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Wednesday, February 4. 2009
So Taxing
Tom Daschle withdrew his name from nomination, which is too bad. What’s really too bad is that he missed paying taxes in excess if $140,000.00 and for that he needs to pay the price. Lately I’ve been living the philosophy that “this is the price I pay for the life I’ve led,” when thinking or talking about my current health issues.In the years up to today, I’ve eaten too much of all the wrong foods, except for brief respites when I either dated a vegetarian or was recovering from my first heart attack back in 1996. Exercise has been an off and on proposition, but usually on, if only to pedal the Trusty Trek too and from bus stops, work and home. And a cruise up and down the beach walk along Mission and Pacific Beaches. That really isn’t exercise, except for my eyes.
So, as I sit, waiting to see the cardiologist in a few days, in effect a cardiac invalid due to the diminished stamina of my heart, wishing on this day, when the temperature is hovering around 80°f, that I could pedal to the bus stop and get to the beach, I tell myself this is the price I pay for the life I’ve led.
And former Senator, former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee — the Senate Majority and Minority leader — Tom Daschle just paid the price for the life he’s led after he was voted out of office in 2004.
President Obama was on all the major networks admitting he had made mistakes in the vetting process for his administration officials. There was New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Daschle and the nominee for the newly created position of Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer, the last two for tax-related issues.
Both can afford to hire actual accountants to do their taxes and a tax attorney to ask any thorny questions about the tax situation concerning domestic help — and I’m guessing, at the time of these transgression, when becoming a member of a presidential cabinet wasn’t even a fantasy, let alone a possibility, they figured they could skirt the taxes free in the knowledge that an audit was unlikely so who the fuck was going to know.
President Obama should have ditched all of them, Tim Geithner as well, once their tax problems became a distraction. I know I was behind Geithner just a week ago, but now, after the endless news about the tax problems and the intransigence of the Republicans in regards to the stimulus plan, cutting all three loose would have been the right thing to do.
What’s really frustrating is that no one in the media, nor any of the Democratic policy makers, are pointing out the obvious: the Republican ideas, which were force-fed to the U.S. in the previous eight years when George W. Bush was president and the Republicans controlled Congress don’t work.
Why doesn’t anyone ask these Republicans, remind these Republicans that we’ve had tax cuts for eight years when they and their President (Bush) ruled government? They got tax cuts years after year, beating the Democrats over the head with the club of patriotism — “people opposed to tax cuts are un-American” — pushing for eight years to make those tax cuts permanent.
And we find ourselves in this mess. How are more tax cuts going to change that? How is it that tax cuts that helped cause this depression can magically cure the depression?
John McCain is the worst offender. That’s all he’s had to say since the Republican Party gave him the nomination this past summer. He’s just presented the Republican alternative — which is just a rehashing of the Bush-Republican policies that put us in the situation in the first place!
McCain and his confederates want us to believe that extending the Bush policies is somehow going to remedy the effects and failures of the Bush-Republican policies. These are the same failed policies that cost McCain and the Republicans their grasp on power. If their policies worked, McCain would be president at least!
They haven’t worked and that’s why Barack Obama is president and the Democrats are in control of Congress.
Here’s what the media is using to bash Obama and the Democrats over the “failure” of President Obama’s stimulus plan: the president, jokingly, told a delegation of Congressional members that, when it came to fiscal philosophy, the public agreed with him because, “I won.”
Then, it is alleged, Speaker of the House told Republican members of the House of Representatives the stimulus bill would be what the Democrats dictated, stating, “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.” Actually, she probably said it. She hasn’t come out to refute it so I’m guessing it’s an accurate quote.
But that is indeed the reality and the Republicans need to understand it and get used to it. It wasn’t a fluke the Democrats wrested control of government away from the Republicans — the American electorate rejected the Republicans and their policies so of course the Democrats wrote the bill!
They did include tax cuts of course, removed the family planning part of the bill, to acquiesce the complaints of the Republicans, but now it’s time for the president to tell Republicans to get behind the plan or get left behind. Use his bully pulpit to paint the Republicans as obstructionists if need be; Republicans understand he is the most popular president in U.S. history when it comes to a president’s first 100 days, and we’re only on day 15.
That’s the other frustration: because of the 24-minute news cycle, pundits are already speculating on whether the presidency of Barack Obama is a failure or not—and we’ve just begun his third week in the Oval Office.
President Obama did manage to sign the Lily Ledbetter bill giving women the same rights as men in the work force — someone (John McCain?) actually suggested this was bad for women because employers would stop hiring women if they couldn’t discriminate against women as far as pay checks go. Actually, the reasoning for opposing equal pay for women was that employers would be afraid of lawsuits from women.
Lily Ledbetter was a woman who worked 19 years for Goodyear Tires and when she found out that as a senior supervisor she was making significantly less than the lowest paid male supervisor, she sued. The Supreme Court rejected her suit saying she had waited too long to file, even though she didn’t know until she was nearly ready to retire. The pay discrimination has been going on for years.
The bill the president signed removes the time limit on when someone can file a discrimination lawsuit.
And Wednesday afternoon President Obama signed the SCHIP bill that provides health care to all American children, a bill his predecessor vetoed.
So far, 15 days into his administration, the president is doing all right. A few bumps along the way, but doing okay.
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