President-elect Barack Obama took to the stage Friday afternoon in Chicago to announce four nominees for labor and transportation positions: Rep. Hilda Solis as labor secretary, Rep. Ray LaHood as transportation secretary, former Dallas secretary Ron Kirk as U.S. trade representative and Maine venture capitalist Karen Mills to lead the Small Business Administration. With labor and transportation announced, Obama rounded out his Cabinet today and took a moment to brag about his speediness in filling the Cabinet. With these outstanding appointees, I have filled out our economic team, and done so at an earlier point than any President in history,…
Monthly Archives: December, 2008
While most people who aren’t former Nixon staffers or convicted Watergate criminals agree that Mark Felt did the right thing by talking to Bob Woodward, not all leaks are as cut and dry. Wired posted a blog entry yesterday that says someone has uploaded a classified report to Wikileaks on the military’s Warlock radio-frequency jammers, which soldiers use to cut off signals to remotely detonated bombs used by Iraqi insurgents. (The Wired blog has some profanity.) The four-year old report contains information on how the jammers work, such as what frequencies they stop. Though the models described in the report are…
Mark Felt, the former associate director of the FBI who helped break the Watergate scandal, died yesterday at 95. Felt, who for decades hid his role in the scandal and was known only as Deep Throat, was the consummate whistleblower. As a career agent and the number two man at the FBI, Felt had firsthand knowledge of how the Nixon administration tried to sabotage the Bureau’s investigation into the Watergate burglary. He used that information to guide Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they dug into the scandal. Felt’s “Deep Throat” moniker, which was given to him…
Does the federal government have too many middle managers? President-elect Barack Obama has promised to thin the ranks of management, especially in the Washington area, and shift more employees to “front-line” positions in field offices. But the plan isn’t sitting well with groups like the Senior Executives Association and Federal Managers Association. A coalition of managers groups sent a letter (pdf) to John Podesta, the co-chair of Obama’s transition team, urging the president-elect to reconsider: An arbitrary cut of managers based upon an across the board ratio for all of federal service is not the answer. Instead, we encourage you…
Hanukkah starts Sunday and Christmas and Kwanzaa are about a week away. To get you in the holiday mood, we bring you a special winter holiday edition of Friday Fun Facts. Today’s fun facts come to us courtesy of the Census Bureau, or as I like to call it, the Fun Fact Bureau. The Postal Service will deliver more than 20 billion pieces of mail throughout the season. Last year holiday shoppers spent $30.5 billion on gifts. Christmas tree farmers sold $493 million worth of pine trees last year; $114 million worth were sold in Oregon alone. Approximately $1.3 billion…
The widely anticipated pay raises for 2009 were just released this morning. In an executive order, President George W. Bush outlined how various pay schedules will be impacted by the 3.9 percent overall pay raise that Congress enacted. Also, the Office of Personnel Management released the new 2009 pay tables for the various localities. Among the highlights: Basic pay under the General Schedule will go up 2.9 percent. The remainder of the 3.9 percent overall pay raise enacted by Congress will go toward locality raises. Among the 30-plus locality pay zones, employees in the Washington D.C.-Baltimore-Northern Virginia region will see…
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters signed what is perhaps the most important order of the year today: the one that allows Santa to fly his sleigh in military air space on Christmas Eve. Dubbed “Santa Skylanes,†the expanded air space will help Santa — and commercial air traffic — navigate the nation’s busy airspace. Here is what Peters had to say about this important order: We know Santa Claus must adhere to a really tight schedule to get to every house on his list. Allowing him to use military airspace will ensure that crowded skies won’t mean empty stockings on Christmas…
Sens. Mary Landrieu and Olympia Snowe will be the top Democrat and Republican leaders of a Senate committee when the new Congress convenes in January. Landrieu, D-La., will become chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, while Snowe, R-Maine, will remain the ranking member. Landrieu is replacing John Kerry, D-Mass., as the committee’s chair. In a press release, Landrieu said she will push for opportunities for women- and minority-owned small businesses, and Snowe concurred. “As a vital voice for women entrepreneurs in Congress, we will advance an ambitious policy agenda targeted toward renewing the federal government’s commitment…
The Energy Department just announced it’s awarded new contracts to 16 energy service companies to finance up to $80 billion in energy-savings projects at federal facilities over the next decade. Energy awarded the contracts under its Super Energy Savings Peformance Contracts (Super ESPC) program. Agencies will be able to issue task orders under the contracts for projects that cut energy and water consumption or costs, increase renewable energy use, and reduce operations and maintenance costs. As I reported back in September, the new contracts are larger in size and scope than existing ESPCs and are expected to spur significant growth in…
We’ve been reporting for months on the flurry of midnight rulemaking at executive agencies. Here’s the latest addition to the list: Health and Human Services today issued a final version of the “conscience rule.” It allows workers at health care facilities — doctors, nurses, pharmacists — to refuse to help provide services they find morally objectionable. Even a janitor could, conceivably, refuse to clean a room where abortions take place. “Many health care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice — often in direct opposition to their personal convictions,†said Joxel Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary of health.…