Obama faces new criticism from women's groups over his team

[The Northerner]

President Obama is facing new criticism from women’s rights groups for failing to nominate a woman to his core group of economic advisers.

Obama on Friday named longtime adviser Austan Goolsbee to head the Council of Economic Advisers after Christina Romer left to return to the University of California at Berkeley.

Women’s rights groups -- including the National Organization for Women (NOW) and The New Agenda -- have sharply criticized the White House for not including more women in prominent positions overseeing the economy and financial policy. The groups are pressuring the president to nominate Elizabeth Warren as the inaugural head of a new consumer financial protection office.

“It's very disappointing. You can't say unexpected but very disappointing that the president is content to build a boy's club in the White House in many areas,” Amy Siskind, head of The New Agenda, said Friday after the president named Goolsbee to the job.

“The problem with the president insulating himself with the old boys around him is that he is really not getting information about how people are struggling, how women are struggling,” Terry O'Neill, head of NOW, said earlier last week.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/118247-obama-faces-new-criticism-from-womens-groups-over-economic-team

[geek tragedy]

1. The New Agenda is not a feminist organization.

It is a Republican front group.

[namahage]

26. No way!

Why, they even had an actual woman speak at their very first major event!

[MichiganVote]

2. *Sigh* Why must women always invite themselves to the economic party.

[WhiteTara]

3. get back in the kitchen!

and cook those eggs right, too!

[QC]

4. Girls are bad at math

according to Larry Summers.

[impik]

5. I was wondering who will be talking about him like a dog today

Easilly the president who has done more for women's rights than anyone else - but hey, everybody is talking a crap over him, so why not.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. Next batter!!!!

:eyes:

If people think things are awful/terrible now, I wonder how they will like a Republican Congress next year or maybe another Republican in the WH in 2013 to top it all off? Maybe then (and only then) people will remember just how well we actually had it for a minute.......right before they broke it. :banghead:

[namahage]

6. Amy Siskind? Really?

The same one who wrote this:

Should Women Back Palin in 2012?

Money quote:

I am a lifelong Democrat who for the first time in my life voted Republican in the 2008 elections. I did this for one reason: McCain selected a woman as his running mate.

[Drunken Irishman]

7. That's sound logic right there.

What a dolt.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

10. Walter Mondale, a DEMOCRAT, beat John McCain to the punch

by, what, 24 years and she made a huge deal about McCain nominating Palin in 2008?!! :banghead:

Lemme guess: She was a so-called "PUMA", right?

[Cha]

12. What a freakin' idiot..that's gender stupidity..nt

[ProSense]

8. Obama's cabinet is the most diverse ever

There are six women in the cabinet. From the OP:

Obama has named roughly the same number of women to powerful Cabinet posts as President George W. Bush.

Under the Obama administration, women lead powerful agencies and departments, including the State Department, Department of Health and Human Services, Labor Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Obama has also nominated two women, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to the Supreme Court.

Women also have key roles on his economic team, including Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and Lael Brainard, Treasury Secretary for International Affairs.

But women's rights groups have focused some of their criticism on the administration's core group of economic advisers at Treasury, the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers.

The National Economic Council?

As far as the CEA, there are still a number of women on the Council

There are women on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board

The claim about Bush is completely false, there were never more than four women in Bush's cabinet positions at any give time. Gale Norton turned out be one of the most corrupt cabinet members ever.

Seriously, what the hell are they talking about?

[Jennicut]

9. Obama added two women to the Supreme Court.

I think that went pretty far in his commitment to make women's voices important to this country. I think Obama picked someone he knew well, rather then a male over a female for any reason.

[depakid]

13. Well, when you've got a loser like Summers heading up the team

You're sort of inviting that reaction.

Harvard women's group rips Summers

A suggestion by Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, that women may not have the same innate abilities in math and science as men has touched off an angry response from many Harvard professors, including members of a committee on women's issues who sent Summers a letter yesterday complaining that his remarks "impede our current efforts to recruit top women scholars."

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/01/19/harvard_womens_group_rips_summers/

[dionysus]

21. bless your heart for trying so hard.

[scheming daemons]

23. depakid, the australian provocateur, always gets an A for effort

He doesn't have to deal with the impact of American elections, so he can afford to be ideologically "pure".

The rest of us have to deal with having a GOP congress in the fall.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

29. That what the "A" stands for?

I thought it was something else.

[depakid]

32. In this case it's an "M" for memory

though it's fair to say that http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jan2010/ca20100129_165898.htm">Brooksley Born can probably recall some choice comments, too.

[CBR]

14. This is stupid. nt

[FrenchieCat]

15. Yeah...but the stupids are everywhere!

Can't see past their flaring nostrils of outrage. :eyes:

[nmbluesky]

16. What's about Elizabeth Warren

Hello!!!!!!?????

[Arkana]

17. This is bullshit. Six women in the Cabinet, two women appointed to the Supreme Court,

and Valerie Jarrett is senior counsel to the President.

[impik]

18. They all talk about him like a dog

[Number23]

34. Don't forget Susan Rice, UN Ambassador and Dr. Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General

Now, I'm personally of the mindset that the more women you have on your team, the better. But this would not appear to be even CLOSE to an issue that Obama should be criticized on.

[scheming daemons]

19. So.. N.O.W. is upset about the ONLY President to nominate two female SCOTUS justices...

...and who also has *SIX* female cabinet members, including the most prestigious of cabinet positions: Sec. of State.


Got it.


He's obviously anti-woman.


:eyes:

[CBR]

20. He hates women! This has been a lame ass meme since

"you're likable enough Hillary." One that never dies because... well, because he won.

[Drunken Irishman]

24. But see, Hillary doesn't count because she wasn't his VP!

[blue neen]

22. Spare me.

Typical negative B.S.

[TheBigotBasher]

25. Amy Siskind the PUMA feminist?

Lol. A woman so committed to the safety of women that she offered to provide the hate site Hillbuzz the IP address of a female blogger who she happened to disgree with so that they could go after her with baseball bats.



Not only did this PUMA bigot do this she tried to pretend that the hate site was a feminist site as well.

The same Amy Siskind that front pages on NoQuarter and calls them "friends".

Siskind is no feminist. She is a Palin lobbyist posing as a liberal.

[Number23]

35. Good catch, BB

:thumbsup:

[nmbluesky]

27. He pick Woman for Sec. of State

Hillary Clinton,
Hello!!!!!!:eyes:

[AtomicKitten]

28. Think Progress: Obama has a higher rate of appointing women & minorities than any predecessor.

:patriot:

link: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/12/obama-higher-rate-women/

Obama has a higher rate of appointing women and minorities to the courts than any of his predecessors.

Yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer highlighted Republicans’ successful efforts to obstruct President Obama from appointing judges to the federal courts. Despite these efforts, the Inquirer notes, Obama has had a higher “rate of appointing women and people of color…than those of any of his predecessors during their first year of their terms”:

So far, nearly half of Obama’s 73 appointments to the federal bench have been women, 25 percent have been African American, 11 percent Asian American, and 10 percent Hispanic. About 30 percent of Obama’s nominees were white males. By contrast, two-thirds of George W. Bush’s nominees were white males.

Obama’s rate of appointing women and people of color is higher than those of any of his predecessors during the first year of their terms.

Unfortunately, Republicans have shown a historically high level of obstruction in blocking Obama’s appointees. While Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had 91 percent of their judicial appointees confirmed in their first year of office, Obama only had 36 percent of them approved by the U.S. Senate.

[frazzled]

30. As a feminist, I'm not fully sympathetic to this complaint

These are the circumstances: Christina Romer was a brilliant choice by this administration to head the CEA, but she left. Obama had to promote from within to replace her. Why? Because the Republicans block any new nominations he makes, and the economy is too important to wait to play those kinds of games. Goolsbee, having been already confirmed and on the CEA, was just a practical choice to move up from within.

With Secretaries of Labor (Hilda Solis), Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano), Health and Human Services (Kathleen Sebelius), State (Hillary Clinton) plus UN Ambassador Susan Rice and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (I'm sure I'm forgetting a few), we have a Presidential Cabinet with massive female input. And maybe Elizabeth Warren will be there soon. Oh yeah, and he appointed two women to the Supreme Court. This is not a president who is afraid of women--he grew up and lives in a female-rich environment.

[tammywammy]

31. +1 n/t

[ibegurpard]

33. Oh, good God!

Of all the things you could legitimately criticize him for...

[vaberella]

36. As a womanist...this is geting outright ridiculous. n/t

[ensho]

37. I say keep on prodding Obama until he listens

if we women have to fight to be heard and or invited

so be it

[phleshdef]

38. Keep prodding him to do what? He has appointed women all over the place.

Of all the valid complaints out there, Obama not appointing enough women to powerful positions isn't even close to being one of them.

[impik]

41. It doesn't matter. Anything goes.

Stupid country.

[impik]

40. Pathetic

[WI_DEM]

39. On the other hand he selected two women to the US Supreme Court and as Sec of State