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Further costs of the "transition"

By Jack M. Balkin

[This just in from today's Washington Post: "Top Scientist Rails Against Hirings: Bush Appointees Land Career Jobs Without Technical Backgrounds." Read it and weep:

The president of the nation's largest general science organization yesterday sharply criticized recent cases of Bush administration political appointees gaining permanent federal jobs with responsibility for making or administering scientific policies, saying the result would be "to leave wreckage behind."

"It's ludicrous to have people who do not have a scientific background, who are not trained and skilled in the ways of science, make decisions that involve resources, that involve facilities in the scientific infrastructure," said James McCarthy, a Harvard University oceanographer who is president of the Ameican Association for the Advancement of Science. "You'd just like to think people have more respect for the institution of government than to leave wreckage behind with these appointments."

His comments came as several new examples surfaced of political appointees gaining coveted, high-level civil service positions as the administration winds down. The White House has said repeatedly that all gained their new posts in an open, competitive process, but congressional Democrats and others questioned why political appointees had won out over qualified federal career employees.

In one recent example, Todd Harding -- a 30-year-old political appointee at the Energy Department-- applied for and won a post this month at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, he told colleagues in a Nov. 12 e-mail, he will work on "space-based science using satellites for geostationary and meteorological data." Harding earned a bachelor's degree in government from Kentucky's Centre College, where he also chaired the Kentucky Federation of College Republicans.

The "transition" may give President-elect Obama time to make first rate appointments, but it also gives Republican gangsters an extra eleven weeks to do whatever they can, without, of course, a hint of accountability, to wreck the new Administration (can anyone spell "Midnight Judges"?) .

Full post as published by Balkinization on November 22, 2008 (boomark / email).