Obama And The Democratic Tax Scofflaws Making It Easier To Be An Anti-Family Republican

You learn a lot when you reside Inside-The-Beltway, none of it good

It pains me to see so many progressives making excuses for the tax scofflaws Obama has been appointing to high government posts. Obama talks about bringing high ethical standards to the sewer that is Washington's all pervasive culture of corruption but then makes exceptions when the crooks and lobbyists are Democrats. I don't like it on face value but, more important, I don't like the sleazy message it sends. It weakens Obama and it weakens his nominees and it weakens the Democratic Party when the president starts acting like a Republican. And an apology to equally corrupt fellow Insiders doesn't help one bit.

This morning one of the most corrupt members of the Senate, South Carolina extremist and obstructionist Jim DeMint was on TV asking what would senators have said if one of Bush's nominees had had the tax avoidance problems Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle had. The work that Geithner and Daschle have to do is now compromised by the distrust that citizens will have in them. I was very proud when Russ Feingold and a small handful of other progressives voted against confirming Geithner because of, at least, the appearance of wrongdoing on his taxes. Senator Feingold:

I am deeply troubled by his failure to pay the payroll taxes he owed, despite repeated alerts from his employer at the time, the International Monetary Fund, that he was responsible for paying those taxes. Moreover, his earlier interactions with the Internal Revenue Service over his failure to pay sufficient payroll taxes for his household employees make Mr. Geithner's explanations of his failure to pay his own payroll taxes even less satisfactory. The failure to comply with our nation's tax laws would be problematic for any Cabinet nominee, but it is especially disturbing when it involves the individual who will be charged with overseeing the enforcement of our tax laws.

Predictably the arch-obstructionists, led by DeMint, also voted against confirmation, although for them tax avoidance-- something they normally hand out awards for-- was just an excuse. Recently the upright Senator DeMint, dripping in hypocrisy, was fined by the FEC for taking immense bribes. Had the investigation been pressed the way it should have been, he might be in prison instead of the Senate. DeMint is a fanatic for abolishing the IRS and all forms of federal income tax and all kinds of progressive taxation. It is no coincidence that the member of Congress with the worst voting record on issues affecting the middle class wants to replace progressive taxation with a regressive tax system (a 23% national sales tax) which shifts the tax burden even further from the wealthy and onto the backs of the middle class. This is the man who hysterically warned South Carolina voters that if car makers were bailed out America would see rioting in the streets. Perhaps he was thinking of the Brooks Bros Riot in West Palm Beach that was a key to the coup d'etat that brought Bush to power in 2000.

DeMint is not a man of good will and will use any weapon at his disposal to beat down American working families. It pains me to see President Obama now handing him an arsenal of weapons that he will be able to deploy against health care and against the Employee Free Choice Act and against fiscal reform. Because, in the end, that's exactly what will happen. Creating an environment of distrust between citizens and tax scofflaws in position of power will damage the ability to enact the serious proposals that are made.

"No wonder," drawled DeMint, "liberals want to raise taxes; they don't pay them anyway." With the far right busy rewriting history and pushing their bizarre revised versions through their media outlets, the battle to turn this country around after 8 years of the Bush Tragedy, will be fierce and hard-fought. We may have elected a Democratic president-- albeit a "post-partisan" moderate-- and majorities in both houses of Congress, but the new Administration is shooting itself in the foot and tying one arm behind its back by elevating men, like Tom Daschle, who appear to be crooks. He's a millionaire with a lobbyist wife who doesn't pay his taxes. Isn't that what we thought we were getting away from when we opposed a continuation of Bush in the form of McCain? Arizona's neo-fascist junior Senator, Jon Kyl, was parroting the same talking points today that DeMint and every other obstructionist has been given:

Kyl suggested that Obama is benefiting from his popularity and a double standard, and that President George W. Bush's nominees might not have survived similar mistakes.

"President Obama wanted to have a very ethical administration starting out and so on, but I think he's seeing how hard it is to avoid these kind of problems," Kyl said. "And I just wonder if President Bush had nominated these people, what folks would be saying about that."

They're so happy. And so lucky to be getting their weapons of mass destruction directly from the Obama Administration.


UPDATE: COLBERT'S PAL LYNN WESTMORELAND DEMANDS OBAMA PULL DASCHLE'S NAME

You know you're wrong if you're on the same side as Congress' most clueless, lugheaded bigot. And it's hard to figure out who that is-- with such a stunning array of Neanderthals from backward districts, where political acumen is directly measured by hours logged in listening to Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity, running around Congress without their leashes. But no one would dispute that among the 5 most extreme right wing imbeciles in Congress-- the other four being Paul Broun (R-GA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and Steve King (R-IA)-- sits Lynn Westmoreland, briefly a national laughing stock. Well, he's crawled out from under his rock again and is demanding that President Obama "pull Tom Daschle's nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services, 'effective immediately.'" Hop right to that, Mr. President, 'cause Westmoreland has started a petition drive among all the kooks and nuts who make up the Republican House caucus. It's a post-partisan thing.