Where does it end? How many more tax problems are going to fall out of the books of the people in Barack Obama’s administration?
This time it’s White House chief of staff Rahm “Rambo” Emanuel [1] with problems, a man who, incidentally, was on the board of Freddie Mac in the early part of this decade when the board ignored fraudulent activity according to The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency. Needless to say, that particular issue at Freddie Mac is partially responsible for the current global economic crisis.
Anyway, back to Emanuel’s tax problem. He lived rent-free in the home of Democratic Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro for five years, the value of which exceeds $100,000, which effectively makes it taxable income and based on previous case law [2] in the United States, it will be up to Emanuel to prove that it wasn’t taxable income, not for the IRS to prove that it was, should this matter come up for audit.
It’s not just the taxation side of things which are problematic for Emanuel here, there is also an ethical issue. Mr. Emanuel and Mrs. De Lauro claim that the accommodation was a gift…well that may be so, but if it is the case, then Emanuel was supposed to declare the gift as per the congressional ethics rules…but he didn’t.
I’m also forced to wonder why a multimillionaire such as Emanuel needed free accommodation.
And there’s more. Mrs. De Lauro’s husband is Democratic pollster Stan Greenburg. During the time that Mr. Emmanuel was living in the De Lauro/Greenburg house, he was serving on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee which granted Greenburg contracts in excess of $550,000. Can anyone spell conflict of interest?
On the bright side, as one of the people responsible for the global economic crisis, he should be in a perfect position to explain how it all happened, and how to reverse it…although I shouldn’t be so optimistic, in reality I doubt that Emanuel would be stupid enough to incriminate himself by telling us all about his full role in the economic crisis.
Samuel
Comments Disabled To "More tax problems for the Obama administration"
#1 Comment By hunter On February 19, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
The mind boggles. Are you inferring that ‘pollies’ on both sides of the fence are …shudder..shudder. . corrupt!!? You asked a question about conflict of interest. I ask ‘what penalty?’. I would suggest, now that knocking the bludgers off is not fashionable, complete ruination with all assets taken that were accrued within fifteen years of the offense. All transferred assets to others be confiscated also. Quite honestly, this should apply to all such creeps. i believe that convicted financier Allan somebody whose word was not ,obviously,as good as his bond, after serving his sentence and claiming temporary Alzeimer’s ,walked away with sixty million smackers. Suddenly remembered where he’d left them!