{"id":7918,"date":"2006-07-13T09:10:25","date_gmt":"2006-07-13T13:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7918.html"},"modified":"2006-07-13T09:10:25","modified_gmt":"2006-07-13T13:10:25","slug":"suggestions-for-the-white-house-director-for-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/suggestions-for-the-white-house-director-for-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Suggestions for the White House Director for Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>National Journal <a href=\"http:\/\/nationaljournal.com\/about\/njweekly\/stories\/2006\/0711nj1.htm\">published a list<\/a> this week of salaries for the several hundred political appointees who work at the White House. As TP <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2006\/07\/11\/four-most-overpaid-wh-staffers\/\">noted<\/a>, one guy, [tag]Stuart Baker[\/tag], makes $106,641 a year to serve as the president&#8217;s &#8220;[tag]Director for Lessons Learned[\/tag].&#8221; It is, by any reasonable measure, the most patently absurd title in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not altogether clear what, if anything, Baker actually does. Poking around, I found that he was a former NSA general counsel and the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security before taking on his current job, but there&#8217;s no reported evidence of him actually having done anything at the White House. Is the [tag]Bush[\/tag] gang still looking for those learned lessons?<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) thinks we should save some money, eliminate Baker&#8217;s post, and consider &#8220;a few of the lessons this [tag]White House[\/tag] <a href=\"http:\/\/americablog.blogspot.com\/2006\/07\/white-house-paying-100000-salary-to.html\">should have learned by now<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you&#8217;re going to war without enough troops.<\/p>\n<p>Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it&#8217;s time to demand a little accountability.<\/p>\n<p>Lesson 3: When you&#8217;ve &#8216;turned the corner&#8217; in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.<\/p>\n<p>Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Maybe we should compile a list and send it to Baker. I&#8217;m sure he&#8217;d appreciate the assistance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Journal published a list this week of salaries for the several hundred political appointees who work at the White House. As TP noted, one guy, [tag]Stuart Baker[\/tag], makes $106,641 a year to serve as the president&#8217;s &#8220;[tag]Director for Lessons Learned[\/tag].&#8221; It is, by any reasonable measure, the most patently absurd title in Washington. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/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-7918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918","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=7918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}