Amateur Hour in Washington DC

Notes of Concern…
…Jack Blair

OBAMA ENCOURAGES TRANSPARENCY
Amateur Hour In Washington, DC

The President has told us that he wants his administration to be transparent, for everything to be out in the open, done in the light of day, making no attempt to deceive the American people.

This new transparency was on display when Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico withdrew his name after being appointed by Obama to be in the new cabinet.

Once his selection was announced, the FBI began to investigate the Governor’s background. They provided their report to the president.

It seems the Governor awarded a large contract, not to a New Mexico firm (which would have been expected as he governs that state) but to a California firm that made a six-figure donation to his campaign.

There were many news reports that Richardson was shocked that he was encouraged to step down.

According to CNN, the president commented after Richardson withdrew:

"Governor Richardson is an outstanding public servant and would have brought to the job of Commerce Secretary and our economic team great insights accumulated through an extraordinary career in federal and state office."


More recently the president got another shock. He announced that he wanted Timothy Geithner to be the new Secretary of the Treasury.

Again, the FBI investigators got busy and Mr. Geithner was found to have failed to pay taxes in past years.

Here is a statement from Tribune Media

“Timothy Geithner, now the Treasury secretary, quite clearly tried to defraud the government of tens of thousands in payroll taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF does not withhold such taxes but does compensate American employees who must pay them out of pocket. Geithner took the compensation — which involves considerable paperwork — but then simply pocketed the money.”

Another news comment about Geithner, again in Tribune Media:

His explanations for his alleged oversight don’t pass the smell test. When the IRS busted him for his mistakes in 2003 and 2004, he decided to take advantage of the statute of limitations and not pay the thousands of dollars he also failed to pay in 2001 and 2002. That is, until he was nominated to become Treasury secretary.

Geithner and the president decided to tough it out. So much for the consequences of transparency.

President Obama defends Geithner, saying that his was a “common mistake, it is embarrassing but happens all the time. “

Now there is some transparency!

Geithner, in addition to his other duties, will supervise the Internal Revenue Service.

Recently, former Majority Leader of The U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, ran into a problem on his way to becoming President Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary.

After being defeated for reelection he took a job that paid millions of dollars. With the job came a car and chauffeur. After being nominated for the Obama cabinet position, and having lots of knowledge about how the FBI investigators operate and how the Senate grills nominees, he has been reported as “voluntarily paying $101,943 in back taxes plus interest, working with his accountant to amend his tax returns for 2005 through 2007.”

Seems like there is a question as to the accuracy of his tax returns for a number of years that involve salary, car and driver, and undocumented charitable contributions.

Of course, former Senators are accorded certain deference in Washington, so rather than have a fully televised hearing on his confirmation, which would clearly be transparent (there is that word again), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee,” Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., called his colleagues for a private meeting to discuss the complications surrounding Daschle's nomination.”

In other words, when the hearings are held everyone will had a script and they can play nice with their former colleague.

Senator Daschle no doubt hoped that Treasury Secretary Geithner would accept the “it happens all the time” explanation he plans to proffer, if the president doesn’t beat him to it.

Actually, the president released this comment through his White House Spokesman:

"The president has confidence that Sen. Daschle is the right person to lead the fight for health care reform".

That was a day or so before he was no longer "the right person" and the president accepted Daschle’s offer to withdraw.

Then there was Nancy Killefer, nominated as Chief Performance Officer for The White House.

Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, the White House said Tuesday.

How about that. She was going to be in charge of checking on all the others as to how well they followed the law.


Also, rumors are rampant that our neighbor, Senator Gregg, named to be the Secretary of Commerce, told the president that before he would take the job Obama had to get the democrat Governor of NH to promise not to appoint a Democrat to fill Senator Gregg’s seat. There we go with that above board stuff again! And of course, a Republican has been named by the Democrat Governor.

It will be interesting in the confirmation hearings as Gregg explains how he voted to do away with the Commerce Department one year and now wants to be the head honcho.

Then there is the president’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, Congresswoman Hilda Solis. Just as the hearings were to be held at the Senate they were canceled. Guess why! Seems her husband just yesterday paid up the money he owed to settle tax liens against his business, liens that had been outstanding for 16 years!



So here is the scorecard.

The first guy discovered by the FBI, Governor Richardson, has to withdraw rather than delay confirmation of the new president’s cabinet picks.

The second guy discovered by the FBI, Mr. Geithner, gets to pony up all the taxes he didn’t pay, and pay a penalty, and then gets confirmed to run the Treasury (and the IRS).

Boy those IRS employees must be especially excited.

The third guy, Senator Daschle, also ponies up hundreds of thousands of dollars he attempted to keep from the government, and he gets a closed-door hearing. Then he withdraws. He is probably wondering if there is any way to get those hundreds of thousands of dollars he belatedly paid back.

Next, a Republican Senator is picked to head a Cabinet Department he once thought should be abolished. Oh, and he won’t take the job unless he can pick the party of his successor.

Then the lady who was going to check up on all the others , Nancy Killefer ,withdraws. Tax problems!

Finally, the nominee to be Secretary of Labor, Congresswoman Hilda Solis, has her confirmation hearings canceled because her hubby took 16 years to pay his tax liens. Surprise, he only paid them a few days before the hearings were scheduled.

Who knew that a policy of transparency simply meant that instead of hiding criminal acts we would just have them announced up front and then try to confirm the fellows for high government jobs anyway.

I have to admit, it certainly gives me lots of confidence to know that these folks have lately become very transparent and have now laid out for us to see what the FBI would have laid out eventually.

I was watching the Geithner hearings on television the other day. One poor U.S. Senator was stating that the Senate had refused to confirm people in the past who had done far less than Geithner, that the people deserved a higher standard in their government servants, especially those so close to the president.

Since he happened to be a Republican, and as we know they lost the election, the committee let him have his say and then went on and ignored him.

And another Senator asked that the Daschle nomination please be withdrawn. In this case, someone up the street in a Big White House was listening.

We have come a long way in the country. Remember, under former presidents a great jurist was denied a spot on the Supreme Court because he had smoked marijuana as a teenager. And then there was the fabulous jurist, Judge Kimba Wood from New York, who lost her shot to be Attorney General for Bill Clinton because her Nanny was an undocumented worker.

It was much tougher in the days when we had standards.

Now with the transparency guidelines one simply admits to bad acts and the slate is wiped clean and he gets to be called “The Honorable” when he comes into a room, and the people all stand up for him. Wow. Somebody should have thought of this before.

The list of people who have failed to be confirmed for high-level jobs because of previous bad behavior is quite a long one.

We are now operating in an age where previous performance does not seem to be a predictor of one’s acceptability to work for The President of The United States.

Some readers may think I am being pretty hard on Obama.
I find no reason to assume that President Obama knew of these issues in advance of appointing any of the people. I leave to you the question of whether he should have.

I think his first reaction, to encourage Bill Richardson to withdraw rather than taint the presidency was the correct one. I admire him for that.

My admiration diminishes however when he revisits his approach to these issues and gives both the Secretary of the Treasury a pass for egregious behavior in his previous position, and recommends the same for the nominee for Health and Human Services.

As my friends in Georgia used to say: “That hound won’t hunt”.

This new administration is demonstrating a lack of experience and preparation and in these first missteps is setting itself up for a lot of criticism and a lowering of expectations. I hope the "on the job" training that is evident in selecting members to lead cabinet level positions improves before decisions are made that relate to national security.

One day soon these “Honorables” may come to your town to give a talk.

Be sure to stand up when they are introduced.