So. Just who’s in charge here?
With the news flying by so fast and so many cabinet level people being pulled into the impeachment morass, I started to wonder if I remembered the Presidential succession correctly.
I did, for the most part, just having forgotten about the Senate’s President Pro Tempore, Senator Chuck Grassley. If you’re wondering, it goes, Vice President, Mike Pence; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi; President Pro Tempore, Chuck Grassley; and fourth is the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. After that, the cabinet secretaries are in line based on the oldest cabinet position in order. So number five would be the Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, then the Attorney General, William Barr. You can look up the entire succession by going to Wikipedia and looking for United States Presidential Line of Succession.
As of writing this post, the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney General are all being named, if not actually charged, with actions being investigated for impeachment.
And once I saw the list, my next question was about Senator, #MoscowMitch, Mitch McConnell. He’s not listed. The reason is that he’s just the Senate Majority Leader. The actual leader of the Senate is Senator Grassley. If Grassley is the actual leader, why is McConnell the person controlling which bills coming from the House, get put to a vote on the Senate floor? Because he’s the party leader? Shouldn’t that be Grassley’s job as the leader of the Senate?
It’s entirely possible I’m missing a big piece of the procedure. After all, I’m just your average citizen. However, hundreds of bills are being stopped dead by #MoscowMitch. Republican friends of mine rant that the Democrats aren’t doing anything. They should do their jobs. Well. They are. It’s just that bills have to go through both houses of Congress. With McConnell stopping everything they forward, the entire process has ground to a halt.
It’s my personal opinion that McConnell should be on the list of people who are being investigated. After all, he and his wife, Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, are pulling some funny business with regard to Kentucky’s transportation budgets. Ms. Chao, by the way, normally 14th in line of succession is not eligible because she’s a naturalized citizen. Even so, her hijinks with her father’s Chinese companies should make her a target for impeachment investigation as well.
Nearly the entire cabinet has been identified as pulling some fast and loose shenanigans with their departments. Who else besides those I’ve already named? Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt: Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue; Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry; and Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Recently, Secretary of Homland Security, Kevin McAleenan, has resigned though I haven’t heard why. All together, counting the Vice President, that’s 10 out of 18 cabinet members. Half of them. Well, More than half.
There may be more. Some may be just be flying under the radar. Some may actually be trying to do a good job. I have no way of knowing. But given President Trump’s penchant for putting the person most diametrically opposed to his or her cabinet mission in charge, I don’t hold out a lot of hope that these people aren’t destroying what they’re in charge of as fast as humanly possible. Most certainly Sonny Perdue and Betsy DeVos are.
I am afraid for my country. All ten, if not more, of these Secretaries seem hell-bent on making our country of the Corporation, by the Corporation, and for the Corporation. The rest of us can just piss off.
