Cronyism accusation on appointment of Simonson to HEW.

[napi21]

He was Sec. to Tommy Thompson and not qualified to deal with possible pandemic.

[indepat]

1. But his politics are right, so it doesn't matter that he is not qualified

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Neo-cronies, same old con.

[wiggs]

3. Need new list

Someone should go throught the hundreds/thousands of appointments and nominations in this administration and show where the cronies and lobbyists are. This would be very timely, considering Chertoff, Negroponte, Poindexter, Brown, and Miers. Does this information exist already?

I've seen a bunch of this kind of thing listed in RFK's Crimes Against Nature. The number of flat out corporate hacks that have served in the adminsitration to regulate the industries they came from is astonishing. Bet you'll find the same thing in every department...

[Marr]

4. Political hacks from the Heritage foundation handling rebuilding of Iraq.

Just one example is Michael Ledeen's daughter, Simone, who was given the task of rebuilding Iraq's economy. The list is very long, though. From top to bottom, they stacked the effort with the "ideologically pure" rather than the competent.

This might be a good time to bring this point up. With more and more talk of cronyism, it might actually be covered.