permanent government

As much as rendition, the Iraq scam and the looting of the Treasury for bank bonuses, Tom Daschle makes me wonder if the coup has already happened and America is under the control of a shadow government, whatever the outcome of elections. As you know, President Obama's choice to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services — and point man on health care reform — has a tax problem. He failed to pay $140,000 in taxes, as the New York Times genteelly puts it, "related to income for consulting work and the use of a car made
available to him by a close friend who is also a generous donor to
Democratic causes."

We have a task of civic rebuilding after 25 years of more-or-less "conservative" misgovernance — chief on the list restoration of a fair and adequate revenue base for government, and teaching people there's no free lunch. Tax cuts are not a magic elixir. Taxes are the cost of a modern society. Daschle, like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner before him, is no better than a fat Republican tax cheat — with the added hypocrisy of wanting (rightly) to raise taxes. These are the Ted Haggards of tax policy.

Yet more troubling is the window Daschle's "embarrassing" slip gives us into the permanent power elite.