Skip to main content

Driving Tom Daschle

Big oops!

Like any washed up politician Tom Daschle cashed in after his term of service was over and joined gold plated money making machine InterMedia Advisors of Englewood, Colorado, which hired him to sooth their clients. Daschle is a limited partner and chairman of that firm's executive advisory board, and is also an independent consultant to InterMedia Advisors LLP of New York City.

The job also came with a car and a private chauffer; so Daschle thought.

But it turned out that Daschle was supposed to have been paying taxes on the service and didn’t, which put him in arrears to the US treasury for about three years.

When Treasury thugs came looking for him, shortly after the new Health and Human Services Secretary was plucked from obscurity by the Obama administration to socialize the nation’s health system, he and his accountant “fixed” the oversight.

Daschle failed to report income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031 in 2005, $89,129 in 2006 and $93,096 in 2007. He failed to report consulting income of $83,333 in 2007. Add to the sum his failure to report adjusted reductions in charitable contributions, and Daschle adds a total of $353,552 in additional income and reduced donations, meaning an additional tax payment of $128,203, in addition to $11,964 in interest.

Politico is reporting that Daschle’s patron, Leo Hindery , the Democratic fundraiser who provided the free car and driver to Daschle and the founder of InterMedia Advisors, paid Daschle at a rate of $1 million a year as a consultant: “Hindery was an economic consultant to Obama during the campaign and was believed at one point to have been under consideration for the Commerce secretary post.”

John Hinderlake of Powerline finds a silver lining in all this subterfuge: “One good thing about electing a Democrat as President is that, as he nominates fellow Democrats to senior positions in the Executive Branch, millions of dollars in unpaid tax liabilities come to light and are belatedly paid to the IRS, with interest. It is, perhaps, the most tangible advantage of electing Democrats to office.”

Daschle is the second tax scofflaw in the new Obama administration to be examined by the congress, which must pass on the acceptability nominees before they assume office.

Tim Geithner, Obama’s Treasury Secretary precedes him. Since Democrats this year are in command of the White House and congress, not too much ado was made about this “nothing.”

Republicans on the verge of being Democrats -- Mike Crapo, Orrin Hatch, John Cornyn, Olympia Snowe and John Ensign -- voted the goof ball into his position.

The usual Democrat culprits winked.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Casey Chadwick’s Uneasy Life after Death

Casey and her mother Wendy "I just started grief counseling. I'm always sad. I'm sad and in pain and I miss her." Wendy Hartling   Hartling is the mother of Casey Chadwick, murdered in 2015 by Jean Jacques , an illegal Haitian immigrant. Jacques was convicted of the murder of Chadwick in a New London Superior Court jury trial and sentenced by Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed to a 60 year term in prison. Since Jacques is 44 years of age, the sentence was, in effect, a life sentence. Connecticut Commentary coverage of the Chadwick murder may be found here , and here   and here . Jacques could not have been sentenced to death because Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly, under pressure from the state Supreme Court, had abolished Connecticut’s death penalty law in 2012 . The slaughter of Chadwick was particularly brutal. Her body had been found by a friend who, opening a door to a closet, discovered Chadwick stuffed in a dark corner drenched in blo...

Understanding North Korea Through Dramaturgy

The U.S. military is sending the Vinson Strike Group, including the carrier and two guided-missile destroyers, to operate in the Western Pacific Ocean in response to Pyongyang’s recent missile tests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asked about the strike force, issued a terse statement: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” Is this a post-Syrian bombing mission? Will the US take out North Korea’s missile launching sites, possibly with the unspoken concurrence of China? Never let a bombing go to waste. There are some in the United States who think any such incident should be used to rid North Korea of that runty little totalitarian cock-of-the-walk who keeps his countrymen starved, in fear and at his knees. Since we only have one chance, they say, go for the clean sweep -- no more Kims. Connecticut Commentary is reprinting an earlier piece about the Kims here. Best read with a glass of port.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."