No Private Sector Experience Necessary
I’m not sure if this chart on the professional background of Obama’s cabinet appointments is a weird outlier or a telling indicator, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
by Will · November 25, 2009
I’m not sure if this chart on the professional background of Obama’s cabinet appointments is a weird outlier or a telling indicator, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
Tags: Obama
Will
Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.
October 11, 2012
December 5, 2015
May 14, 2013
[caption id="attachment_361266" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screengrab from WIVB Buffalo Channel 4 News[/caption]
Still a developing story, but what we know so far points to an utterly depraved act of violence at a Buffalo supermarket.
Comment →Ten people were killed and three others suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were transported to local hospitals after a mass shooting at a supermarket on Buffalo’s East Side Saturday afternoon.
The shooter was an 18-year-old white male who was heavily armed with tactical gear and was live-streaming during the mass shooting, officials said. City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the shooter is not from Buffalo and traveled “hours” from outside the area.
“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “A straight-up racially motivated hate crime.”
The shooter was identified in court Saturday evening as Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York, about 200 miles southeast of Buffalo.
Gendron was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder without bail.
The 18-year-old will be back in court on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. for a felony hearing.
When Gendron exited his vehicle at the supermarket, authorities said, he shot four people in the parking lot. Three of them died and one is in the hospital. The shooter entered the store and opened fire on customers.
Twitch deletes shooter’s live-stream video of Buffalo mass shooting
A retired Buffalo Police officer, Aaron Salter, who was working as a security guard, shot Gendron but he was unharmed because he was wearing armor, Gramaglia said. The retired officer was shot and killed.A law enforcement source told CBS News that the gunman had a racial slur written on his weapon. The attack is being treated as a hate crime.
Erie County District Attorney John Flynn will not confirm the existence of the shooter’s manifesto. He said they believe there was a “racial component” to the attack but won’t say more.
This attack is being investigated by the FBI as a hate crime and as violent extremism.
Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.
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Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. "A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. "We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence."
From THOMPSON v. CLARK ET AL.:
Held: To demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution for purposes of the Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution, a plaintiff need not show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence. A plaintiff need only show that his prosecution ended without a conviction.
Thompson has satisfied that requirement here.
Thompson v. Clark was decided 6-3. (Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas and Gorsuch joining.)
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Recently comments that included the strings "zed" or "doug" were sent immediately to trash. This should be fixed now.
I’m old enough to remember when pundits praised Bush’s cabinet for having the highest percentage of CEO’s ever/or in a very long time. Perhaps you aren’t.Report
Hahaha that’s a pretty compelling rejoinder. In my defense, I was still in high school during Bush’s first term.Report
I’m not entirely convinced the selection of agencies represented in the sample is actually a useful barometer of “private sector relevant” areas anyway. For example, why State, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation or Interior? Treasury and Commerce I can see, but even with Energy…what’s good for existing private sector interests isn’t necessarily what’s good for the private sector writ large.Report
Although this chart only reflects the cabinet, I imagine a similar one with all political appointees would show a very similar disparity. While obviously not the whole explanation (I think a preference for academics over executives accounts for a good percentage), the combination of a lobbying ban and expanded registration requirements significantly affected the availability of private sector talent for the administration. Although there were a few highly publicized deviations from this ban (Bill Lynn as indispensable at DOD), the policy deterred a number of experienced Clinton-era types from pursuing positions, even if they had not been formally registered with the scarlet “L.” It is even more striking that in some of the most of the most business-intensive positions in the upper echelons of the administration- Commerce, USTR- you have a lawyer-turned-career-politician types.Report
This chart is useless without the definition of “private sector” the creator is using. Does that include non-profits? Think tanks? Academia? Public-private partnerships?Report
Joe –
Not sure (there’s no link to the original report), but I assume the definition is consistent throughout every Administration. So I think you can use this as a visual comparison if nothing else.Report
AEI should have titled their blog post- When Snark Goes Horribly Wrong.
As already noted, GWB was touted as having the highest number of CEOs and managed the drive the economy over a fucking cliff and enter into an entirely misguided war. And there is no underlying information about where data even come from or the rationale for selecting these particular Cab Secs.
Then again, the hacks at AEI are not particularly noted for their intellectual rigor.Report
President Bush (43) was the worst and totally discredits private sector experience. Done.
/snark
I mean as compelling as the GWB rejoinder might have been, still his percentages are far, far, far closer to FDR and L. Johnson. Bush (43) is within 10% of every President in the last 100 years except Carter, Kennedy, Hoover, and TR; whereas, the Obama cabinet is within 10% of none and 20% away from the next closest should prove well absolutely nothing.
Without a correlation to which departments and a clear definition of what counts as private sector experience versus public sector, this chart is useless. Not to mention we’re comparing the first 10 months of the Obama presidency to 108 years of Cabinets…including Warren Harding’s.
That said, I would presume thinking people could agree that public nor private sector experience are reliable predictors of administrative excellence or failure. The most compelling argument would be for both, experience with the subjects ones department regulates or is tasked to work with as well as experience with the unique work environment that is the executive branch. The proof is in the pudding not the pedigree.Report
The chart’s useless without a lot of things. Since Eisenhower, we’ve added several departments: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs, Energy. For several of those, private sector experience might not be all that useful. But at energy, we have Steven Chu, who competed successfully in the world of research for many years. There is no tougher competition in any enterprise. Is that counted as private sector, since it’s not necessarily government?
In any case, this Obama bunch is as talented as any cabinet we’ve had in the past 120 years, maybe since Lincoln. I suppose if one is determined to find something to grouse about, one can find it. Few of them speak French fluently, for example. And there is a bias towards graduates of Ivy League schools. I don’t think any are graduates of community colleges, and I don’t think any of them have ever been plumbers.
For that matter, few of them are skilled cabinet makers. What is it you think really sticks in the craw of the American Enterprise Institute? Few of them are idiots? None of them have a history of Brown Shirt involvement? None of them have sucked on the sugar teat of the American Enterprise Institute? What?Report
I’m not done yet, but with the first three Obama cabinet members I checked — in order of succession — I’ve got 13.5% with prior business experience. . .[later] I’ve found two without business experience about halfway through . . . I think the chart is not an outlier, it’s just a liar.Report