Which cabinet members do you want gone?

[efhmc]

[lapfog_1]

1. Geithner - n/t

[efhmc]

2. So agree.

[HooptieWagon]

3. Holder!

[efhmc]

5. Agreed. Seems nice but very ineffective.

[HooptieWagon]

47. Might be a nice guy...

But entirely too preoccupied with pot-smoking grannies, rather than Wall St criminals and election thieves.

[efhmc]

51. Agreed. Not up to the job. Need someone meaner.

N

[quinnox]

4. bring in a whole new team

preferably all of them with a liberal/progressive bent.

[efhmc]

8. Can you be more specific, please?

[quinnox]

17. sorry, but just general

advice. I really don't know a whole lot about Obama's cabinet as it stands now. I just think it would be a good idea to make a fresh start, and a new team seems like a good idea for that.

[efhmc]

19. Okay. Not so sure to flush everyone is such a good idea.

But there are surely many who need to go. Thanks for your response.

[Panasonic]

6. Holder, big time.

Replace him with an pro-cannabis Wall Street-hating asskicker.

I have one in mind by the name of Eliot Spitzer.

[efhmc]

11. Would be good but not going to happen. Too controversial.

[Stardust]

43. My sentiments exactly about Holder. Not sure about Spitzer...have read some pretty negative things

about him here.

[MadashellLynn]

50. I agree!

Holder doesn't appear to have the brass. I think Jennifer Granholm would be a great Attorney General and wouldn't run into the buzz saw Spitzer would. I think later he will be able to get back in politics.

[PD Turk]

7. Holder

Bring in a AG that will go after the big crooks, all of them.

[efhmc]

14. He and Geitner are my two big get rid of.

[PD Turk]

20. Yeah Geitner too

They can both hit the road. We need to start cracking down on the corporate crooks in this country, it's long overdue

[efhmc]

28. Never have thought he served the President well. Still wondering why he is there.

[femmocrat]

9. Easy one --- Arne Duncan.

I hope the Pres. hires someone who is actually qualified this time.

[ibegurpard]

13. seconded

someone who actually believes in public education.

[Iris]

25. exactly

[efhmc]

15. Have to say do not know that much about him as a cabinet member.

Can you give me some more info, please?

[Art_from_Ark]

52. Here's something to get you started

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11244560

[roody]

53. Totally unqualified and corporate

[femmocrat]

67. There were a lot of posts about his lack of qualifications on the old DU. Here is one:

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8581747&mesg_id=8587644

88. Arne Duncan has no certification of any kind, not as a teacher, or administrator!

"The over-regulation of classroom teachers and the ongoing indignity of having to acquire “CPDUs” in order to remain certified (and achieve “highly qualified” status) insults every man and women who worked hard to get through college (and, in the case of the majority of Chicago teachers, graduate school) to earn the right to teach in a public school classroom. While CEOs and their well-paid staffs are completely unregulated, teachers are facing more and more restraints and indignities. Teachers shouldn’t be required to gather CPDUs until Arne Duncan is required to get an Illinois teaching certificate, work the required six years in a school, pass the Illinois administrative tests, and get his “Type 75” so he can be a principal. After several years as a principal, he can apply for the top job.

Can you imagine the uproar in the police department if the mayor tried to appoint a “CEO” of Police with the same qualifications and experience as Arne Duncan (and Paul Vallas) had for the top educational job?..."

http://www.substancenews.com/archive/May03/editorial.ht...

"Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology. He was co-captain of Harvard's basketball team and was named a first team Academic All-American. He credits basketball with his team-oriented and highly disciplined work ethic."

http://www.ed.gov/news/staff/bios/duncan.html

[Doremus]

10. Salazar, Interior Secy.

Someone who actually wants to protect the interior would be nice.

[efhmc]

16. Who would be good at this job?

[Doremus]

21. My binders are empty but I'm sure there are any number of better choices

Finding one who actually cares about protecting public lands should be a priority.

[efhmc]

23. Refill those binders. We need your input. Love that baby pic.

Looks a little like my new gchild.

[Art_from_Ark]

59. How about another Udall?

Stewart Udall, the Interior Secretary under both Kennedy and Johnson, did an outstanding job at Interior, and his son, Tom, seems to be a chip off the old block:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Udall

[mick063]

12. I'm from Washington State

I'll pass judgment after I see how Holder deals with our new marijuana law.


I want the entire Department of Homeland Security gone. I'm thinking of the potential for another Gestapo here. It wouldn't take much.


Additionally, if a cabinet member is a former employee of Goldman Sachs, I want him out. No matter how qualified he is.

[efhmc]

18. Sounds good.

Especially the GS comment.

[DearHeart]

22. Geithner and Holder nt

[efhmc]

24. My top 2.

Such bad picks. Hope they are gone soon

[sarcasmo]

26. Holder

[efhmc]

27. Yelp, ineffective and divisive.

[backscatter712]

29. Holder and Geithner! n/t

[Thrill]

32. Both are leaving anyway. They're going to make money now

.

[efhmc]

37. Hasn't Geitner already made a boat load?

[Thrill]

41. I can tell you if he hasn't. He sure is about too

[northoftheborder]

30. Geitner, Holder, Duncan, Napolitano, and definitely Salazar

[efhmc]

33. Why Napolitano? Agree with the rest.

[doc03]

31. Gietner and Holder n/t

[efhmc]

34. Look like we all agree on those two. With whom would you replace them?

[AnnieBW]

35. Steven Chu

Smart guy, crappy administrator. Should have done more due diligence on those solar panel companies. Let him go back to academia, where he can be the Asian Sheldon Cooper.

[efhmc]

36. Am asking for suggestions for replacements. Anyone?

[mick063]

66. For Department of Energy?

Christine Gregoire hands down.
Believe me. She would absolutely be the best candidate for this position.

link

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire says she’s been dealing with the issue of nuclear waste for more than 20 years, and she has the logic down cold.

As she told President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future Thursday, there are a few key principles to her formula.

First, there’s science. Then there’s technology. And then there is politics – two kinds. There is politics with a “Big P,” she said, and politics with a “Little P.”

Politics with a “Little P” means working with the local community to win acceptance for a plan for treating nuclear waste.

It’s the “Big P” politics that causes the problems, Gregoire told the commission. And it’s “Big P” politics, Gregoire implied, that has led to the Obama administration’s decision to shut down the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.

Gregoire didn’t say that directly. But during her talk with the commissioners it was hard to miss her inference.

Yucca was authorized by Congress, she said, but it has been, “taken away for reasons I don’t know and I don’t understand. The reason we’ve lost trust on that is that we don’t’ know if it’s based on science and technology. We have spent billions of dollars. We have prepared Hanford waste to go to Yucca.

“When we allow politics or anything else to get involved, we lose the trust of the people of Washington. This has to be based on data and science and technology and we cannot allow politics to guide what we do.”

Hanford, Washington, a center of U.S. military nuclear production, is sitting on thousands of tons of nuclear waste. The people of Hanford and Washington, Gregoire said, have been planning on moving that waste and cleaning up Hanford’s soil for years.

Those hopes rested on the construction of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which Congress designated in 1987 as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.

So it was notable that the Blue Ribbon Commission, formed earlier this year to examine waste storage alternatives, held two days of hearings at Hanford.
Hanford , in south central Washington, was established in 1943 to build weapons grade plutonium, and it did so throughout the Cold War until 1989. The biggest worry there is 149 single-cell underground storage tanks filled with liquid waste generated by the process of making plutonium for nuclear weapons. More than 40 of those tanks are “leakers,” Gregoire said.

During her talk, Gregoire’s primary focus was on the long-running state-federal partnership to clean up Hanford. But with speaker after speaker at the commission’s Hanford hearing focused on the decision by Obama, press by Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada democrat and the current Senate majority leader, to shut Yucca down.

In turn, the hearing showed the ripple effect that closing Yucca will have on the communities where reactors have been running and producing energy and where waste has been accumulating and stored, all in the belief that the Congressionally-mandated Yucca repository would one day be available.

Right now nuclear waste is stored at more than 100 reactor sites while states waited for Yucca.

DOE, which was charged by Congress to build Yucca, earlier this year called it, “unworkable,” but has yet to provide scientific data to support that assessment.

Reid’s opposition is based on the premise that Yucca is too close to Las Vegas, and that a leak or an incident involving nuclear material being transported to Yucca will damage Las Vegas and Nevada’s tourism industry.

But Gregoire and several other witnesses before the Blue Ribbon Commission on Wednesday and Thursday noted that the selection of Yucca has been a 20-year long process, and that other sites – including Hanford – were considered before Congress settled on Yucca.

Upon learning of administration efforts to close Yucca, Washington, South Carolina, the counties of Aiken, S.C. and White Pine, Nev., as well as an association of utility commissioners have sued to keep it open.
Gregoire, in fact, told the commission Thursday that she has personally been involved in negotiations with DOE to clean up Hanford for two decades as director of the state’s environmental agency, its attorney general and now its governor.

She noted that DOE is half-way done with a $12.3 billion waste treatment plant that will vitrify weapons waste to specifications designed for storage in Yucca. If Yucca is cancelled, she said, that will put the waste treatment plant’s mission in limbo.

"I don’t have any confidence that we’ll pick another (deep disposal) site anytime soon, and even then, the process will take years," Gregoire said. "Hanford cannot wait."

Waste in seven Hanford storage tanks has been removed – no simple feat, she said, given the fact that no one knew how to handle that waste beforehand.

The present danger, Gregoire and other speakers reminded the commission, is that leaking tanks are spreading in underground plumes that threaten the nearby Columbia River, one of the West’s vital waterways. Hanford stretches along 51 miles of Columbia River bank.

“We’ve got to get those tanks emptied,” Gregoire said. “There’s a plume that’s headed toward the Columbia River. We’ve got to stop it. We don’t know how to stop it.”

[PoliticAverse]

38. Since Obama has read so much about Reagan, maybe he'll pull a Reagan...

and have everybody resign.

[efhmc]

40. You and Quinnox seem to be in agreement on this.

But why not keep someone who has been good at the job instead of taking a chance on a new unknown person?

[PoliticAverse]

49. I was just throwing that out there as a possibility based on the fact that Obama seems to have

studied Reagan a great deal. I have no idea what he intends to do, I'm in favor of keeping good people in
their job.

[efhmc]

57. Well there are certainly people who should go. Really they never should have been there in the

first place; example Holder and Geitner. They do not help our country or our president.

[Angry Dragon]

39. arne, holder, geithner

[efhmc]

42. Seems to be the consensus. I had 2 of them. Did not have an opinion about

arne.

[Thrill]

44. Holder and Geitner are already leaving

Duncan isn't. Unlike the the other two who likely are going to go get big money gigs. Arne is just a School Superintendent. So he's not likely going to be going anywhere

[efhmc]

46. Those were the ones I wanted gone. Did not know they were leaving.

Guess I missed that info.

[ScreamingMeemie]

45. Part of me would love an entirely new crew...

But, if not... Geitner.

[efhmc]

48. Wish he had never been part of this administration.

Will be sooooo happy he is gone.

[ancianita]

54. ARNE F**KING DUNCAN! PUH-LEASE!

#2: ERIC HOLDER -- REPLACED BY ELLIOT SPITZER!

[femmocrat]

68. + 1000 n/t

[roody]

55. Monsanto Vilsack

[efhmc]

61. Is that Tom? He definitely needs to go.

[Ikonoklast]

56. LaHood, another Republican holdover.

Ineffectual as head of Transportation, has a real problem with the FMCSA regulations looming out of control and doesn't seem to want to do one thing to change it.

[efhmc]

58. Don't know him but seems like a bad pick. Oust him.

[Ikonoklast]

63. He's a big zero. I know that Obama kept him on because he's a moderate, but he's also a nothing.

As Secretary, he oversees the FMCSA and has let the head of that regulatory agency pretty much run roughshod over my industry because they bow to a small set of special interests (usually funded by rail interests) and 'industry experts' (lobbyists).

The head of that agency is using data rejected by them at one time because it didn't support their regulatory findings, but are now using that very same data to now support their changed position, and refuses to answer to anyone why the agency is doing so.

If the data was found faulty before and was rejected, why is it suddenly valid?

The entire fiasco has had to be decided in the courts, on almost every important issue, costing everyone money.

[Zorra]

60. Geithner, Holder, Salazar, Duncan, LaHood, and Vilsack. nt

[efhmc]

62. Why Salazar?

[Zorra]

64. Third Way Co-Chair Ken Salazar: Secretary of the Interior.

Needs of business too often take precedence over needs of environment.

[TheKentuckian]

65. If Solis is allowed out of Witness Protection or Cheney's "undisclosed location"

or wherever she is then I like her but I can't think of another that I would be sad to see go, even if I'm sadder to see a new shitheel.

Clinton is quite competent, so I have no desire for her to go but it is a tough post and beyond competence, I'm not in love so it is what it it is.

The whole lot is otherwise dicey at best (Chu, BP scientist guy) to competent middling Republican (LaHood) to fucking terrible (Duncan, Geitner, Salazar, Holder).

Just to take away pointless to the question infighting, let's say Hillary is off the table and name three must haves/somebody can fill your role but you can't be replaced people. Hell, let's just say "really good" or maybe "I really like them".