The Ugly Side of the Democratic Party

Barack Obama promised to bring change to Washington, and that he has. But I don't think it's the change people (who fell under his spell) were expecting. Here's some insight into the latest happenings:

Now, let me say something about the census, because it is related to [Rebublican Senator Judd] Gregg’s decision not to join this administration. The media hasn’t focused on this yet, but it is a big issue you will hear a lot about in the days ahead.

One of the Commerce Department’s most important functions is to oversee the census that takes place every ten years. The census is used primarily to allocate the number of congressional representatives for each state in the House of Representatives (which determines votes in the Electoral College), and it is also used to determine the funding formulas for most federal programs that send tax dollars back to the states.

For obvious reasons, this is a highly sensitive political issue, and for that very reason this job has always been entrusted to the career civil servants in the Commerce Department. But after Gregg was announced as Commerce Secretary, the Obama team yanked the census out of the Commerce Department and decided that we should trust it to the tender mercies of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

For those of you who may not know, Rahm Emanuel is a brass-knuckles, hyper-partisan operative from, of course, Chicago. He was one of Bill Clinton’s key “fixers,” and served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, when many good conservatives were smeared with disgusting negative attack ads.

We were told that the census was moved from the Commerce Department because we just couldn’t trust the Republican Judd Gregg to handle it properly. Well, I don’t know anyone in Washington who questions Judd Gregg’s integrity. I think his statements above speak volumes about the man. The same cannot be said about Emanuel, and there are well-known stories about his vindictiveness that would send chills down your spine.

The decision by the Obama team to pull the census out of Commerce and give it to Rahm Emanuel is extraordinarily revealing of the hardball, partisan tactics these folks are willing to use in order to make sure our side never wins another election. If the administration does not reverse itself on the census, Republican leaders are threatening to go to court. But it’s no wonder that Judd Gregg felt like he couldn’t be a “team player” in this crowd [Gary Bauer, End of Day report, 2/13/09].

When Will the Smoke Clear?

Here's an excerpt from an analysis about the so-called stimulus bill passed by both the Senate and the House. Read the entire article here.

A Trojan Horse

Both the Senate and House stimulus bills are Trojan horses that deliberately exploit anxiety about the current recession to conceal their destruction of the foundation of welfare reform and a massive expansion of the welfare system. Since its enactment in the mid-1990s, such reform has proven to be a very successful policy that dramatically reduced welfare dependency and child poverty. The fact that the stimulus proponents seek to conceal the bill's massive permanent changes in welfare is a clear indication that they understand how unpopular these changes would be if the public became aware of them. Far from an exercise in "unprecedented transparency"--as President Obama claims--the stimulus bills are an example of unprecedented deception.

Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in the Domestic Policy Studies Department and Katherine Bradley is a Research Fellow in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, at The Heritage Foundation.

An editorial in the National Review Online echoes these concerns (go here to read).

May as well start documenting all these shenanagins in this blog, because things are moving quickly behind the smokescreen that is Barack Obama. It's hard to argue with deceptive people, especially really good deceivers who have mastered the art of obfuscation. Obama is especially clever at saying things one way one day, then changing them the next and acting surprised when challenged or questioned about the contradiction. Sometimes he even admits that in saying things, he didn't really mean what he said. Recall he did this after he was elected and he suddenly rediscovered Hillary Clinton's virtues after ripping her to shreds during the campaign, pointing out that criticism of her was just campaign "rhetoric," you know. Ah yes, rhetoric...Four years from now will we remember his propensity to deceive for the purpose of achieving his objectives?

Losing track

It's hard to keep up with all the scoundrels in the Democratic Party. Here's the latest (excerpted from Gary Bauer's End of Day report):

Over the weekend, we learned about yet another tax-raising liberal Democrat who massively underpaid his own taxes. This time it is former Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle, who has been nominated by President Obama to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. In that post, the pro-abortion Daschle is expected to direct the Obama Administration’s takeover of American health care and dismantle the pro-life policies of the previous administration regarding human embryo stem cell research.

Daschle is considered very smart. Nonetheless, he expressed ignorance that a luxury car and chauffer he was provided by his employer were taxable... In addition, Daschle lacked proof for thousands of dollars of charitable deductions he took and failed to report some consulting income. The bottom line: On January 2nd, he sent the IRS $140,000 in back taxes and penalties. The Washington Post referred to this as a “tax glitch.” I suspect most taxpayers would apply a few more colorful adjectives.

If this sounds familiar, that is because Daschle’s tax “glitch” comes on the heels of the tax problems of another Obama nominee, Timothy Geithner (supposedly the smartest man to tackle the economic crisis), who claimed not to understand that you must pay self-employment tax on self-employment income. He is now head of the Treasury Department and oversees the IRS! And don’t forget Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who is under investigation for failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. Rangel just happens to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which means Rangel is the man who writes our nation’s tax laws!

No wonder liberal Democrats love higher taxes – they don’t pay them!

The Obama team carted out various people all weekend to tell the public that these were honest mistakes, and, besides, Daschle is such a nice guy and he’s a liberal. Everyone in Washington knows that if this were the nominee of a Republican president, the nomination would be dead on arrival. The Democrat attack machine, aided by its media allies, would go into overdrive. The nominee would be humiliated in public hearings and withdraw in disgrace.

There will be a Senate hearing on Daschle today – in a closed session. The Obama team that promised “openness” and “transparency” apparently doesn’t want the public to see Daschle squirming. Senator Daschle should make his tax returns public immediately. The hearings should be open to the public. And President Obama might want to go back and review his own campaign speeches about the new ethical standards he was going to bring to Washington.

Yes, someone reading this might bring up Republican scoundrels, like Randy Duke Cunningham. But it's the hypocrisy that's so galling. These are the people who would reach deeper and deeper into my pockets to pay for their pet social projects but somehow manage to keep a tight grip on their own money (by lying or gaming the system).

Maybe taxing and reallocating should be strictly voluntary. If wealthy Democrats want to fund these kinds of projects using taxpayer money, then go ahead and set it up so people can volunteer to have their income taxed and let the rest of us donate our money to causes we believe in. But they should stop pretending this is all about social justice, etc. These people--the Daschles et al--are full of hypocrisy. They say, oops, sorry, my bad....here's a hundred thousand, will that cover it? But would he pay if he hadn't been caught?

And people wonder why I left the Democratic Party.