Caretaker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word "caretaker" may have numerous meanings. It most commonly refers to a person who cares for a property, or a temporary government.
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[edit] Property caretakers
A property caretaker is a person who cares for real estate in exchange for rent-free living accommodations, and with the possibility of additional compensation. The caretaking profession includes positions as housesitters, ranch sitters, bed & breakfast and innsitters, property managers, estate managers, and hosts at resorts or campgrounds. A caretaker is generally distinguished from a “caregiver,” someone with health care skills who is employed to care for another person, often as a live-in aide.
Caretaking is actually a very old profession, rooted in the British tradition of land maintenance. In 1868, The Times defined a caretaker as “a person put in charge of a farm from which the tenant has been evicted.” Today that definition has been expanded to cover a multitude of landowner/caretaker relationships. The number and diversity of these relationships has increased during the past decade. The property caretaking field has been covered by The Caretaker Gazette since 1983.
[edit] In politics
[edit] Caretaker governments
In politics, a caretaker government rules temporarily. A caretaker government is often set up following a war until stable democratic rule can be restored, or installed, in which case it is often referred to as a provisional government.
Caretaker governments may also be put in place when a government in a parliamentary system is defeated in a motion of no confidence, or in the case when the house to which the government is responsible is dissolved, to rule the country for an interim period until an election is held and a new government is formed. This type of caretaker government is adopted in Bangladesh where an advisor council led by the former chief judge rules the country for 3 months before an elected government takes over. In systems where coalition governments are frequent a caretaker government may be installed temporarily while negotiations to form a new coalition take place. This usually occurs either immediately after an election in which there is no clear victor or if one coalition government collapses and a new one must be negotiated.[1]
[edit] Caretakers
Caretakers, similarly, are individuals who fill seats in government temporarily without ambitions to continue to hold office on their own. This is particularly true with regard to U.S. Senators who are appointed to office by the governor of their state following a vacancy created by the death or resignation of a sitting senator. Sometime governors wish to run for the seat themselves in the next election but do not want to be accused of unfairness by appointing themselves in the interim, and sometimes they do not wish to be seen as taking sides within a group of party factions or prejudicing the outcome of a primary election by picking someone who is apt to become an active candidate for the position. At one time, widows were often selected as caretakers; this custom has declined somewhat as women have begun to seek elected office in their own right on a routine basis.
In a similar vein, Nelson Rockefeller was said to be a caretaker Vice President of the United States (1974–1977). He was nominated for the office by President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded the resigned President Richard Nixon. Rockefeller made it apparent that he had no further presidential ambitions of his own (unlike many Vice Presidents), despite having run for the office three times in the past, and he had no intention of even running for a full term in the vice presidential office. He kept his intention when Ford's running mate in the 1976 presidential election was Senator Bob Dole.
