Only Eight Percent of Obama’s Cabinet Members Have Private Sector Experience
ByThis doesn’t inspire confidence in Obama’s ability to “create or save” jobs in America. As it turns out, only 8% of his cabinet officials have private sector experience. So 92% don’t know diddly about free markets or job creation. No wonder the economy is still a mess.
A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all. ….
H/T Townhall
Update: Someone calling himself Borg in the comments left a link to this St. Petersburg Times article which directs you to this St. Petersburg Times article calling this report false. The looked at the resumes of Obama’s cabinet members and say many of them have private sector experience:
Shaun Donovan, Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, served as managing director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., where he oversaw its investments in affordable housing loans.
Something tells me the investments in affordable housing loans didn’t do so well. Sounds like a “private sector” job dependent upon public funding.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed the electronics research lab at one of America’s storied corporate research-and-development facilities, AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work won a Nobel Prize for physics. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in addition to serving as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator, has been a partner in his family’s farm for decades and, with his wife, owned and operated a Dairy Queen and radio stations in his home state of Colorado.
A research lab isn’t exaclty a job creator and the last time I checked people don’t usually cite their spouses’ job experience on their resume. Oh, and did that farm receive government subsidies?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke spent part of their careers working as lawyers in private practice. Clinton and Vilsack worked as private-sector lawyers at the beginning of their careers, while Locke joined an international law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, after serving as governor of Washington state. At the firm, Locke “co-chaired the firm’s China practice” and “helped U.S. companies break into international markets,” according to his official biography. That sounds like real private sector experience to us.
Oh really? Did any of those positions involving making payroll? Profit and loss statements? Capital creation? Actually running a business?
The St. Pete Times asked the creator of the chart about the “discrepencies”:
“What I was really trying to get at was some kind of completely, 100 percent subjective assessment of whether or not a person had had enough control of payroll, dealing with shareholders, hiring, firing and risk-taking that they’d be in a position to have had a meaningful seat at the table when the issue being discussed is job creation,” Cembalest said.
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Interesting; I saw a chart associated with this on another site and the Obama administration is way far below the rest. I was rather amazed at the low average from all the Presidencies though.
“Help Wanted: No Experience Needed” You’ve got to see this zing on the Whitehouse… Hint: Involves Dr. Ray Stanz from Ghostbusters…
Click here: http://thedailyzing.com/551/help-wanted-no-experience-needed/
Or, Google: The Daily Zing & check it out! LOL =)
lies. please, someone, just once, check a source before posting random stuff. it might, yano, be COMPLETELY WRONG:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/02/beck-wrong-cabinets-private-sector-experience/
Dear Borg,
Just because there is some website out there that claims it is false, doesn’t mean it’s 100% false. If you read the entire article you posted, then you probably wouldn’t have posted it as your defense.
The article you site explains that this study was based on the assessment of whether or not a person had had enough control of payroll, dealing with shareholders, hiring, firing and risk-taking that they’d be in a position to have had a meaningful seat at the table when the issue being discussed is job creation.
Every example sited arguing this study STILL proves nothing to counter this. Oh except ONE which the researcher admit to have missing…so not 8%, let’s give him 8.5%
QOUTE:
“Cembalest said that he did discount the corporate experience of the three lawyers we identified — Clinton, Vilsack and Locke — and added that he awarded nothing for Donovan, Chu or Salazar, even though we found they had a fair amount private sector experience. Cembalest acknowledged fault in missing Salazar’s business background, saying he would have given him a full point if he had it to do over again. But he added that the kind of private-sector experiences Chu and Donovan had (managing scientific research and handling community development lending, respectively) did not represent the kind of private-sector business experience he was looking for when doing his study.”
I did some research and found the actual article that contained the original chart:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/24/michael-cembalest-obama-business-beltway-cabinet.html
According to the original chart compiled by Michael Cembalest, the percentage of Obama cabinet appointees with private sector experience is just over 20%. As Cembalest admitted to PolitiFact.com, any effort to address the topic of private sector experience is heavily subjective.
No matter how one looks at it, I hope we can all agree that whoever started the mass email of the chart changed the data (reducing Obama’s percentage of cabinet appointees w/ private sector experience by over 50%). Also, Glenn Beck didn’t bother to do any research. If he did, he would have realized this error.
Unfortunately this chart seems to be bogus. I don’t like Obama’s policies so I want to believe this info, but I couldn’t find any source data. I don’t think that JP Morgan Research ever does political research.
Even the Forbes article listed in the previous comment doesn’t list the source of its information.
This looks like an internet rumor, but I am willing to be corrected if anyone can find the source data.