The Flow of Consciousness

Nancy Killefer, Obama’s choice for the newly created "chief performance officer," has tax problems: she failed to pay unemployment taxes for household help at her D.C. home. She withdrew herself from consideration.

Tom Daschle, Obama’s choice for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has tax problems, too: he "recently filed amended tax returns and paid more than $140,000 in back taxes and interest for 2005-2007," according to CNN. He withdrew himself from consideration, as well, and Obama publicly blamed himself for his "embarassing" choice.

Timothy Geithner was approved as the Secretary of the Treasury despite having underpaid his own taxes by $43,000 while involved with the International Monetary Fund. Read that article—it’s entitled "A Comedy of Tax Errors" and it’s totally fitting. "A future Treasury secretary using TurboTax? The mistakes were multiplying." I agree. The worst part of this one is that Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle were defending him. What a farce.

Hilda Solis, Obama’s candidate for Secretary of Labor, does not herself have tax problems, but her husband does. He neglected to pay $6,400 in business taxes on his auto repair business for more than 16 months. NBC Los Angeles reports, though, that "White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Solis and [Sam] Sayyad [her husband] were unaware of the liens until asked about them this week." Her nomination is delayed while the Senate discusses the effects of this tax problem.

Tie this in with the non-tax-related withdrawal of NM Gov. Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce amid grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to political donors, and one simply has to ask a question.

What is Obama thinking? Do we have a worker in office instead of a leader? I question Obama’s ability to pick legitimate candidates for the posts which he is Constitutionally tasked with filling. I also must question the Senate’s motives in approving a Secretary of the Treasury who was involved in the IMF, which is essentially a worldwide central bank (but then I remember that most of Congress believes in statist Keynesian economic theories, not the sound, libertarian Austrian economic theories of such scholars as Ludwig von Mises).

The representatives of the American public sided with it in the electoral college and chose this president. Can this president chose a staff which meets his goals of transparency, efficient government, and change?

Update 3 March 2009: Obama’s nominee for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk agreed to pay taxes he owes. The madness continues!

Update 1 April 2009: Health and Human Services nominee and current Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius paid nearly $8,000 in back taxes.. You know where you and I would be if we didn’t pay our taxes? Jail.

H.R. 5512, the Coin Modernization and Taxpayer Savings Act of 2008, passed the house yesterday. In addition to changing the composition of penny to a copper-painted steel and the nickel of nickel-coated steel, the Act also repeals current weight requirements for coinage and mandates that all U.S. coinage be minted in the United States, and a few other things.

Why? From the bill text:

(5) The United States Mint gained further experience changing the metal content of pennies in 1982, when it began producing copper-coated zinc pennies as a result of rising copper prices.
…
(7) Given the current cost to make a penny and volume of pennies minted, by simply reducing penny production costs to face value, the United States will save more than $500,000,000 in the next 10 years alone.

(8) Reducing the cost to produce a nickel to face value will save the United States an additional $60,000,000 per year.

It makes sense to save money, since the penny’s copper-zinc weight is worth almost two, and the nickel is worth approximately seven cents, if I recall a recent news report correctly. However, do you think this change is worth devaluing the few ties American money still has to (somewhat) precious metals?