The destruction of Linda Chavez for what she did for that woman and in fact
many others is perhaps the most disgusting thing I have ever seen it would
appear to violate virtually every belief of the liberals and the Democrats.
That is if they had beliefs as opposed to an agenda. While Clinton takes bows
and the Democrats cheer for pardoning a million illegal aliens (now obviously
simply a vote harvest) Linda Chavez is Borked and viciously attacked. Just to
highlight the hypocracy I include exerpts from this article from 1993 (all
facts since confirmed). Truth hurts my friends:
Bill and Hillary at the Trough
By Lisa Schiffren
<<<When Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the
Supreme Court, he said: "I believe the measure of a
person's values can best be measured by examining the
life the person lives." In that spirit, Bill and
Hillary's financial life, as reflected in a decade's
worth of tax returns, sheds light on their values, and
the experience that shaped their economic worldviews.
Nanny Problems
It is an irony that may or may not comfort Zok Baird,
Kimba Wood, Charles Ruff, and Judge Stephen
Breyer--all of whom lost jobs over the issue of
household help--but among the other bills footed by
the taxpayers of Arkansas was the cost of Chelsea's
nanny. The record of that expense helps explain how
the Clintons came to be blindsided by the Baird
nomination.
Chelsea Clinton was born on February 27, 1980.
Hillary, already a partner at The Rose Law Firm, took
off the better part of six months in order to care for
Chelsea. But a 1981 audit of the Governor's Mansion
official payroll showed that one D.M. Sanders, a
nurse, was employed from March 4, 1980--one week after
Chelsea's birth--until Bill Clinton left office on
January 31, 1981, at the cost of $3,130. Of course the
State of Arkansas does not pay for nannies for its
officials' children. So Governor Clinton had Chelsea's
nurse listed on the official payroll as a security
guard.
When this expenditure was caught and challenged by a
local newspaper in 1981, the then-out-of-office
Clinton shrugged it off on the grounds that the
security guard slot had been the only one open. (The
mansion had a full roster of maids and cooks.)
Ignoring official job designations is common when
hiring legitimate office staffers, but it makes sense
in this case only if one assumes that the taxpayers
should pay for a personal nurse for the governor's
baby. In any case, nowhere on their 1980 tax return
did either Yale-trained lawyer/parent remember to list
that $3,130 taxpayer gift as income.
Bill Clinton lost his re-election race that year, so
1981-82 are the only years since 1977 that he was off
the public payroll. Without a mansion full of help,
the Clintons hired a nurse--the same Dessie Sanders,
security guard--and paid her with their own money.
Having done so, William J. Clinton and Hillary Rodham
carefully filed Form 2241, the Credit for Child and
Dependent Care Expenses attachment, along with their
1981 return. They claimed a credit of $400 against a
$5,934 payment to Dessie and a $451 payment to a
Montessori school.
The Clintons omitted only one piece of information
from Form 2241: Dessie Sanders's Social Security
number. Nor did they list any such information the
following year. Ms. Sanders, a middle-aged American
citizen, who unlike the rest of the mansion's domestic
staff was white, certainly had such a number. Without
it, the Clintons could not have paid Social Security
taxes for her.
Nor did the Clintons ever list any Social Security
numbers for the other baby-sitters they paid between
$1,000 and $1,500 per year--and for whom they
continued to take the child-care credit through 1985.
As many of us learned last winter (but as Clinton, a
former state attorney general, and his lawyer wife
might have been expected to know), Social Security
taxes must be paid for anyone to whom an employer pays
more than $50 a quarter.
Were the payments made? Or did Bill and Hillary do
what Zok Baird and her husband, Yale Law professor
Paul Gewirtz, did? After a minor fulmination to the
effect that she would not lie about such a thing,
Hillary's press secretary Lisa Caputo explained that
White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum had found Bill
and Hillary's records in perfect compliance with all
Social Security obligations. The relevant records were
in a box in the White House. But for reasons of
principle, the first couple would not release them or
provide any material evidence to show that, despite
appearances to the contrary on their tax returns, they
had not violated the Social Security codes. Unlike
Kimba Wood, in other words, the Clintons did not have
to prove they had met the one ethical standard their
administration has set for employment.
By 1983 the Clintons were back in the governor's
mansion. Oddly enough, there is no further mention of
full-time babysitting on the Clintons' tax returns.
How did the dynamic duo make sure that their baby
wasn't neglected? Sometimes they used part-time
baby-sitters, and continued to file for a tax credit
against that cost, but listed no Social Security
payments. And Mrs. Clinton has often said that her
parents baby-sat frequently. Witnesses in Little Rock
suggest a third alternative: that the Clintons
routinely used staffers assigned to official
duties--housekeeping, security, mansion administrator,
etc.--to look after Chelsea. Rosie Spann, an elderly
maid who served in the mansion when Chelsea was young,
confirmed this. "I worked upstairs, so I sometimes
watched the baby when Hillary went to work."
No secret is made of the fact that, as White House
Deputy Press Secretary Lorraine Voles put it,
"childcare was provided for them in the governor's
mansion." But why is it that nowhere on the state's
official payroll--for all of Chelsea's young life--has
anyone ever been listed in that job designation?
This set-up continues in the Clinton White House.
Twenty-two-year-old Helen Dickey, Chelsea's last nanny
in Little Rock, moved with the Clintons to Washington
and is paid $20,000 as an employee of the East Wing
social staff. How then does she rate a bedroom in the
White House? According to Newsweek, Press Secretary
Caputo said that Dickey's duties include providing
"basic backup support" in planning parties and
answering mail and the phones, but acknowledged that
Dickey still takes care of Chelsea "on occasion." Said
Caputo: "She's really part of the family."
Decade of Greed
Despite an income that put them in the top 3 percent
of American families, for the Clintons in the 1980s,
most things in life were free--except clothing. Yet
Hillary managed to subsidize clothing, too, with some
stunningly aggressive tax deductions. Each season
Hillary gave away dozens of bags of old
clothing--hers, Bill's, and Chelsea's--to Goodwill,
the Salvation Army, and local shelters and charities.
Despite her busy schedule, she personally listed and
valued each item. Yearly totals range from just under
$1,000 to well over $2,300. Highlights include valuing
Bill's used undershirts at $3 each and Bill's used
running shoes at $10 and consistently donating the
sort of personal items that most of us feel are best
thrown away. (Bill's and Chelsea's underwear: $1 a
pair.) One year Hillary gave away a host of Chelsea's
toys. (One item, a Christmas bear, is crossed off. One
can only imagine little Chelsea pleading to keep the
bear, which mom believed would fetch a $3 deduction.)
Former Commissioner Alexander noted that the Clintons
seemed to have an unusually high turnover in clothing.
Another former IRS official questioned "whether the
fair market value she ascribes to these old clothes
are within the realm of reasonableness."
Lisa Schiffren, formerly a speechwriter is a fellow at the Center for Social
Thought in New York.
