It wasn't just the unpaid taxes. And it wasn't just that two other Obama Administration officials had neglected to pay their taxes as well. It was the lifestyle, and the choices Daschle made. It was that he had given speeches worth $200,000 to health-care-industry groups that he would have had to regulate as Health and Human Services Secretary. It was that he made $5 million in two years, "advising" various businesses and organizations rather than formally "lobbying" for them, a cheesy distinction that almost made it worse. It was that these decisions became known at a moment of rising public disgust with the bankers who looted the economy — and then continued to loot it, granting themselves bonuses even after the rest of us chose to bail them out.
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The excesses of wealth, throughout the country, have become an American problem. The extremely rich have detached themselves from the rest of society, which was the point of Obama's story about private jets. In Washington, it is a bipartisan phenomenon. Democrats have their special interests too, and their lobbyists are terrific at what they do. A guy like Daschle, who knows the system cold, who could talk to both the insurance companies and the liberal advocates, would have been invaluable to Obama in bringing health insurance to everyone who needs it. But, as the man said, we're all going to have to sacrifice, and it now seems clear that Obama's sacrifice, if he wants to reattach Washington to a nation sick with cynicism about its government, will be to detach himself from the lobbyist élites who might have helped grease the skids for his policy goals.

Sources on the Hill close to these negotiations say the Census would, more or less by default, would fall under the jurisdiction of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. That would be fine for Dems; But how would it sit with Republicans to have the former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee exert control over the bureau that provides data used in redistricting?

Bakestar wrote:Sort of political, but...

In NJ, an inflatable rat = free speech. Hooray First Amendment!

Ginsburg has recently told her former law clerks and others that she envisioned serving on the court into her 80s, although those comments were made before the latest diagnosis.

pacino wrote:I like a lot of the ideas in rendell's new budget, especially the idea about reducing school districts by 80%. not sure how increasing hte budget will play, though. also, would i be one of the the laid-off workers? most likely. i fail to see how getting rid of workers helps the government perform better.

Werthless wrote:Labor secretary's husband has resolved his tax issues, and it shouldn't be too much of a hurdle to.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... axes_N.htm

Equally specious is the oft-heard complaint that even some of the immediate spending is not stimulative.

"This is not a stimulus plan, it's a spending plan," Nebraska's freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, "won't create the promised jobs. It won't activate our economy."

Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services -- a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.
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In the next day's Journal, Coburn won additional support for his theory that public-sector employment and output is less worthy than private-sector output from columnist Daniel Henninger. Henninger weighed in with his own list of horror stories from the stimulus bill, including $325 million for trail repair and remediation of abandoned mines on federal lands, $6 billion to reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and -- get this! -- $462 million to equip, construct and repair labs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What is most striking is how much 'stimulus' money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure," wrote Henninger. "This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus."

Actually, what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

kruker wrote::cry:

I don't think that anyone on the right in Congress really knows why they should be criticizing the stimulus. Having to see these ridiculous stats about how high you can stack 100 dollar bills being used as a form of argument in the highest legislature in the land is just sad.

The quick argument should be that this spending can be done more efficiently by the private sector, that the residual impact of allowing the private sector to spend this money will have a greater benefit than government spending. If the government is going to spend this money, let it go to infrastructure and to agencies (being discerning about which ones get funding).