links for 2009-01-15

Although it has been dismissed by some observers as a “hiccup” in an otherwise smooth confirmation process, treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes during the years he worked at the International Monetary Fund is causing some Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask serious questions about his actions. First among those questions is why he accepted payment from the IMF as restitution for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid.

I have a new story up on Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner's tax issue. The news is that Geithner, like other International Monetary Fund employees, received an allowance from the IMF to make up for the taxes he paid. But in the case of self-employment taxes, Geithner accepted the allowance and didn't pay the taxes.
++++++
Nice reimbursement if you can get it.

As Barack Obama builds his administration and prepares to take office next week, his political team is quietly planning for a nationwide hiring binge that would marshal an army of full-time organizers to press the new president's agenda and lay the foundation for his reelection.

The organization, known internally as "Barack Obama 2.0," is being designed to sustain a grass-roots network of millions that was mobilized last year to elect Obama and now is widely considered the country's most potent political machine.
++++++
Is this permanent campaign ripe for abuse?

The obvious question is why the IRS, and for that matter Giethner, didn’t look back at 2001 and 2002 after the 2003 and 2004 errors were caught. The answer may well be that by the time it found the 2003 and 2004 “discrepancies,” the IRS’s ordinary three-year statute of limitations for unpaid taxes from the date a return is filed had expired for 2001 and 2002.

But there’s an exception to that three-year rule: “The statute of limitations does not apply in the case of a false or fraudulent return with intent to evade any tax.” Intent can be difficult to determine, but Team Obama must have concluded, “brilliant” financial guy that he is, that Geither should have known, and indeed may have known, that he was required to pay self-employment tax at the time he filed his 2001 and 2002 returns. So they told him to pay up.

9:45 a.m., in the transition office, President-elect Obama, meeting with: the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, CNN's Roland Martin, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the Washington Post's Gene Robinson, the Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson, the one and only Maureen Dowd, the New York Times's Frank Rich, the Wall Street Journal's Jerry Seib, Atlantic political director Ron Brownstein, USA Today's DeWayne Wickham and columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.

The Times's Paul Krugman was invited, but did not attend.
++++++
Maybe they needed to balance off Rachel Maddow.

Finding a way around the two-thirds vote barrier on new taxes has been a holy grail for those on the political left, while preserving it has been a bedrock cause for those on the right. And while many business leaders might accept the particular plan that Democrats offered as a way to crack the budget stalemate, they fear it could lead to even more creative ways to impose new levies on business, such as a "carbon fee" that's been mentioned.

The legality, however, remains very questionable.

The business-supported California Taxpayers Association, in a recent editorial in its weekly bulletin, points out that the constitutional provision at issue requires a two-thirds vote on "any changes in state taxes enacted for the purpose of increasing revenues collected pursuant thereto whether by increased rates or changes in the methods of computation …"

Given that wording, a scheme to skirt the two-thirds vote could have an uphill battle in the courts.
++++
This scheme will never pass muster

The Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on Mr. Geithner’s nomination was postponed to next week after Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, objected to holding it on Friday, according to committee aides. A spokesman for Mr. Kyl, Ryan Patmintra, said on Wednesday that Mr. Kyl did not object because of the news of the controversy over Mr. Geithner’s late payment of taxes for 2001 to 2004 when he worked at the International Monetary Fund, but because of unrelated scheduling issues.

Mr. Kyl invoked a committee rule requiring one week’s notice for hearings unless members decide otherwise, his spokesman said; the Arizona senator is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, and its confirmation hearing for Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general who is opposed by some Republicans, is expected to go into Friday.

Members of Obama's vast campaign foreign policy apparatus — reportedly including about 300 wonks — have been silent since the end of the campaigns on the grounds that being quoted might hurt your job prospects.

But with Clinton heading to the State Department, some of their grumbles are getting picked up by Foreign Policy, which reports that Obama loyalists are aghast to see Clintonites taking the key foreign policy spots.
+++++++
Obama is not encouraging loyalty now is he?

I have a new story up on the pardon countdown for Scooter Libby. Will it happen? In Libby circles, that's The Thing That Cannot Be Spoken. "Nobody talks about it, nobody says anything," one prominent Libby supporter told me. "There's not much more to say," says another, "we just kind of wait and watch and hope."
+++++
Pardon is coming on the last day in office.