Politiks As Usual: In The News 1/11/10

McCain Aide: Palin Believed Candidacy 'God's Plan'

Democrats Dismiss Republican Call For Reid To Step Down

Tea Party Planning National Strike Jan. 20

Obama Delivers On His Transparency Promise: We're Seeing Straight Through Him

The Porn Star As Leftist Hero

American Library Association's Not-So-Hidden Gay Agenda

Feinstein: 'Dozens' Of Gitmo Detainees On Battlefield

Obama Maintains Confidence In Embattled Treasury Secretary Amid AIG Questions

Bush General Petraeus Agrees To Stay, Says No Troops To Yemen

Louisiana Inmates Earn Ministry Degrees

Rudy Giuliani: There Were No Terror Attacks Under Bush

Irony: Tax Cheat Tim Geitner Introduces Tax Law Reforms

Obama Needs To Fire Timothy Geithner Now

Sounds about right to me:

The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein finally said the F-word.

Fraud.

While Congress and the Treasury mull over approaches to the financial crisis with exotic names like “cram down,” “claw back” and “disgorgement,” and tax AIG executives “1000 percent” on their $160 million in bonuses, Pearlstein posed a potential solution in simpler terms.

He said what we should be hearing from every leader in government from President Barack Obama on down: “the Justice Department would surely have been within its rights to launch an extensive civil and criminal investigation into whether those bonuses were granted as part of an ongoing conspiracy to defraud shareholders.”

Any other description is making the situation more complicated than it needs to be.

See, most of us out here on Main Street don’t know the ins and outs of naked short selling. But we know that if you go to any sports book in Vegas and bet $100 on Morehead State to win it all, the casino takes your money up front. We don’t know how to engineer a credit default swap. But we know that when the dealer offers “insurance” against a blackjack, the odds say it’s a sucker bet. We didn’t know that banks were borrowing $30 or $40 for every dollar they had on hand, but somehow we all knew a long time ago that “no matter what a stripper tells you, there’s no sex in the champagne room."

But Wall Street either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. So it’s time for Main Street to help Wall Street learn a little “street” justice. We don’t know karate, but we know this much:

1. Lose Geithner Now

Obama can’t start getting rough with other people’s people until he makes an example out of one of his own first. For all we know, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is a seminarian, a math whiz and a trained ninja assassin. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The perception on all sides is that he’s ineffectual and tainted because of his tenure at the New York Fed. Anytime my wife looks at the TV and says, “I’m pretty sure I could take him,” that’s not a good sign. Oh, and by the way, he failed to pay his taxes right before taking over the federal department responsible for collecting—wait for it—taxes. He’s got to go.

Nice: "Heckuva job, Timmy!" Hypocrisy we can believe in wins again.

Hilda Solis, Another Obama Appointee, Has Tax Problems

First it was Tim Geitner. Then it was Nancy Killifer. Then Tom Daschle. Now BO's latest Cabinet pick, his choice to head the Department of Labor, Hilda Solis, has tax problems:

The husband of President Obama's choice to head the Labor Department paid about $6,400 Wednesday to settle tax liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years against his business, the Obama administration said Thursday.

The disclosure came shortly before a scheduled 2 p.m. meeting of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will vote on U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis' nomination as Labor secretary. The hearing was postponed to give the administration time to look into the tax matter and report back to the committee, said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Sen. Edward Kennedy, the committee chairman. Solis is a California Democrat.

Yeah, he's "screwed up" so much that he keeps making the same mistake over and over. I think it was 3rd grade that I learned that you're supposed to LEARN from your mistakes, not REPEAT them. Billary warned us over and over about Obama's inexperience, too bad she didn't have the guts to warn us about his utter incompetence--she might've won the nomination if she had.

Tom Daschle: Another Democrat Tax Cheater

ABC.com:

After being defeated in his 2004 re-election campaign to the Senate, Daschle in 2005 became a consultant and chairman of the executive advisory board at InterMedia Advisors.

Based in New York City, InterMedia Advisors is a private equity firm founded in part by longtime Daschle friend and Democratic fundraiser Leo Hindery, the former president of the YES network (the New York Yankees' and New Jersey Devils' cable television channel).

That same year he began his professional relationship with InterMedia, Daschle began using the services of Hindery's car and driver.

The Cadillac and driver were never part of Daschle's official compensation package at InterMedia, but Mr. Daschle -- who as Senate majority leader enjoyed the use of a car and driver at taxpayer expense -- didn't declare their services on his income taxes, as tax laws require.

During the vetting process to become HHS secretary, Daschle corrected the tax violation, voluntarily paying $101,943 in back taxes plus interest, working with his accountant to amend his tax returns for 2005 through 2007.

(Daschle reimbursed the IRS $31,462 in taxes and interest for tax year 2005; $35,546 for 2006; and $34,935 for 2007, a Daschle spokesperson said, adding that Daschle had asked his accountant to look into the tax implications of the car and driver five months before Obama won the presidency.)

The Daschle spokesperson told ABC News that the senator, facing questions from the committee, has said "he deeply regretted his mistake. When he realized it was a mistake he corrected it rapidly."

Hey, I actually sympathized with confirmed Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner's $40,000 "tax problems" because he used TurboTax, which is pretty well-known for being unreliable. But Daschle takes the cake on this one, while going down as yet another Obama pick invloved in scandal.....funny in light of all the criticism Michael Steele is receiving from the Left for daring to be elected new GOP Chairman, as if scandal-ridden pols are beholden to just one party.