Corruption, Katrina, Congress, Tax Cheats, And Waste (yeah, I know some of those were redundant)

Here are several quick hits that you might want to know about.

Democrats shed the 'culture of corruption' campaign slogan

The Obama administration and the new Congress are quickly handing over to Republicans the same "culture of corruption" issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.

Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., is only the latest embarrassment. Senate Democrats accepted Burris because they believed what he told them: He was clean. Burris now admits he tried to raise money for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who authorities say sought to sell President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.

The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn't Burris' conduct alone; it's the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.

- The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is the subject of a House ethics investigation. It's partly focused on his fundraising practices for a college center in his name, his ownership financing of a resort property in the Dominican Republic and his financial disclosure reports.

- Federal agents raided two Pennsylvania defense contractors that were provided millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

- Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9 on federal charges, including allegations he schemed to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder.

- Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, abandoned his bid to become health and human services secretary and the administration's point man on reforming health care; and Nancy Killefer stepped down from a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs.

Both Daschle and Killefer had tax problems, and Daschle also faced potential conflicts of interest related to working with health care interests.

- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed after revealing he had tax troubles.

- Obama's initial choice for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, stepped aside due to a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.

- While the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary, Obama had to waive his ethics regulations to place the former defense lobbyist in charge of day-to-day operations at the Pentagon.

Pretty impressive when you put them all together in one list, isn't it?  It's that much more impressive when you put this into the context of Pelosi's 2006 pledge to be the 'most ethical Congress in history'.  I think this would only be a surprise to people who have Kool-Aid stains on their cheeks, but it's still good to remind everyone of who really embodies the culture of corruption.

The specter of Hurricane Katrina

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there's no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative.

Well, of course they are...! 

Even the Gulf's fiercest advocates say they're happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs...

It's a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf's needs years later.

Just last summer, Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. Bush was pilloried for not mentioning the disaster in back-to-back State of the Union addresses.

Isn't it amazing how Republicans who claimed there had already been enough money sent to New Orleans were soundly lambasted by liberals and the media (sorry for the redundancy)?  Now, however, when Democrats are in charge, there's suddenly enough money down there already, and everything's cool?  Hmmm...

Going after tax cheaters

Switzerland fought on Thursday to defend a landmark decision allowing bank giant UBS to transfer client data to the United States in a tax settlement that experts say will dilute bank secrecy laws.

UBS, the world's biggest bank to the rich, agreed late on Wednesday to pay a hefty $780 million fine and disclose the identity of some clients after U.S. investigators accused it of helping wealthy Americans to dodge taxes. The deal had the blessing of the government and the financial regulator.

Okay, so let's get this straight.  Obama pushes the world-renowned Swiss banking secrecy to try to nail rich tax-dodgers...but tries to appoint multiple rich tax dodgers to his own Cabinet?!  Is anyone else seeing the irony here?  Oh, by the way, piercing this veil of secrecy could destroy the Swiss banking industry, presumably costing thousands of jobs in the process.  Not that Obama cares about jobs, of course. 

Who needs Congress?

Perhaps the most striking thing about Obama's proposed housing plan is this nugget from The New York Times: "Except for the provision that empowers bankruptcy judges, almost all of the other elements can be enacted by Mr. Obama without further action by Congress." 

How have we gotten to the point where hundreds of billions of dollars can be spent and major initiatives undertaken merely on presidential whim? Answer: Congress has delegated so much power to the executive branch that the old rules we learned in high-school civics are now null and void. Those old rules, remember, held that the legislature made laws and the president executed laws. Now, Congress routinely delegates massive amounts of broad law-making authority to the president in order to avoid responsibility for anything. For a book-length treatment of this, see David Schoenbrod's Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation. 

As Montesquieu once wrote, "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty."

And this:

Jerry, it is instructive to note that in the UK, the powers the executive gets via delegation from the legislature are called "Henry VIII Powers," after the monarch who strong-armed Parliament into starting off this practice. I suspect it is one of those practices the Founding Fathers found so abhorrent that they saw no need to prohibit it in the Constitution, as no self-respecting American legislature would do it. Unfortunately, now when we need it spelled out constitutionally it is exactly the time when such an amendment would have no chance of success, so useful does Congress find the practice.

Show of hands for anyone who thinks you should keep your current Senators or Representative...?  Unless you know for certain, 100%, iron-clad, hardcore know you've got a good one...VOTE. THEM. OUT.

Another futile aspect of the mortgage bailout

One of the most important things to note about the new Obama forclosure plan is that we know it won't work as advertised. As John Berlau points out here, people who have their loans modified to help them out actually redefault for the most part. The latest figures indicate that 36% redefault after just three months, and by eight months it's almost 60%. There is no evidence to suggest that this new mortgage restructuring plan will be any more successful. In that respect, Obama is doing just what he said he wouldn't do, throwing good money after bad. Moreover, by delaying the "clean break" that foreclosure actually represents, the plan actually subsidizes harm with taxpayer money.

A turd generally gets nastier with prolonged exposure, and this one is no different.

Tracking stimulus waste

The AP reports that "Republicans are preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending" in the stimulus package.

House Republicans are setting up "a stimulus-watch program" that will allow watchdog groups and private citizens to report findings as contractors and agencies start spending billions of dollars on roads, schools, renewable energy projects and other initiatives, said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor.

"We'll be taking a look in detail" and "really providing accountability and transparency," Cantor said in an interview Wednesday.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement: "House Republicans are concerned about the potential for abuse of taxpayer funds in the massive trillion-dollar spending bill that the president signed into law this week. ... We will remain vigilant in our oversight efforts."

Some Republican lawmakers and aides say that even relatively small examples of spending abuse will feed conservative talk shows and fuel criticism of the plan's implementation, just as a handful of dubious items in the bill helped House Republicans mock it and stay united against it. Only three Senate Republicans voted for the bill, giving it the minimum needed for passage.

This is a smart move by Cantor, Boehner, and Co. The White House has launched a website that is supposed to allow people to track how stimulus funds are spent, but I suspect the GOP will do a better job of finding wasteful spending. After all, the White House hasn't exactly done a great job of finding tax errors of administration appointees.

At least someone inside the GOP has a brain and some guts!  Of course, the Democrats have shown zero reluctance to lie, cheat, and deceive, so I suspect the GOP has their work cut out for them in terms of actually tracking all of this.  Still, this should be interesting to watch, and could be an invaluable tool in about 18 months.

There's my two cents.