Quick, tell me what great achievements can you think of that our US government czars have accomplished? Say what?
Having finished my 50-installment project on research that is going on in various universities in every state in the country I am embarking on a new project; taking a look at what kind of interesting things our government is up to. The first topic I’ll address is all of our US government czars.
Technically the word czar is not used by the US government. It is just the word the media has adopted to refer to someone appointed by the president to deal with a problem the country is having.
The first czar I remember hearing about was the drug czar. I don’t remember which president appointed him or what his name was but he was in charge of the war on drugs in this country.
Czars date back to Woodrow Wilson’s administration and have been used by every president since. Some critics argue that presidents use czars to avoid having to work with Congress to solve our country’s problems. Our current president and his predecessor have appointed by far the most czars of any of the presidents.
Current and former czars include: performance czar, healthcare.gov czar, economics czar, green jobs czar, diversity czar, car czar, cyber security czar, intelligence czar, regulatory czar, safe schools czar, border czar, science czar, climate czar, Afghanistan-Pakistan czar, pay czar, health czar, homeland security czar, AIDS czar, weapons czar, manufacturing czar, WMD czar, California-water czar, Asian carp czar, Great Lakes czar, information czar, technology czar, auto recovery czar, domestic violence czar, urban affairs czar, GITMO czar, stimulus accountability czar, Iran czar, Middle East czar, foreign aid czar, bioethics czar, bird flu czar, birth control czar, copyright czar, faith-based czar, ebola czar.
The number of czars varies depending on which issues the president feels are most urgent. As usual funding for new czars never seems to be a problem yet what are we getting for our money?
My favorite czar has to be the Asian Carp czar. Who wouldn’t want that job? And actually something needs to be done to protect our waterways from this highly invasive species.
For more information about our government czars check out these articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars
Mirror Neurons 