New cabinet post under President Biden

The Constitution didn’t establish the presidential cabinet per se but it did authorize that the president “may require the opinion of the principal officer of the executive departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective office". The term cabinet was not mentioned but was coined by fourth president James Madison and the name stuck. Washington’s first 4 member cabinet has since grown to 15 with the 2002 creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

Sadly, none of the current cabinet positions explicitly confront the twin evils constituting an existential threat to a decent, humane, fair society. Next January 21, his first full day in office, President Biden should propose the Department of Institutional Racism and Income Inequality (IRII). The Secretary of IRII would be charged with proposing and overseeing policies designed to eliminate the scourge of institutional racism which has plagued the American Experiment since its founding. He/she would provide same for redressing the grotesque expansion of income inequality which has now exceeded that occurring during the Gilded Age. Think if the IRII Secretary as the Ombudsman for the millions of minorities locked in poverty, crime, despair of urban wastelands and the many more millions locked out of the American Dream from slave wages while the billionaire class luxuriates on the benefits of that wage slavery.

A Department of Institutional Racism and Income Inequality is critically needed today but its formation is not recommended under the current administration. To the racist and billionaire class currently in power such a cabinet would, like its current departments, be distorted into a department to perpetuate institutional racism and expand income inequality.