A Quick Thought On Sotomayer

If the Obama administration has shown us anything, it has shown us how to not pick nominees.  That said, the first question on everyone's mind about Sonia Sotomayer should not be her race or her stance on constitutional issues. The first question on everyone's mind should be "How much in back taxes does she owe, and how will she explain it?"

Read more...

Another Tax Cheat in the Obama Administration

To the surprise of nobody, it turns out that Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary is ALSO a tax cheat.  

Apparently, it is a requirement for this administration that you cheat on your taxes before you can be nominated for a cabinet post. 

Of course, once again, these are "honest errors."  I'm just curious why all of these honest mistakes are only found when these people get appointed to a cabinet post?  Is there some Special Version of Turbo Tax that asks the question "Are you a democrat in a highly visible public office?  If so, you are eligible to dodge some of your taxes.  But if you get nominated for a cabinet post, you may have to pay these taxes...."?

Like Michelle Malkin said, "Knock me over with a feather!"

Read more...

The Media's Whitewashing of HHS Nominee

Back during confirmation hearings in 2001 for former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson Dan Rather reminded Evening News viewers of Thompson's "hardline anti-abortion stand."

Eight years later, there's a whitewash of President Barack Obama's HHS' nominee abortion record.

As a Democratic governor in red-state Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed several bills that would modestly restrict abortion. She supports late-term abortion. She's socialized and taken money from well-known abortion extremists, and she has been unofficially ostracized from the Catholic Church for her stance. But you'd have to go out of your way to learn much about that from the news reports that followed the Feb. 28 announcement that Obama planned to nominate her as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This is a position that controls a $700 billion budget and, according to the New York Times, "would have considerable influence over government policy on abortion."

The MainStreamMedia also wants to portray the governor as a "popular Democrat in a conservative, Republican state."  This isn't exactly true.  The Kansas governor has won two terms in office.  However, anyone who knows anything about Kansas politics knows that even though the state is dominated by Republicans, it is divided ideologically.  The state is about 2/3 Republicans, but only about half of those are conservative, Reagan Republicans.  The rest are moderates and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).  Liberal leaning moderates who might otherwise be inclined to be democrats know that in order to influence primaries in the state, they have to register as Republicans.

In both of the Sebelius' runs for governor, she ran as a moderate centrist while facing known fiscal and social conservative opponents.  Many moderate Republicans voted for her knowing she couldn't push a liberal agenda with the (mostly) conservative and moderate state legislature. 

Expect her repressed liberal core values to surface in full force in Washington.

Read more...

Another Tax Cheat Nominee

This is getting old.  How many is it now?  Four?

It seems yet another would-be member of the Obama administration accidentally forgot to pay taxes.   It was revealed today that the husband of Secretary of Labor nominee Rep. Hilda Solis had 15 outstanding state and county tax liens totaling $7,630 against his automobile  business, some of them dating back over 16 years.

White House Spokesman Robert  Gibbs had this to say:. 

"The White House believes that if you owe taxes you should pay them." Robert Gibbs

I certainly hope that they do.

The couple is claiming ignorance of the outstanding liens.  

While I have little specific knowledge of the tax lien process in California, this doesn't pass the smell test.  Liens aren't usually imposed until there have been a series of notices asking for payment.  In addition, in our age of computerization the existence of unpaid taxes often effects an owner's ability to keep the business completely legitimate. That's because city, county and state agencies now readily share information about the unpaid taxes and may refuse to renew many licenses and certifications until shown proof that all applicable taxes have been paid.

During the Obama campaign, he promised not to include lobbyists in his adminsitration.  (A promise which he broke, but that's beside the point, at the moment.)  What he didn't tell us was that he would make as a requirement that anyone in his administration MUST be a tax cheat.  All this is very ironic, given that all the rest of us simple folk are going to be stuck with mammoth tax bills for years to come because of the Obama Porkulus Spending Package.

Read more...

Say It Isn't So!

I thought Obama was invincible ... that he couldn't make a mistake.  But here we are, two weeks into the Obamanation, and lo and behold.....

(from Fox News)....

President Obama admitted he made a "mistake" in his handling of Tom Daschle's Cabinet nomination, telling FOX News on Tuesday that he takes full responsibility for a process that ended in Daschle withdrawing his name amid tax problems. 

The president also said in the interview with FOX News that he's standing firm on a Feb. 16 deadline for the multi-billion dollar stimulus bill being debated on Capitol Hill, despite growing concerns that package contains too much unnecessary spending. 

Daschle's withdrawal, along with wrangling over the stimulus, made for possibly the rockiest day of Obama's presidency so far. The president said he will learn from the Daschle debacle. 

"I consider this a mistake on my part, one that I intend to fix and correct and make sure that we're not screwing up again," Obama said. "Ultimately I have to take responsibility for a process that resulted in us not having a (health and human services) secretary at a time when people need relief on their health care costs. 

"So this is a mistake -- probably not the first one I'm going to be making in this office, but what I'm absolutely committed to doing is fixing it," he said. 

Obama, who had tapped Daschle to steer a sweeping health care reform effort, said the next order of business is to find another "highly qualified" health and human services secretary. 

Obama denied influencing Daschle's decision to withdraw, which caught a number of senators by surprise Tuesday. Though Daschle caught flak for revelations that he had failed to pay more than $130,000 in taxes, the former Senate majority leader has strong personal ties on Capitol Hill, and several Democrats said they thought he still could have won confirmation. 

Read more...

Our New Treasury Secretary?

Barack Obama campaigned on his alleged "judgement to lead."  The nomination of Timothy Geithner for the Secretary of the Treasury makes a mockery of that claim.  The nomination, and the circumstances surrounding it, have raised many issues and questions - not only about the nominee himself, but also about senators and others reviewing it. 

Let's look at it another way:

Suppose you or I had done the following...

1) ... been in charge of overseeing an entire industry (the New York Financial Industry) that had collapsed and brought down the whole country with it

2)  ... cheated on our taxes.

3)  ...  lied about paying that taxes that we owed

4)  ...  called our tax cheating an "honest mistake"

5)  ...  hired an illegal employee

Now, if we had done all of these things, do you suppose we would ...

A)  end up in jail 

or

B)  be nominated for a position in the President's cabinet?

Is this really part of the "Change we can believe in," or were those just words?

Read more...