Reserved government positions

I would like your opinion on reserved government positions. The role of Treasurer in the USA, which is the same as "Chief Cashier" in the UK, is the person who is responsible for the production of "narrow money" and formerly stamps. The physical production of notes and coins, and the engineering of anti counterfeiting devices. The Treasurer is one of two signatures on banknotes, the other being the Secretary of Treasury. The Secretary has much larger range of responsibilities.

After WWII, the Treasurer resigned after 16 years in office, and Harry Truman decided that this position should be filled by a woman, what would then be the highest ranking appointed position in the US government. In keeping with this tradition this office is now approaching 50 years where the position has been filled by a woman.

After a while, women in government became less of an oddity. About 19 years after Truman's initial appointment Richard Nixon selected a Latina for the job. Starting with mid first term Reagan the position has gone to a Latina all but one time. Most of the currency in circulation is signed by a Latina.

My question is why is this office left vacant roughly 20% of the time, sometimes for over a year at a time? It's been vacant for 9 out of the last 50 years, and out of the last 18.5 years, it has been vacant for a total of 3.8 years.

I must assume that the office is vacant so often because each president is looking for a suitable candidate from a narrow demographic. The job is a kind of reward for suitable loyalty.

The second part of the question has to do with the overwhelming engineering difficulties that is costing close to a billion dollars (in my estimation) in difficulties in printing the next generation hundred dollar bill. Maybe there is an engineer that just so happens to be a white middle aged man who has some experience in production engineering. Of course he is not going to be as interesting on the lecture circuit.

I would assume that most of the duties of these upper level appointees are actually performed by deputies. Its sort of the way the President appoints an Ambassador to Korea only to have the new ambassador arrive and ask his staff "How is it there are two Koreas?". Ambassadorships are rewards for re-election campaign contributions. Race-designated offices are doled out as rewards to those members of the suitable demographic category that have merited something but its more a way to fill the position without gaining adverse publicity about "an end to the office being considered solely for (females, latinos, etc.)".

The secretary of the treasurer and controller of the currency probably have zilch to do with the actual production of new bills. I understand the company with the over 100 year old monopoly on paper for the treasury altered its product.

The use of quotas by race, gender, orientation, and other group concepts like that, is an awful idea in most situations. For one thing it undermines the very real fact that we are all individuals and differ among each other, regardless of skin color, sex, etc. Dr. King said it best, when he spoke of his dream that people should be judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.

When dealing with people such things ought to be irrelevant. When considering someone for a position, you should ask what that person can bring to the job, not whether the job should be held by a woman, an overweight gay man, an overachieving teen, etc, etc.

There can be exceptions. Casting people in movies, for example, is very dependent on looks, often to the detriment of acting ability. Offhand I can't think of any others, but there may be. For a position like treasurer, or secretary of defense, or any position like that, gender, race and such are irrelevant.

I don't know the specific rules for the Treasurer position but the Senate has an Advise and Consent role in choosing people that will work for the president. The Senate is also fucked up beyond belief. Each Senator has the ability to filibuster a nominee for any position in which the Senate has this advise and consent role. Tom Coburn, by far the most stupid of all the Senators (God help the school that issued him his gynocology degree) uses this power to shut everything down. So to answer your question, it's probably some self-important Senator that thinks he or she is the world that prevents the office from being occupied more than 80% of the time.

Quote: FleaStiff

The secretary of the treasurer and controller of the currency probably have zilch to do with the actual production of new bills. I understand the company with the over 100 year old monopoly on paper for the treasury altered its product.

The Secretary of the Treasury is ultimately in charge of everything including the production of banknotes. But that is pretty far down on his list.

The Treasurer on the other hand should primarily be concerned with the physical production of money, either notes or coins. Now clearly these women are not selected for their engineering skills. But the job is primarily to see that the nation has a stable currency supply.

Quote: FleaStiff

Race-designated offices are doled out as rewards to those members of the suitable demographic category that have merited something but its more a way to fill the position without gaining adverse publicity about "an end to the office being considered solely for (females, latinos, etc.)".

Since 22-Sep-1983 5 out of 6 of people filling this position have been latinas. Quickly looking at their resumes none of them seem to have any experience in production manufacturing.

Looking at the budget I see a massive production engineering problem:
$1 in $6 in FY2008 was to produce 800 million color $100 notes (none were produced)
$2 in $7 in FY2009 was to produce 1300 million color $100 notes (none were produced)
$1 in $2 in FY2010 was to produce 2750 million color $100 notes (1200m were produced, but none were delivered because of low quality. How many are good?)
$3 in $8 in FY2011 was to produce 1700 million color $100 notes (173m were produced in 9/12 months, quality is still unknown)

Should an equivalent counterfeiting level as hit Canada in 2004 hit the USA, we may find that we don't have a currency acceptable to cover people's needs.

Quote: pacomartin

Quickly looking at their resumes none of them seem to have any experience in production manufacturing.

No, but they have good experience raising funds for someone's campaign chest and they had suitable demographics to avoid adverse publicity. Those are the qualifications for the job. Production Manufacturing? They give good contributions, good phone, good memos and good meetings. They don't know beans about manufacturing. They don't have to.