Here we go again. I wrote a blog last October about Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) holding up the nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Peter Diamond, a Nobel Prize winner and authority on joblessness, expressing my frustration that a man of this intellectual quality and with specific gifts to analyze the problems of joblessness in this threatened economy should have his nomination blocked.
Well, people, Dick Shelby and a bunch of bloody-minded Republicans and, to be fair, a lacklustre feeble effort by the Obama administration in support of their nominee have caused Peter Diamond, after fourteen months of frustration, to withdraw his name. Shelby smugly stated that he hoped the administration would come up with someone with "more bipartisan appeal".
Nice work, everybody. It symbolizes the state of inaction and impasse currently the standard oerating procedure in Washington. Just play politics, postphone important decisions until the election. The Republicans don't want to do anything that might give credit to the Obama administration. But Obama and his people aren't a helluva lot better right now in putting everything aside, including job stimulus, to deal with the deficit. I know the deficit is important---but job creation can help to get things going, spark the economy and improve the deficit situation. All we have is intransigence, scolding each other---and not getting anything done.
Let's get off this merry-go-round and let's go somewhere! In the meantime, a brainy man named Peter Diamond, who might have some good ideas, is walking away. It's a bloody shame.
We humans are funny that way. We'd rather have a bad egg or no egg a tall, if chosen by somebody else.
ReplyDeleteAnother frustrating example of partisanship run amok. While the country suffers, they spend their time on debating sexting.
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