"The Daschles: Feeding at the Beltway Trough" Greenwald

[KoKo]

Sunday Feb. 1, 2009 08:23 EST
The Daschles: feeding at the Beltway trough

Glenn Greenwald


How serious Obama is about health care reform remains to be seen. Obama supporters argue that Obama needs someone like Daschele, with credibility within the health care industry, in order to achieve real reform. That's the standard explanation for most of what Obama does (he's only courting the establishment in order to change it), and though highly skeptical, I'm personally willing to withhold judgment until the actual evidence is available regarding what Obama actually does.

But there's no need to withhold judgment on Daschle himself. He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington. It's probably impossible for Obama to fill his cabinet with individuals entirely free of Beltway filth -- it's extremely rare to get anywhere near that system without being infected by it -- but Daschle oozes Beltway slime from every pore.

Before he was elected to Congress 30 years ago from South Dakota, he had very, very few skills outside of the political arena. He was an Air Force intelligence officer for three years in the early 1970s, then worked for six years as an aide for to South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, then was elected to the House and then the Senate, where he became Majority Leader. So he's spent virtually his entire adult left working on Capitol Hill.

Despite that (or rather: precisely because of it), after being defeated for re-election to the Senate in 2004, he was able almost immediately to begin earning millions of dollars every year from firms and companies that depend on exerting influence in Congress:

The release of the financial statement submitted to the Office of Government Ethics ] details for the first time exactly how, without becoming a registered lobbyist, he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, realtors, farmers, energy firms and telecommunications companies with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.

Daschle's expertise and insights, gleaned over 26 years in Congress, earned him more than $5 million over the past two years, including $220,000 from the health-care industry, and perks such as a chauffeured Cadillac, according to the documents.

Other than his ability to know how to swing doors wide open in Congress, what "expertise and insights" worth that level of compensation does Tom Daschle have? It's pure legalized influenced peddling, and -- upon being booted out of the Congress -- he ran right to it as quickly as he could and engorged himself at the trough as hungrily as possible.

In doing so, he followed perfectly in the footsteps of his second wife, Linda, who served as the Clinton administration's Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and then, once she left her position running the agency that regulates the airlines industry, returned to her extremely lucrative lobbying practice with her largest clients being American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed and various airports and airport executive associations -- the very companies that she had been regulating. She began lobbying the Senate on behalf of those clients as soon as Tom left the Senate, where -- needless to say -- he has many "friends" and others who remain loyal to him, and she is continuously successful in defeating measures to impose greater regulations on the airline industry and to obtain other massively beneficial legislation for them.

Much more about Tom & Linda (the lobbyist) Daschle at....
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

[hedgehog]

1. Is it possible that the Daschle appointment was a bone tossed to the DLC and

other insiders with the full knowledge that there was no way this guy was going to get past the review process? I'll be watching to see if Obama ends up bringing in an outsider who may have been his first choice all along.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Daschle is close adviser of Obama and Obama had a large # of Daschle's staff in his sen. office.

Daschle also told him to run for prez BEFORE he had too much of a record to defend.

Obama owes him. It's got nothing to do with the DLC.

[hedgehog]

4. I didn't know that. My general impression of Daschle is that he was pretty ineffective,

but then the Wiki article suggests otherwise.

[Captain Hilts]

5. He was a bad leader. nt

[hlthe2b]

6. Yes.... Dachle was an early political mentor to Obama

very very early and yes, he probably does owe him... But, I'm not sure he's worth the fight at this point.... It was a pragmatic choice since Dean would have a much more difficult time working across the aisle with Repugs in Congress, but.....

[KoKo]

7. Yes...Obama owes a lot to Tom Daschle. It's a difficult situation for him..

in how do you ditch the person who "brung you to the dance."

[hlthe2b]

3. Bring Howard Dean on for HHS and toss Daschle...

I have reserved judgement on Tom Daschle, despite considerable reservations-- for literally a decade... Enough...

[HelenWheels]

8. I agree

Give it to Howard. But then he is DNC and Rahm Emmanuel is DLC and never the twain shall meet.

[Vinca]

11. A great idea. Howard Dean.

I also liked John Edwards for this, but we all know how that would fly.

[terisan]

13. After so many other bone tosses to the DLC?

Summers, Geithner, Rubin, Emmanuel, even Biden-one of the senators most responsible for the destructive empowerment of the credit card industry.


I suspect that there is a shadow cabinet behind the scenes with opposing views but It has theoretical academicians who have never had to display real-world accountability for theories.

The economic initiatives of this administration seem to be aimed at righting and re-establishing a failed system and softening it a bit, making it less hostile and contemptuous of the rest of us.

To me, part of the problem is a working model in politics that every "program" has a recipient and beneficiary - in Agricultural govt spending for food stamps, poor people are nominally the beneficiaries but the recipients are the agribusiness corporations that get the billions in taxpayer funding.

The middle class gets zero because we pay the high food prices resulting from subsidies for the rich. (The poor get food stamps to somewhat offset the higher prices).

(Republicans and farm-state Dems always used to cry for the "family farmer" to get this passed, although the recipients were generally big corporations. The last massive farm bill was passed last year, by Dems and Repubs--with more Repub opposition than Dem.

So-called progressive Dems pressed for the corporate giveaways- then get high marks from progressives for voting for food stamps

When I look at the "stimulus " package I look to see who are the beneficiaries and who are the recipients.


There will be improvements in social legislation, I think, but the economic policies will be reactionary and I believe that is the intent of this administration.

Citizens still seem to be easily deceived by demagogic politicians. I hope, of course, that I am wrong. But I no longer believe in the bogey man of the DLC--progressives have had every opportunity here to be bold.

[bbgrunt]

9. just the kind of person we DON'T need in that position.

[ljm2002]

10. Apart from everything else...

...it pisses me off that Daschle, like Geithner, both insiders and both presumably conversant with the tax codes, nevertheless both managed to conveniently miss that they owed taxes on large amounts of money.

I think I'll try that the next time I receive $200,000 worth of perks from some company that I'm already earning millions from.

It isn't just those two, though. It's all of the Washington insiders, who enact laws and tax codes, only to try and wriggle through the loopholes or just avoid paying altogether, sure in the knowledge that they won't get caught.

And the thing is, they would not have been exposed except for the vetting process.

If a person is found to owe back taxes when they are vetted, why in the hell does the nomination continue? It really pisses me off that they get away with this nonsense. Then they "pay it back" and everything is supposed to be hunky-dory? How the hell many other taxes didn't they pay? Why do we continue to tolerate this smelliness from our representatives in Washington? Why in the hell would we want a Treasury secretary who doesn't understand how the tax codes apply to him, personally? Why in the hell would we want a HHS secretary who doesn't bother to pay taxes on $200,000 worth of perks, until forced to?

The way I see it, when the vetting turns up this sort of nonsense, they should be forced to pay back taxes and their names should be taken out of contention. If that means that the administration doesn't get its first 10 choices for the position, so be it. It will put the whole flock -- Democrats and Republics -- on notice that their ability to hold responsible public office is contingent on their being responsible in the first place.

You know, that whole "personal responsibility" mantra that keeps being thrown in our faces whenever we say anything about predatory mortgages, or predatory credit card practices and the like -- the old "you signed up for it, whaddaya complaining about?" attitude. So they signed up for the tax codes, a lot more than the rest of us did -- they had a direct hand in setting them up.

[KoKo]

12. Good Points. One would have hoped the Vetting would have caused those

who had more than one tax problem to withdraw in shame. In Geitner's case he had three tax problems (one of which could have been honest mistake) but the other two (hiring undocumented worker and using child tax credit for his kids Summer camp) seem more intentional.

Daschle and his wife have knowingly used his connections to make themselves a multi-millionaires and peddle influence even to becoming a "President Maker" who feels he deserves a high position in the administration as his reward no matter how bad his financial dealings seem to the rest of us out here.

[KoKo]

14. ...