Yes, Tom Daschle is Out! Daschle announcing his withdrawal. "If 30 years of exposure to the challenges inherent in our system has taught me anything, it has taught me that this work will require a leader who can operate with the full faith of Congress and the American people, and without distraction," he said. "Right now, I am not that leader and I will not be a distraction.
As reported by The NY Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, Former Senator Tom Daschle has withdrawn from consideration for health and human services secretary over his belated payment of federal taxes. More on how the ex-Senator is the 2nd Obama pick to pull out over tax issues.
AAPP: I have pointed out my concerns about how, former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle was getting "The New Black Politics Pass."
I agree with Steve Holland at Reuters, he is one of many former politicians and ex-government officials who have gotten rich by using their influence and powerful connections. It's too bad as a millionaire he failed to pay his taxes.
Now get this, he is not the only one, not paying his taxes, another appointee who wanted an Oversight Role in the Obama administration has withdrawn. Yes, Nancy Killefer withdrew from consideration for chief performance officer after coming forward with concerns about tax returns.
AAPP: I guess there are a few crooks and liars trying to get positions in the new Obama administration. See Who's Who in Barack Obama's White House.
As reported by MTV, By now, you're probably either read about or seen Jennifer Hudson's stirring rendition of the national anthem before Sunday night's Super Bowl. In her first public performance since seen her mother, brother and nephew were slain in October, Hudson delivered a stunning version of the anthem.
But after the game, the show's producer, "American Idol" music director Ricky Minor, told The Associated Press that, at his request, Hudson lip-synched the anthem to a previously recorded track.
AAPP: Who cares MTV, leave Jennifer Hudson alone! She "sang" that Anthem like very few have been able to do. The only people who have done any better are Marvin Gaye and let us not forget Ray Charles' America, The Beautiful. MTV needs to stop hating on black folks.
Jennifer Hudson performs the national anthem at Super Bowl XLIII on Sunday
Photo: Paul Spinelli/ Getty Images
Since it was apparent that Barack Obama would be the 44th POTUS, the term "Post racial America" has been flowing in the national conversation.
I spent a considerable period of time searching for a definition for the term post-racial. It is interesting that there really is not one given by any viable source. I read plenty of definitions on conservative blogs. Which all seem to lean towards the theory that in a post-racial America the rights of white citizens would be lessened to the point where they would not be able to recover their positions of power.
But one of my greatest passions is the issue of race, which also leads to issues of immigration, assimilation, affirmative actions, social justice, etc. It irks me that the elitist liberal media has annointed Barack Obama as a "post-racial" candidate. (By the way, I have no idea what the working definition of "post-racial" is; when the media gets into the meta-sociological, it always turns out to be a disaster.)
I believe that The Right has a interesting opportunity to capture the sentiments of those who want to move beyond race, into a near color-blind society, by using conservative principles of old. I tell everybody that one of the top reasons I am a registered Republican is the fact that The Left is interested in what I can contribute as a Korean-American or Asian-American; The Right is simply interested in what I can contribute as an American. Source
I find this to be an interesting observation. Especially after the vicious racial tone of the national campaign
AAPP says: Here is a great article in The Harvard Crimson by Dr. Jonathan David Farley ’91 is the 2004 Harvard Foundation Distinguished Scientist of the Year. He writes about the new black politics and how it just may not be "all that" for black Americans. It's a great article. I just finished doing a radio program about this issue on my BlogTalkRadio program.
As an African-American, people expect me to be excited by the inauguration of the first black president of the United States last week. Of course, symbols matter. A black man could not have ascended to the presidency 40 years ago. But the inauguration of President Barack Obama means considerably less than what the pundits say it means.
True, it indicates that racism is lessening in America. But the black unemployment rate will stay the same. The black poverty rate will stay the same. Policemen will still murder elderly black women with impunity. Confederate flags honoring those who killed to preserve slavery and racial segregation will still disgrace our public spaces. And Obama will not do or say anything about any of this.
Certainly, having a black president will be a first. But just because you are a first for blacks does not mean blacks are first for you. For example, Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, informed on other blacks at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He also hated black America’s Saul of Tarsus and shining prince, Malcolm X.
While it would be absurd for blacks to practice “shadism”—the great Harvard graduate W. E. B. DuBois, intellectual and freedom fighter, had the blood of two continents in his veins—it would be naïve to ignore the weighty significance of the truth: that many black political “firsts” in America, such as Marshall, have been light-skinned mulattoes, like Obama.
Admittedly, Obama represents a new type of African-American politician: He is not a minister, he did not march with Dr. King, he has no line item in his budget for pregnant mistresses and keeps food—not cash—in his refrigerator. Brotherman is no Uncle Sambo. He is not an embarrassment in that sense.
Yet he is an embarrassment in another sense. At least the misleaders and pied pipers who came out of the bowels of the civil-rights movement paid lip service to the idea of uplifting the race. Obama and the new generation of black policy-makers, such as Newark, New Jersey, mayor Cory Booker, self-professed drug-dealer-cum-Harvard-professor Roland Fryer, and former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Jr., pay scant allegiance to the past or feel little obligation to their fellow blacks as blacks.
Unlike black conservatives, such as Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whom the African-American community mostly derides, the new black politician does not usually declare openly that he is against the issues blacks support. He just never declares that he is for those issues. For instance, the issue of reparations for slavery is avoided. At one presidential debate, white congressman Dennis Kucinich said he was for it, while Obama dodged the question.
Blacks make the false assumption that, because the new black politicians have somewhat dark skin, they in fact share the same goals and do not need to say so. When pressed a year after the aforementioned debate, Obama admitted he was against reparations for slavery. He can support giving $700 billion to corporate crooks and incompetents, but he cannot support reparations for slavery. Obviously, he knew he would still get 99 percent of the black vote.
African-Americans are like dogs at the park: If you fake throwing a Frisbee, they run away looking for the Frisbee you didn’t throw. When the dog comes back, you do it again—and the dog falls for it again, drooling. Blacks who swoon over Obama are akin to the blacks who dance to the song “Sweet Home Alabama.” They clearly haven’t listened to the words.
This is why the inauguration of Obama as the nation’s first half-white president was nothing to celebrate. One can only succeed as a black American—in politics or at your job—by submitting to majority authority and control. You can’t say you don’t want to recite the no no hair removal reviews Pledge of Allegiance. You can’t suggest you were ever not proud of the country that murdered Indians with gifts infected by smallpox and that blew up little girls as they prayed.You certainly can’t speak the truth about racism, as Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, proved.
Obama’s rival, Senator John McCain, all but called Obama a child molester, all but called Obama a traitor, and in response Obama called McCain a “hero.” Wright, on the other hand, praised Obama endlessly, officiated at Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, and gave him the title of his best-selling book. But he also made a few correct remarks about American racism, labeled too “controversial” to keep them from being discussed seriously. Instead of standing by his friend and supporter as the statesman Nelson Mandela would have done, new black politician Barack Obama assailed Wright without mercy.
Obama’s election is exactly the wrong signal to send to America’s ebony youth: that, if you don’t raise any issues that make the majority uncomfortable, you, too, can become the president. We can only celebrate the election and inauguration of a black president when he can represent and articulate black interests, and not before.
Dr. Jonathan David Farley ’91 is the 2004 Harvard Foundation Distinguished Scientist of the Year.
If a black man or woman didn't pay his or her taxes they would not even be considered for employment with any Federal agency, let alone become head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Why is it that former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle is withstanding revelations about unpaid taxes, and can get a pass? This is change?
As reported by the NY Times, During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a “new era of responsibility.” What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.
The exceptions that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not pay all of their taxes. Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who is now slated to become the No. 2 official in the Pentagon. And there are the others brought into government from the influence industry even if not formally registered as lobbyists.
President Obama said Monday that he was “absolutely” standing behind former Senator Tom Daschle, his nominee for health and human services secretary, and Mr. Daschle, who met late in the day with leading senators in an effort to keep his confirmation on track, said he had “no excuse” and wanted to “deeply apologize” for his failure to pay $128,000 in federal taxes.
As reported by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune the news that former Sen. Tom Daschle (S.D.), President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Health and Human Service Department had not paid more than $128,000 in back taxes over the past several years threatened to further slow the momentum built by the president during the transition process. The new Republican leader is also having none of this. As reported in USA Today, Michael Steele said in a telephone interview that Republicans should oppose former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle is the second Cabinet nominee to acknowledge he didn't pay thousands of dollars in taxes.
"We've already let one cat out of the bag with (Treasury Secretary Timothy) Geithner," Steele said. "So what's the standard down to, to be a Cabinet secretary? You don't have to pay your taxes? Come on."
AAPP: OK, I'm a former Democrat, and Republican, but I'm now Independent. I have to say, enough is enough. Now we learn his chief of staff is a lobbyist. Steele just may be on point when he says, Steele said. "So what's the standard down to, to be a Cabinet secretary?
AAPP: I guess I agree with John Brummett, who wrties: "There is nothing new, nothing that changes Washington, nothing in the vein of “yes, we can,” in nominating for secretary of health and human services a former veteran senator whose wife is a big-time Washington lobbyist for the airline industry (which she once regulated as acting FAA administrator), then standing by him when it comes out that he didn’t pay his hair removal taxes on income from a car and driver provided him by a big corporation, and didn’t tell you about the problem, of which he became aware last summer, until after you’d nominated him.
We need public officials who pay their taxes, in full, on time, even without being nominated for cabinet jobs. Holding our noses for a treasury secretary who came up short on his income taxes was enough to ask. Plenty."
As The Washington Post reports, Daschle, who paid more than $100,000 in back taxes to the IRS in recent days according to a spokeswoman, is set to meet in a closed door session on Monday with the full Senate Finance Committee to explain the oversight.
Daschle is the third Obama Cabinet pick to run into trouble. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama's initial choice as Commerce Secretary, stepped aside due to an ongoing federal investigation into pay for play allegations in the Land of Enchantment. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged he had failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years, describing the failure as an accounting oversight; he was confirmed by a vote of 60-34 earlier in the week.
AAPP: Change? Right! I guess this can be called, The New Black Politics pass.