The LOUDelf speaks!

Let’s get over for a moment that our new “Car Czar” — Brian Deese – doesn’t drive American.  I’m sure if we walked through the parking lots of many political offices (of any political party), we’d see many foreign-made cars.  The fact is that many of them are either better vehicles, or better buys.  Some are made right here in the US (Honda – which Deese drives).  This doesn’t concern me. 

What DOES concern me is cronyism over qualification.  Here is the entry on his background from Wikipedia:

Brian Deese works at the National Economic Council and is special assistant to the president for economic policy. Previously, he served as a member of the Economic Policy Working Group for the Obama-Biden transition. He emerged as “one of the most influential voices” in the Obama Administration relative to the auto industry, and specifically the Chrysler and GM workouts. He has appeared in videos posted on change.gov by the transition team.  Before joining the transition team, he was deputy economic policy director for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign and, before that, for Gene Sperling in the 2008 Clinton campaign.  He graduated from Middlebury College in 2000 with a degree in Political Science and is now on leave from Yale Law School.  Previously, he was a senior policy analyst for economic policy at the Center for American Progress.  Brian also worked as a research assistant at the Center for Global Development, hired by founder Nancy Birdsall, according to The New York Times, where he co-authored the book Delivering on Debt Relief.

Of his history, the only applicable thing I read is:  “He emerged as “one of the most influential voices” in the Obama Administration relative to the auto industry, and specifically the Chrysler and GM workouts.”  This make his role seem amazing.  What I fail to understand, is how – if the administration has only been in place for less than 6 months – he somehow has any kind of experience to be running a process that can affect the whole country without congressional approval? 

Let’s draw a comparison, shall we?  Michael Brown had little to no emergency experience prior to taking on a role in FEMA.  After 2 months (March 2001), he was nominated to head FEMA by George W. Bush. In April 2003, after a lengthy congressional approval, he was sworn in.  Sounds like a similar track-record, doesn’t it.

A major difference, is that Brown had to face congressional inquiry and approval before handling the critical organization… Deese did not.  Another major difference is that FEMA is reactionary, and only operates in response.  Deese will be overseeing on-going private industry. 

We’ve seen a lot of kickback go on so far with the stimulus bill funding a lot of the president’s allies’ pet projects, firings of people investigating presidential supporters, and so on.  We’ve already seen in the GM case where the people with a legal right to a first shot at assets get passed over in favor of the unions (presidential supporters) and new management (who will be largely presidential supporters/sympathizers).  What next?

I’m going to stick by my original stance that the American public is going to need some Vaseline.