We have yet another tax issue showing up on the list of people nominated for service in the Obama administration. There seems something of a pattern, here. Jake Tapper and Jon Karl at ABC say [1]:
ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader , D-S.D., to be President Obama’s secretary of health and human services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee. The controversy deals with a car and driver lent to Daschle by a wealthy Democratic friend – a chauffeur service the former senator used for years without declaring it on his taxes.
Go and look at the report. There is far more to it than this one transgression. You’re going to find that what it suggests is outright tax fraud on the part of Daschle.
Of course, it should be noted that this may not make a difference as to whether not the nomination of Daschle is confirmed. We already know based on the long list of apparent criminal activity by Democrats that is being ignored by this White House and this Congress that such things simply don’t matter to them. Clearly, if such things did matter, questions like “Are you up to date on all your taxes ?” would have been asked, and the answers investigated to at least some cursory level. Clearly, they were not. Ergo, we may assume such things simply don’t matter to them.
At some point, we out here in flyover country have to admit to ourselves that there’s a pattern here that is at least optically challenging. The more observant among this will have to admit that it is far more than that. It is outright criminality, and a pattern of it which is directly connected to the Obama administration.
I’ll go even further; It’s time to admit to ourselves that all this business surrounding the Blagojevich impeachment, and the upcoming criminal trial, was trying to tell us something rather crucial that we as a nation ignored last November. To my mind, it amplifies the question of Obama being able to arise from that fetid sewer known as Chicago politics, without bringing it’s values… or the lack of them, with him to the White House. Perhaps, given the level of warning we’ve had, we shouldn’t be surprised at what we see today.
I hasten to add, the criminal aspect is not the only aspect that deserves some attention here. According to the report, Mr. Daschle didn’t report $83,333.00 in consulting income in 2007. How many people make so much money that they forget a portion of it is taxable income? We are told repeatedly by these same Democrats, Daschle included, how evil the rich are. Yet by their own standards, Mr. Daschle comes up as looking rather rich. And dishonest. For that matter, so too does Tim Geithner, for many of the same reasons.
The question now before us is what the Republicans, who have shown every inclination to bend over backward to accommodate the Democrats, will do with this tax cheat.
I said when Geithner’s tax issue came to the fore, that if the Republicans ignored it, they were aiding and abetting criminal activity. I’ve seen some questioning on the net as to whether or not Mr. Daschle’s apparently larger levels of tax cheating would force the Republicans to respond. I suggest that it may not.
The reason can be traced to an old joke about a John going to a prostitute. He asks the prostitute if she would sleep withhim for a Million Dollars. She says “of course”. He asks “Would you sleep with me for a dollar?” She responds with “What kind of a girl do you think I am?” Says the John, “We’ve already established that. Now, we are haggling over price”.
The pattern of Republican on response to these matters within the current administration, has already been established. Any response now would be out of character. If the Republicans at this point respond to the tax cheat that Tom Daschle has apparently been revealed to be, it’s going to be a little difficult to explain why they didn’t respond to similar conditions in the case of Tim Geithner. On the other hand, should they decide to contuinue to prostitute themselves on the alter of ‘bipartisanship’ by not responding to this issue, they will be hard pressed to take the high road at anytime in the near future. They will thus relegate themselves to political oblivion, and justifiably so.
The Republicans have backed themselves into an unattractive corner. No matter what they do at this point, it’s going to cause them some pain. However, in the long term, the only way out of this and back into any respect among the American voters, is for the Republicans to actually grow a spine about the wave of criminality emanating from the Democrats in general, and particularly among the Obama administration and it’s appointees.
Michelle Malkin [2] has comments, this monring including an interesting quote. Q&O, also. [3]
Update: Politico puts this in even sharper contrast: [4]
If a Bush appointee got rich off of Wall Street in this climate, had a chauffeur from one of his fat cat cronies, had unpaid taxes that amounted to more than what most people make in a year, and then the administration tried to fix it behind closed doors. Democrats would call for his head and would demand ‘accountability.” But will Republicans have the guts to do the same?
The answer is ‘of course not’. Why, it wouldn’t be ‘bipartisan’.
(Edit:Formatics, added links)