Sure, I knew her name. She being the only member of George W. Bush's cabinet still serving in the position originally appointed since 2001.
What I don't know is what the hell she's been doing all these years, especially during the last few months. I also didn't know that she's married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, until someone else on Daily Kos mentioned it in a diary about him.
Elaine Chao is an immigrant, born in Taiwan.
Chao received her B.A. in Economics from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1979. Chao also studied at MIT, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of 31 honorary doctoral degrees from colleges and universities around the world.
What did she do to deserve all those honoray degrees? Well, she's not new to government. She's had jobs in the Department of Transportation and was the director of the Peace Corps.
Following her service in the government, Chao worked for four years as President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way of America. She is credited with returning credibility and public trust back to the organization after an embarrassing financial mismanagement scandal involving former United Way of America president William Aramony. From 1996 until her appointment as Secretary of Labor, Chao was a Distinguished Fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
So, she's obviously a partisan Republican. She's been Labor Secretary for 8 years and I have never been aware of anything she's done. What can we find? Her wikipedia entry has one measly paragraph taken directly from her own website:
During Secretary Chao's tenure, the Department of Labor updated the white collar overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which has been on the agenda of every Administration since 1977. Complaints from the business community about their losses in overtime-related litigation spurred the Bush Administration to act on the controversial changes. In 2003, the Department achieved the first major update of union financial disclosure regulations in more than 40 years, giving rank and file members enhanced information on how their dues are spent. The Department has set new worker protection enforcement records, including recovering record back wages for vulnerable low-wage immigrant workers. The Department has also launched comprehensive reform of the nation's publicly funded worker training programs. In 2006 and 2007, the Department successfully implemented the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act). On August 17, 2006, President Bush signed the Pension Protection Act, which protects the 44 million workers whose retirement security rests upon private sector defined benefit pension plans.
That's all she has to show for 8 years of work? Good grief. Here we are at the end of her tenure with each month bringing news of more and more job losses and higher unemployment and she's in hiding. The least she could do is pull a Hank Paulson and hold a press conference about what should be done and how the next administration has been coordinating with her about what needs to be done.
What do we get instead? Her husband allowing for the collapse of the US auto industry and the massive job losses that come with it.