Tag Archives: nepotism

Ivanka and Jared privileged? No-o-o-o!

I have sought to keep quiet about Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president of the United States. I guess it’s time to speak about her.

It’s not that I relish taking shots at a president’s daughter. Ivanka Trump, though, isn’t your run-of-the-mill presidential “child.” She is a senior policy adviser to her father, as is her husband, Jared Kushner.

The pair now have become subjects of a book that details how they parlayed their kinship to the president to acquire enormous power within the West Wing of the White House and how they attained that power with no discernible credentials — other than Ivanka’s father is the president.

Kushner Inc.

The book is titled “Kushner, Inc.” and chronicles how both of them were the children of domineering fathers who greased their entry into the business world. The book, though, does say that Donald Trump was a “disengaged” father during Ivanka’s coming of age years.

Vicky Ward wrote the book and it is sure to bring out the Trump critics who will note that Ivanka and Jared are given tasks for which they have no qualifications. Ivanka supposedly works on job creation for women; Jared is in charge of forging a Middle East peace.

The way I see it, Jared Kushner is the one who is farther out of his league. He has zero credentials negotiating a diplomatic solution to centuries of warfare among people with historic hatred for each other.

Yep. They’re grifters. Their benefactor, the president, has said that qualified individuals are banging on the door seeking to work within his administration. He calls them the “best people.”

Ivanka and Jared do not qualify by any measure to be of the quality required for the access they have to the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

Ivanka takes offense? Get over it, young lady

Ivanka Trump is walking the finest of lines.

She is the elder daughter of the president of the United States. She also is an unpaid senior adviser to the Leader of the Free World.

So, when she gets asked by a broadcast journalist about the allegations of sexual abuse leveled against her father/the president, she reveals why it’s important that the president be mindful of the problems nepotism poses in hiring senior advisers.

Ivanka cannot serve in her “official” capacity without facing difficult questions surrounding her “boss,” who also happens to be her father.

She called the question posed by NBC News’s Peter Alexander “inappropriate.” Wait a minute, young lady. He was asking the question of a senior policy adviser, not of a presidential daughter.

This is why nepotism is a bad thing when it involves people at the highest levels of government.

Many decades ago, the federal government implemented an anti-nepotism policy in response to questions surrounding the appointment in 1960 of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy by his brother, President John F. Kennedy. After JFK’s murder in November 1963 and after RFK was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year, the government enacted a policy that prohibited hiring by presidents of “linear” relatives to paid positions.

It didn’t cover the role that Ivanka Trump fulfills in her father’s administration.

There needs to be some tightening of these rules. If it’s not going to happen, then the president needs to send his daughter packing.

College needs to own its policies

springcampus_5

Some issues just aren’t adding up regarding the matter of Amarillo College’s hiring policies, which now have become the subject of community discussion.

Who’s in charge of administering and enforcing those policies? Aren’t there some others at AC who should be held accountable for this embarrassing development?

Ellen Robertson Green quit her job as AC vice president for marketing and communication after it was revealed that she allegedly violated AC nepotism rules by hiring her daughter to work as a content producer for Panhandle PBS, the college’s public TV station.

Green supervised Panhandle PBS. Her daughter, thus, reported directly to her mother.

That violated the school’s rules against nepotism.

I’ve already declared my own stake in this matter, given that until recently I worked as a freelance blogger for Panhandle PBS and that I consider Green to be a friend.

I now am an outsider looking at this situation from some distance.

However, I do know that everyone works for someone else.

Green didn’t operate in a hermetically sealed environment at AC. I’m going to take a bit of a leap here and presume that the college has qualified and competent legal counsel advising senior administrators of matters that might cause problems.

Thus, I am unclear as to why Green is taking the fall by herself by resigning her post at AC, particularly after the college terminated her daughter’s employment when reports of this policy violation became known.

The way I see it, if the school fired her daughter, that ends the nepotism problem right off the top.

Green was one of several VPs at the school who report directly to AC President Russell Lowery-Hart. Was the president unaware of the hire? Did he let it go? If he was unaware, why was he kept in the dark?

I fear the questions will linger for a time longer and cast a growing shadow over a public institution that — until just recently — had enjoyed a stellar reputation throughout the community it serves.

It’s time to clear the air.

Fully.