Wonkette's take on Daschle - funny, and the best summary I've heard of this mess yet

[camera obscura]

Anybody who saw the Senate Minority Leader lose his seat in 2004 and then magically reappear in 2008 with a pair of snappy red glasses knows that Tom Daschle is a bit of a jackass. But little did we know he was a tax cheat who would blame his current woes on his accountant.

In a letter to his former Senate colleagues apologizing for not paying OH OVER A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS IN TAXES, Daschle writes:

When my accountant realized I would need to file amended returns, he suggested addressing another matter I had raised with him earlier in the year: whether the use of a car service offered to me by a close friend might be a tax issue. In December, my accountant advised me that it should be reported as imputed income in the amended returns.

So Daschle “raised the issue” earlier in the year and who knows, he might have been happy to pay this rather extravagant sum, but his accountant didn’t get around to “advising” him one way or the other until December. Silly accountant! What’s this person getting paid for?

The larger issue, of course, is this. Many of us, particularly those of us with some freelance income who have to file our own estimated taxes, spend a whole lot of time wondering if we are going to be wildly overpaid or underpaid, tax-wise, at the end of the year, and living in abject fear of audits and fines and the countless ways the IRS can make your life unpleasant if you do not pay your taxes.

And yet for jackasses like Daschle, it does not even occur to them to worry about this stuff. They feebly “raise the matter” with their accountant, and maybe some months later the accountant says, “Yes well perhaps you should pay these taxes if you want to be considered for this fancy government position.” What is so infuriating is not just the idea that people like Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle seem to think they are tax exempt; it’s that they live a life so blissfully free from worry about taxes.

Tom Daschle is not such an extraordinarily talented individual that he is the only human who can save American healthcare as the head of Health and Human Services. Indeed, the Republican vote on SCHIP shows that nobody can save American healthcare, because the votes aren’t there. Universal healthcare will never, ever happen, not even in the middle of our second Great Depression in which the streets will fill with millions of homeless indigents who lost their health care along with their jobs and are now perishing in the streets. So fuck it, Obama should cut Daschle loose and nominate, why not, YOUR MOM. She pays her taxes, right?

http://wonkette.com/405917/tom-daschle-throws-his-accountant-under-the-bus

[tavalon]

1. I hope she's wrong about Universal Health Care and rather than your mama,

Howzabout Howard Dean? No brainer, really.

[DURHAM D]

8. Neither Daschle -

or his soon to be boss have any interest in UHC. Also, Daschle has been working as a lobbyist/consultant on the wrong side of this issue for several years. He is a place holder for the next 4 or 8 years - nothing is supposed to change.

Also, John Kerry said last year that UHC is dead on arrival in the Congress.

Howard Dean is a good suggestion but he will never be considered for the job - he has the opposite agenda of the current administration.

[tavalon]

10. See, here's the thing that might push this administration to go UHC whether they want to or not

In other countries, when people lose their jobs, it's bad, but they still have health care. We have health care tied to our jobs so as people start losing their jobs here (started already, we're hemorrhaging jobs) more and more people will have no health care and that will be an added problem and that might, might, might open the window. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I'm more typing it to be heard.

I want Dean dammit!

[karynnj]

14. You are misquoting John Kerry - he said that he and Ted Kennedy thought mandates

(where adults were required to buy health insurance) was dead on arrival. Obama did not include mandates and Kerry was there as a surrogate. (Kerry, in his own plan in 2004, did not have a mandate - just access to universal care - which was FAR more than Edwards 2004, which just covered kids. In 2006, in his Faneuil Hall speech that would have been one of the 5 speeches backing a 2008 run - his plan had a mandate, but one that would NOT be put in place immediately - but at a point in the future. This was because it would kill the plans chance of being passed initially - so even though he was speaking as a surrogate - it was what he believed.)

This is a return to the primaries - where Obama not having a mandate led HRC and Edwards to say his plan was not universal. (EE went further and lied on the night before the Iowa caucus saying that Obama's plan did not cover pre-conditions.)

[DURHAM D]

21. Who is misquoting?

UHC requires mandates
No mandates = No UHC

And further more, without UHC we will never have single payer.

[karynnj]

24. That is YOUR definition - and as was said in the primaries - under all plans there would not be 100%

coverage. Car insurance is mandated - are their drivers and cars without any? No one ever was willing to answer what the penalty would be or how people would be forced to take a plan.

What Obama spoke of was universal access to healthcare. In addition, you can get to single payer from an Obama (or Kerry) like plan as easily as from a Clinton like plan that everyone is madated to get.

Now, how could Kerry's 2004 plan have morphed to single payer? Consider what the re-insurance of catastrophic costs look like and here is a scenario. In 2004, Kerry proposed re-insurance of catastrophic costs by the government to pay costs above $50,000. This would reduce insurance costs for everyone even when the cost of the two pieces are added. This would help small businesses and other small groups that currently see rates sky rocket as soon as an employee has large costs. The reason it lowers costs overall is that that piece is single payer. Assume this would have passed - and the savings that economists on the left and right thought would happen, happened. I would bet someone could suggest that we could get another chunk of savings by lowering the threshold. Over time, the threshold could go as low as $5000 - reaching a point where it becomes close to the deductible that is in some plans now. At that point, it would be the de facto insurance and it would be single payer. The other part would be in essence like the dental plans we have which are really pre-paid basic health services.

(As I noted, in his 2006 Faneuil Hall speech - before either Edwards' or Clinton's plans, Kerry did say that there ultimately would have to be a mandate. But not because otherwise it would not be single payer or universal - but because there is a need not to have the costs of the uninsured patients without resources spread over all other patients. He proposed giving everyone access first - because that was more important and was more likely to pass.

[nichomachus]

2. I usually do my own taxes

and I've never had a problem. One year, I had a more complicated return and was pressed for time, so I hired an accountant. He fucked it up three different ways -- including mailing my return in a envelope with no address and no return address. I found out five months later when the PO finally opened the dead letter, saw what it was, and sent it back to me.

Also, the government recalculated my return and decided that they owed me twice what the accountant had figured.

[stopbush]

3. Sounds like you had a bad accountant.

I stopped doing my own taxes in 1998 or so. Since then, I've hired accountants and they all seem very adept at finding deductions I'd have missed. I always get a decent return (don't know about this year, though).

To me, it's worth the couple of hundred dollars they get as a fee. Peace of mind comes from having all the t's crossed and i's dotted.

[nichomachus]

6. I find that Turbo Tax does that just as well.

[Old Codger]

4. These people

They just spend tax money they don't pay it...

[Peace Patriot]

5. My mother could do more for health care than anybody in Congress--and she's dead!

THROW DIEBOLD & ALL 'TRADE SECRET' VOTING MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR' NOW!

Really. We will soon see universal health if we do.

Communing with my mom's spirit, I have only her quote of FDR to convey to the living: "Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!" (--Franklin Delano Roosevelt).

[joeglow3]

7. I need to move to DC

Seriously, I bust my tail as a tax accountant. Apparently, in DC, all accountants are stupid, lazy and treat their clients like crap and get away with it.

[AtomicKitten]

9. IMO the Daschle nomination is political payback and the zippy red glasses don't persuade otherwise.

Daschle helped Obama gain his sea legs when he first came to the Senate and Obama hired Daschle's COS when he was defeated. I think Daschle could very easily be replaced by a better, more deserving candidate.

[GeorgeGist]

11. Ummm...

Daschle was defeated in the same year, 2004, that Obama was elected to the Senate. I guess Tom was on shore given Barack directions.

[AtomicKitten]

12. Daschle was instrumental in his transition to the Senate

with Obama coapting his staff in the process.

The ties run deeper than perhaps you realize:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/11/deep-ties-obama-ran-dasch_n_150233.html

[karynnj]

16. There was no overlap between Daschle and Obama

Daschle lost in 2004 and Obama won in 2004. That was why Daschle's excellent staff was available. This was a huge boon to Obama because it immediately gave him many very experienced people. (He also got Jon Favreau at that point as a speech writer who had worked on the Kerry campaign.)

Daschle was a very early advocate for Obama for President. I think though that it was not just a payback. I think like the Rahm Emanuel pick (which I hate), it was picking a politician who had experience leading and dealing with one of the houses of Congress. He comes in to the job already knowing exactly what moves a very large percent of the Senate. Kennedy and Baucus and their staffs and the rest of the their committees will be instrumental in writing a bill that can pass - Daschle knows both well.

[AtomicKitten]

18. I don't think I conveyed nor did I mean to convey there was an overlap of service

just that Daschle was instrumental to Obama in the transition. I do agree that Obama struck a goldmine by hiring his experienced staff to help show him the ropes of Congress.

My point is their relationship goes back further than some think (see other response to my original post); they didn't just meet in 2004.

[karynnj]

19. Sorry - I misread it - and I agree with you that Daschle was

very much a mentor - I had known that they knew each other before 2004, but hadn't known the extent. Like with the Geitner issue, I just wish that he had been more diligent on his taxes - and it really is an issue that his wife is a lobbyists - as well as the fact that he has made so much money from the health care industry. (I liked Daschle and always liked seeing him on talk shows - stating Democratic positions quietly and calmly.

[AtomicKitten]

22. I didn't anticipate that the sticking point on the nominees would be taxes.

Daschle has some connections to the healthcare industry that could be construed as unseemly. I guess for that reason, if he were placed anywhere I would prefer it not be HHS. But I would expect Obama to have mulled it over carefully before making the nomination, so it probably will be fine.

[karynnj]

23. I hope so

Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman were also speaking of a different potential problem with a company that Daschle has been associated with the deals with education - this is something I hadn't heard elsewhere so I will take it with a grain of salt. (especially because Matthews took a Democrat's comment that the nomination could still be done --- as negative. :crazy: (It is also getting annoying that these same talking heads really didn't question truly awful Bush nominees.

[avaistheone1]

13. Yuck, More proof Daschle is an embarassing whore.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/01/daschle/index.html

[genna]

15. If Daschle can do the job and has to catch up his taxes, then so be it

Everyone has to pay the IRS. Either when they are supposed to by April 15th every year or when they seek higher office or whenever. We all need to pay our way.

If we want perfect public servants, then we are truly living in a dream world. Why not go back to the Bushies and let them come to government without any outward marks, then let them do any bad thing they want after they are in office. It is a false choice, but do we have to complain about every thing that doesn't suit us?

[avaistheone1]

17. We don't expect perfect....Daschle problem is that he is a sell-out to the health care industry.

Why would Obama want to put in heckofjobDaschle in? He is a K Street whore. Pure and simple.

[genna]

25. Let me put it this way: Obama has been more than willing to deal with lobbyist

He has put the selection of lobbyist in certain limits. At some point, Obama's standard has been swayed by who can get the most out of their position.

Earlier I said: It is a false choice, but do we have to complain about every thing that doesn't suit us?


You've called lobbyists, corporate whores. If their best contribution is that they know how to service their client the best, who else has these talents who worked on the Hill as the majority leader? Who else has the favors owed to them that Daschle does?


I like Dean as a cabinet head. HHS suits me just fine. He or any other reformer will have personality clashes and pay backs on the Hill from lawmakers without even trying to push through health care reform. He will have the same types of grudges that Rahm Emanuel inspires from Republicans.


I think Obama should fight the good fight and if he said he was going to lead a certain way that he should do what he said. The way he has erected his chess board and the pieces he has put into place tells me that he wants the oncoming fights to be the substance, not the chess pieces.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

20. I will never forget how he and Gephardt rolled over and let the Repukes

fuck them and this country in the ass after 911, the invasion of a sovereign Iraq, and the Patriot Act.

I will never forget the smirk on his face and he watched himself lose on Election Night 2004. Why the fuck was he smiling? He was getting his ass kicked left and right!!