White House green.

• Position: Business interests and the new cabinet

The Clinton team is finally in place, but it's the J.V. squad at best. "Lackluster" would be a generous term for it.

On the domestic side, the two most powerful liberals in the cabinet--Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros and Labor Secretary Robert Reich--were pushed off the shelf. In their place are party hacks with no national reputation and no clout. Andrew Cuomo will not have Cisneros's heft at HUD, and already Clinton is slashing its budget, despite Cisneros's final cries of anguish.

Over at Labor, where Robert Reich at least expressed concern about increasing corporate power and declining wages, now there is Alexis Herman, who has no evident inclination to slug it out for labor. Some payback! After pouring $35 million into electing Democrats, labor can't even get an ally inside the cabinet door.

A former business consultant, Herman was a big NAFTA proponent. She seems to have more allies among the Fortune 500 than in the halls of labor. "The business community respects her and likes her," said ARCO's chief lobbyist. That's not exactly reassuring.

Paint the cabinet green. It's not only inexperienced; it also belongs to Wall Street.

Being a corporate toady is a prerequisite with this new group. Take a look at the Secretary of Transportation, Rodney E. Slater. He was the best friend of the trucking industry while he was Federal Highway Administrator during Clinton's first term. Republicans in Congress have cheered his nomination. Why not? Slater was the guy who pushed Clinton to lift the speed limit on our nation's highways, and he seems to be going along with the trucking industry's demands to double the freight they can haul with each load--sure to do wonders for our infrastructure.

During Clinton I, there was at least a debate about which side to be on--the corporations' or the people's. But in Clinton II, that debate is over. The corporations have won. The only bouquet that Clinton threw to liberals was token representation, and, as Adolph Reed Jr. points out elsewhere in this issue (see Page 18), this bouquet stinks.

The head of the cabinet is now, unmistakably, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, late of Goldman Sachs. This champion of Wall Street, of NAFTA, and of the Mexican bailout has enormous power to set the agenda. It's not one that favors working people. Rubin continues to promote global free trade, at whatever cost. He favors privatizing Social Security and Medicare. And he wants a reduction in the Consumer Price Index--all of...