More Cabinet Picks

More Fantasy Cabinet Picks - to add to those I made in the last entry.........

Secretary of Agriculture: Michael Pollan
author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma"; he would end the farm bill subsidies that has the Agribusiness growing corn to go into everything from poptarts to doorstops. Pollan would find ways to revitalize and bring back the family farmers to provide food for the folks nearby.

Backup pick for Secretary of Agriculture: Frances Moore Lappe,
author of "Diet for a Small Planet" and "Democracy's Edge"; Director of "Food First" and "Center for Living Democracy." She knows how to "spread the wealth" worldwide while engaging our highest citizen-selves.

One last backup for Secretary of Agriculture: Wendell Berry. We need a poet in the cabinet and why not this eloquent, champion of rural America, poet-farmer.

Secretary of Commerce: Van Jones, the founding president of Green For All and author of "Green Collar Economy." This amazing orator from Yale, would catalyze a win-win formula for renewable energies, energy conservation, and jobs for the urban poor. He recognizes the overwhelming urgency of global warming and the parallel urgency to create jobs and equity for the health of our cities and the evolution of our country.

Press Secretary: Bill Moyers, hands down - the greatest journalist of our time and one who will always put integrity above spin.

Secretaries of Music: We need a duo for this new Ambassadorial type of Cabinet position. Carlos Santana and Michael Franti.
Carlos is the guitarist who could make even a tyrant weep and bring comfort and joy to every corner of the globe, and Michael, the courageous visionary whose lyrics can get us all moving in one dance across every conceivable border.

Secretary of Education: Jonathan Kozol, author of "Savage Inequalities." No more rich districts and poor districts as a fact of life. All children deserve an equal investment of education resources.

Still puzzling over Secretary of Transportation as well as Health and Human Services.
Would love some suggestions......

Can we all agree to deep six the Secretary of Homeland Security post?

Fantasy Picks for the Cabinet Team

Surely there must be a "fantasy cabinet league" started yet for the Obama Administration. If so, here are my first picks.

Secretary of Energy : Al Gore
guaranteed to get us back on track starting with signing the Kyoto Treaty on greenhouse gases and the Bali Agreement;

will reintroduce the term "global warming" to the national agenda as the biggest reason of all to restructure our economy. (this somehow got virtually dropped in all the presidential debates in favor of "reducing our dependence on foreign oil".)

Secretary of State: Samantha Power - Professor of Public Policy at Harvard
she wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning: "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide"
She'd hold fast to the commitment to do something in Darfur.
Unfortunately, she was the Obama adviser that got dropped after she was quoted calling Hillary Clinton "a monster."

Backup Pick for Sec of State: Hillary Clinton
If she can take Obama's direction to talk to every world leader - friend and foe - you can trust she's powerful and brainy enough to come away with something big.

Secretary of Treasury: Jeffrey Sachs
Economics and also Public Health Professor at Columbia
Author of "The End of Poverty" and "Common Wealth"
You can actually understand him when he explains macro-economics and how to restructure.

Backup Pick for Treasury: Paul Krugman
New York Times columnist and Econ Professor at Princeton and Nobel Prize winner
He would not be writing blank bailout checks to banks without significant reform conditions.

Secretary of Peace: Dennis Kucinich
oh, we first have to create this new position in the cabinet

Secretary of Defense: Colin Powell
He'll definitely want to redeem himself and reestablish his reputation for integrity after the big lie he made at the UN regarding WMD in Iraq.

I have to review the draft pool for the other positions. To be continued.