A Tax Cheat in charge of the IRS?

[Naked Gents Rut]

Geithner is confirmed, 60-34. Not a bad showing by the Republicans. Maybe there's a slim (very slim) chance that they can hold together to oppose the stimulus package...

[Naked Gents Rut]

Collins

[Blaupanzer]

QUOTE=rah;5516474]I agree that it probably won't matter much, but I expected better. All of the "ONEs" retoric and the hope of all the people that think they elected a GOD. Reality is going to slap them all in the face because of all the talk of change, we're seeing a lot of same ole, same ole. All the talk of taking washington back from the narrow special interests, and lobbyists, but if you looked at the sponsors for most of the GALA balls (including those from Illinois) the lobbyists were throwing around money like it was going out of style. (of course American dollars probably are) America has been fooled again. Entering day 2 of the continuing nightmare.[/QUOTE]

1) It's hardly day 2. The nightmare began either with the death of Kennedy or the stolen election of 2000. Whether either of those bad dreams are over remains to be seen.

2) My ballot said President. If you voted, so did yours. Nothing about God, parting the seas, or any super powers were mentioned. The man has been in office for less than a month and already everyone on the right says, "See, he can't do it." We gave your guy 8 years and he kept making it worse. I would suggest you wait a bit before indicating "all is lost."

[Dinner]

Where's this letter? I saw no mention of this in the Senate report.

Does the Wall St Journal work as a source for you? "In 2004, an accountant advised Mr. Geithner in writing that he did not owe employment taxes. An accountant who reviewed Mr. Geithner's 2001 tax return also didn't inform Mr. Geithner he owed taxes".

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123194884833281695.html

There is some conflict in that Geithner did sign a document, among dozens, when he first started his employment with the World Bank which told him he had to pay this tax but then his CPA gave him written advise to the contrary so he went with the CPA. Either way it is pretty minor and has been fixed.

Rah: No one is claiming Obama "is the one" as you keep saying. All we're saying is let's not try to make a mountain out of every mole hill and if this is the worst the right has been able to dig up then it really isn't that bad.

[Dinner]

They lean towards power, I think. They fawned over Bush early on, particularly right after 9/11 (when nearly everyone liked the guy). They did a craptacular job of calling him on his bull****. The NY Times was chearleading the run up to the Iraq war, ffs.

The media will typically fawn over each new President, I think. They will turn on an unpopular or lame duck President. A guy like Obama, riding in on very high approval ratings, replacing a guy with approval ratings in the 20s... has a lot of political capital. So yeah, they will suck up to him... at least for a while. They want access (access means less hard work actually researching stories and other hard stuff like that).

-Arrian

Sadly true. I honestly think a lot of this comes down to excessive media consolidation.

[Dinner]

The man has been in office for less than a month and already everyone on the right says, "See, he can't do it." We gave your guy 8 years and he kept making it worse. I would suggest you wait a bit before indicating "all is lost."

Hell, watch the daily show for Jan 20th. Fox News virtually ignored the inauguration and ran a 12 hour Bush lovefest special punctuated with pronouncements that Obama had failed and destroyed the economy. I **** you not! They didn't even give the man a single day before they declared all is lost.

[rah]

Don't get me wrong, I hope he succeeds and I do have a reasonably good opinion of him. But, he is a chicago bred politician so I'm always a bit leary of "CHANGE". You can say all you want that your ballot and mine said president, but we're realistic people. There are a lot of people that do see him as the ONE. I just like using it because I know it irritates people. I don't care if people believe he could be a great president, but a lot of people around me at work already assume he is. Yes, it's too early to say he's a failure. (i still can't believe some die hards are claiming that, what morons) but it's also too early to canonize him.

I do wish him well, since there's always the self interest there.
Yet there seem to be some people that want him to fail no matter how it affects them personally.

He won, good for him, hope he does well, but still don't believe his "Change" stuff (as least for some things). We'll see.

[Imran Siddiqui]

This, my friends, is teh awesome:

http://gawker.com/5139875/our-tax+cheat-treasury-secretary

We would be completely sympathetic to Geithner's claim that this was a goof because of the IMF's Byzantine payroll-tax status. Except that Geithner, when he worked at the Treasury Department in 1998, testified before Congress to explain the IMF's Byzantine payroll-tax status:

His detailed explanation before Congress in 1998 about the IMF's payroll taxes follows in the link above.

[Dinner]

Well that's not good.

Even an expert couldn't understand it? BTW didn't he work at the World Bank and not the IMF? Would that make a difference or are they, as I suspect, treated the same?

[Dinner]

Hell, watch the daily show for Jan 20th. Fox News virtually ignored the inauguration and ran a 12 hour Bush lovefest special punctuated with pronouncements that Obama had failed and destroyed the economy. I **** you not! They didn't even give the man a single day before they declared all is lost.

I found a link to the Daily show where Fox News declares all is lost on Obama's very first day in office.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=216561&title=Fox-News-Fear-Imbalance

[Naked Gents Rut]

Obama's putting a tax cheat in charge of Health and Human Services, as well.

ABC News has obtained the Senate Finance Committee Report on Tom Daschle's nomination to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which indicates that Daschle's tax problems were even more substantial than earlier reported.

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.

The Senate Finance Committee Report also notes that during the vetting process, President Obama's Transition Team "identified certain donations that did not qualify as charitable deductions because they were not paid to qualifying organizations. Daschle adjusted his contribution deductions on his amended returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to remove these amounts and add additional contributions." This adjustment meant a reduction in the amount he contributed to charitable foundations of $14,963 from 2005 through 2007.

With the unreported income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031 in 2005, $89,129 in 2006 and $93,096 in 2007; the unreported consulting income of $83,333 in 2007; and the adjusted reductions in charitable contributions, Daschle adds a total of $353,552 in additional income and reduced donations, meaning an additional tax payment of $128,203, in addition to $11,964 in interest.

On January 2 of this year, Daschle filed amended tax returns to pay the $140,167 in unpaid taxes.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/01/more-daschle-ta.html

[Kuciwalker]

I saw that a few hours ago. This is just embarrassing.

[Naked Gents Rut]

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt on the car service, but not reporting consulting income is pretty blatant.

[DinoDoc]

Wesely Snipes must be kicking himself over the news coming out of Washington recently.

[Darius871]

Suddenly I'm glad not to be rich.