Internet Scofflaw

Nancy Pelosi:

Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs.

At that pace, unemployment would hit 100% in eight days.

Rasmussen reports that public support for the stimulus package has fallen into negative territory.  The public now opposes the measure by a 43-37 margin.  Public support has fallen steadily since Rasmussen began polling the issue on Inauguration Day.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

If Christopher Dodd (D-CT) were innocent of wrongdoing regarding his “Friends of Angelo” Countrywide mortgage, he could clear his name whenever he wants by releasing the documents.  More than six months ago, he pledged to do just that.  But, for reasons that remain unclear (unclear, that is, if he’s innocent), he hasn’t done so.  His recent decision to give up the mortgage did little to quell the pressure, particularly since interest rates being now near historic lows means it costs him very little to do so.

So, Dodd is trying a new tack.  He allowed a few journalists to see the documents (over 100 pages of them), but only for a few minutes and they were not permitted to make copies.  Moreover, no journalists from the Washington D.C. beat were among the selected few.

Is this how innocent people behave?

(Via Instapundit.)

The London Times reports:

The European Union warned the US yesterday against plunging the world into depression by adopting a planned “Buy American” policy, intensifying fears of a trade war.

The EU threatened to retaliate if the US Congress went ahead with sweeping measures in its $800 billion (£554 billion) stimulus plan to restrict spending to American goods and services. . .

Last night Mr Obama gave a strong signal that he would remove the most provocative passages from the Bill.

“I agree that we can’t send a protectionist message,” he said in an interview with Fox TV. “I want to see what kind of language we can work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade.”

(Via the Corner.)

A rise in protectionism would have been the worst thing that could happen at this juncture.  We’ve seen where that goes.  President Obama gets credit for playing the grown-up.  Sooner would have been better, but this was soon enough to avert a crisis.  On the other hand, there seems to be no limit to the fecklessness of Congressional Democrats.  Do these fools study history at all?

It’s not just Republicans that are upset about being shut out of crafting legislation:

A group of more than 50 House Democrats has penned a letter to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) imploring him to “restore this institution” and see that the House returns to a “regular order” process of legislating.

The letter, signed by a large number of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition and the centrist New Democratic Coalition, has not yet been sent. Members are still gathering signatures in an effort to send the strongest signal possible to all top House Democrats that the caucus is up in arms over the top-down method of legislating employed by Democrats since late last year. . .

Since last year, many senior House Democrats — many of them subcommittee chairmen — have grown overly frustrated with how only small and select bands of legislators have been responsible for writing bills, such as the $700 billion Wall Street bailout as well as much of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill.

Democratic leaders have acknowledged that the “regular order” process of methodically developing and writing bills in subcommittees and committees has been abandoned recently. But they have defended the handling of such sensitive and important legislation by only an exclusive group of leadership and senior lawmakers as a necessary tactic during exceptional times.

(Via Hot Air.)

Ah yes, exceptional times.  Aren’t they always.

President Obama’s pledge to bar lobbyists from his administration has been shown to be a complete fraud:

President Obama promised during his campaign that lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House.”

So far, though, at least a dozen former lobbyists have found top jobs in his administration, according to an analysis done by Republican sources and corroborated by Politico.

Obama aides did not challenge the the list of lobbyists appointed to administration jobs, but they stressed that former lobbyists comprise a fraction of the more than 8,000 employees who will be hired by the new administration. And they pointed out that before Obama made his campaign-trail promise, he issued a more complete – and more nuanced – policy on former lobbyists.

Formalized in a recent presidential executive order, it forbids executive branch employees from working in an agency, or on a program, for which they have lobbied in the last two years.

Yet in the past few days, a number of exceptions have been granted, with the administration conceding at least two waivers and that a handful of other appointees will recuse themselves from dealing with matters on which they lobbied within the two-year window.

(Emphasis mine.) (Via Hot Air.)

Full list (as of today) at the link.

I suppose this is largely moot now that Daschle has withdrawn his nomination, but it turns out that he still hasn’t paid all his back taxes:

It became clear on Monday that Mr. Daschle was responsible for thousands of dollars in additional unpaid taxes related to his use of the car service, even after already paying $140,000 in taxes and interest. He has acknowledged that he owes Medicare taxes equal to 2.9 percent of the personal value of the car service he received from Leo Hindery Jr., a big Democratic donor and founder of a private equity firm to which Mr. Daschle was an adviser. Mr. Daschle’s failure to pay Medicare taxes on the income was discovered by the Finance Committee.

(Via the Corner.)

A new Gallup poll shows that support for the stimulus package has slipped further.  Although most still want some kind of stimulus package passed, 54% reject the current bill.  Only 38% support it, down from a majority just one week ago.

Another Gallup poll shows that Americans oppose President Obama’s first two executive orders.  By a 58-35 margin, Americans oppose his order reversing the Mexico City policy, thereby allowing the government to spend money for abortions abroad.  And, by a 50-44 margin, Americans oppose his order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.  The latter result is despite enormous positive response from the media.

Nevertheless, the President’s job approval has weakened only slightly, and stands at 66%.

Over the last couple of weeks, Vice-President Biden has treated us to an inconsequential but amusing soap opera.  He first mocked Chief Justice Roberts for flubbing President Obama’s oath of office, then apologized, then denied that he apologized.  Today, in a hilarious coda to the story, Biden flubbed the oath of office for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Oh geez.  This is getting silly:

Nancy Killefer on Tuesday withdrew her nomination to become chief performance officer, a new post in President Obama’s administration, a White House spokesman told CNN.

Officials said privately the reason for the withdrawal was unspecified tax issues.

The withdrawal is an embarrassment to the White House, as the much-touted post was aimed at scrubbing the federal budget.

(Via Instapundit.)

Now that she’s withdrawing her name, I wonder if she’ll pay whatever she owes.  We’ll never know.

UPDATE: It seems the amount at issue in Killefer’s case is only about $300 ($950 with interest and penalties), much less than Geithner, Daschle, Rangel, Franken, etc.  (Via Volokh.)  I wonder why she was the first to take a fall.

Christopher Dodd is going to refinance his sweetheart mortgage:

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose two mortgages with a troubled lender are under a Senate ethics investigation, said Monday he will refinance them.

Sen. Dodd said he sought no special treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp., when he refinanced his Washington and East Haddam, Conn., homes in 2003. Sen. Dodd has acknowledged participating in a VIP program at Countrywide, which he thought referred to upgraded customer service, not reduced rates. . .

The bank, a leading subprime lender at the center of the mortgage meltdown, was sold to Bank of America Corp. last year and has been the focus of allegations that it gave favorable loan terms to lawmakers. . .

Sen. Dodd, whose committee has oversight over the mortgage and banking industries, faced heavy criticism in his home state for not releasing details of his mortgages when the controversy erupted last year. . .

The terms of the mortgages are under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.

“I just wanted to put this behind us,” said Sen. Dodd, speaking to reporters in his Hartford office. . .

Sen. Dodd played a key role in crafting the $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan, which allows the government to spend billions of dollars to buy bad mortgage-related securities and other devalued assets from troubled financial institutions.

(Via the Corner, via Instapundit.)

Is “I’ll give it back” a defense for bribery now?

RedState notices that the Senate’s “stimulus” bill would channel $90 million to two liberal activist groups, under the guise of digital TV transition.  (Via Instapundit.)

I’d be very surprised if this were all of it.  I’m reminded of the Canadian sponsorship scandal, in which $100 million (Canadian) was channeled to liberal partisans with the intent of promoting the Liberal party at the polls.  The Canadian Liberals weren’t as clever, though.  They foolishly tried to hide that $100 million within a $250 million program, rather than a $1.2 trillion program.

The Wall Street Journal sums up the Dodd scandal in one sentence: “Rare is the politician who could clear his name overnight and chooses not to.”  Yep.

(Via Instapundit.)

Democrats are outraged that Wall Street firms gave $18 billion in bonuses last year.  President Obama called it the height of irresponsibility.  Christopher Dodd (who still won’t honor his promise to release his loan documents) has even vowed to confiscate those bonuses somehow.  It’s ridiculous that an industry that did so badly, and required taxpayer money to stay afloat, would give itself bonuses amounting to about $100k per employee or so.

But another enterprise that did even worse last year is giving itself $93k more per member: the US Congress.  Congress has voted to give itself a $93k increase in annual petty cash (that’s walking-around money members can spend in their districts to ensure perpetual incumbency).  (Via LGF.)  The coincidence in the two numbers is striking but illusory.  The Congressional figure is just the increase; the total figure is in the millions.

While the Democrats push a preposterous 1.2 trillion “stimulus” boondoggle (filled with not only pork, but every liberal hobby horse), more than quadrupling the deficit in a single year, they plan to cut defense spending by 10%.

Tax-and-spend, check.  Weak on defense, check.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The story is not so simple, after all.  Hot Air says the “cut” is in the usual sense of Washington double-speak: a cut relative to the proposed increase.  In the real world, it’s as much as an 8% increase.  It may be that the larger figure determined by the Joint Chiefs’ is necessary, and it certainly isn’t as though the rest of the government is being asked to limit its spending, but it’s much harder to get outraged about this than for a real cut.  I think President Obama is off the hook.

Still, I would like to see the Democrats be forced to stand up and make this case.  They have historically prattled on about Republican spending cuts (I wish!) where there were actually only cuts to proposed increases.  I would like to see them admit that an increase is not a cut.  But it’s doubtful that the media will press them on this.

Rod Blagojevich: I did it for the children.

It’s not just the tax evasion:

Tom Daschle, tapped to be President Obama’s health czar, was paid more than $200,000 by the health-care industry in the past two years, according to documents obtained by Politico.

The former Senate majority leader, who gave speeches to firms and groups with a vested-interest in the administration’s upcoming health reform, collected the checks as part of a $5 million windfall after he lost reelection to his South Dakota seat. . .

For instance, the Health Industry Distributors Association plunked down $14,000 to land the former Senate Democratic leader in March 2008. The association, which represents medical products distributors, boasts on its website that Daschle met with it after he was nominated to discuss “the impact an Obama administration will have on the industry.”

This week, the group began openly lobbying him, sending him a letter urging him to rescind a rule requiring competitive bidding of Medicare contracts.

Scrappleface reports:

Obama Plan Has Already Boosted IRS Tax Collections

In office less than two weeks, President Barack Obama has already increased tax receipts at the U.S. Treasury with an innovative plan to get tax-dodgers to pay up, in full, immediately.

“The president’s plan is simple but ingenious,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, “He targets wealthy individuals who filed inaccurate tax forms, cheating the government out of tens of thousands of dollars. Then he just nominates them for cabinet positions. They suddenly see the error of their ways, and they cut checks for the full amount owed, plus interest.”

(Via Instapundit.)  Heh.