Obama's Cabinet & Cabinet level positions

[Ender]

RawStory and WaPo are saying Gov. Janet Napolitano got picked for DHS. I'm not too familiar with her, is she a solid choice and a real hardass who will get those guys to unfuck themselves, or something else?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

According to the ticker on CNN.com, Bill Richardson is under "serious consideration" to be named as Obama's Secretary of Commerce.

Err . . . wait . . . what?

Does this mean that Hillary's likely to become SecState after all?

[General Zod]

According to the ticker on CNN.com, Bill Richardson is under "serious consideration" to be named as Obama's Secretary of Commerce.

Err . . . wait . . . what?

Does this mean that Hillary's likely to become SecState after all?

If Bill Clinton agreed to go through the vetting process, then it's probably a safe assumption that Hillary is giving it serious consideration and is most likely going to accept.

[J]

Timothy Geithner of the New York Fed is the new Treasury chief. So much for change, he's been a Paulson mini-me and has voted in favour of all the rate cuts and other disastrous decisions taken to date in the current economic crisis. If he was going to choose someone from the Fed, he could've at least chosen Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed as he's been the disenting opinion in almost every FOMC meeting and has been quite outspoken against the actions taken by the Fed and Treasury.

[Coyote]

RawStory and WaPo are saying Gov. Janet Napolitano got picked for DHS. I'm not too familiar with her, is she a solid choice and a real hardass who will get those guys to unfuck themselves, or something else?

She's the one that mobilized the National Guard of her state to secure the border with Mexico, saying that if the federal government wasn't up to the task, then it was up to the governors to step in... so, depending on how you feel about that...

[Glocksman]

RawStory and WaPo are saying Gov. Janet Napolitano got picked for DHS. I'm not too familiar with her, is she a solid choice and a real hardass who will get those guys to unfuck themselves, or something else?

She's the one that mobilized the National Guard of her state to secure the border with Mexico, saying that if the federal government wasn't up to the task, then it was up to the governors to step in... so, depending on how you feel about that...

IIRC, there are rumors lurking in the background that she's a lesbian.
I don't give a shit, and if the rumors are true, neither does Obama.

As far as I'm concerned, if the Repub right has a hissy fit over the pick she's a damn good choice.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Timothy Geithner of the New York Fed is the new Treasury chief. So much for change, he's been a Paulson mini-me and has voted in favour of all the rate cuts and other disastrous decisions taken to date in the current economic crisis. If he was going to choose someone from the Fed, he could've at least chosen Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed as he's been the disenting opinion in almost every FOMC meeting and has been quite outspoken against the actions taken by the Fed and Treasury.

He didn't go to the right cocktail meetings. Looks like Obama is playing it Establishment safe. Hopefully when it doesn't work he'll pave his own path later into his first and definitely into his second term, especially because issues will become much more important then. I think he's probably still isolated in Establishment La-La Land, and well, we cannot make him read Roubini.

[J]

Well, at least there's one adult around...

Reuters link

Obama to name Volcker to head new markets panel

CHICAGO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will name former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to chair a new White House advisory panel on stabilizing financial markets, a spokesman for Obama's transition office confirmed.

University of Chicago economist and Obama policy adviser Austan Goolsbee will serve as the panel's staff director, another transition aide confirmed.

The panel will be set up to advise Obama on steering the country out of its current economic crisis.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, editing by Philip Barbara)

[ray245]

Does he belong to the Chicago school of thought in regards to economics?

[irishmick79]

RawStory and WaPo are saying Gov. Janet Napolitano got picked for DHS. I'm not too familiar with her, is she a solid choice and a real hardass who will get those guys to unfuck themselves, or something else?

She's the one that mobilized the National Guard of her state to secure the border with Mexico, saying that if the federal government wasn't up to the task, then it was up to the governors to step in... so, depending on how you feel about that...

She's a really solid choice. She implemented a law in Arizona requiring employers to use DHS's E-Verify to check out Social Security numbers for new employees, she's leery on the border fence (saying "show me a 50 foot wall and I'll show you a 51 ft ladder"), and she wants to make the visa process more efficient for applicants from mexico and places. Unlike Chertoff and Ridge, I get the sense that she understands you can't just go with the law enforcement only route on immigration issues, that it needs to be a multi-tiered approach. That, and it's good to have a DHS secretary who's actually from the southern border region instead of being from the northeast. She's very, very pragmatic.

[Guardsman Bass]

It looks like Gates will probably be sticking around as Secretary of Defense, although that's not really a surprise; discussion about keeping him on at least for a transition period has been going on since the election.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama’s advisers were nearing a formal agreement with Mr. Gates to stay on for perhaps a year, the Democrats said, and they expected to announce the decision as early as next week, along with other choices for the national security team. The two sides have been working out details on how Mr. Gates would wield authority in a new administration.

The move will give the new president a defense secretary with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as experience with foreign leaders around the world and respect among the senior military officer corps. But two years after President Bush picked him to lead the armed forces, Mr. Gates will now have to pivot from serving the commander in chief who started the Iraq war to serving one who has promised to end it.

In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

But advisers argued that Mr. Gates was a practical public servant who was also interested in drawing down troops in Iraq when conditions allow.

“From our point of view, it looks pretty damn good because of continuity and stability,” said an Obama adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. “And I don’t think there are any ideological problems.”

Associates said Mr. Gates was torn between a desire to retire to a home in Washington State and a sense of duty as the military faces the daunting challenges of reducing forces in Iraq and increasing them in Afghanistan.

As Mr. Obama moved closer to assembling his national security team Tuesday, he lost a top candidate for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. John O. Brennan, an agency veteran who was widely seen as the front-runner, withdrew from consideration amid concerns that he was linked to controversial intelligence programs authorized by Mr. Bush.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, Mr. Brennan said he did not want those concerns to be a “distraction” for the incoming administration. At the same time, he vigorously defended his record and called himself a “strong opponent” of the harsh interrogation methods the agency used in recent years, including waterboarding, the practice of making a suspect experience the sensation of drowning.

The developments came as Mr. Obama prepared to begin unveiling his national security team after the long Thanksgiving weekend. Besides formally announcing his nomination of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, Mr. Obama was expected to appoint Gen. James L. Jones, a retired Marine commandant and NATO supreme commander, as his national security adviser.

Other front-runners have emerged in recent days, including Adm. Dennis Blair, retired from the Navy, for director of national intelligence; Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, for ambassador to the United Nations; James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, for deputy secretary of state; and Thomas E. Donilon, a former chief of staff at the State Department, for deputy national security adviser.

The team is shaping up as one of experience more than change, figures with long résumés but at times conflicting backgrounds. Nothing reflects that more than keeping a Republican-appointed defense secretary. Although Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford made no change at the top of the Pentagon when they took office, no president has kept a defense secretary from a predecessor in another party, Donald Ritchie, a Senate historian, said.

Mr. Gates, who served as C.I.A. director under the first President Bush, would not have to be reconfirmed by the Senate. The prospect of retaining him generated praise from the military establishment and Capitol Hill, where he is viewed as a pragmatist who turned the Pentagon around after the tumultuous tenure of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But it also stirred a debate inside Mr. Obama’s circles, where some advisers worried that the decision to turn to a Republican appointee — something President Bill Clinton did in naming William S. Cohen to the defense post in 1997 — would reinforce the notion that Democrats could not manage the military. “It makes them look like they’re too wimpy to be trusted to run the building,” said one adviser who asked not to be named.

Keeping Mr. Gates after a polarizing campaign on the war also seemed incongruous to some. “I really can’t begin to understand from a political point of view how Barack Obama, a person who got the nomination because he ran against the Iraq war, can keep around the guy who’s been in charge of it for the last two years,” said Loren B. Thompson, head of the Lexington Institute, a research organization.

Mr. Gates talked with Mr. Obama’s team about how to make the arrangement work. One adviser familiar with the discussions said the final issue was the choice of senior Pentagon personnel and whether a small circle of Gates advisers would remain.

Obama advisers have talked about Richard J. Danzig, a former Navy secretary, as a possible deputy and heir apparent to Mr. Gates, but some acknowledged that the prospect could raise concerns. If Mr. Danzig is sitting down the hall from the secretary’s office and seen as Mr. Obama’s real choice, some said, then his presence could undercut Mr. Gates’s authority.

But Mr. Gates has shown an ability to manage the Pentagon even with a small inner circle. When he took over from Mr. Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Gates did not bring a single new aide. And the senior military officer corps will remain unchanged at the start of the administration, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Mullen made an unannounced trip to Chicago on Friday for a 45-minute meeting with Mr. Obama on a wide range of national security issues, Pentagon officials said. Before going, Admiral Mullen received approval from both Mr. Gates and Mr. Bush, the officials said.

The decision by Mr. Brennan to pull out of consideration for a senior intelligence job surprised specialists and lawmakers, some of whom questioned whether he had been forced by Mr. Obama’s team to withdraw. Mr. Obama’s office denied pushing Mr. Brennan aside.

The episode underscored how the C.I.A.’s secret detention program remained an incendiary issue. Mr. Brennan, who will continue to work on Mr. Obama’s transition team, was a senior adviser during the campaign and said an Obama administration would ban coercive interrogation.

Yet a group of psychologists posted a letter on the Internet last weekend calling for Mr. Obama to pass over Mr. Brennan, quoting a 2006 interview in which he seemed to defend C.I.A. operations after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Stephanie Cutter, an Obama spokeswoman, said, “John Brennan has served our nation with honor and is a man of talent and integrity,” adding that Mr. Obama “is grateful for John’s continuing assistance as a valuable member of our transition team.”

I've also heard that Obama is picking James Jones as his National Security Advisor.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Does he belong to the Chicago school of thought in regards to economics?

The Chicago School means "school of thought", not the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. It came to get that name because it grew up around Milton Friedman and his acolytes there, but not everyone there is a Chicago School.

[hongi]

Rumsfeld nemesis Shinseki to be named VA secretary

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary, turning to a former Army chief of staff once vilified by the Bush administration for questioning its Iraq war strategy.

Thoughts?

[The Romulan Republic]

I heard something (on CNN I think) that would potentially derail Clinton's appointment to Secretary of State. Something in the Constitution that bans appointments of Congressmen to a post that received a pay raise while they were in office, I believe. Unfortunately, I've heard nothing about this since. Does anyone know weather this is, in fact, accurate? If so, it would be pretty embarrassing for Obama as a former Constitutional lawyer, and a matter of questionable ethics (and I say this as an Obama supporter).

[Thanas]

^There is already a solution to this that has been used before and is quite simply. You simply work for the same salary as before the increase you voted for.

[CmdrWilkens]

Rumsfeld nemesis Shinseki to be named VA secretary

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary, turning to a former Army chief of staff once vilified by the Bush administration for questioning its Iraq war strategy.

Thoughts?

I had issues with some of the programs in terms of equipment he supported but form nearly all accounts from handling troop welfare issues he certainly would seem to be a worthwhile choice. Moreover the biggest thing the VA needs to start getting right is co-ordination with the Pentagon bureaucracy so anybody familiar with that should be a boost.

[Fire Fly]

Link

Obama makes pick for energy chief, sources say

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama is likely to name Steven Chu, a physicist who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, three Democratic officials close to the transition said.

The three officials said the announcement is expected next week in Chicago, Illinois, and that Obama will also name Carol Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, as the newly created "climate czar" inside the White House.

Chu won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and is highly respected in energy circles. But some Democrats have privately expressed concern that Chu has no political experience as he takes on the monumental task of passing a landmark energy reform bill early next year.

Although Browner is seen as a shrewd inside player who could help the incoming energy secretary navigate Capitol Hill, Obama will face questions about how effective his team will be going up against oil companies and other special interests that do not want to change the status quo.

"Energy is going to be a huge fight," one Democratic official said. "They need someone with the gravitas and force of personality to make it happen."

Democrats have privately floated some other big names for energy secretary in recent days, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

But a source close to Schwarzenegger said the governor wants to serve out the rest of his term.

A source close to Powell said the retired general will take "no formal Cabinet role" in an Obama administration but is leaving the door open to an informal troubleshooting role -- such as Mideast envoy -- if the incoming president has a specific mission that needs to be filled. iReport.com: What do you think of Obama's cabinet picks so far?

Energy is one aspect of the president-elect's one-year goal to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. The plan, which Obama announced Saturday, aims to put Americans to work updating the country's infrastructure, making public buildings more energy-efficient and implementing environmentally friendly technologies, including alternative energy sources.

During his campaign, Obama said he would invest $150 billion over 10 years in clean energy. He proposed increasing fuel economy standards and requiring that 10 percent of electricity in the United States comes from renewable sources by 2012.

This is encouraging, an actual physicist in charge of the energy department. Schwarzenegger seems like he would also be a decent pick.

[KrauserKrauser]

So there is going to be a cabinet and a bunch of czars?

What is the aggregate term for the czars? The Onion Dome?

There is a Energy Czar, Car Czar, Climate Czar, Czar Peter the Great, Czar Nikolas... at some point will there be a red revolution against the czars within the cabinet?

[The Original Nex]

Yea the "Czar" label that the media puts on these non-departmental officials is getting tedious. Essentially they either serve the role of something very specific within a department; like the proposed "Auto Czar" overseeing the bailout, or the existing "Drug Czar" overseeing the nations drug policies; or they act as inter-departmental liaisons and coordinators as the "energy czar" will do amongst the Energy, Environmental, Commerce, and Interior departments. They all have their own titles and/or committees/councils that they oversee, but isn't it so much fun to call them Czars?

[Thanas]

^It is just another catchy word that the media uses because they are too dumb to read up on history or just do not care.

Just ignore it.

[sketerpot]

Fun fact: Steven Chu is one of the signatories on the list of scientists who support evolution and are named Steve.

[sketerpot]

Sorry for the double post, but this Steven Chu guy is a more interesting choice than I thought. He co-authored "A Sustainable Energy Future: The Essential Role of Nuclear Energy", which makes some nice recommendations:

• Make maximum use of the current ‘fleet’ of operating light-water reactors, including plant life extensions, extended fuel burnup, and power uprates.
• Establish a national priority to immediately deploy advanced light-water reactors to meet our nation’s increasing energy demand, while limiting greenhouse gas emissions and continuing to provide critical support to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
• Employ an integrated approach to manage used nuclear fuel and high-level waste, including interim storage, licensing of the Yucca Mountain Repository as a long-term resource, and exploration of optimal future waste management options.
• Implement an aggressive research and development (R&D) program on advanced reactors, reprocessing, waste management, and fuel fabrication concepts to enable timely identification of the technological options for a sustainable closed fuel cycle.

He's also quick to point out how much radioactive material coal power releases. It's great to see someone with sense being given the top position. Now hopefully he can get stuff done....

[Sriad]

Steven Chu is also, apparently, the first person to come into Presidential Cabinent service with a Nobel Prize.

This seems like it could be a great pick, and I'm glad to see the trend of picking people who are competent in their fields continue.

[Fire Fly]

I can't reiterate enough how impressed I will be if Steven Chu is made energy secretary. This guy is pro-reform, pro-nuclear and pro-renewable. An interesting article depicting his view of tackling energy reform:

Note to Detroit: Consider the Refrigerator

This past summer, Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who currently heads Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—and who has been tapped to be the next Secretary of Energy—delivered a talk on climate change and how to combat it. Consider, Chu said, the refrigerator.

Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that “the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.

The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. “I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,” he said.

Chu is an inspired choice to lead the Energy Department, but he’s clearly going to have his work cut out for him. Among the many groups that have failed to absorb the lessons of the refrigerator are Congress and its new ward, the American auto industry.

The same day that word of Chu’s appointment began to leak out, Congress backed away from a provision of the auto-bailout package that would have forced the automakers to abide by new efficiency standards that California—once again—is trying to set. California’s Clean Car rules would require vehicles sold in the state to become roughly twenty per cent more efficient by 2020. The U.S. automakers have been fighting the standards in court for years. Some drafts of the bailout bill would have forced them to drop these lawsuits in return for federal assistance; the Bush Administration, however, said that it would not agree to any package with that provision.

At this point, it looks like the legislation doesn’t have enough votes in the Senate to pass. But the saga isn’t over. Even if the measure is approved, Congress will almost certainly have to return to the issue next year, as the money in it—fourteen billion dollars—falls far short of what nearly every knowledgeable source says is needed to keep the automakers out of bankruptcy. One can only hope that, by that point, Chu has had more success getting his message out. If taxpayers are going to foot the bill for the automakers, at the very least their dollars ought to be going to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.

[sketerpot]

Plus, he's flat-out dismissive of corn-based ethanol -- cellulosic is a much better option, and he's willing to say so.