Meaning those who voted for Obama believing his jive about “change”. It’s abundantly evident now with the appointment of a tax-cheat for a Secretary of Treasury, and now another for Secretary of Health and Human Services – as well as the dropped nomination of Bill Richardson, that Obama’s words a “new kind of Washington” is just that “words”.

“So Tom Daschle, the erstwhile prairie populist and scourge of multiple Presidential nominees, failed to disclose and pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income. He also waited months to pay up and told the Obama transition team about his tax oversights only days before his Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This one is going to be fascinating to watch, less for what it says about Mr. Daschle than what it will reveal about Democratic standards. Every Republican in America knows that if Mr. Daschle were a Reagan or Bush nominee he’d now be headed back to private life faster than you can say John Tower. That’s the way Democrats have treated GOP nominees who were accused of far lesser transgressions than Mr. Daschle’s tax, er, avoidance. The question is whether Democrats are going to treat Mr. Daschle according to the standard that Mr. Daschle set when he was running the Senate.

And what standard was that? Well, on taxes, you may recall that Mr. Daschle’s Senate Democrats led the campaign against “Benedict Arnold corporations” that earn too much income overseas. The companies do this legally, in part to avoid a U.S. corporate tax rate (35%) that is the developed world’s second highest, but that hasn’t stopped the Daschle Democrats from comparing them to traitors.

Then there was the assault on legal tax shelters, led in the Daschle Senate by Democrat Carl Levin. The Levin hearings encouraged the Justice Department to prosecute employees who sold tax shelters for KPMG, though no tax court had found them illegal. Most of the KPMG charges were later thrown out of court, but not before careers were ruined and life savings spent on legal defense fees. Under political pressure in 2002, the IRS disclosed the names of users of a KPMG shelter, including William Simon Jr., a Republican candidate for California Governor. Democrats cried that Mr. Simon was a tax cheat, and he had to release years of tax returns to show otherwise.

Now we learn that Mr. Daschle failed to report some $255,000 in income from 2005 through 2007 for a car and driver supplied to him for personal use. The chauffeur service was provided by Leo Hindery, a big Democratic donor who also made Mr. Daschle a bundle by making him a limited partner in InterMedia Partners, a private equity shop.

As a legal tax matter, this isn’t even a close call. Mr. Daschle says he used the car service about 80% for personal use, and 20% for business. But his spokeswoman says it only dawned on the Senator last June that this might be taxable income. Mr. Daschle’s excuse? According to a Journal report Friday, “he told committee staff he had grown used to having a car and driver as majority leader and did not think to report the perk on his taxes, according to staff members.” How’s that for a Leona Helmsley moment: Doesn’t everyone have a car and chauffeur, dear?”

Of course this isn’t new. We’ve seen this new “standard” since Democrats took congress in 2006. Whether it was William Jefferson – who refused to leave office until he was thrown out by voters, to Charlie Rangel who has till now successfully stonewalled the non-existent Ethics Committee, it’s apparent that it’s business as usual for the corrupt Democrat party.

Obama ran on “change” and on the same tainted platform of reform, yet just shy of his inauguration we saw his hand-picked Chief of Staff Raum Emmanuel get caught red-handed in the Blagojevich scandal.

In fact with the number of scandals and close scandals piling up Obama’s on track to break all previous records set.

Which lends us to believe either one or two things about Obama and neither are good, refreshing, but perhaps show that when it comes to corrupt politics nothing has “changed” either.

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