Thanks President Obama For the Laugh

I needed a laugh today given the recent Wall Street meltdown, and President Obama and the Administration didn't disappoint. The Administration will start going after international tax dodgers.

President Barack Obama's Treasury secretary says the administration will unveil a series of rules and measures in the coming months to limit the ability of international companies to avoid U.S. taxes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that Obama will propose legislation to limit U.S. companies' ability to shelter foreign earnings from taxation in the U.S. He also said the administration will try to limit wealthy Americans' ability to use tax havens to avoid taxation.

He did not immediately provide details.

It's pretty hilarious that it's tax cheat Tim Geithner who is announcing this new plan.

Let's also ignore all the other Democrats that President Obama nominated for positions requiring Senate confirmation who skipped out on their patriotic duty to pay their full tax share, including Ron Kirk, Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Killifer.

Let's go after international corporations or individuals who haven't paid taxes because of tax havens or other currently legal setups that allow them to avoid paying US taxes.

Let's ignore that Charles Rangel sits on the House Ways and Means chairmanship despite failing to pay thousands in taxes and multiple ethics flaps.

This is one of the last bastions of a government entity looking to find tax revenue when none is forthcoming from other sources. The Administration is hoping to find a few billion more from these sources, even though that means that these corporations will find themselves paying more tax rather than investing the money or distributing it to their investors.

The dire fiscal situation is also why we see states beefing up their compliance efforts and pushing to expand sales tax collection of Internet sales. They're trying to wring every last dollar out of taxpayers to pay for their incredibly irresponsible spending packages.

UPDATE:
Slublog points out that Geithner also attempted to defend tax hikes on those making over $250,000. My irony meter is pegged right off the scale.

UPDATE:
Obama is full of laughs today. His latest? People need to buy stocks because they may be potentially a good deal. Why would anyone put money into the stock market these days with the Obama budget looming with all kinds of hits to various sectors of the economy - from hitting up the utilities and those that produce carbon emissions to the financial sector and investment houses that can't get their books in order to the health care field and drug stocks when he's looking to completely rejigger how those industries operate.

It makes little sense other than to say something today that is more optimistic than he's been in some time. Obama inherited a bad situation, but he's made it so much worse in so short a time frame by massively expanding government spending and then claiming that he will cut spending by hiking taxes and treating the end of the war in Iraq as a spending cut.

UPDATE:
Charles at LGF points out that Obama couldn't even get basic financial terms straight like P/E ratio. Just imagine the outcry if Obama's predecessor made that mistake.

Still Another Obama Nominee Has Tax Troubles

The hits keep on coming for the folks who supposedly vet the nominees for various posts within the Obama Administration requiring confirmation. They allowed Ron Kirk to be put forward and only later did they realize that he failed to pay $10,000 in taxes.

Ron Kirk, nominated as U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration, owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to make his payments, the Senate Finance Committee said Monday.

The committee said the taxes arise from Kirk's handling of speaking fees that he donated to his alma mater, and for his deduction of the full cost of season tickets to the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team.

The disclosure made the former Dallas mayor the latest in a string of top-level Obama administration appointees found to have underpaid their taxes, following Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle, who withdrew as candidate for Health and Human Services secretary. Nancy Killefer, Obama's pick for chief performance officer, also bowed out amid tax problems.

How does this happen?

How many Democrats can Obama's people dig up that didn't pay their taxes? What does this tell you about those Democrats that Obama was considering and didn't make the cut?

What does it say about the judgment of the Obama Administration? Why does that not get more attention from the media. I guess they were looking for change in DC and decided that they'd rather have tax deadbeats running the show.