great Depression with none of his 17 deputies even named. Each one has to be confirmed by the US Senate, a process that usually takes weeks.
Paul Volcker, an Obama economic adviser and former Federal Reserve chairman, called the situation at the Treasury “shameful” last week. Mr Geithner has a 50-person “shadow cabinet” of intended appointees but they have no authority to take any decisions.
The other two, other then the one named in the article, are Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General and Caroline Atkinson for Undersecretary of International Affairs. It gets even better tho. Out of the 1,200 government appointees Obama gets to fill he has only filled 70 of them.
Will he make the “me so tired” excuse on this one also or could it be that reality has sunk in and no one wants to go down with the Titanic?
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groan… Like I said back on Jan 9th, how long before Robert Rubin shows up in Geithner’s treasury dept?
Reruns of the Gong Show
they are less than rookies trying to play in the bigs. they have zero experience and absolutelly no idea what they are doing. obama should never have been elected, he had pretty words with nothing behind them, his staff is used to doing stuff on the fly and shifting the blame else where, the buck stops with them. this is a sorry excuse for an administration, 70 of 1200 positions filled, what a joke.
@luva the scissors: But remember….”This will be the smoothest presidental transition ever!” LOL yeh…right
Sarge
I’ll take one of the 1130 left over positions. Minimum salary 6 figures. Can’t beat a postition where you don’t have to work and don’t have to pay taxes.
Actually I could fill a hundred of the postitions at $100K + each since no work is required.
this is the worst transition ever, no experience and they said that they would be ready on day one. yeah, right. ready on day one, i think hillary had the phone call in the middle of the night ad right, he can’t answer the phone because he is to busy having parties and concerts and all. see, gosh, we are all being to hard the the teleprompter messiah. he has to get used to his new digs and show off a bit before he can actually get down to business. read elsewhere that someone is prompting an investigation to see how much taxpayer money is being wasted for these parties. if obumbles spent as much time on his job and appointments and less on bands and what food to serve his “guests” maybe he could do his job.
Intensive vetting? From Team Obama? Yeah right. The questions probably amounted to “Are you a living person?”, “What’s your favorite color?” and “What’s two plus two?”.
Yikes. Just yikes.
W and his team looks more and more competent every day.
This is quite interesting as it exposes a structural gap in the Obama White House’s ability to push its policies through the Governments departments.
If the following story gets legs on Wall Street, Geithner will be out the door by the end of the month…….
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/obamas-economic-saviour-savaged-as-keating-lets-rip-20090306-8rk7.html?page=-1
Exit question: What happens when the Obama Administration implodes ??
So why does this come to mind ?
“after weeks of intensive vetting”
They couldn’t find a fault with their taxes –
We could of had a V-8.
I think John and Sarah would have had the economy up and running if our country had not decided to elect Obama because it would be cool to have the first black president.
I hope we don’t make the same mistake in 2012. I hope Sarah Palin runs for president as I think she coule be elected if things keep going as they are.
@Luva,
They WERE ready on day one – to begin a four year-long celebration of the greatest con job in American history. I wonder how Hillary feels about her Democratic Party now. She must be fuming on the inside, knowing that she was (and still is) imminently more qualified than the two-faced, teleprompter-toting, totally tanned twinkie in the Oval Office.
As for Nazareth, let’s just say “Thank God!” that she decided to remove herself from consideration to work with Geithner on reform of our economics system. In the SEC, she was supposed to be watching out for issues like securities fraud.
With her hubby R. W. Ferguson Jr., former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), they were ultimately responsible for the lax securities regulations and subsequent banking collapse (with Greenspan, they were a perfect trifecta of incompetence.) We are better off without her.
Geithner won’t fix the problem by making banks ‘fess up to the true market value of the toxic assets. He’s stalling to buy time, until TARP II, TARP III, and other government actions will buy up the remaining toxic assets at grossly inflated prices. That way his banker friends save face, and multiple generations of Americans will curse him and Obama for delaying the nation’s recovery.
Jeff V
Interesting?
Larry Johnson was having lunch with a lobbyist at the 116 Club in DC. He describes the conversation.
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/03/07/what-the-lobbyists-are-saying/
Not surprising in the least INRE GOP spending, Missy. They have vested pork/earmarks in the omnibus as well. There are a few from both parties calling for an O’veto. T’aint likely to happen. As I’ve often stated, my disdain for Congress is fair and bipartisan. Frankly, they should all go home and get jobs.
The lobbyists have become the experts because of the power and funding they’ve received over the past few decades. But they are only the experts in getting the job done their way, not necessarily the best, most efficient, ans most economical way.
With respect to McCain and Palin, it saddens me to think that they probably would have had one hell of a fight with both Democraticly controlled houses of Congress. The Democratic majority would no doubt try to stir up the H&C inspired WIIFM masses, telling them that any belt-tightening by McCain would be Robin Hood in reverse. The left might even have been more upset than they were when the GOP “stole” the election from Al “me no breathe hot air” Gore. Imagine all the energy spent in fawning over Obama, and then imagine it turned into hatred for McCain, aided by the MSM.
Why is Obama having such difficulty, considering that he’s got quite a bit of Clinton’s people working for him? Or is that the problem? Is Obama so far left that he’s alienating his own administration (and the Democratic Party?) I’d bet that his fatigue is due to excessive micromanaging, which wouldn’t be a problem if he spent more time filling open appointment seats, and spend a lot less time campaigning and partying.
Has anyone else noticed how Obama has been targeting states he didn’t win in the 2008 election for selling his porkulus budget plans? No obvious campaigning there!
I gotta find something less stressful than watching Obama and his administration tank, pulling all into the abyss. Maybe sewing, knitting, or a full mouth root canal without anesthesia?
Jeff V