{"id":5500,"date":"2005-10-11T10:47:58","date_gmt":"2005-10-11T14:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5500"},"modified":"2005-10-11T10:47:58","modified_gmt":"2005-10-11T14:47:58","slug":"bushs-hackocracy-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-hackocracy-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s Hackocracy, redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has said the likelihood of a human flu pandemic is “very high<\/a>,” I thought it might be worthwhile to check back with The New Republic’s latest article on Bush’s “Hackocracy<\/a>” — a fairly comprehensive review of the administration, looking for the next Mike Brown (incompetent crony given critical governmental responsibilities).<\/p>\n

Last week, I noted that Stewart Simonson, Assistant Secretary for Public Health and Emergency Preparedness at HHS, has experience in public transit but no public-health expertise<\/a>. This week, let’s take a look at Simonson’s boss, Christina Beato<\/a>, who is the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health for the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

In June 2004, Cristina Beato admitted to her hometown newspaper that she hadn’t paid much attention to the details of her resume. That’s too bad, because those silly little details seem to have stalled her confirmation for assistant secretary for health for over two years now. Beato said she earned a master’s of public health in occupational medicine from the University of Wisconsin (but the university doesn’t even offer that degree). She claimed to be “one of the principal leaders who revolutionized medical education in American universities by implementing the Problem Based learning curriculum” (but the curriculum was developed while Beato was still a medical student). She listed “medical attache” to the American Embassy in Turkey as a job she held in 1986 (but that position didn’t exist until 1995). She also boasted that she had “established” the University of New Mexico’s occupational health clinic (but the clinic existed before she was hired, and there was even another medical director before her). <\/p>\n

For her part, Beato has offered a simple explanation: English is her third language, after French and her native Spanish, and sometimes the language barrier is just too much to handle. How does one say “pants on fire” in Spanish?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Does the White House try<\/i> to find unqualified people for key administration posts, or does it just work out this way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has said the likelihood of a human flu pandemic is “very high,” I thought it might be worthwhile to check back with The New Republic’s latest article on Bush’s “Hackocracy” — a fairly comprehensive review of the administration, looking for the next Mike Brown (incompetent crony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}