Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Check out Mike’s post on the double standard in the MSM towards this latest “mistake” on Obama’s part

For all the hoopla of the Obama inauguration his transition to power has been one of complete and utter folly. The latest? His pick for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. You may recall that pick of Obama’s met with a lot of praise. Now, not so much:

Documents released by the Senate Finance Committee strongly suggest that Geithner knew, or should have known, what he was doing when he did not pay self-employment taxes in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. After his failure to pay was discovered, first by the IRS and later during the vetting process, Geithner paid the federal government a total of $42,702 in taxes and interest.

The IMF did not withhold state and federal income taxes or self-employment taxes, Social Security and Medicare, from its employees’ paychecks. But the IMF took great care to explain to those employees, in detail and frequently, what their tax responsibilities were. First, each employee was given the IMF Employee Tax Manual. Then, employees were given quarterly wage statements for the specific purpose of calculating taxes. Then, they were given year-end wage statements. And then, each IMF employee was required to file what was known as an Annual Tax Allowance Request. Geithner received all those documents.

The tax allowance has turned out to be a key part of the Geithner situation. This is how it worked. IMF employees were expected to pay their taxes out of their own money. But the IMF then gave them an extra allowance, known as a “gross-up,” to cover those tax payments. This was done in the Annual Tax Allowance Request, in which the employee filled out some basic information, marital status, dependent children, etc., and the IMF then estimated the amount of taxes the employee would owe and gave the employee a corresponding allowance.

At the end of the tax allowance form were the words, “I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments from the Fund.” Geithner signed the form. He accepted the allowance payment. He didn’t pay the tax. For several years in a row.

And when exactly did he finally pay those taxes? After Obama named him treasury secretary, and after the vetting team found the little itty bitty oversight on Geithner part. Just a tiny mistake you see.

Bulls&%t.

If any one of us had not paid our taxes for years we would be in a TON of trouble. Tax fraud is no joke, but to those associated with Obama it appears it is. Laugh it off, go pay those taxes and then all is right in the world.

It gets better. According to an article by Politico’s Craig Gordon and Amie Parnes Geithner included some payments to his kid’s overnight camps in calculating his dependent child care credit for three years. 2001, 2004, and 2005. His accountant told him in 2006 that this was not allowed and Geithner ignored his accountant. He never amended the returns.

Judicial Watch:

Besides failing to pay the U.S. government $34,000 in taxes, Obama’s pick to run the agency that ensures the nation’s financial security kept money earmarked as restitution for taxes he didn’t pay.

At the time Geithner, considered to be a brilliant financial markets specialist, worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which oversees the global financial system. For years (from 2001 to 2004) Geithner didn’t pay Social Security or Medicare taxes on his lucrative salary yet he gladly cashed the IMF’s tax restitution checks.

The IMF gives employees an extra allowance, known as gross-up, to cover tax payments. To get it employees must file a detailed tax allowance request and the organization then follows up with a check to cover the amount.

Geithner filed and signed the requests for years but didn’t follow through with his obligation. The forms clearly commit the employee to pay the taxes for which he or she is receiving a tax allowance payment from the IMF. For years Geithner accepted the allowance yet blew off the Internal Revenue Service as well as the commitment he had made by signing the official form.

Hey, you keep money given as reimbursements for money you never paid, that’s a-ok in Obama’s book.

Roger Simon on the absolute brilliant judgment Obama has:

…The vetters also told Obama, of course.

According to an article by Politico’s Craig Gordon and Amie Parnes, Obama “decided to push ahead with the nomination anyway because he ‘still wanted him.’”

At the end of the day, a source said, “Barack decided that he was the best person for a really important job.”

OK, I get it. The economy is teetering on the brink, and we need to cut corners a little. We can’t be all that scrupulous and nitpicky when the future of the nation is at stake.

So in November, Team Obama announced that Geithner had this little problem and was paying his back taxes with interest and that it was all an honest mistake and no big deal, right?

Wrong. They decided to keep it a secret. But The Wall Street Journal discovered it and blew the whistle Tuesday.

Kept it a secret. Sounds like something the left has been complaining about on bushitler’s part doesn’t it?

The Geithner foul-up is different than the Bill Richardson foul-up. The Obama vetters were unable to get Richardson to give them all the background information they needed, but Obama went ahead and appointed Richardson to the Cabinet anyway. Then that blew up, and Richardson withdrew his name.

With Geithner, the vetters found the bad stuff — yay! — but everybody thought they could sweep it under the rug. Boo.

Amazing how forgiving the MSM, the left and the Democrats can be when one of their own sweeps things under the rug. Hides information. Appoints people that should not be appointed.

They say he made a mistake. I don’t buy it. He was given ample notice over and over about those taxes. He was even told he couldn’t claim things that he did claim and never fixed it.

But say it is all a big mistake.

Is that the type of person you want to run Treasury?

Obama does.

Two Examples of How Media Accountability for the Obama Administration Will Be 180 Degrees Opposite That for Republicans

There are two sets of rules!

El Rushbo, America’s anchorman put together this montage of “news” reporters and Democrat leaders knocking themselves out to excuse the failure to pay taxes by Obama’s Treasury Secretary Designate, Timothy Geithner. Once the script had been delivered by Obama’s aides, they all danced to the same tune:

KERRY: It is possible to make an innocent mistake. I think this is an honest mistake.

CROWLEY: The transition team put out a lengthy list of reasons why this was just an honest mistake.

BORGER: … I would not describe as a huge mistake.

HENRY: It is a common mistake.

KING: Maybe an honest mistake.

ALTER: It does seem to be a honest mistake.

SHUSTER: He made a common mistake on his taxes.

BARNES: Yes, it is a common mistake.

STODDARD: The Obama administration is saying it’s a common mistake.

HARWOOD: It is being described as an honest mistake.

VIEIRA: …Geithner’s tax problems, honest mistake…

BROKAW: This does look like an honest mistake.

MITCHELL: An honest mistake…

STEPHANOPOULOS: This was an honest mistake, fairly common. Geithner himself is embarrassed by this and he’s sorry.

He’s embarrassed and he’s sorry so I guess it’s ok! During the Clinton years, “everybody does it” was the common refrain for excusing X,Y, or Z. Now we add “honest mistake” to the list.

Meanwhile, incoming White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is presumed innocent of any wrongdoing in the Blago scandal because Obama says so. And Charlie Rangel (DEMOCRAT-NY) the Chairman of the tax writing House Ways and Means Committee still sits in that chair after admitting failure to pay his taxes on income from vacation property he owns. The man who writes the rules claims he didn’t know… Another “honest mistake?”

Imagine if this was a Republican nominee. Can you hear the refrain “an ethical cloud hangs over this nominee….how long will he last?” repeated over and over and over.

Example Two: Obama’s Inaugural: Record Spending And Not A Peep From the Usual Suspects

Change is all any of us will have left after paying for this!

Yesterday, Scott clued us into the news that Obama’s inauguration would be the most expensive in history. And it’s not just the logistics and security that are making records. It’s Democrats partying like it’s 1999 that will set a record. The total may top $150 million dollars!

Scott points out how four years ago Democrats were suggesting such a celebration during a time of war was inappropriate with the money better spent on supporting our troops or domestic concerns.

The Grapevine on Special Report summarized the handwringing thusly:

Salon.com described the event, in an piece by Eric Boehlert on Jan. 20, 2005, as “Bush’s overblown celebration,” the think tank Center for American Progress called it “lifestyles of the rich and heartless,” and an article in the London Guardian by Paul Harri on January 9, 2005, said it was “an unashamed celebration of red America’s victory over blue America.”

Should we view Obama’s lavish spectacle as an in your face celebration of blue state ‘s victory over the rest of us?

And what of the Center for American Progresses charge that the Bush Inauguration was a demonstration of the “lifestyles of the rich and heartless?” I visited their web site and found that this time around they are touting how eco-friendly Obama’s party will be. Do they REALLY want us to compare the carbon footprint of Obama’s monstrosity to that of Bush’s in 2005?

And speaking of “lifestyles of the rich and heartless” here’s what one chirpy AP/Obama reporter had to say about spending and frugality this time around:

For inaugural balls, go for glitz, forget economy
By KELLMAN
Associated Press
January 13, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — So you’re attending an inaugural ball saluting the historic election of Barack Obama in the worst economic climate in three generations. Can you get away with glitzing it up and still be appropriate, not to mention comfortable and financially viable?

To quote the man of the hour: Yes, you can. Veteran ballgoers say you should. And fashionistas insist that you must.

“This is a time to celebrate. This is a great moment. Do not dress down. Do not wear the Washington uniform,” said Tim Gunn, a native Washingtonian and Chief Creative Officer at Liz Claiborne, Inc.

“Just because the economy is in a downturn, it doesn’t mean that style is going to be in a downturn,” agreed Ken Downing, fashion director for Neiman Marcus.

And if anyone does raise an eyebrow at those sequins, remind them that optimism is good for times like these. “Just say you’re doing it to help the economy,” chuckled good manners guru Letitia Baldridge.

That’s right. If any of those pesky peons who have lost their jobs and their homes shout insults at you tell them you are doing it all to help! But I doubt you will have to worry much about protesters showing up. That’s something else that only happens when Republicans are in charge and this time around we can count on those extra tens of millions in spending for security to see to it that the average Joe won’t get within a thousand feet of partygoers. After all, who wants to be reminded that the nation is suffering an economic downturn while you are blowing wads of cash that could be better spent helping people?

Finally:

Why some on our side seem to go along to get along with the left’s lies!

Andrew Klavin, writing at Breitbart’s Big Hollywood nails it:

Why We Fight
by Andrew Klavan
Breitbart’s Big Hollywood

This is by way of a friendly response to the estimable Jay Nordlinger, Senior Editor at the likewise estimable National Review. Jay wrote a strong column yesterday openly saying what I’ve been hearing many conservatives express tacitly ever since the election. Reflecting on the media’s disgraceful distortion of the characters of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, he wrote:

“It seems to me that the Left has won: utterly and decisively. What I mean is, the Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher mentality has prevailed. They decide what a person’s image is, and those images stick. They are the ones who say that Cheney’s a monster, W.’s stupid, and Palin’s a bimbo. And the country, apparently, follows.”

I’ve been hearing and reading prominent conservatives and Republicans say nearly as much on television, in print and in private conversation ever since the election. They say Sarah Palin can never make a comeback. They say the fight for small government has been lost. They say we can’t have immigration reform that protects our borders. They say we have to distance ourselves from “embarrassing” commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

No, no, no, no. What the right is experiencing at the moment is a phenomenon called “cultural para-stimuli.” You can read all about it in Tom Wolfe’s wonderful novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It’s sort of like peer pressure on steroids. It was discovered by Nobel Laureate Victor Ransome Starling, who found that when he surrounded normal cats with cats whose behavior had been bizarrely altered by brain surgery, the normal cats began acting like the crazy cats all around them.

That’s us–surrounded by the mainstream media. So steeped are we now in their lies about our representatives, their ridicule of our commentators, their demonizing dismissal of the causes we know are just, that we’ve begun to adopt their attitudes toward ourselves! And perhaps chief among the lies they’ve sold us is the lie that they’ve won, that the media are theirs for good and all, and that Americans are going to be hoodwinked and brainwashed by their constant barrage of misinformation forever.

Well, only if we let them. And only if we in the media surrender first.

You’ll want to go and read the rest here.

It’s amazing how quickly some on our side will accept the premises and the newspeak put out by the left. I’ll hazard a guess that most of those who do are living inside the Washington Beltway, in New York or some other urban center where liberal social elites rule who gets invited to the cocktail parties and who does not. I’ve lived in both New York and Washington and realize the pressure that is exerted for conservatives to either shut up or tone it down to get along.

Not all of us will sell our souls for the price of a cocktail but it’s sad to see that some do!