Friday, October 17, 2014

Obama Appoints Dem Operative Ron Klain As Ebola Czar

by JASmius



Who is Ron Klain?  Well, I can tell you what he's not: a physician of any sort, a healthcare worked in the most tangential sense, an actor who plays a doctor on TV, and somebody mistaken for a doctor who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

But what is he?  Besides a dead ringer for William Wayne Zimmerman III....



....only with a toupee and orders of magnitude more character?:

He's tackled the financial crisis....

i.e. helped orchestrate it.

....served two vice presidents and been portrayed by Kevin Spacey in an HBO film, but Ron Klain's newest job as the U.S. point person on Ebola may be his toughest challenge to date.

Seeing as how he knows less about medicine in general and infectious disease prevention in particular than he does origami condoms.

If he'd been Bill Clinton's chief of staff, he wouldn't have that problem.

A longtime Democratic operative....

One of his three chief "qualifications".

....Klain was tasked Friday by President Barack Obama with running the government's response to the Ebola crisis. Klain has been a trusted adviser at the Obama White House, and served as Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff from 2009 to 2011 and as Vice President Al Gore's from 1995 to 1999.

Klain has been out of government since leaving Biden's office during the Obama's first term. The White House said that Klain would report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco.

Neither of whom know anything more about medicine in general and infectious disease prevention in particular than Klain does.

Klain, a lawyer....

Chief "qualification" #2.

....also served as chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore and was a key figure during the 2000 Florida presidential election recount....

The chief "qualification" trifecta.

He previously served under Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration.

Seems like that would have been penance enough for any multitude of sins.

Then there's the matter of this "czar" crap arising again - and the fact that this time it was at the badgering behest of congressional Republicans:

Obama has been under pressure to name an Ebola "czar" to oversee health security in the U.S.....

Remember the last time the term "health security" was coined at the federal level?  I think you do.

....and actions to help stem the outbreak in West Africa, where nearly 4,500 people have died from the virus.

White House officials had initially resisted congressional calls to name a lead figure on Ebola, arguing that various agencies had distinct responsibilities, including the Centers for Disease Control, The Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

But on Thursday, Obama conceded that such a point person might in fact be necessary even as he praised his adviser for doing "an outstanding job."

I beg to differ.  Ebola, being a potential epidemic, quite clearly falls within the purview of the Commissariat of Health & Human Services (which is itself unconstitutional, but let's put that aside for now).  So quite clearly the "point person" on ebola should be Sylvia Burwell, the HHS Commissar, or one of her deputies, that have already been confirmed by the United States Senate.  The One does not have the constitutional authority to appoint executive branch poobahs outside the Senate's confirmation process, and is compelled neither by circumstances nor protocol to add yet another layer of illegal bureaucracy to Leviathan atop what's already crushingly present.  One would like to think that at some dim, subconscious level some Republicans vaguely realized just what it was they were urging and had it occur to them to stop themselves.  Not that that would have prevented O from adding Ron Klain to his "czar cluster," but now he can say that the GOP "made him do it" if and when 'Pubbies come to their senses and decry this latest illegal government expansion.

Czar Klain's doubtless first order of business?  Making the "Republican CDC and NIH budget cuts caused the ebola crisis" meme stick in the next eighteen days.  That's something "Democrat operatives" do know how to do.

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