Friday, November 07, 2008

Comment on Obama considering Summers for Treasury

The Times is agog with the news that Mr. Lawrence Summers is in the short list to be the next Treasury Secretary. It is commendable that President elect Obama is looking to allay jittery markets and appoint someone as quickly as possible at the Treasury who can project an image of stability, values and infuse continuity at the Treasury.

The only problem is that Mr. Lawrence Summers is not that man.

From his speech to the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Women often don’t want to work the hours needed to get to the top and that girls are socialized toward nursing while boys are socialized toward building bridges. In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are, in fact, lesser factors involving socialization and continuing iscrimination.
In other words, this man was telling us that women were intrinsically inferior to men when it came to math and sciences.

That he was the President of Harvard University when he made that comment was another thing... Now he is being considered by President elect Obama to be the Treasury Secretary. No way. Now how. Not ever.

Obama can do better than that. Geithner is the right individual for this job.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now that the anti-science, superstition-based intiative presidency is coming to an end, we need several Manhattan projects to make us great again. First we must provide free advertising-based wireless internet to everyone. Then we must criss-cross the land with high speed rail. These two major public works projects will boost us out of the Grotesque Depression. We must develop microorganisms that may be freely distributed and become commonplace to improve our future. Because bovine flatulence is the major source of greenhouse gases, we must develop microorganisms which can be grow in the home that will provide all of our nutrition. Then we must create microorganisms which turn our sewage and waste into fuel. Since paranoid schizophrenia is the cause of racism, bigotry, homelessness, terrorism, ignorance, exploitation and criminality, we must provide put the appropriate medications, like lithium, in the water supply. We must also allow dangerous individuals who refuse free mental health care to be required to be implanted with drug release devices and microorganisms to improve their mindsets. We should encourage international organizations to do likewise. In order to fund this we must nationalize the entire financial, electrical and transportation system and abolish the silly notion that each industry should be regulated by its peers. Furthermore, as feudalism is the threat to progress everywhere, we must abolish large land holdings by farmers, foresters or religions and instead make all such large landholding part of the forest service so our trees may diminish greenhouse gases. We must abolish executive pay and make sure all employees in a company are all paid equally. We must abolish this exploitative idea of trade and make every home self sufficient through the microorganisms we invent.