What could I have been thinking? :smack:
Oh, right.
I said, and I maintain, that the symbols that do become significant are rarely those that are important. And that the incidents that become symbols are virtually random. They get seized on after the fact and people look around and say, “huh? since when was that a problem?” The fact is that virtually anything anybody does can be abstracted and turned into a symbol and nothing anybody does can prevent this.
Are you smart enough to know that you owe money on consulting fee income? No? That’s OK, you’re not running for Treasury Secretary. Are you smart enough to know that if you’re audited and this is explained to you it also includes the years NOT audited. That’s the issue with Geithner. If Obama’s vetting process can figure this out then the next Treasury Secretary should damn well be able to figure it out.
And while I’m thinking about it, how many people in past administrations have been dinged for not paying the social taxes owed on hired help. Nancy Killefer would be the 3rd person on Obama’s hiring list to stumble into public view. The purpose of the vetting process is to eliminate these people before a public announcement of support so they can be cut loose.
This is the crux of it. As I’ve learned now, these discoveries were made as a result of this vetting process. It did work. But apparently, the Obama folks were gambling that these issues would not submarine the nominations. What should have happened at that point, however, would have been that Obama should have said, “Dang, I was hoping this guy would be clean. Oh, well, let’s find someone else.” Otherwise, why would there be a vetting process?
especially the head of the New York Federal Reserve!
besides he signed documents from the World Bank saying he understood that he was responsible for the employer portion of his SS taxes. He just forgot.
As for vetting, no one ever noticed while he was at the Fed.
part of the problem is that there just aren’t very many people qualified for these jobs. Under normal circumstances there would be more, but these aren’t normal circumstances. Obama needs to find people who are a) qualified to handle unique and complex issues, b) acceptable to a Democratic adminstration and c) can agree with Obama’s policies. And pass a background check. There just aren’t that many people that meet all those quals. When the best that can be done is 3 out of 4, sometimes the vetting gets the short straw. And sometimes b) loses (Judd Gregg). Only time will tell when a) loses.
Personally, I am willing to forgive Obama’s mistake with Daschle-but I hope it doesn’t become a trend. But I sure am glad Daschle withdrew. If he had forced his way through confirmation, it would have reflected very poorly on the administration and the Democrats.
I agree that driving a thousand miles is silly and wasteful. But why a private jet? What’s wrong with a regular commercial flight, like their employees fly on? What the heck are they doing with their time that saving every possible minute is so critical?
Are they, or are they not, trying to save their company’s money?
I would tend to agree with that, except for one detail which I have not seen an answer to on this thread: How were these problems discovered?
To rephrase the OP: How does the vetting process work?
If things are as complicated as Spartydog claims, then I would not expect outsiders (who doen’t have access to the subject’s personal records, or maybe even with such access) to find these kind of errors in just a few days, or even a few weeks. And if such things can be uncovered now, why were they no uncovered years earlier?
Again: How does the vetting process work?
Isn’t the vetting process ideally supposed to discover problems before the nomination is offered? Given the amount of negative press attention and the fact that Obama felt the need to cop to having erred, it seems to me that the vetting process produced too little, too late.
I heard, without confirmation, that they were barred from using commercial jets for “security reasons.”
I find this quite plausible. That’s the way the world was.
As for savings, a major CEO makes probably $50,000 an hour. Corporate jets avoid all the time wasted in security lines and sitting on tarmac waiting to take off and getting baggage at the other end. Each flight probably adds hours of productive time a day. Multiply that by the number of executives who use the jet over a year. Virtually every major corporation in America has a corporate jet - or several - for precisely this reason. They don’t fly commercial for the same reason the President doesn’t fly commercial.
I saw this when my wife’s company got rid of their jet and banned short commercial plane rides. Now a trip to Albany, something that happens a zillion times a year, means either adding eight hours of car travel to a business day or leaving the night before to make an early morning meeting. It’s enormously disruptive to work and to families, but it’s easier to make families pay the price.
There’s a huge “I hate everybody who makes more money than I do” component to all the recent scandals. It’s understandable to an extent but it’s not reasonable. And that includes the sense of not reasoned. Pure emotion.