Daschled:
The South Dakotans in my family are big Tom Daschle fans; I’ve never warmed to him, personally. Maybe it’s because I’m not the ”organization-Democrat” sort. Twice in my life I’ve been personally involved with such people, and I’ve found that I’m more the independent hell-raiser sort. Yes, I understand the intricacies of politics; I didn’t get that political science degree for nuttin’. But as a personal note, I’m Mr. Good Government, and I’m always nervous at best about such machines and organizations as a conglomeration of people who are willing to let things go too easily and concentrate on the maybe easily possible rather than the way things ought to be.
I thought when Daschle was nominated that yeah, he might be able to maneuver things around for a health bill, but I wasn’t convinced - and I remembered that since he left his Senate seat, he’d been (along with his missus) three feet deep in the heart of big lobbyist stuff. I didn’t think that would play well in a clean-house Obama administration. And it turned out that I was right.
Along with that, I also knew that Daschle had recognized Obama’s star qualities early, and a lot of Daschle’s people went to work for Obama when he came into the Senate and since. Daschle was probably the main go-to-for-advice person that Obama went to on health issues, and he probably also saw Daschle’s ability as a necessary thing, and focused on that.
The problem is, with all of the crapola that the Bushies pulled, and the crapola that the Wall Street people pulled on bonuses, junkets and goodies for themselves, there was no way Obama could get past hanky-pank with the rules on taxes and whatnot. He had one free shot at getting past tax problems, and it went to Tim Geithner. Daschle’s problems sounded larger and far more plushy (costs of the car and driver from the tycoons), and I’m glad for everyone’s sake that Daschle saw the NYT editorial that his time was up, and that his nomination was a dead issue.
In the long run, it’s probable that the worst damage is that Obama won’t have a old pol on his team for the health plan push. I don’t think it’s going to really mess up Obama more than that.
The reality is that many people get cute with their taxes, because they don’t have the press and tax experts poring over their returns. But the cutes of the Big Bidness People are getting on a lot of people’s nerves because The Little Guys Are Losing Their Jobs or Sweating It Bigtime, and the rich bozos are having a blast with taxpayer dollars. As Barney Frank told the fat cats:
“People really hate you, and they’re starting to hate us because we’re hanging out with you. And you have to help us deal with that.”
Robert Reich put it well:
Typical Americans are hurting very badly right now. They resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections. They’ve become increasingly suspicious of the conflicts of interest, cozy relationships, and payoffs that seem to pervade not only official Washington but our biggest banks and corporations. In short, many Americans who have worked hard, saved as much as they can, bought a home, obeyed the law, and paid every cent of taxes that were due are beginning to feel like chumps. Their jobs are disappearing, their savings are disappearing, their homes are worth far less than they thought they were, their tax bills are as high as ever if not higher - but people at the top seem to be living far different lives in a different universe. They’re the executives and traders on Wall Street have lived like kings for years off a bubble of their own making while ripping off small investors, the financial louts who are now taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout money while awarding themselves huge bonuses and throwing lavish parties, the corporate CEOs who are earning seven figures while laying off thousands of workers, the billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers who are paying a marginal tax rate of 15 percent on what they say are capital gains while people who earn a fraction of that are paying a higher rate, and, not the least, the Washington insiders who have served on the Hill or in an administration and then gone on to pocket millions as lobbyists for the same companies they once regulated or subsidized. To the American who’s outside the power centers - the places of entitlement and I’ll-scratch-your-back-while-you-scratch-mine deal making - the entire system seems rotten.
That’s something the fat cats have a real problem wrapping their heads around. Me, I think Claire McCaskill’s rant about executive pay reductions is going to be something that may get into law a whole lot faster than it might have six months ago, when it should have been part of the rules on the original bailout. But back then, the Powers That Be couldn’t countenance such a thing - it was socialism, I’ll have you know.
There are some who say that nobody expected the Master Of The Universe on Wall Street to be so dumb; well, ladies and gents, being stupid with money allegedly for their own benefit is what got them and us into this situation. Didn’t surprise me that they were willing to go right on being stupid as long as they could get away with it. Or that the Same Old Same Old in Washington would continue on unabated by calls for change and reform.
If you notice, the Republicans who are against the Stimulus are the ones who don’t actually have to run a government. The ones who do, such as State Governors, are going for it, because they’re stony broke. California’s Republican Governor is issuing State IOUs rather than paying people because they ran out of money. Those won’t pay people’s bills, nossir.
In Illinois, the new Governor (not the mental and moral midget who is running around like a ADHD chihuahua on crack to the media) is trying to get a grip on what to do about the state budget, and one state senator is querying as to why the state allows companies that pick up sales taxes from the people who shop there are keeping such large proportions of the sales taxes for their own use - at least in such large amounts. As in the state not getting $126 million it could use elsewhere.