Crony Capitalism run amok in the United States Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had good reason to inaugurate the nuclear option in the United States Senate in 2013. Obstructionism during the Obama Presidency had reached heights not seen in previous Presidencies. Now it is a given that the opposition party is always going to give the President headaches, as noted in the below chart from a scholars strategy network  written by Sheldon Goldman (http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/tracking-obstruction-and-delay-us-senate-confirmations-judges-federal-courts). However, according to the below chart from the article, while obstructionism has steadily increased, the peaks were during the Clinton and Obama Presidencies.

In order for judges, and actually, cabinet-level nominees like Attorney General Lynch (whose nomination was needlessly delayed) to receive affirmative votes, Reid and the Democrats changed the rules so all nominees to positions save the Supreme Court can be voted on with a simple 51 seat majority.

Unfortunately, the changing of this rule created an unintended consequence. Nominees with dubious records and in some cases irrational beliefs could now win confirmation if there is enough of the President's party to deliver the vote. President Trump's nominees include a person who has business ties with Russia and won an award from Vladimir Putin (our new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson). It includes a nominee that has sued the agency he has been chosen to head multiple times because he does not believe in Climate Change (Scott Pruitt and the Environmental Protection Agency). The Treasury Nominee forgot about $100,000,000 in one of his portfolios. Do we want someone like that working in a position that presumes a knowledge of math? This person did remember to foreclose on a person who was 27 cents behind on a house payment.  The person selected to head the Health and Human Services Department is a physician who apparently believed a profession in politics and health care was a way to enrich himself with inside trading. The nominee to head Housing and Urban Development knows nothing about the job and has said that he is not qualified to head a cabinet position which is odder because that person thought he was qualified to run for President. The Secretary of Energy nominee, former Governor Rick Perry, did not know nuclear power (including our weapons system) was part of the portfolio in that department. Finally, there is a Secretary of Education nominee who does not believe in Public Schools and thinks schools should promote "God's Kingdom" in a stunning rebuke to the separation of church and state. It is a sad state of affairs when the sanest nominee is the Defense Secretary whose nickname is "Mad Dog."

Despite the President's contention, this is not "The Best and the Brightest." It is a collection of crony capitalists and "yes" people whose appointments, in some cases, are there to possibly enrich themselves or their former organizations and in others to destroy the agencies they are heading from within. This is not good government.