Free Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies by Michelle Malkin Page B

crisis to force Obama hagiographers to confront an alternate narrative. A reality-based narrative. A narrative of incompetence, nepotism, influence-peddling, and self-dealing that defies the stubborn myth that Barack Obama is the One True Agent of Hope and Change.
    While pundits cooed over Obama’s “Achievatrons” and their unbridled “star power,” nomination after nomination imploded. The White House and its allies dismissed each failure as a “hiccup,” a “bump in the road,” or a “goof.” Meanwhile, the pace of withdrawals and botched appointments was “record-setting” and “unprecedented.” Some of the names you’ll recognize. Some you’ve never heard of because Obama’s cheerleaders were too busy glorifying the Greatest Transition in World History. Among the fallen:
• Bill Richardson (corruption scandal)
• Tom Daschle (taxes, ethics)
• Nancy Killefer (taxes)
• Annette Nazareth (allegations of incompetence)
• Caroline Atkinson (taxes)
• H. Rodgin Cohen (conflicts of interest)
• Frank Brosens (“personal” reasons)
• Scott Polakoff (allegations of fraud)
• Jon Cannon (ties to embezzlement scam)
• Charles Freeman (foreign government cronyism)
    And those were just some of the bodies thrown under the bus before the 100-day mark. Heckuva job, Obama vetters!
    But getting through the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or competence. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, of course, tops the list of Senate-confirmed Obama bombs. Mentored by Wall Street power brokers Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, he played key roles in bungling Indonesia’s economy and engineering the Bear Stearns and AIG bailout fiascos. And that was before his prolonged failure to pay back taxes on illegal immigrant household help (along with his acceptance of reimbursement money for taxes he didn’t pay) was discovered and before his sheepish admission that he had approved the AIG bonuses his boss decried as “shameful” and “outrageous.”
    After Bill Richardson and GOP Senator Judd Gregg bowed out of the Commerce Secretary position, President Obama settled on former Democrat Governor of Washington, Gary Locke. The national papers called him “strait-laced” and hailed his “clean reputation.” Both liberals and conservatives in his home state called that a crock. As governor, he gave billions in tax breaks to Boeing while failing to disclose that he had retained a paid Boeing private consultant and auditor to advise him on the matter. In the governor’s mansion, Locke had his own Billy Carter—a brother-in-law who mooched off the family name to secure tax breaks and job opportunities. And on top of all that, the corporate lawyer Locke (who specialized in trade issues with China) was involved in not one, not two, but three campaign finance scandals involving tainted Asian cash. Perhaps suffering from Commerce Secretary withdrawal fatigue, the Senate confirmed Locke by unanimous consent.
    Hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet:
• The No. 2 official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, former King County, Washington, Executive Ron Sims, has the distinction of being the most fined government official in his state’s history for suppressing public records from taxpayers.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for years fought disclosure of massive donations from foreign governments and corporations who filled her husband’s library and foundation coffers.
• Top Obama advisor David Axelrod ran fear-mongering campaigns in Illinois in support of a huge utility rate hike—and failed to disclose that his ads were funded by Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.
• Labor Secretary Hilda Solis failed to disclose that she was director and treasurer of a union-promoting lobbying group pushing legislation she was co-sponsoring as a congresswoman.
• Attorney General Eric Holder overruled his own lawyers in the Justice Department over the issue of