Thursday, January 05, 2006

Recess Time!

As part of his ever increasing campaign to see just how much he can get away with before impeachment proceedings begin (see photo), President Bush pushed through a raft of recess appointments this week. You might think that he'd learned something from the disaster of appointing unqualified cronies like Michael Brown, but as the president likes to remind us -- learning is for pussies.

One of the names that leapt out at me was Julie Myers. Installed as the new head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Myers is now a high-ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security and the main person in charge of making sure our borders are secure.

And -- this won't surprise anyone -- Myers is wholly unqualified. She has no background in the fields she's now responsible for, and no real experience in her new office. She's flitted around the Bush administration from job to job these past few years, but usually in low-level spots. She's going to be responsible for 20,000 employees and an operating budget of $4 billion, and yet her previous managerial experience was just a year-long stint as assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Department of Commerce, where she supervised 170 employees and a budget about 160 times smaller.

No experience, no background, no relevant skills. So why would the president put a woman like this in charge of a vitally important area like immigration and customs? Good ol' nepotism. Her uncle is former JCS Chief Richard Myers and her husband is Michael Chertoff's Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security.

While the Myers pick is disturbing -- why does that phrase sound familiar? -- what's really disturbing here is that Bush has in his first five years managed to make about as many recess appointments as Clinton did in his entire eight years, which is mind-boggling when you consider that Clinton was up against a stonewalling Republican Congress for most of that time, while Bush has had his own party running both houses of Congress for almost his entire term. If he has to sneak these people past his own party members, that says something.

(Photo from the Poor Man, by the way.)

5 comments:

Thrillhous said...

If he has to sneak these people past his own party members, that says something.

Couldn't agree more. I just can't figure why he wouldn't have these folks go through congressional review. Would congress really raise a stink? Doesn't Bush want to spend any of that massive amount of political capital he has?

I guess they know this'll just be a teeny blip on the news radar that will only be noticed by us shrill libruls, but it certainly makes a nice addition to the cronyism facet of the culture of corruption.

Thrillhous said...

Oh yeah. As a cat lover, I don't mind saying that picture is hilarious. tic tac to a whale hilarious.

Mr Furious said...

Myers was getting some static at her confirmation hearing... even from Republicans:

[link] "I'm really concerned about your management experience," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told her, pointing out that ICE, with 20,000 employees, was the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government.

"I think that we ought to have a meeting with (Homeland Security Secretary) Mike Chertoff … to ask him… why he thinks you're qualified for the job. Because based on your resume, I don't think you are," Voinovich concluded.

Isaac Carmichael said...

Oooo....is that the photo that the White House doctored up and changed the kitty to corn on the cob?

Otto Man said...

Yep. The Corn Council got to them, too.