Obama: We cannot let politics get in the way of passing this crap sandwich

Barack Obama™

White House lawyers, apparently with few other pressing issues to press, are reportedly investigating ways of protecting use of President Obama's image all over the globe.

A whole lotta luck with that, guys.

Bloomberg News' Julianna Goldman quotes a White House spokeswoman: "Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president.”

New Obama tax-evasion scandal: Tom Daschle

Daschle’s team claims that the former Senator deserves the credit for revealing the problem himself.  Daschle did report this — but only after getting picked as HHS Secretary.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s when Geithner suddenly discovered that he owed Uncle Sam money too, only Daschle paid back a lot more: over $100,000.

How many more people will Obama nominate who either are too incompetent or too dishonest to declare all of their income and pay all of their taxes?  Is this the new career track for tax cheats — a Cabinet office?

Update: Apparently, Daschle can’t even use the Geithner “I’m so stupid” excuse, as ABC also discovers that he flat-out failed to report direct income:

The report indicates that Daschle’s failure to pay more than $101,000 taxes on the car and driver a wealthy friend let him use from 2005 through 2007 is not the only tax issue the former Senate Majority Leader has been dealing with since his December nomination prompted a more thorough examination of his income tax returns.

Mr. Daschle also didn’t report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.

Plus, Daschle claimed almost $15,000 in charitable donations over three years to organizations that don’t qualify for the deduction.

How many Americans make so much money that they could forget about $83,000 of it in a year?

Flashback: U.S. apologized to Iran in 2000 for past actions

I’m embarrassed to say I forgot about this when I wrote that post about Ahmadinejad demanding an apology from The One. Or did I just repress the memory?

I wonder if the mullahs remember and simply want us to grovel again. To let them know we really mean it this time.

The bit about Albright comes from this old page-one LA Times story, lest you doubt its veracity. I’m strangely glad to find out we’ve been down this road before: Not only does it increase pressure on Obama not to repeat the gesture, but it’s a neat microcosm of how long and fruitless the “dialogue” has been. How keenly aware of that is he? Maybe more keenly than we think.

The stealth health-care nationalization in the “stimulus”

Rahm Emanuel once advised that crisis means opportunity, and the Democrats have taken that message to heart.  They’ve exploited the sense of economic crisis in order to build a Trojan Horse stimulus bill that encompasses all of their legislative goals — and they’re trying to stampede people into supporting it out of panic.  Hope and Change?  More like Fear and Loathing.

What this does has nothing to do with stimulating the economy.  Worse, it exponentially increases the difficulty in reforming entitlements, and Medicare already was the one program most in need of reform.  It’s heading into insolvency even without the additional load of ten million new and unplanned subscribers in three weeks.  Now, we will have even more subscribers to throw into the reform grinder, making it more painful than ever to effect the necessary changes to bring the program back into solvency.

And how do the Democrats plan to make this work?  They want to kill the one part of the program that actually receives payments.  Medicare Advantage is exactly the kind of public/private partnership that could rescue Medicare, where recipients buy supplemental coverage to make Medicare work for them better and extend the bargaining power to reduce costs at the same time.  Democrats want to kill that program and force all MA patients back to the poor coverage Medicare alone provides.

This demonstrates what a disaster this stimulus bill is, and what a disaster Democratic rule in Washington will be over the next two years.  It’s hard to believe one could credibly say this, but I long for the honesty of the Clintons.

Geithner as good at job as he is at taxes

The most humiliating aspect of Timothy Geithner’s first embarrassing display of incompetence as Treasury Secretary isn’t the fact that he almost touched off an international incident and a trade war with a major, if troublesome, US partner.  It’s that Joe Biden had to clean up after him.  Geithner shot off his mouth even before taking the oath of office, and the Obama administration had to hit full reverse:

The Obama administration backed off Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s statement last week that China is “manipulating” its currency.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden said the administration has made “no judgment” on whether the Chinese have manipulated their currency, an accusation that would have international legal ramifications. …

Geithner said in a written statement as part of his Senate hearing that the Obama administration “believes that China is manipulating its currency.”

Many people believe China manipulates their currency.  I’m sure Geithner believes it.  Heck, I believe it.  But if Geithner and Obama make that the official US position, it will trigger a major complaint in the WTO, which could lead to significant trade sanctions against China, and a trade war at the worst possible time.

Maybe Geithner thought that the Obama administration figured this would be a good time to touch off a trade war — right in the middle of a serious and possibly severe global recession.  He might have good reason to think that, but as it turns out, Geithner apparently didn’t know what the official position of the Obama administration was or what his statement meant as a member of Obama’s cabinet.  He gave bad information to Congress and misrepresented the United States.

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In Washington, there's a breathless rush to turn the economy around by greening it. But are "green-collar" jobs and green infrastructure really the jobs and industries of the future that our "brilliant" new economic planners claim?

Most Americans don't seem to think so. According to the latest Pew Research poll, they rank the "economy" and "jobs" as the nation's top two priorities. The "environment" stood 16th out of 20, and "global warming" finished dead last.

Average Americans certainly aren't making the same connection between these issues as the political elite in Washington, who are confident replacing lightbulbs will simultaneously save the planet and the economy.

Does government really know better? Or is this whole "green economy" push just one more big boondoggle — like ethanol?

The same wonks who pushed ethanol are now pushing green economic stimulus as part of President Obama's brain trust. They plan to create millions of new jobs by building solar panels and wind turbines — two terribly inefficient energy producers.

Solar panels achieve about 35% efficiency, while windmills get only slightly better — 50% efficiency. Efficiency means how much of the energy source can actually be converted to electricity. Wind and solar are inefficient because they demand vast amounts of land.

For example, wind power requires about 10 square feet of land to generate enough wattage for a light bulb. A natural gas plant takes up to 200 times less space to generate the same power.

But don't tell that to the new administration.

The president honestly believes wind and solar farms will be the economic drivers of the future. Just like ethanol was supposed to be the fuel of the future?

Once again, "experts" in Washington who've never worked a day in the private sector think they can pick winners and losers in private industry — despite their awful track record.

• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner issued new guidelines Tuesday aimed at [15] eliminating the influence of lobbyists on the $700 billion financial bailout program.
• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner [16] picked a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his Chief of Staff Tuesday.
• Newly minted Treasury Secretary [17] Timothy Geithner recently received a $435,000 severance payment from his old employer, according to a mandatory financial disclosure statement released by the Office of Government Ethics.
• All six of the law and accounting firms hired by the Treasury Department to help manage the $700 billion financial bailout [18] have clients who received the federal money, contracting and regulatory records show.
• The parent company of both Philadelphia newspapers has been engaged in discussions with Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) about obtaining a [19] $10 million government bailout.

Article printed from The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/01/28/morning-bell-the-pelosi-obama-reid-trillion-dollar-debt-plan/

Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican, sent out a press release earlier today about his innovative new bill:

"Rangel Rule"

All U.S. taxpayers would enjoy the same immunity from IRS penalties and interest as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if a bill introduced today by Congressman John Carter (R-TX) becomes law.

Carter, a former longtime Texas judge, today introduced the Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735, which would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

An exception, or the rule?

Do you recall that moment of Hope and Change^TM when Barack Obama barred lobbyists from the federal government by executive order?  By golly, Obama would clean up government and keep lobbyists out of policy-making positions, or else … he wouldn’t.  For the second time in the eight days since signing the order, the Obama administration has plucked a lobbyist and put him in charge of the policy on which he’d lobbied:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in agency decisions.

Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner’s chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the government’s $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of that money.

Goldman Sachs, eh?  Four months ago, I wrote about GS’s political connections and predicted that they would survive the crisis.  Now they have one of their bailout lobbyists in charge of the bailout, a neat trick that even the Bush administration would have avoided.

And what exactly did Obama promise us as Hope and Change^TM?

3.  Revolving Door Ban    Lobbyists Entering Government.  If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 2, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment:

(a)  participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment;

(b)  participate in the specific issue area in which that particular matter falls; or

(c)  seek or accept employment with any executive agency that I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment.

So let’s see.  Patterson will serve as chief of staff to Geithner, which means deep involvement in the bailout money — unless Geithner won’t be involved in it himself, in which case the entire raison d’être of confirming Geithner evaporates.  Goldman Sachs will get a big chunk of that money, and might come back for more.  It appears that Patterson will by definition unavoidably violate sections 3(a), (b), and (c) of the new code of ethics in the Obama White House.

Will there be more exceptions to this rule … or have the exceptions already become the rule, eight days after Obama signed it?  Change, baby!