Alongside -- and perhaps in front of -- Roger Altman, Gene Sperling is rumored to be the leading contender to succeed Larry Summers as director of the National Economics Council. At the moment, Sperling serves as an adviser (or, in the lingo of the Treasury, "counselor") to Timothy Geithner. For Sperling, the odd reality is that this means he's vying for a job he's already had once: He led the NEC from 1995-2000, and given both the economy's performance over that period and the perception that the Clinton White House ran fairly smoothly in its later years, you'd think he'd be a shoo-in.
But politically, Sperling has two problems. The first is that he took a lot of money from -- a term that should be distinguished from "went to work for" -- Goldman Sachs and two hedge funds. In 2008 and 2009, Sperling served as an adviser to the financial titan, making more than $800,000 for consulting. His duties at Goldman Sachs were primarily on a $100 million charitable project to help raise the skill levels of poorer women in developing nations, but in some ways, that makes the transaction more peculiar: You tend not to get paid that much for offering guidance to charitable endeavors. It is very hard to believe that Goldman Sachs wasn't attempting to buy influence with a politically savvy economist who had good relations -- and would later go to work for -- the incoming Democratic administration.
As Noam Scheiber reports, there's little evidence that Sperling has been particularly sympathetic to his former benefactors. He was the principal force behind the tax the administration levied on firms to pay back TARP. Sperling is also pretty far-flung from Wall Street itself. He's worked in politics pretty much his entire professional life, developing a reputation for insane hours and comical unkemptness in the Clinton administration, attaching himself to think tanks and writing a policy book ("The Pro-Growth Progressive") during the Bush years, and then joining the Obama White House in a position that was far beneath the role he'd served for Bill Clinton. If Sperling is intellectually and emotionally captured by anything, it's Washington, not Wall Street.
Nevertheless, perceptions matter in politics, and the Wall Street payout is the sort of arrangement that people loathe: Whatever it really was, and whatever Sperling saw it as, it sure looks like Goldman Sachs was buying itself some political insurance.
The second issue for Sterling could be seen as either a positive or a negative: He's already in the administration. So far, every major vacancy in the White House has been filled by someone else from the White House. Rahm Emanuel was replaced by Pete Rouse, Peter Orszag was replaced by Jack Lew. Christina Romer was replaced by Austen Goolsbee. The implication here is that President Obama believes his team is doing a good job, and that it doesn't need new members. But there are certainly people inside the White House making the case that for both political and policy reasons, some new blood would be a good thing.
What'll help Sperling there is that the administration never found a real outsider it liked -- and it may have concluded that an outsider isn't the right fit for an internal process job. The early interest in a CEO appears to have fizzled. The other leading candidate for the job is Roger Altman, a banker and former Clinton-administration official. That is to say, he shares most of Sperling's drawbacks, but doesn't have Sperling's advantages: experience running the NEC, experience with the personalities in this White House, and extended experience in politics, including during a previous period when a Democratic president had to negotiate with a Republican Congress. All of those qualities would be rather helpful in directing the activities of the administration's economic team going forward.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.
If any of you are writing to Governor Beshear of Kentucky about the life-sized Noah's Ark the state will be underwriting, don't wait for a reply — he's sending out a standardized form letter, which many people have been forwarding to me. Here it is, in case you haven't got one.
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about proposed "Ark Encounter" tourist attraction. I appreciate knowing your views.
Bringing new jobs to Kentucky is my top priority, and I believe this project will be beneficial to our future, providing an estimated 900 jobs and $250 million in annual revenue for the regional economy. The theme park is expected to draw 1.6 million visitors in the first year alone. I am excited to have another unique, family-friendly tourist attraction for the state.
The theme park will be funded by private developers at a cost of $150 million. The for-profit developers are seeking state tax incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act - the same program used to help bring the state's first NASCAR race to the Kentucky Speedway. Any tax incentives the project may receive will come in the form of sales tax exemptions once the project is completed, and as long as it meets the guidelines under the Development Act.
The state has reviewed the project from a legal standpoint and, if the Noah's Ark application meets our laws, finds nothing unconstitutional about a for-profit company investing $150 million in Kentucky to create jobs and bring tourism to our state. The tax incentive law does not discriminate among religions and was not created specifically to benefit the theme park. The Tourism Cabinet also is in the process of reviewing the park's application for tax incentives to make sure the project can deliver on certain performance measures. This project is an investment in the future of the Commonwealth and is sure to bring people from across the country to Kentucky.
Again, thank you for sharing your views. As always, please feel free to contact me in the future whenever an issue is important to you.
Sincerely,
Steven L. Beshear
I feel like I've been slimed reading that.
First of all, it's not about jobs, and he knows it. That "900 job" estimate is, as near as anyone can tell, a fiction from a feasibility study cobbled together by one of Ken Ham's cronies, and which no one else has actually seen. The state will be coughing up more money than they're telling us, too: AiG is already asking for road expansion. What else can we expect them to ask for?
It's never just about jobs. If it were, the state would be expanding investment in education and would be taxing the churches. There are always other motives behind exactly what the state government will and will not support.
Come on. This project the governor is supporting only reinforces the stereotype of Kentucky as a state full of ignorant hillbillies and gullible rednecks, making the place a laughing stock. Seriously. Fred Flintstone-style dioramas and exhibits of people working with dinosaurs? Dragons, unicorns, and the Loch Ness monster touted as evidence for the Bible? The whole notion of the Ark itself is ludicrous and untenable…and Beshear is simply dismissing reason and evidence to promote superstition and folly in his state. Because it will part the rubes from their cash. That's cynical and contemptible.
If the governor were sincere in his desire to invest in the future of the state, he wouldn't be supporting miseducation and lies and a low-class, rinky-tink gang of pseudoscientific poseurs and bible-thumping con artists.
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