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By W. Jackson Bate
By Susan Zakin
$20
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AP/Francisco Seco
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The Nobel Prize-winning economist and public advocate is at the top of every liberal’s wish list for President Obama’s second-term Cabinet appointments.
Posted on Jan 5, 2013
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AP / Khalil Hamra
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Egyptians staged another mass protest Monday as the interim civilian government faced another major transition. The day before, the whole cabinet submitted its resignation, but the ruling military council had yet to accept it by nightfall. Meanwhile, more than 30 people were ... (more)
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Flickr / Maged Helal (CC-BY)
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Egyptian military officials swore in a new, temporary Cabinet on Thursday in response to rising pressure from protesters demanding a faster transition away from the Mubarak regime. (more)
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whitehouse.gov
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Christina Romer, who heads up Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, is exiting the White House, the National Journal’s Hotline On Call blog reported Thursday, and her rumored reasons for leaving have something to do with one Larry Summers and his continuing hold on the president.
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AP / George Osodi
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Nigeria’s interim President Goodluck Jonathan will hopefully live up to his name after sacking his entire Cabinet on Wednesday. Given that he’s got less than a year before the next national election, Jonathan has to work fast to pick a new lineup, and many members may be familiar faces.
Posted on Mar 18, 2010
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Flickr / Randy83
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One day after the Dutch Cabinet collapsed, the country’s prime minister has announced that he expects the Netherlands to pull out all its troops from Afghanistan in August.
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In a push for increased government transparency, the Obama administration has announced it will require each Cabinet-level department to post online three collections of “high-value” data—covering everything from tire safety ratings to workplaces where injuries have occurred—previously undisclosed to the public.
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Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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It looks as if Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet strategy is still in desperate need of repair. The majority of his nominees have once again been rejected by the parliament, casting doubt on his ability to lead in the country’s fractious political environment.
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AP / Farzana Wahidy
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Hamid Karzai is having issues in his second term as Afghanistan’s president. It seems that the Afghan parliament has nixed 17 of his 24 Cabinet nominees.
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ABR / Ricardo Stuckert
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Honduras’ government is on the ropes again. Roberto Micheletti, the interim president, moved to form a new government after a deal to form a “unity” cabinet collapsed. Manuel Zelaya (pictured), the elected president ousted in a coup in June, is now urging a boycott of the election scheduled later this month.
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aceproject.org
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The Iranian parliament has approved the first woman Cabinet minister, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, in the 30-year history of the Islamic republic. Parliament also gave its blessing as defense minister to a man wanted in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina that killed 85 people.
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Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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Afghan Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal said Monday that President Hamid Karzai is the clear winner of last week’s presidential election, citing empirical evidence to back up his claims.
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World Economic Forum
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U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost three members of his Cabinet in three days, adding to a heap of political casualties that originally grew out of an expense claims scandal. The latest dropout, James Purnell, has called on his former boss to “stand aside to give our party a fighting chance. ... ”
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governor.ks.gov
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Let’s try this again, shall we? Tom Daschle didn’t make the cut, but President Obama has a new contender for secretary of health and human services. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who may be vulnerable to attacks on the abortion issue, faces a potentially challenging confirmation process.
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seattlepi.nwsource.com
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Fourth time’s the charm? Barack Obama’s two official picks to serve as commerce secretary both had to drop out. Another candidate withdrew her name before it was ever announced. Now the president is reported to have offered the job to former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. So who is he?
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State Dept. / Michael Gross, cropped
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With his party holding 15 seats in the Knesset, Avigdor Lieberman of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu is poised to pick Israel’s next government. Lieberman would like a choice cabinet post in exchange for anointing the next premier, but he’s under investigation for allegedly laundering millions of overseas dollars.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Apparently nobody wants to be President Obama’s commerce secretary. The second candidate for the post, Sen. Judd Gregg, has dropped out. The Republican senator cited “irresolvable conflicts,” including the stimulus package and the census. That’s what you get for trying to make nice with those fussy Republicans.
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What exactly was the point of that endless questionnaire Team Obama famously had prospective worker bees fill out? A fifth Obama nominee has run into some controversy, the fourth due to a failure to pay taxes, although in the case of Labor Secretary-designate Hilda Solis, her husband is to blame.
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama in Washington reminds one of Diogenes in Athens, with his lantern in search of an honest man.
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“I’m frustrated with myself, with our team,” the president said Tuesday as he worked the cameras to try to limit the fallout from his appointee implosion.
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By Marie Cocco — No need to fumble for words that sum up the stew of hypocrisy, arrogance and insiderism that is the unfolding saga of Tom Daschle. This is the audacity of audacity.
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Flickr / seiu_international
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Well, Hillary Clinton will have to wait a little longer, but seven others whom President Barack Obama tapped to join his Cabinet had gotten the all-clear from the Senate as of Tuesday afternoon.
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fairimmigration.wordpress.com
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As President-elect Barack Obama transferred to Washington, D.C., from his Chicago HQ this weekend, his first big political problem from within the ranks of his Cabinet choices began: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, nominated by Obama, withdrew from consideration as commerce secretary because a scandal is brewing in Richardson’s home state.
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White House / Eric Draper
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By Eugene Robinson — The history-be-my-judge interviews that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been giving recently help me understand their choices—but also reinforce my confident belief, and my fervent hope, that history will throw the book at them.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Because Arne Duncan gets along with teachers unions but is also seen as a reformer, his selection was interpreted as a politically shrewd, split-the-difference choice by Obama. But that is not the whole story.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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On Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama introduced three top financial appointees who will help him with the unenviable task of revamping the government’s economic regulatory system and “crack[ing] down on this culture of greed and scheming that has led us to this day of reckoning,” as Obama put it.
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nytimes.com
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Doing little to slough the stereotype that Midwestern governors are automatically good at farming, Barack Obama has announced the next nominee to his presidential inner circle: former Iowa governor and presidential candidate Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary.
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AP photo / Douglas Healey
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By Chris Hedges — The multiple failures that beset the country can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think. They focus instead on creating hordes of competent systems managers.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Eugene Jarecki —
For anyone seeking real reform of America’s foreign and defense policies in the years ahead, the introduction of Barack Obama’s national security team last Monday was a mixed bag. Yet what these and other appointments really suggest about Obama’s broader prospects for reform requires vigilant public attention.
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By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
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nytimes.com
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Bearded political renaissance man and current governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson was picked Wednesday morning to be Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce. The unsurprising move makes Richardson the latest politician drafted by Team Obama, who point to Richardson’s experience at the U.N., as governor, and as energy secretary.
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By David Sirota — Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised “change we can believe in.”
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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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Multiple news outlets, from ABC to Fox, now confirm that Robert Gates will retain his post as secretary of defense for at least the first year of the Obama administration. The president-elect will roll out Gates and his other hawks during a national security team unveiling next week.
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Flickr/marcn
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A source from within President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team said Thursday that Obama is “on track” to tap Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state after Thanksgiving, according to the Associated Press.
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Those famous “multiple Democratic sources close to the transition” have revealed three more members of Barack Obama’s Cabinet: Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as chief of homeland security and Obama’s billionaire buddy and top fundraiser Penny Pritzker to head the Commerce Department. Update: Pritzker is out.
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DoD / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison, USAF
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The Financial Times is reporting that Barack Obama is keen to have Robert Gates stay on as defense secretary. The paper says the two are currently negotiating their differences, but then that’s the whole point: Obama wants people who disagree with him in his Cabinet.
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Flickr / seiu_international
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Here’s a summary of the day’s Clinton watch via Political Wire: The Guardian says she’ll definitely take the job that The Washington Post reports she may be up for. All eyes now turn to Bill, who’s Global Initiative, huge personality and international superstardom complicate the vetting process. Update: Oy vey.
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United States Senate
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We’ll see how long he’s able to keep this up, but at least for the immediate future, Barack Obama is aiming to keep lobbyists at bay, issuing strict guidelines for his transition team that Obama aide John Podesta described Tuesday on a conference call to reporters.
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World Economic Forum
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While many of us are still celebrating Barack Obama’s historic victory, rumors of a major buzzkill are flying: Lawrence Summers, a Clinton-era treasury secretary and deregulation enthusiast, is said to be the front-runner to take over the Treasury Department.
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house.gov
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Just a day after winning the presidency, Barack Obama has started hiring. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, one of the architects of the Democrats’ congressional majority, is in line to be chief of staff. Sen. Chuck Hagel, the anti-war Republican, could be named to a Cabinet post, while Sen. John Kerry is said to be after the secretary of state job. Updated yet again.
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In post-Nixonian American politics, you’re nobody unless you’re associated with a scandal replete with shadowy intrigue and danger and commonly referred to in the press with the suffix -gate. Good thing John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, comes equipped with her own: Troopergate.
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On Tuesday, the Iraqi Cabinet expressed extreme displeasure over the incursion of Turkish troops into the Kurdish northern region of Iraq and called for a halt to Turkish interference, which Cabinet officials called a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty.” Also on Tuesday, an apparent suicide attack on a bus headed toward Syria from Mosul in northern Iraq killed nine people, according to The New York Times.
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Instead of being alert in Wednesday’s Cabinet session about California’s wildfire crisis and perhaps offering some helpful action items for the team, Vice President Dick Cheney apparently decided it was snooze o’clock and got a little shuteye at the meeting table, although a White House flack insisted he was simply “meditating.”
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “unity government” has lost its last Sunni representatives, as five ministers announced a boycott in protest of sectarian favoritism. Nearly half of the Cabinet has walked this year.
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foxnews.com
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Nilofar Bakhtiar, Pakistan’s federal minister for tourism, is in hot water with clerics in her home country for hugging a skydiving instructor who guided her through a tandem parachute jump for charity last month. Now, after striking such an “obscene” pose, she’s had to resign from Pakistan’s Cabinet.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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