This came in last week:
XXXX:
Call your Senator right now at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary.
Yesterday, Tim Geithner lied to the Senate Finance Committee telling them that the tax program Turbo Tax was to blame for his failure to pay taxes. Prior to that time, Geithner said he simply forgot. At the time he failed to pay his taxes, Geithner signed a statement saying that he would pay his taxes.
If Tim Geithner cannot be honest with the United States Senate with his money, how can he be honest with our money?
Call your Senator right now at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary.
Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
Tim Geithner was just approved by the Senate, 60-34…
Yeah, yeah, I know, nothing MoveOn does ever works either. Sorry, I just like making fun of the Red State jackasses.
John Cole
Just you wait. When the economy goes to hell and we run up 6 trillion in debt over eight years and the Democrats add another expensive entitlement, then you will see they were right to oppose Geithner.
Oh, yeah. Nevermind.
burnspbesq
Conyers subpoena’ed Rove today. He’s supposed to appear next Monday.
I believe that sound you just heard is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House strapping on his trusty Glock and preparing to go arrest Karl after he blows off the supboena.
NickM
Shorter Red State: Bring it on
Shorter Reality: 60-34
Probable Red State response: Win!!1!!
DougJ
What I like is how weak and unconvincing their argument is. MoveOn would have warned that he would bankrupt us all and come up with some pun involving the name “Geithner”, not dithered around about whether or not he used TurboTax.
Laura W
Blago on Larry King.
wheeee….
burnspbesq
@NickM:
Depends on the objective. If the objective was for the Senate Republicans to signal their intention to act in bad faith every chance they get, then l’affaire Geithner truly is a win.
Dork
Erick’s outstanding journalistic acumen has clearly taught him not to reuse the same word twice in the same sentence.
Incertus
@burnspbesq: Oh, I don’t know–they only managed to get 34 no votes, and three of those were Dems, four if you include Sanders. I think what that shows is that it’s going to be really tough for McConnell to hold his caucus together, and he’s got very little room for error for at least the next two years.
Jennifer
Well, they only lost 7 RINOs (marginally sane individuals), so I’m sure they’ll chalk this up as a "win".
JL
I’m sure this will not surprise regular readers of Balloon Juice but Geithner said that although he used Turbo Tax, Turbo Tax was not the blame, he was. Why does Red State lie?
jibeaux
You know, I get excited when I see the "Erick Wood Erickson" signature box, but this is kinda lame, really. I demand more crazy in mah crazy! Or at least more stirring militaristic language.
dmsilev
@Laura W:
Rachel Maddow just announced that she’ll be interviewing Blago tomorrow. Get the popcorn ready.
-dms
sgwhiteinfla
DougJ
Wait, don’t forget that the conservafools and the talking heads blamed the great orange satan and moveon types for preventing torture apologist John Brennan from getting the top gig at the CIA. I mean thats something, right? lol
scarpy
You know, I’m tired of this business about Geithner "blaming" TurboTax for his tax issues. He did not do that. Chuck Grassley asked him what software he used. Geithner replied that he didn’t want to give the impression that he blamed the software. Grassley pressed. Geithner said he took full responsibility for not paying them, then said he used TurboTax, and then again emphasized that the full responsibility was his.
To be clear, I don’t think a guy who failed to pay taxes should run the IRS, and Geithner gave some disappointing non-answers to a lot of the bailout questions. But this "he blamed TurboTax" crap is bullshit.
Not that we should be surprised, of course.
gogiggs
I’m confused, doesn’t RedState think taxes are bad and lying to Congress is okay? I guess IOKIYAR
Laura W
@dmsilev:
and I can not WAIT, based upon the awesome segment (Mr. Blago Goes to the Media) she is doing now to prep us all as to what to expect. She is ruthless, in her adorable, hiding her face in her hands from sheer embarrassment, way.
Hysterical.
SoulCatcher
I have to disagree with the notion that Move On failed…
After all, they certainly succeeded in showing how Congress is nothing but a bunch of crying wussies.
How?
They ran a newspaper ad.
Ok…great…lots of groups run newspaper ads.
But how many have had both the Senate and the House vote to condemn their ad?
Think about it…a bunch of DFH’s ran a newspaper ad and Congress collectively wet itself and stamped their feet in pussified indignation.
I wish I had that kind of success in something so simple.
Matthew Hooper
Hey, don’t sell MoveOn short. They were hand in glove with the Obama campaign, and did a hellacious amount of the muscle work. They couldn’t coordinate directly with the campaign, mind you, but that just meant that everyone doubled down on their efforts rather than assuming the other guy did it.
Admittedly, their advertising/grass roots lobbying kinda failed. But their reals strength came in when they organized. (Shh, don’t tell the RedState maroons.)
Andre
@dmsilev:
Interviewing Blago at this point must be just a single step up from interviewing Natascha Kampusch, journalistically speaking. The horror of the situation and your sympathy for an obviously damaged individual are eclipsed by the sheer spectacle they’re making of themselves.
Mentis Fugit
@scarpy:
In short, Red State lie even when the truth would serve their purpose. It’s a reflex.
Jay
Juan Williams called Michelle Obama "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress" on Orally tonight.
John O
Doug, Doug, Doug,
Don’t you understand that the vote would’ve been much worse without the work of our Fearless Heroes?
59-33, minimum.
Mike in NC
Bravo Zulu to the Red State Strike Force douchebags for another resounding victory.
CT
@Jay: WTF is it with the repubs and the wives of Dem politicians? Going back to Kitty Dukakis, smearing the wife seems to be part of the game. F**K Juan Williams-half the time he’s tearing up over Obama’s win, the other half he’s auditioning to be Hannity’s back up host.
Tonal Crow
@Mentis Fugit:
No. It’s rhetoric. Good rhetoric. It’s short, funny, and memorable. That it’s a lie matters not at all to them. It’s just like the "Al Gore invented the internet" meme.
Get with the program. These guys ran America into the ground, but when it comes to rhetoric, they’re geniuses.
kay
It’s such a disconnect. I’m reading this amusing nonsense and listening to Obama "speaking directly to the Muslim world" according to the breathless Anderson Cooper.
"Obama contacts….THE MUSLIM WORLD…".
That means he gave an interview without preconditions. I guess.
These guys on the Right better get serious, fast. The media, too.
I feel like I’m sitting at the grown-up table, half-listening. while the kids at the card table in the next room complain.
Don
I wonder how many of the Red State brigade frothing at the mouth over this have, in the past, decried how overly complicated the tax code is.
I really don’t know if I think this should be a precluding factor or not. My instinct is to think that calling this kind of screw-up an indicator is akin to saying that someone isn’t qualified to run Ford because they don’t know how to drive a manual transmission.
I’ve had to pay both halves of FICA before and I’da been confused to receive a W2 rather than a 1099. Then again, I ain’t lookin to run the IRS.
MillionthMonkey
If you’re going to use it to clean up the seized credit markets, I think you have to pony up extra for the "Deluxe" version of TurboTax.
Punchy
Dems just capitulated on the Rubbers and Coathangers provision in teh stimulus bill. Decided to chuck it in the hopes that……(excuse me, I’m laughing too hard)….get this….the Repubs will suddenly then lose that talking point and therefore decide……(Christ, I’m busting a gut)…..to support his stimulus plan. Until tomorrow, when there’s a whole new talking point about something else that upsets them.
I know Obama aint this much of a fool, so I’m at a loss here.
tomjones
@scarpy: You are aware that there’s an IRS Commissioner that runs the agency, and that Tim Geithner will have as much influence over day-to-day operations as President Obama will over those of the FDA?
tomjones
@Punchy: Meh. The fact is that spending "stimulus" money on birth control is exceedingly hard to defend, and just plays into the SPENDEE LIBERRULS narrative that the media is so eager to peddle. Even I, a died-in-the-wool liberal who free bases birth control pills, cringed when I heard about this.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
Guess what? ANY Tax Software program will give you an incorrect tax return if you don’t know what you are doing. The key is, as always, is to UNDERSTAND what you are doing so that you can at least roughly anticipate where your amounts should be showing up and have at least an approximate idea of what they should be. From there you need to carefully review the results. If it’s just matching numbers from Tax Documents you have it’s really quite simple. If it involves tax theory, and computations, well, it’s a pretty good idea to have an understanding of the theory. At any rate, most programs provide some type of underlying worksheets to show the calculations used in reaching 1040 line amounts. They may seem byzantine, but the thing to keep in mind is that they are totally and strictly mechanical in nature. If you enter the right numbers on the worksheet in the right fields, it will work down and give you the right answer. Conversely, bad input will result in bad output. As far as Geitner goes, I’m figuring he thought himself too smart by at least half and just plugged numbers directly onto the 1040 lines without using underlying input forms or worksheets. He likely plugged his 1099-Misc income directly onto line 7 as wages, so the program would have no way to know that SE Taxes had to be calculated.
In my job I talk to a lot of Tax Preparer’s who use our software and I am constantly amazed and chagrined at just how many of them enter data into the return and then just look up at the "Refund Monitor" display number, without even knowing they should at the very least be reviewing Form 1040 (BOTH pages). They throw in a bunch of numbers and sit back like some boob at a slot machine, waiting to see if their client gets 3 cherries or not. A common question, for example, is: "Why is my client’s refund less than it was last year?" My general reply is, "Well, did you review 2008 to see if it looks right? Once you’ve done that you can then COMPARE it to 2007, and then you should be able to explain the differences." Response: All too often, Dead Air…
Sorry, I’ve just spent most of my day talking to people who should not be allowed to open a tax software program under any circumstances – and I’m talking about PAID preparer’s, not "do-it-yourselfer" taxpayers.
Rant over…
Bootlegger
@scarpy: Let’s get this straight. He paid his share of his payroll taxes, but his employer didn’t pay their share. This was a consulting job and the employer did notify him, but he did actually pay some of the tax, just not all of it. When they caught him and asked him to pay, he paid what they asked for. When Obama called he asked him to pay it all, and he did. I really don’t see the fucking problem.
sgwhiteinfla
tomjones
Here is the actual justification for the "birth control" in the stimulus bill.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/republicans-irate-over-expansion-of-republican-approved-program.php
/
/
Unfortunately evidently no Democrat in Congress reads TPM and or they couldn’t figure out how to explain it properly.
Joshua Norton
They obviously used it as something to eliminate in the negotiations. Does anyone really think the repigs give 2 squats about spending? We’re talking about the party who would sneak added earmarks and perks into spending bills between the time they were passed and the time they went to the printers.
At least the Dems. put everything in the front window for everyone to see and bicker over.
Bootlegger
@tomjones: I agree with this. Stay focused on infrastructure and energy, maybe some lower income tax credits. But BHO should have made it a priority to make this bill "pork proof", take out anything that seems weird or crazy. Think of the bonus points if he could have avoided the WTF line item veto.
Swervus
So let me get this straight…
The REPUBLICANS are bitching about a political appointee being shifty with taxes and that we should not trust them with Other People’s Money after the last eight years while they had the keys to the kingdom?
‘Scuse me while I go repair my Irony Meter… motherfucker shot straight through the roof.
Tonal Crow
@tomjones:
It’s not difficult to defend. People using birth control are less anxious about unplanned pregnancies and, if the birth control method is condoms, less anxious about STDs. Less-anxious people are happier, work harder, are better parents — and *spend more*.
Democrats need, first, to find their GOP-damn backbones, and second, to take a GOP-damn course in GOP-damn rhetoric. And then another course. And then three more. I have never seen a more rhetorically-inept bunch than the Pelosi/Reid/Feinstein Axis of Capitulation. Not often I wonder whether they’re not simply GOP moles….
Bootlegger
@Tonal Crow: That is an awful long string of causal mechanisms from condoms to happy buying spree. This will have zero effect on the economy and I’m becoming more convinced that they dropped it in there with the sod to have something to "give up" in the final compromise.
As for doing it like the R’s, why? There is a reason they are out, the last thing we need is to "act like them".
Bill H
Maddow asks McCaskill whether we are qoing to engage in counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. McCaskill makes a lengthy speech about how we’d better not start rebuilding that country because the last time we did that was in Iraq and we wasted a lot of money. Maddow merely thanks her and moves on to the next prepared question.
Ruthless?
Laura W
@Bill H: I was referring specifically and solely to the segment on Blago’s media blitz that occurred around 9:35 last night.
Kathy
Instead of dropping the Medicaid provisions the Repubs are complaining about, why don’t Democrats ask why the Repubs would like to force poor women to have babies that taxpayers will have to subsidize?
It’s all in how you frame the debate. Remember guys as as our President said, "I won."
kay
@Kathy:
I’m going to disagree. He’d be crazy if he didn’t include provisions he intended to jettison, and that particular provision gives the Republicans something to distract the lunatics with.
The expansion of S-CHIP is huge ( I know not part of stimulus bill). The low-income tax provisions are huge, and Obama wants them badly.
SGEW
You still have an Irony Meter? Mine hasn’t worked since 2001 or so.
You must have the super-deluxe edition.
scarpy
@ Bootlegger 33
I have several friends who work lower-level gigs with international outfits like World Bank and IMF. If they knew they had to pay employer-side payroll taxes, and they did, I have a hard time pitying a guy like Geithner when he says he didn’t know.
You make it sound like his employer should have paid the taxes but didn’t. It wasn’t IMF’s "share" of the taxes to pay, because IMF is not a U.S. organization.
@ tomjones 30
Yes, I did know there is an IRS commissioner. Did you know the Treasury Secretary is the IRS commissioner’s boss? No, Geithner won’t manage it on any direct level. But he is still the head of the department it falls under.
And he’d have more control over day-to-day operations than Obama would over FDA. I believe the comparison you’re looking for is with Tom Daschle.
Comrade Dread
To be fair, liberals have had eight long years to develop their snark and sarcasm, while Republican toadies mostly spent that time fantasizing about strapping young men at the ready.
Don
Except it wasn’t 1099 income, he was issued a W-2 just like the rest of us wage slaves get. Some WaPo letters to the editor clarified the matter.