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You are here: Home / Nip It In The Bud

Nip It In The Bud

by | 56 Comments

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This just gets better and better:

When it comes to his shadow run for Senate, Harold Ford is a New Yorker through and through. When it comes to paying taxes, though, he’s still a Tennessean — he’s never filed a New York return.

Ford claims to have moved to New York three years ago, and says paying “New York taxes” makes him a New Yorker. But his spokeswoman confirms to Gawker that he’s never filed a New York tax return — meaning that he’s never paid New York’s income tax, despite keeping an office and a residence in New York City as a vice chairman of Merrill Lynch since 2007: “He pays New York taxes and will file a New York tax return in April for the first time,” Ford’s spokeswoman Tammy Sun told Gawker. “He will file all necessary personal disclosure and tax forms that candidates are required to file if he chooses to run.” (According to Sun, Ford admitted to the tax dodge yesterday at a press availability in Albany, but we can’t find any news accounts mentioning the remarks.)

The best thin about the Harold Ford nonsense about challenging Gillibrand is that now, outside of Tennessee and in a major media market, he is being exposed for the fraud and bullshit artist that he is. Sure, his rumblings about running may be irritating, but hopefully he will be so damaged it will be at least 4 years before Scarborough and company are able to fluff his reputation back.

And again, the way we know that Harold Ford really and truly sucks? Like Evan Bayh, he was a Democrat who I thought was ok when I was in full koolaid mode.

And my deep apologies for that video. Well. Not really.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    Derelict

    To the best of my knowledge, failure to file tax returns in New York when you actually earn an income there (even if you’re a resident of another state) is a FELONY.

    Hope Harold has fun running his campaign from behind bars.

  5. 5.

    Lev

    Sorry, but I can’t accept your premise.

    Evan Bayh is not too bright and plenty annoying, but on almost every big-ticket item he winds up sticking with the Dems.

    Harold Ford, um, doesn’t.

    Not to mention that Indiana would be a tough lift for anyone other than Bayh. I know who my preference would be.

  8. 8.

    Violet

    That video is teh awesome! I’ve never seen that before. Hilarious.

    Harold Ford is a serious douchenozzle. It’s great fun watching him implode on a national level. I kind of hope he gets caught up in some sort of failure-to-pay-taxes quagmire. It’ll be fun to watch him try to talk his way out of that.

  9. 9.

    jl

    Too bad Barney Fife is gone. Was he a Democrat? Nice to run a guy like Barney. The ‘nip it in the bud’ stuff would go down very well with the Very Serious People. He could get thousands of Sunday talkies out of that. McCain and Lieberman would be just cold dropped out the lineup.

    Thanks for the video. An apology for it was very appropriate and I appreciate it, but thanks anyway.

  13. 13.

    BruinKid

    Oh no, there’s been a shooting at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. It looks like 3 biology faculty are dead, 3 others wounded, after a professor was denied tenure.

    Already in the comments section of the CNN article are right-wingers saying that on RateMyProfessor, some students had called her a “socialist”, so get ready for Malkin/Republicans/Fox News to politicize this tragedy in 3… 2… 1………

  15. 15.

    Cain

    You know, if I had that option and I was a greedy sumbitch I probably would have done it too. I mean who wants to pay New York’s taxes eh? I wonder how many people thought “shit, why didn’t I think of that?”

    hah.

    cain

  17. 17.

    Prattlehorn

    Are you saying that Ford’s selfish grifterness disqualify him for cable talk shows?

    Who’s being naive, Kay?

  19. 19.

    kay

    @General Winfield Stuck:

    He bores me a little, so I’m sad. I can’t even make fun of him. He’s just a big nothing phony. I’m bored with Palin, too. Where is he from, again?

    We need a new jerk. Someone with some heft.

    I’m going to wait for Lynne Cheney.

  24. 24.

    Randy G

    One of the few things I regret from the 2006 election season was donating to that felonious jackass’s Senatorial campaign.

  25. 25.

    Dan Robinson

    Both Harold Ford and Michael Steele think that they can get elected because they are black. Steele is trying to raise his profile nationally and use that to launch a run for president in 2016.

  29. 29.

    Tax Analyst

    @Derelict:

    To the best of my knowledge, failure to file tax returns in New York when you actually earn an income there (even if you’re a resident of another state) is a FELONY.

    Pretty much, at least if they can show it was WILLFUL. If not there are still penalties and interest. I guess it’s possible a former Member of the House wouldn’t be smart enough to be aware of their Income Tax filing requirements, and we are, after all, talking about Harold Ford here.

    This should really boost his NY Senatorial run. I’m sure the rank and file voter who has been regularly paying their rather high NY State Income Taxes all these years would be thrilled to pull the lever for someone hasn’t been carrying his share of the load and wouldn’t have bothered if no one had brought it up.

  34. 34.

    Jim

    How long (if at all?) did Hillary pay NYS taxes before her run in 2000? Ford is a worthless douche regardless of whether or not he paid any NYS income tax. This is fun and all, but let’s not act like carpetbagging is new to this particular seat.

  36. 36.

    Chad N Freude

    Re the video (which is beyond hilarious): What do you suppose is the significance of the photograph of Rock Hudson at 40 seconds in?

  38. 38.

    Warren Terra

    @Jim:

    How long (if at all?) did Hillary pay NYS taxes before her run in 2000?

    You’re conflating two issues, carpetbagging and tax paying.

    Hillary probably didn’t pay NYS taxes prior to her run, on the grounds that she neither lived in New York nor earned money there. Whether someone with so few ties to the state should be allowed to run there is an interesting question, but it’s a question about carpetbagging.

    Ford both lived in New York and earned money there. That makes his nonpayment of taxes an issue separate from his carpetbagging. Indeed, he’s actually spent a few years in NEw York State, so would be much less a carpetbagger than was Hillary – if apparently infinitely more of a felon.

  39. 39.

    Chad N Freude

    @Mike Kay:

    To paraphrase John Mayer, Rielle’s snatch lady parts must be like sexual napalm.

    Fixed, by the liberal PC Language Police

  41. 41.

    Warren Terra

    In case readers are in a situation similar to what I often am when I’m reading on my phone (an oldish Samsung, and less of a Smartphone than a Moderately Intelligent Phone), and can’t see plug-ins but can follow direct links to YouTube videos (that then play via YouTube Mobile), here’s a direct link to the video.

  43. 43.

    josefina

    Memphis is about as corrupt as New Orleans but a lot less flamboyant. Boss Crump ran the city for the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Fords were his lackeys.

    Crump died in 1954. Did the Fords exercise their political power in any way that was useful to anyone other than the Fords? Nope.

    When MLK was murdered fourteen years later, he was in Memphis to support this strike. [Scroll down or search for (28)—so worth it.] The strike was prompted by horrible, even lethal conditions the Fords had done sweet fuck-all to correct.

    I’ll vote for Harold Ford right after I purchase Genital Cosmetic Colorant.

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    keep on researching Ford.

    he STILL hasn’t answered the very simple question:

    Harold, did you or did you not, receive a GOVERNMENT FUNDED BONUS while at Merrill Lynch?

    simple question – yes or no.

  45. 45.

    AnotherBruce

    Ah you youngsters who are new to Fife Filosofy. It’s kinda touching. Barney was both behind and ahead of his time. No easy feat.

  47. 47.

    bob h

    I have friends who divide their time between Arizona in the Winter and Manhattan in the Summer. New York State offers a better deal on income tax, so they are very careful to spend exactly 6 months + 1 day there, with airplane tickets to prove it, when the inevitable tax audits are done.

    If Ford has been spending more than 6 months in New York without filing taxes, he is guilty of income tax evasion. This could and should kill his Senate effort.

  48. 48.

    sheiler

    My siblings and mother and I used to call each other and quote Andy Griffith show lines and then hang up. We loved that show. For mother’s day one year I sent my mom some flowers with the note: “Barney’s in jail.” She called me back and said that that episode had played that day.

    Thanks for the memories.

    I supported Harold Ford in the psychological way that I do when I want the Republican in the same race to lose. I thought the ads against Ford in the Tennessee race were sleazy and despicable. But I never once thought of him as a candidate (no matter what state he wanted to represent) that I would actually give money to, or support in any meaningful sense.

  50. 50.

    Anonymous At Work

    John,
    Harold Ford in Tennenessee was the Democrat you voted for so that Democrats in general had more committee seats in the Senate. If you weren’t voting in Tennenessee, just don’t vote for him. But the type of Blue-Dog Southern Democrat just doesn’t fly outside the South.

  51. 51.

    Will

    I’m far more concerned about the possibility of billionaire media mogul Mort Zuckerman entering the NY Senate race:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13mort.html?hp

    Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real estate tycoon and publisher of The Daily News, is considering a bid for the Senate seat now held by Kirsten E. Gillibrand, according to two people told of the discussions.

    The guy is a complete asshole. A self-described “Democrat” who campaigned for Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008. He has unlimited pockets like Bloomberg. Luckily, he has none of the likeability and/or people-skills.

    But still. He’s a threat. A douchebag threat.

  54. 54.

    Dave

    I mean, let’s be honest. No one could have known that he was this much of a wanker. I knew he was the political version of a “trust fund” baby, and that he enjoyed tacking right, but didn’t really have a problem with him, especially in Tennessee. In fact, I thought he had a decent future in politics. Who could have known he would be such a buffoon?

  55. 55.

    mandarama

    Harold Ford and John Edwards in the same thread…it’s like a Douchebag Gold Medal Competition!

Comments are closed.