Although it’s only two weeks until his inauguration, Barak Obama sounds like he’s still on the campaign trail. One needs to look no further than his reliance on slogans, a la Jesse Jackson, rather than the specifics of his promised Economic Recovery Plan to evade being forced to give a straight answer.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to locate some concrete statement by the President-elect relative to this plan of his that will supposedly transform the country into the fabled Land of Milk and Honey. Not surprisingly, I came up empty handed. Wait, let me rephrase that. I did find two references, neither of which was sufficient to qualify as a straight answer if posed to anyone other than Barak Obama.

The closest thing to a blueprint for this upcoming miracle that I was able to locate was a web document entitled “Barak Obama’s Economic Agenda,” which I found at www.BarrakObama.com. This document, like most other campaign-related propaganda issued by candidates for any political office, is long on words and short on statements that might be taken as representing commitment to course of action.

The other was his prediction, made on several different occasions during the campaign was that his “Economic Recovery Package” would cost some $250 billion. Since, in his most recent public statement, he has revised the costs of his programs to $850 billion it would appear that his previous estimate was either a gross miscalculation on the part of his advisers or a deliberate misstatement on his part.

Let’s turn to his proposed Presidential appointments in the hope that those will be a little more enlightening than his public statements.

Bill Richardson (Secretary of Commerce)

Although at first he was hailed as the greatest thing in commerce and economics since John Maynard Keynes, the reincarnation of Huey Long was fired by the Obama Administration before he could be confirmed by the Senate. The nation was thus spared the incompetence that the State of New Mexico had endured for the previous 6 years.

Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State)

Hillary gets this job due to 1) her extensive experience in following her husband around the world while he was in office to make sure he didn’t induct female staffers into the “Mile High Club” and 2) she wanted to make sure that Bill Richardson didn’t get the job. Of course, her nonexistent display of courage while braving a nonexistent hail of sniper fire in Kosovo was certainly another factor in favor of her appointment.

Eric H. Holder Jr. (Attorney General)

Holder distinguished himself during the Clinton Administration when, as Janet Reno’s Deputy Attorney General, he worked tirelessly in order to find a way for President Clinton to pardon fugitive felon (and major contributor to the Clinton Presidential Library) Marc Rich.

Tom Daschle (Secretary for Health and Human Services)

Daschle was in the House of Representatives from 1978 to 1986 before moving on to serve in the Senate, where he distinguished himself both as a true party ideologue and as a reliable “yes man” for Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. The voters in South Dakota finally realized that Daschle had outlived his political usefulness when they sent him to the unemployment line in 2004. Daschle will undoubtedly be grateful to return to steady employment after being forced to eke out a living o the $10,000 + expenses lecture circuit.

Timothy Geithner (Treasury Secretary)

Geithner, currently the President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, went to work at the International Affairs division of Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as He was later a deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy from1995 to1996, senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996-1997), and assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998). In 1998 he was promoted to Under Secretary of the Treasury for International and served under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both loyal Clintonistas, until 2001.

Leon Panetta (Director, Central Intelligence Agency)

Although Leon Panetta has no experience in anything other than running his mouth and being Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1993 to 1997, Panetta’s proposed appointment as head of the CIA was so outrageous that even Dianne Feinstein was against the idea. However, after consulting (political Newspeak for “being told what to think”) with the Obama Transition Team, she is now a born-again believer in his formerly-nonexistent qualifications.

In addition to a few straight answers, all I want to know is if this is all that we can expect from the much-ballyhooed “Change We Can Believe In.” Considering the employment histories of many of his appointees, it’s starting to sound more and more like Bill Clinton’s third term with each passing day.