Governor Kathleen Sebelius' Tax Missteps, and How Insignificant They Are, Relatively Speaking.

I'm gonna just run out in front of this and say that the first person to criticize Governor Sebelius for having inadvertently left certain taxes go unpaid between 2005 and 2007 had better be awfully careful.  For instance, I'd like very much to hear that person take responsibility for having, possibly, also made errors when completing their annual tax forms, and even be willing to have those tax records pored over with tooth and lice comb to determine that they are, indeed, blameless as they currently assume they are, as they busily, eagerly cast red-herring-shaped stones at the Democrats being placed currently by the Obama administration.

See, I just did my family's taxes for the year a few weeks ago, using the H&R Block software available at the local Target, the one created for people who work and have an at-home business.  And, despite my very best intentions, I screwed up.  After working for several hours running on all of the tedious details, I pressed the send button and hey, presto!, the IRS assumed I'd done right by my numbers, as had I, and they approved of what I sent.  Only I realized later that evening where I'd screwed up, and in the morning, I went back and fixed the glitch.  So now I'm in the process of having to amend my returns, both federal and state, in order to pay them back for my mistake.  One mistake, and it took the return I was supposed to receive from both fed and state combined down by a few thousand dollars.  It was such a dumb move, and all I had to do to avoid it was not push the send button until I'd slept on the thing.  But that isn't what I'm trying to say.  What I'm saying is, dude.  I made a mistake.  It's ridiculously simple to do with taxes, even if someone else prepares them (which I'm assuming is true in the case of the Governor, who's already pretty busy being a Governor).  She had no intention of making these mistakes, any more than you or I do when we prepare our own taxes, due to the need to save the money we would spend on hiring someone else to prepare them, or through the hiring of someone else, someone who has been referred to us because they are competent and capable and there's a string of seemingly inscrutable letters after their name signifying their capacity to manage the taxes (mostly) without error.

But here's the thing that really matters: people who make mistakes on their taxes through honest intentions generally are found owing, give or take, a few thousand bucks.  Because it was an oops.  An error.  A miscalculation, made because the tax preparer is not perfect.

People who hire the brilliant scam-artists who know their way in, out, through, over and around the tax laws, are more loop-hole savant than anything else, are intent on cheating the government (and their fellow tax-payers) out of what they owe.  And it isn't in the thousands-of-dollars range.  Nuh-uh.  It's in the millions.  At least.

(Well, and there are plenty of examples to point to in the recent Republican-run Congress regarding people who absconded with millions of dollars in taxpayer money that didn't even come to them as a result of loopholes.  Nay, they did other things, like make shady deals with government-funded contractors.  Etc.  Deals involving millions upon MILLIONS of dollars.  Taxpayer dollars.  And I won't even touch on how their loosening of, and dismembering of, laws created to protect homeowners and the banking system and the taxpayers, caused the current financial maelstrom we're grappling with, the situation that earned some shady monsters billions upon BILLIONS, while the rest of us poor saps are trying to keep our forty-grand-a-year -- if we're lucky -- jobs.  Yeah.  Pointing fingers would be easy.)

This is not that.  And I would like very much to see the Governor not being given the run-around by those members of the media who are prone to aiming at creating discord for discord's sake, and instead be allowed to gracefully take on her new role as HHS Secretary.  She's got quite enough to manage in that capacity without being challenged stupidly, for the purpose of a media whirlwind and the ensuing ratings-fest, by the moronic, imbecilic partakers of such.

Even though I know I'm wasting my breath in hoping they'll drop this.  Even though I'm aware of how this sort of thing will play out, I can't help wishing the throwers of clay, shaped-and-painted-to-look-like-red-meat, would recognize how they lower our discourse.  The disservice they do to people, not just the ones in our nation, but people everywhere, solely for their own, miniscule fifteen-minute feast.

It's a damn shame.

In Other News This Week: Science (or not), Mountaintop mining (or not), and (no 'ors' here) Flournoy takes Afghan point, and Sebelius confirmation hearing and HHS Conscience Rule recension moving forward

In other news you may have missed this week:

• Texas narrowly avoids a quick trip to the dark ages when three Republican and four Democrat members of the Texas State Board of Education barely defeated seven socially conservative Republicans attempt to require science classes to teach evolution "weaknesses"
• Two Senators introduced legislation to ban mountaintop mining in their Appalachia Restoration Act
• NPR's Morning Edition reported that, "The point person for the new Afghanistan strategy at the Pentagon is Michele Flournoy, a well-respected analyst who worked in the Clinton administration and is now undersecretary for policy."
• Daily Women's Health Policy report says to watch for HHS Secretary-Designate Sebelius' confirmation hearing next week and read the Christian Science Monitor examination of Obama's plan to rescind HHS Provider 'Conscience' Rule

Read on for more details!

READ IT! Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama: A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

In case you missed the press conference this morning or want to review the comments in more detail, MOMocrats has the transcript of President Obama's speech about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and his administration's strategy going forward:

Good morning. Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office. My Administration has heard from our military commanders and diplomats. We have consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments; with our partners and NATO allies; and with other donors and international organizations. And we have also worked closely with members of Congress here at home. Now, I’d like to speak clearly and candidly to the American people.

The situation is increasingly perilous. It has been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks against our troops, our NATO allies, and the Afghan government have risen steadily. Most painfully, 2008 was the deadliest year of the war for American forces.

Health Reform: Sputter, Sputter, Stop?

 This is a hellacious week for many folks inside the Washington Beltway: budget resolution time. On Wednesday, the House and Senate Budget Committees started marking up -- Hill-speak for editing -- the FY2010 budget resolutions.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, "said he would leave out new spending for Obama's proposed expansion of health care coverage, a program likely to cost in excess of $1 trillion over the next 10 years, as well as the president's proposal to make permanent an $800 tax credit for working families. Lawmakers would be free to adopt those policies as long as they did not increase the deficit, Conrad said."

What does that mean exactly? Well, it means that any spending for health care reform -- for the program itself, to support workforce shortages, to improve infrastructure for health IT, etc. -- would have to be completely offset; that is, by a tax increase or spending cuts equal to the entire cost.

Now, the House is taking a different approach. They are piking the bipartisan approach and going for health reform via a budget reconciliation (BR) provision. BR was created in the 70s to rejigger spending or taxes within the budget resolution. Clinton used it in 1993 to raise fuel taxes and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit; Bush used it to pass his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

So why is the budget reconciliation regarded as partisan?

I Object! Why I Just Cannot Get Behind the Treasury Dept. Bank Bailout Plan

In this photo: Citizens square off against police during a protest of capitalism in Denver. Is more of this coming? (Photo by MOMocrat Lawyermama.)

Wall Street may have ecstatically reacted to the Treasury plan announcement yesterday, but, as a resident of Main Street, I did not. And it appears that even Wall Street has realized that it perhaps got a little too euphoric yesterday with that brief average of 6.9% rise (Dow and NASDAQ gained 6.8% and S&P 500 gained 7.1%) and has reapplied its bear mask. While that may appear to be a minuscule rise, consider that it is the largest rise since the economy so-called crashed.

I say so-called crashed because if I am very honest, I will say I saw this coming a decade ago, and I think Wall Street might actually be learning its lesson about adrenaline rush cause+effect actions.

Am I an economic expert? Financial whiz? Wizard with magic ball?

In my own life, yes I am, and my personal financial and economic standing caused me to start asking some serious questions starting around 2000. What happened then to give rise to the questions that lead me to believe we were on the verge of a serious problem?

Obama Administration takes next step in global credit stabilization endeavor

"Treasury Proposes Plan To Purge 'Toxic Assets'," explains Scott Neuman at NPR, "The Obama administration launched its latest initiative to stabilize global credit markets Monday, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiling a $1 trillion plan to bring the government and private investors together to absorb banks' toxic assets and jumpstart new lending."

I went over to financialstability.gov---just one the new administrations open access/transparency in government initiatives---to follow up on what this plan entails, and to treas.gov to follow-up on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

In short, the new Public Private Investment Program (see Fact Sheet here), to quote Neuman, ". . .is a plan to expand the new Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to start the Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets — a partnership to acquire the bad loans. TALF would buy the loans from banks and then bundle them into privately administered investment funds that would be partially guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp."

My inbox is happily engorged with emails from various experts and spokespeople for this issue. I have been busy chewing and digesting on this news all day.

I'm left with two major concerns:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Even More Amazing Than You Thought

ETA: The EARLY Act is H.R. 1740. It has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a powerhouse. She was elected to Congress at 38 and is already a cardinal – so called because she chairs one of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittees. She raised a staggering $17 million for her party during the 2006 elections – third only to Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel. She's also a mother of three. When does she sleep?

But this morning I was even more amazed at her ability to juggle her intensely demanding roles. I opened my email to learn that Rep. Wasserman Schultz was sponsoring the Breast Cancer Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act -- the EARLY Act (so new it doesn't yet have a bill number). OK, no big surprise there – the congresswoman has always been a big advocate for women's health.

No, the surprise was that over the past year, while managing to mother, legislate, and travel to support Democratic candidates, she endured seven major surgeries, including a double mastectomy, oophrectomy, and reconstructive surgery, after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

You can watch her interview with Robin Roberts – also a breast cancer survivor – on Good Morning America right here.

Go Read It: AIG, TARP, and "The Big Takeover," in Rolling Stone

So AIG had "no idea" being leveraged 30:1 was beyond risky. The assumption was that housing prices would rise forever. Assume all those home loans that formed the basis for CDOs and SIVs and other derivatives were all soundly documented and from buyers who'd been qualified properly. Assume there was no predatory lending. Assume all business was conducted above-board.

Two narratives for the American public to choose from: stupid, or criminal?

I'm over stupid. Stupid =AIG, we were victims of bad economic luck. I've moved on to criminal. Criminal=AIG, we had all the data, mathematical models, auditable books to tell us this would blow up, and we kept all those bits that created bad economic luck for everyone else hidden as long as we could.

Criminal, as in, who at AIG knew better, and when?

Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market [emphasis mine].

"The Big Takeover," by Matt Taibibi, Rolling Stone magazine.

Criminal, as in, instead of BAILING your ass, AIG, we should be JAILING your ass.

Where are the indictments? The subpoenas? I'd like to see what the Attorneys General of NY, CT, and DE produce. The DOJ. The UK's Serious Fraud Office.

And then, I want to see some claw-back, BIG TIME.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k. She keeps her pitchfork near.

Dear Democrats: On AIG, Quit Gnashing Your Teeth. Start Doing Your Jobs.

No, seriously.

I've seen you on TV this week, outragedly expressing your outrage about the outrageous outrage that is the outrageous AIG bonus payout.

All that outrage sure makes for good populist theater. But that's what it is, isn't it? Theater.

Because the fact is, you should have seen this coming.

Bush, Paulson and Bernanke may have been the ones behind the notorious TARP Part One, the taxpayer-funded bailout that handed out no-strings-attached cash to failing financial firms like a lonely grandma passing out Halloween candy. The application for the Bush version of TARP required less information from floundering banks that had publicly admitted risky behavior than I, as a fairly responsible private citizen, would have to provide in order to secure a Victoria's Secret credit card.  

UN Statement on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity”

This? Is very good news. Such a brief press release for such a momentous thing. I am extremely happy to see this statement, but a little part of me remains appalled that it needs to be said at all. Still, it has been said. The reign has ended.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Office of the Spokesman

For Immediate Release                                                                                    March 18, 2009

2009/233

Statement by Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman

UN Statement on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity”

The United States supports the UN Statement on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity,” and is pleased to join the other 66 UN member states who have declared their support of this Statement that condemns human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity wherever they occur.

The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world. As such, we join with the other supporters of this Statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora.

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