First Britain, then France, now Italy:
Personnel issue #1 (for today):Michael Ledeen noted this blunder by President Barack Obama earlier this week. Obama promised to improve relations with our allies if elected to the White House. Unfortunately, it appears Obama understands multi-party democracies as well as his Secretary of State:
He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would work together "to overcome the current global political and economic hardships and build a safer world." The only problem with the letter was that the Italian president does not make policy; that power resides with the prime minister and his cabinet. Perhaps the White House czars have issued an ukaz stipulating that the American president writes only to his peers, and thus instead of addressing himself to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama wrote to a man who holds an almost entirely ceremonial position.
Personnel issue #2 (for today):Another high-ranking official in the Obama administration has had to leave his position, and in this case, one has to wonder how he got the job in the first place. Scott Polakoff, the top bank regulator for the Treasury, has taken a leave of absence after internal audits uncovered his allowance of backdated capital infusions, which could amount to cooking the books for IndyMac and other institutions. But the OTS chief had also been responsible for regulating AIG as well (via The Boss):
The acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision has been put on leave pending a review of the agency's role in the backdating of capital infusions by some banks, the agency said Thursday evening.
OTS said in a surprise statement that Scott Polakoff, who has been serving as acting director of the OTS, would be replaced by OTS Chief Counsel John Bowman during the review by the Treasury Department.
The OTS, a division of the Treasury Department, has come under fire after it was revealed last year that the agency had allowed IndyMac Bancorp Inc. (IDMCQ) to backdate a May 2008 $18 million capital infusion to the first quarter. IndyMac failed a few months later, a collapse that cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $10.7 billion, the costliest failure in U.S. history.
A subsequent review of the issue by the OTS uncovered four other cases of backdating by banks, cases which the agency said in a January letter to U.S. lawmakers "were not acceptable to current OTS standards." Allowing the banks to backdate capital infusions to earlier quarters could allow firms to avoid regulatory penalties for having too little capital.
Personnel issue #3 (for today):Barack Obama may have trouble getting his #2 at Treasury confirmed, and not necessarily from Republicans. Neal Wolin worked on the Treasury team that drafted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd blame for the economic meltdown. From the Left, Greg Sargent has noticed the connection, but has begun rehabilitating the legislation:
Tim Geithner's new nominee for number two at the Treasury Department, Neal Wolin, played a key role in drafting legislation in the late 1990s deregulating the banking system, a former Treasury Department official confirms to us.
The law that Wolin helped draft has been blamed by some critics for easing up regulatory pressure on huge financial institutions, tangentially helping create today's mess — and his role drafting it could come under questioning at his upcoming confirmation hearings.
Our reporter, Ryan Derousseau, came across Wolin's role in researching our big profile of Wolin at WhoRunsGov.com. Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, confirmed that as Treasury's general council at the time, Wolin "provided the technical and legal drafting" for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
As Ryan writes, the Act hasn't been directly blamed for today's meltdown. But it did pave the way for the birth of huge financial companies like Citigroup that were deemed "too big to fail" when their mortgage bets went belly-up and the credit market evaporated. The government, of course, had to bail out these institutions with billions in taxpayer dollars.
You might have seen this earlier today...
Remember, [Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas] was the "safe" choice for HHS after Daschle got dinged for — that's right — not paying his taxes.Then again, maybe back taxes are just a pure Democrat thing:By CBS's count, this is the sixth nominee to have tax trouble. Yes, really.
In the letter, which was sent to senators and dated today, Sebelius wrote that she had made changes related to charitable contributions, business expenses and the sale of a home, according to the AP.
The wire service reports that she and her husband paid just over $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest, for the years 2005-2007…
On the charitable contributions front, she writes that she could not locate three acknowledgment letters out of her 49 charitable contributions in excess of $250, and thus eliminated those three deductions.
She also writes that she had "insufficient documentation" for some of her tax dedications for business expenses, though because of the Alternative Minimum Tax they did not affect the amount owed. She also said she mistakenly paid off a home loan that included deductable mortgage interest.
D.C. Council member Marion Barry owes the federal government more than $277,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties and has failed in six recent months to make scheduled payments on taxes owed the D.C. government, according to federal authorities.
Anyway, moving on...
Lie #1 (for today):
Lie #2 (for today):What a difference a day makes …
Thursday, March 26: "I'm not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money."
The Obama administration is planning billions in new assistance to Pakistan, yet the record of previous U.S. military and development aid to the strife-torn Muslim country has been marred by a lack of accountability and transparency, according to government reports. …
The only two audits of U.S. development aid to Pakistan in recent years, by the U.S. Agency for International Development's inspector general, found significant problems. Record-keeping in an $83 million education reform program was so inadequate that auditors could not say whether any good was achieved. An effort to rebuild schools and health clinics in an area devastated by a 2005 earthquake was found to be years behind schedule.
Lie #3 (for today):Before President Barack Obama took office he promised to:
not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.
In just his first week in the White House, Obama broke this promise twice signing both Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and Medicare expansion bill without posting the bill for five day comment.
Today, Obama will break his promise to the American people yet again, this time by signing the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. There is no way that anyone of these three bills could possibly be considered an emergency. All three are clear broken promises by the Obama Administration.
The Wall Street Journal's Review and Outlook explains how Obama's first budget resurrects the death tax sooner than you think:
The President's budget calls for the largest increase in the death tax in U.S. history in 2010.
The announcement of this tax increase is buried in footnote 1 on page 127 of the President's budget. That note reads: "The estate tax is maintained at its 2009 parameters." This means the death tax won't fall to zero next year as scheduled under current law, but estates will be taxed instead at up to 45%, with an exemption level of $3.5 million (or $7 million for a couple). Better not plan on dying next year after all.
But it's not just Obama. It's apparently contagious to those around him, too.
Hillary "Smarter Policy" Clinton first gaffed on Russia, then Europe...now it's Mexico's turn:
Demonstrating that Amateur Hour continues at the State Department, Hillary Clinton managed to display an amazing degree of ignorance while making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico yesterday afternoon. While viewing the famous image of Mary as a native peasant that Mexicans believe was divinely created, Hillary asked — well, you have to read the story:Welcome to the Era of Obama, where HOPE! and CHANGE! reign supreme.During her recent visit to Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers "on behalf of the American people," after asking who painted the famous image.
The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary's eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image's lack of decay.
Mrs. Clinton was received on Thursday at 8:15 a.m. by the rector of the Basilica, Msgr. Diego Monroy.
Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.
After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked "who painted it?" to which Msgr. Monroy responded "God!"
Who painted it? Didn't anyone brief Hillary on the history of the Guadalupe apparition? As it turns out, no one should have had to brief the Secretary of State. She told the Monsignor that she had visited once before, thirty years ago. She must have thought it was just a good place to take tourist pictures.
There's my two cents.
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