If the recent confirmation of Tim Geithner and the pending confirmation of Tom Daschle are not examples of inside baseball, I don’t know what is. Besides the fact that President Obama was elected on a platform of change and that he has named practically no one who doesn’t have a twenty-page Washington resume to any position of importance, now we are expected to accept that the only people with experience, substance and hope of creating change are not capable of paying their taxes on time.
People have complained about my recent anger. Well, come on, how can thinking people not be angry with this administration? Again I ask as I did last week: Where is the outrage? How come people aren’t as angry as I am that the government has seemed to swap one do-nothing, self-serving leader for another?
One of the greatest aspects of this country is our simple, safe, secure and on-time transition of power at all levels of government, from the highest office to the lowest. (Sorry, Mayor Giuliani!) The structure and order of the Republic is not only the envy of freedom seekers everywhere but the true bond that holds this country together. Yet we still elect and appoint people who laugh at the thing that put them in office in the first place.
I do not believe the current Secretary of the Treasury is the only person to lead us out of the economic weeds we find ourselves in, and now that I know that he’s someone who seems to be less then forthright about paying his taxes, I question his appointment even more. But what is a greater concern is that no one else besides Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity seem to be concerned that a Democratic Senate confirmed him by a vote of 60 – 34. Now we hear that the incoming Health and Human Services Secretary, a veteran of the Senate leadership, has also had problems paying his taxes on time.
The President said after the Treasury Secretary was sworn in that “We can’t waste a day” and that there has been “a devastating loss in trust and confidence” in the U.S. economy in the wake of the credit crisis and Wall Street woes. While this all may be true, I think the first way to restore trust and confidence, not only in the economy, but in the United States itself is to make sure that the people in power and the people these people appoint to powerful positions make sure to pay all the taxes they owe and pay them on time, the way the rest of us have to. Seems simple, right?
THINGS THAT DRIVE ME CRAZY!
Shocking as it may be, nothing else drove me crazy this past week. Again I am sure that this won’t last. Something surely will provide the right level of ire deemed necessary for these pages before the week is out.