A Round-Up of Obama’s Staggering Hypocrisy
By PrivatePigg ~ February 3rd, 2009. Filed under: Obama, hypocrisy.
What is worse: the fact that our President has been completely dishonest about the way he’s running Washington, or the fact that the only criticism (for the most part) is coming from the rightosphere? Is Obama a consummate liar, or did he intend to keep his promises, but has found out that criticizing and campaigning is much easier than actually leading? If that is the case, his staggering lack of any Executive, or even Congressional, experience is to blame.
Now, make no mistake: the change we need won’t come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together.
Timothy Geithner is Secretary of the Treasury, despite having been delinquent on his taxes to the tune of over $40,000 because he was defeated by his TurboTax program and because he didn’t pay attention when the International Monetary Fund tried to educate him on his tax obligations as an independent contractor for the organization.
2. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel is in a world of trouble because of various tax delinquencies. The fact that his committee plays a key role in writing the tax laws makes this especially rich. Despite Nancy Pelosi’s promise to give us “the most ethical Congress in history,” she has yet to remove Rangel from his chairmanship to punish him for his comprehensive failure to abide by the tax code.
And now, we learn that former Senate Democratic Leader and current Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Daschle has tax problems of his own. The former Senator accepted the services of a car and driver without reporting it as income on his tax returns, a tax liability of over $100,000. In addition, Daschle failed to report over $80,000 in consulting income in 2007. To be sure, now that Daschle is a Cabinet nominee, he has gone back and paid his delinquent taxes but that doesn’t excuse or put to the side the astonishing degree of personal negligence Daschle displayed in preparing his tax returns. Proving that there is no shortage of gall in the universe, Daschle tried to explain away his actions by stating that “he had grown used to having a car and driver as Senate majority leader and didn’t think to report the perquisite on his taxes, according to staff members.”
Even the NYT has called for Daschle’s removal.
We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor.
A funny video from Ace, too.
Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination on Tuesday to be President Barack Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary, faced with problems over back taxes and potential conflicts of interest.
“Now we must move forward,” Obama said in a written statement accepting Daschle’s request to be taken out of consideration. A day earlier, Obama had said he “absolutely” stood by Daschle.
And:
President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government has withdrawn after earlier failing to pay tax on household help, the White House said Tuesday.
“Nancy Killefer has decided to withdraw her nomination, and we accepted her withdrawal,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman…When her nomination was announced by Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had placed a lien on her home in the upscale Wesley Heights neighborhood. The local government alleged that she had started missing payments on unemployment compensation tax for a household employee.
And:
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama’s initial selection for commerce secretary, withdrew his name amid a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.
The husband of President Obama’s Labor secretary nominee 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 told USA TODAY this afternoon.
Obama’s new lobbying rules will ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff. Those already hired will be banned from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they once targeted.
The rules also ban lobbyists from giving gifts of any size to any member of his administration. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the ban would include the traditional “previous relationships” clause, allowing gifts from friends or associates with which an employee comes in with strong ties.
The new rules also stipulate that anyone who leaves his administration cannot try to influence former friends and colleagues for at least two years. Obama is requiring all staff to attend to an ethics briefing like one he said he attended last week.
Obama called the rules tighter “than under any other administration in history.” They followed pledges during his campaign to be strict about the influence of lobbyists in his White House.
“The new rules on lobbying alone, no matter how tough, are not enough to fix a broken system in Washington,” he said. “That’s why I’m also setting rules that govern not just lobbyists but all those who have been selected to serve in my administration.”
It is easy to project yourself as a clean politician after making your debut in South Side Chicago with buddies like Rahm Emanuel. US president Obama has appointed more than 17 lobbyists after talking big on anti-lobbyist Governance and rooting corruption out of the American Government.
Dreams are dreams. Facts are facts. President Obama is surrounded by corrupt lobbyists ready to sell America cheap. …
Take the example of the newest exposure of doubletalk from Obama! After calling for clean Governance, he appoints a Treasury Secretary who “forgot” to pay for his ‘business tax’ for years! Tom Daschle, a top lobbyist in Washington, who has amended his U.S. tax forms to pay back taxes with interest, is now Obama’s best choice for America’s chief health official. …
Would you believe, Obama had to issue 17 waivers on his own rule in less than two weeks for allowing lobbyist enter his Administration and control Governance of America!
And:
Mr. Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of defense, William Lynn, has been a lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, and his nominee for deputy secretary of health and human services, William V. Corr, lobbied for stricter tobacco regulations as an official with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, conceded the two nominees did not adhere to the new rules. . . .
BARACK OBAMA has promised to end the torture of suspected terrorists by American intelligence operatives, instructing his incoming intelligence team to ensure that the United States abides by the Geneva conventions…Human rights activists have expressed concern about another of Mr Obama’s intelligence appointments - John Brennan, who was named yesterday as homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism.
Mr Brennan was dropped as a candidate for director of central intelligence due to accusations of support for torture and extraordinary rendition.
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”
Despite concern about rendition, Obama’s prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the “transitory” technique.
The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
Statement #4:
Last week a massive ice storm struck the heartland of America, leaving at least 42 dead and millions without power or water. Days later there are still over a million people in Kentucky who have no power, no water, and no communications. They could have to survive this way for weeks! The conditions are dire and getting worse, with some storm survivors carrying pails of water from creeks. Thousands more are living in shelters with no timetable for returning home. FEMA is nowhere to be found.
Amid this catastrophe, where is President Barack Obama? While millions are struggling were struggling with the dangerous and deadly icy conditions President Obama had the thermostat in the Oval Office cranked up like a “hothouse” growing orchids. On Thursday — while millions in Tennessee and Kentucky did not have access to shelter or food — Obama hosted a cocktail party at the White House and served up fancy martinis and an appetizer menu that featured mouthwatering wagyu steak costing $100 a pound.
Saturday night — as the governor of Kentucky called up the entire National Guard in his state to deal with the ongoing crisis — President Obama slipped into his black tie attire to attend the exclusive Alfalfa Club dinner, where lavish cocktails and fine dining were the order of the evening. And on Sunday — when millions in Kentucky and Tennessee still lacked the basic necessities of power and water — the Obama family threw an extravagant Super Bowl party!
It is critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it’s an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. We can do it, but we’re going to have to make an investment. The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we’ve got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well…One of the things I draw from the Genesis story is the importance of us being good stewards of the land, of this incredible gift. And I think there have been times where we haven’t been [good stewards], and this is one of those times where we’ve got to take the warning seriously [about climate change]. And part of what my religious faith teaches me is to take an intergenerational view, to recognize that we are borrowing thi planet from our children and our grandchildren. And this is where religious faith and the science of global warming converge: We have to find resources in ourselves to make sacrifices so we don’t leave it to the next generation. We’ve got to be less wasteful, both as a society and in our own individual lives. I think religion can actually bolster our desire to make those sacrifices now. As president, I hope to rally the entire world around the importance of us being good stewards of the land.
The New York Times reported on Thursday, January 29 that:
“…the capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Could this be the same Barack Obama who said last May that:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say ‘OK.’ … That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”
And could this be the same Barack Obama who is looking to sign a stimulus bill that would spend billions of dollars installing millions of “smart meters” that would enable your power company to prevent you from being as comfortable as he is on hot and cold days?
While our new president is warm-and-toasty in the Oval Office, is he considering the plight of Michigan’s Marvin Schur, a 93-year World War II veteran, who was recently found frozen to death courtesy of a malfunctioning electricity “limiter” device installed by his power company?
Change has come to Washington. Elitism is dead. Long live elitism.
President-elect Barack Obama pledged to end earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers slip into spending bills.
Most presidents in recent years have sought the power to remove from spending bills the discretionary items lawmakers insert for their pet projects and home districts, often having little to do with the main body of the legislation.
In a news conference Tuesday on his plans to reform the economy, Obama said he would “ban all earmarks,” although he did not say how.
President Barack Obama’s ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn’t mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won’t be able to funnel money to pet projects.
They’re just working around it _ and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.
The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.
There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as “ready to go” jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.
The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.
“‘No earmarks’ isn’t a game-ender,” said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. “It just means there’s a different way of going about making sure the funding is there.”
Now is the time for Washington to act with the same sense of urgency that Americans all across the country feel every single day. With the stakes this high, we cannot afford to get trapped in the same old partisan gridlock…And we know the only way to solve the great challenges of our time is to put aside stale ideology and petty partisanship, and embrace what works.
President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
And:
In contrast, Barack Obama’s starting out explicitly partisan, with his repudiation of 25 years of pro-life family planning programs in rejecting the Reagan administration’s “Mexico City policy,” which banned taxpayer funding for international abortion providers.
And:
Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Wednesday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan as Congressional Democrats sought to temper their own differences over the enormous package of tax cuts and spending.
What do they say, “reality used to be a friend of mine”? Has anyone been such an abstract failure in his first 2 weeks in office? And it is really simple to explain, too. Due to his lack of any experience as an Executive, and due to his inexperience as even a Washington-based politician, Obama had absolutely no idea how to govern - or what it would take to lead from the White House. This is why he was able to make so many outlandish statements and promises that even people in his own party would not make - they knew they could not keep those promises. But the American people were feeling Hopey and Changey. Now Obama is realizing that criticizing and campaigning is a lot easier than actually leading.
What a failure.
PS - I know there are other instances of hypocrisy, but I do not have time to put them up right now. I’ll get to them…
bRight and Early has a similar post up (h/t CSPT).
From bRight and Early:
STATEMENTS #8 & #9 REALITY
| Early in the campaign season Obama promised to rely on public financing for his run. | He famously ignored that promise and instead raised historic sums, some of it quite questionable. |
| [W]e will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it. (source) | Lilly Ledbetter law - signed by the president just two days after being passed by congress. Not posted on the website for review and comment. |
From Hot Air - Statement #10:
Barack Obama didn’t do much except run for President during his four years in the US Senate, but he did partner with Tom Coburn on transparency in budgeting. That accomplishment allowed for some hope that Obama would work to make the federal government more transparent. Unfortunately, as our friend Stefan Sharkansky reports from Sound Politics, Obama’s appointment of Ron Sims to the #2 position at HUD sends exactly the opposite message. A court levied the biggest fine for illegal record withholding against Sims in Washington State history — and that record hasn’t finished yet:Sims is culpable for what may well become the largest fine for violations of public records laws in U.S. history: see Yousoufian, Armen
My own public records suit against Sims (for delaying release of election records which revealed that King County officials unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the 2004 governor’s race) goes to trial in April.
The Yousoufian case should have derailed Sims’ appointment all by itself. The Seattle Times just reported on the state Supreme Court decision that demanded a higher fine for King County under Sims’ governance for illegally blocking records that Yousoufian wanted to investigate the public financing of Qwest Field, the stadium where the Seattle Seahawks now play.
bRight & Early also expounds on the “lobbying” statement, above:
“Regarding Lobbyists — “I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.” - Candidate Obama* William J. Lynn - former Raytheon lobbyist picked for the number 2 slot in DoD.
* William Corr - recent anti-tobacco lobbyist heading for a position as deputy secretary at HHS.More from Politico (h/t Ed Morrissey)
* Eric Holder - attorney general - registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm.
* Tom Vilsack - secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.
* David Hayes - deputy interior secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until 2006 for clients, including the regional utility San Diego Gas & Electric.
* Mark Patterson - chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.
* Ron Klain - chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, was registered to lobby until 2005 for clients, including the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.
* Mona Sutphen - deputy White House chief of staff, was registered to lobby for clients, including Angliss International in 2003.
* Melody Barnes - domestic policy council director, lobbied in 2003 and 2004 for liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
* Cecilia Munoz - White House director of intergovernmental affairs, was a lobbyist as recently as last year for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.
* Patrick Gaspard - White House political affairs director, was a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.
* Michael Strautmanis - chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations, lobbied for the American Association of Justice from 2001 until 2005.
We can try to slow globalization, but we can’t stop it. The U.S. economy is now so integrated with the rest of the world, and digital commerce so widespread, that it’s hard to imagine, much less enforce, an effective regime of protectionism. A tariff on imported steel may give temporary relief to U.S. steel producers, but it will make every U.S. manufacturer who uses steel in its products less competitive on the world market.
Barack Obama found another way to look weak and inexperienced this week, this time on the trade war threatened by the administration’s stimulus package. After pandering to unions by inserting a “Buy American” clause in the gigantic porkfest, Europe and Asia threatened trade sanctions on American companies competing for business in their markets. Obama finally ran up the white flag instead of Old Glory:The European Union warned the US yesterday against plunging the world into depression by adopting a planned “Buy American” policy, intensifying fears of a trade war.
The EU threatened to retaliate if the US Congress went ahead with sweeping measures in its $800 billion (£554 billion) stimulus plan to restrict spending to American goods and services. …
Last night Mr Obama gave a strong signal that he would remove the most provocative passages from the Bill.
“I agree that we can’t send a protectionist message,” he said in an interview with Fox TV. “I want to see what kind of language we can work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade.”
This guy really has no clue what it takes to lead.
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February 3rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
[...] And it looks like Private Pigg has done the same thing, in greater detail, on PFB Blog. [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
i’d been looking for a roundup of all his nominees various stains on their resumes….much appreciated and well researched. thanks again.