Caroline Kennedy -- More Unqualified than Obama

from the always GREAT Uppity Woman:

I thought we might recap exactly what Caroline Kennedy [Schlossberg] was doing before she decided “not to campaign” for the NY State Senate seat left empty by the work horse and policy wonk known as Hillary Clinton.

Rather, let’s recap what she wasn’t doing — as opposed to what others are saying she was doing.

Village Voice basically calls bullshit on her resume, particularly with respect to her tenure as “Chief Executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships” in the New York City Department of Education .

The truth is, Caroline didn’t do what her political pushers are saying she did.

That’s not to say that none of it got done. It did. It’s just that Caroline didn’t do much of it. But she has no problem taking the credit for big-time fundraising for the NY City Department of Education. In fact, Caroline is not only assuming credit for the work of a woman named Michele Cahill, but she barely had the time to be around much after her appointment to the DOE. In fact, some people weren’t even sure exactly what Caroline did after her appointment:

The most tawdry part of the Bloomberg cheerleading, however, has been the exaggeration of the Kennedy resume. Aside from Caroline’s books–some of which have been collections of her mother’s favorite poems and other people’s essays–the only significant career accomplishment is the two months she worked part-time at Bloomberg’s Department of Education.

Volunteering, like the mayor, for a dollar a year, she is said to have worked three days a week fundraising for city schools. But what few seem to have noticed is that Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein announced her appointment in October 2002, Klein said it would become a fulltime position in 2003, but it never did. When she left halfway through 2004, education reporter David Herszenhorn from the Times wrote:

“But while Ms. Kennedy generated excitement among donors and often met personally with them, several school officials and acquaintances said she was never entirely comfortable within the bureaucracy of the nation’s largest school system. For months after she started, even some high-level education officials said they were not quite sure what she did. In an interview about eight months into her tenure, she would not say how often she worked at the department headquarters or how many hours she spent on the job, saying only, ‘I put in as much time as I can.’”

So how much time was “as much time as I can”?

In fact, one of Kennedy’s main jobs as chief executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships was to oversee the Fund for Public Schools, the public/private partnership that raised hundreds of millions under Bloomberg. The Fund’s tax-exempt filings with the Internal Revenue Service listed her as working one hour a week for the Fund in 2003 and two hours in 2004,the years she was at DOE. She has remained a vice chair of the Fund, which is also represented by Isay and is chaired by Klein, and has more recently continued to do two hours a week of service, according to the filing. Lara Holliday, a spokeswoman for the Fund, said that the hourly estimate was “a reporting procedure” that “doesn’t reflect” Kennedy’s far more extensive efforts while she was on staff and since. Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the Daily News, and Wendi Murdoch, the wife of Rupert Murdoch, sit on this small board with her.

Wow. Two hours a week! You’re a real work horse, Caroline!

Ok, maybe I’m being hard on Caroline. There’s all that money she brought in by doing nothing but being JFK’s daughter. For example, there was that $51 million Gates foundation gift. That has to count for something, right?

Well it would, except she didn’t do that either. A woman named Michele Cahill secured that gift.

Klein “credited her with bringing in a $51 million gift from Bill Gates’s foundation,” according to a Times piece yesterday, but a top former Klein aide told the Voicethat the Gates grant “was totally put together” by Michele Cahill, senior counsel to Klein who came to DOE from the Carnegie Corporation and has returned there. Though Klein has praised Kennedy in the past for raising $65 million for an entirely different initiative–the Leadership Academy–he’s never attributed this Gates grant to her, the largest ever for the school system. In fact, Cahill’s bio at Carnegie says she “created the New York City school reform effort known as New Century High Schools, a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

But hey! Caroline did add “aura” “on occasion”!

"Cahill launched this small-schools program at Carnegie with the aid of millions from Gates in 2000, and, according to the ex-DOE source, “started from day one of the Klein administration in 2002,” which is several months before Kennedy’s arrival, “to get Gates to expand it.”It was Cahill who spoke at the Bloomberg press conference announcing the grant, and Kennedy who was described in the clips as adding “aura” to the occasion.”

But what about that other $65 million that was raised for the district. That was Caroline’s work, right?

Wrong.

The frequently-cited $65 million for the Academy, which trains principals, is also hype. The Partnership for New York City raised $30 million of it from its own members, and hardly needed any heavy lifting from Kennedy to do so. When Caroline left, Kathy Wylde, the Partnership’s president, tried to depict Kennedy’s role delicately. “Her stature was absolutely critical,” said Wylde, a prophetic anticipation of the argument that is now being used to pave her way to the Senate. Klein has become so effusive about Kennedy in her new candidate role that the Times this week attributed $70 million of the Academy funding to her, five million more than the official claims when she left the department.

So basically, Caroline is currently taking credit for something she did not do. She not only did not do it, but she wasn’t even there when it got started. But………she added “aura”.

If raising funds for the NY City School System is a suitable requirement for being appointed Senator, then we are talking to the wrong person. Somebody needs to introduce New Yorkers to Michele Cahill. There’s the real work horse.

In the meantime, Caroline needs to list her real qualifications that have earned her consideration to appointment as Hillary Clinton’s replacement, besides the fact that Rahm is calling Paterson instead of Blagojevich a lot these days:

“I add aura because my Daddy was JFK”.

and

” Uncle Teddy wants his last name embedded in American politics for eternity, and I’m the best he could come up with”.

and

“My money and name are I am the frontrunner for this position even though my cousin’s ex-husband, Andrew Cuomo, is polling better than I am”.

and

“Barack Obama is paying me back for using my father’s name while endorsing him–so Paterson had better get the message”.

Let’s face it. Pay To Play isn’t just alive and well in Chicago.

Note from Barbara: I am supporting Carolyn Maloney for Hillary's Seat. I have had numerous dealings with her & her office over the last 13 years and have found her to be singularly focused on the concerns of her constituents. She has a lot of experience, heart and brains.