The day after I published this, NPR decided that it was newsworthy to report on President Obama’s problems with staffing the Treasury Department. I’m glad they read my blog. 
A week later, the problems have only gotten worse. Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, is still alone at the top of the Treasury Department, without a single deputy secretary, undersecretary, or assistant secretary. Here is a list of the positions that need to be filled, and other than the Treasury, not a single nomination has even gone to the Senate for confirmation. It’s not like there’s a financial crisis going on or anything.
In fact, just this week, 3 nominees for Treasury Department positions have withdrawn from consideration, before their nominations were sent to the Senate.
George Stephanopoulos, hardly a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, reported that “H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.” The reason given was that “an issue arose in the final stages of the vetting process.”
Before H. Rodgin Cohen, Annete Nazareth had withdrawn from consideration. According to the article:
Nazareth was forced to withdraw from consideration for the deputy treasury slot because senators made it clear she would face tough questioning over her time at the Securities and Exchange Commission — tenure that overlapped with the agency’s failure to catch Bernie Madoff.
Meanwhile,
the candidate for Undersecretary for International Affairs, Caroline Atkinson, was told she had to withdraw after a “tax problem” was revealed early in the vetting process, according to officials.
Wow. If George W. Bush had these problems I sure don’t remember them.
And the beat goes on:
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-puts-new-cio-vivek-kundra-on-suspension-2009-3
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/12/urban_policy_director_says_hes.html?wprss=44
You couldn’t make this stuff up, and if you wrote a story with this plot it would be considered over the top.
At least they didn’t claim they were going to be the most ethical administration in history.
Oh my goodness. While Googling for more information on the above, I came across ANOTHER one.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/02/tax_problems_surface_for_trade.html?hpid=topnews
Admittedly, this one would probably be trivial if it weren’t part of a pattern. I mean, $10,000 in unpaid taxes wouldn’t be trivial for most people, but at the level these guys play at, the kind of omissions he made are probably not all that unusual. But still.