At least the excuses keep getting more entertaining… Read on!
The New York Times has reported that another Obama nominee, Capricia Penavic Marshall, has tax issues. And yes, folks, this one is a doozy.
Capricia Penavic Marshall, together with her husband (who happens to be a cardiologist, stay with me on that one), failed to file their 2005 and 2006 federal income tax returns. Marshall is the Obama nominee for chief of protocol for the State Department (I’m not sure, but isn’t that the position that Goldie Hawn filled in the movie, Protocol? If so, Hawn may still be available. Just saying.)
Marshall isn’t claiming some run of the mill excuse. She has a good one: it’s the fault of the Post Office and, of course, her husband. You see, first, her accountant gave them to her husband and he forgot to mail them. And when he finally did get it together, they somehow didn’t get where they needed to be (insert awkward throat-clearing here). Marshall claims that an agent “advised us that there were a large number of tax returns misplaced by the D.C. post office for the 2006 tax year.”
And of course, the problem was miraculously resolved in November 2008, a couple of years after the due date. You know, once Obama was in office – not that I’m implying that Marshall somehow believed that she had to get things right all of the sudden… According to Marshall, the IRS generously advised that in the fall of last year that the Service had not received their returns.
Oh, those silly Marshalls. They can’t seem to get it together. But when it comes to where the salad fork goes, apparently, we can count on her.
As it turns out, the Marshalls were actually better off filing those returns since the couple was entitled to more than $37,000 in tax refunds for the two years. But that’s not the point. It doesn’t absolve you of the requirement to file.
Yet, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to think that made it okay. She said: In the end, only two American taxpayers were adversely impacted by this inadvertent lapse.
Ummm… no.
It affects a lot of American taxpayers. We count on the agents of our government to do the right thing. And not just when it’s convenient. All of the time.
And just to clear up any confusion, the general rule is that a couple who is married filing jointly when both are under the age of 65 must file a return if their gross income is at least $17,900 (that’s the number for the 2008 tax year). In this case, I’m guessing, though I haven’t seen the returns, that much of the refund is due to a combination of withholding and significant credits and deductions, the extent of which would not be known until the return is actually prepared. And clearly, they had the foresight to get an accountant to prepare the return. They just didn’t mail it on time or notice that their $37,000 refund never came.
It doesn’t take a brain heart surgeon to determine that doesn’t look all that great on paper.
I won’t be so hypocritical as to say that I’ve never made a mistake, never missed a filing deadline… I have. See, it’s out there. I don’t claim to be perfect.
But this is the thing. During the Democratic primary, then-Senator Clinton knocked Obama as “elitist” and implied that he was “better” than the average American. On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart remarked in response, “I want somebody that’s better than me. If they don’t think they’re better than me then what the hell are they doing running for President? I want someone that’s embarrassingly superior to me.”
And as I’ve said before, that’s kind of the way that I feel about folks in the highest realms of our government. If they’re going to represent our country, I want them to be great people. Because one of the truths about this country is that it is filled with amazing people. Why can’t we seem to find any?
Hmm, according to this NYT article (written 16 years ago), Ms. Marshall is a law school graduate with superb organization skills that so greatly impressed then-First-Lady Hillary Clinton that she hired her as her executive assistant.
“Like Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Marshall is a lawyer. She is also a first generation American (her mother is Mexican, her father Croatian), raised in Cleveland. She joined the Clinton campaign after graduating law school at Case Western Reserve. Her organizational skills so impressed the First Lady that she became her executive assistant, a job she held until last fall. ”
It seems to me that if a couple consists of a doctor and a lawyer, the lawyer ought to take an at least equal share of the responsibility for following up on important details like making sure the tax return got signed and mailed off. Or, at a minimum, she shouldn’t be “passing the buck” and blaming it on an oversight by her doctor husband. If they elect to file a joint return, both are responsible for making sure that it gets filed.
The couple also strikes me as seriously out of touch with the every day life that most Americans experience if they didn’t notice the missing $37,000 refund that their return called for! That’s not exactly a minor sum.
Oops–left out the link to the NYT article I quoted above:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/24/style/first-ladies-to-the-first-lady.html
“A little older, a little more confused.” I think the problem has been a gradual decline in the standards to which public servants hold themselves. Let’s face it, where we have social interaction and government, there is going to be some corruption, some malfeasance, some aggrandizement of power. What we seem to have witnessed for nearly half-a-century now is the trading of a rather idealistic vision of public service for an “as long as you don’t get caught” model. Public service has become a means, not an end, a means to better oneself, not a means to a better society. We have plenty of less than admirable role models for the new breed of public servant. The sadness here is that some of us had higher, perhaps too high, expectations that Obama could instill a new spirit, a new dedication. As with many other issues confronting his administration, this problem is much more deeply embedded, and will take a lot longer to resolve. We have to keep our expectations high and holding our public servants to the task of being better than we are. We have to hope that Obama does too.
Great article! No bias.
I think Robert young’s response is on target. Public service once was a calling, a higher standard for the country. Butpoliticians have cheapen in it by scandel and corruption, omissions (paying of one’s taxes), commission of ‘crimes’ against fellow citizens. What the worse thing is the American people but past it off as ‘that’s politics’.
No, that’s not just politics. That is apathy as to the role of a citizen. It is the system that has developed over the past two decades, and it appears to be live and well for the future.
The idea that politicians are or will be better than the average American is naive to say the least. They are no better than the rest of us and often times they are worse. The original intent of our founding fathers was that average ordinary citizens would come to the capital and serve the people in their area. They never imagined a ruling elite like we have today. We have given them so much of our money and thus, so much of our power. They gobble up more and more and naive Americans think politicians are going to help them in the long run if we just give them more power. Naive Americans like Jon Stewart who have talked themselves into this servitude because they have a president that is above us all, better in every conceivable measure than the ordinary American. Jon is not referring to someone who is better than the drunk down the street with a stained wife beater tank top on. That guy would never get elected. No, he is referring to a person that is better than everyone. Better than the business man or the doctor. Better than the accountant and better than the nurse. He wants this man not to have the short comings that Jon knows he has. The shortcomings we all have. He wants to believe that a soul exists that has none of these flaws. He wants a messiah.
Shame of it all, we missed our mail in payment by one day and now we have to pay another $118.00 on top of the $4K we already sent. Go figure.