Senator Kent Conrad, speaking on the vote to confirm Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, offered the following rationale:
One committee member, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a former tax commissioner, said in normal times, Geithner’s failure to pay his taxes would have led Conrad to oppose the nomination.
“But these are not normal times,” Conrad said. He said the economy’s not “out of the woods” and touted Geithner’s extensive experience at a time when the country needs a treasury secretary imminently.
What poppycock. What makes now abnormal? Housing slumps? Economic changes? Rising unemployment? That’s all typical stuff for any country. There are ups and downs in life. That’s normal.
Think about what Conrad’s logic allows for. In “normal” times, I wouldn’t want a bank robber to run Citigroup, but since he has so much experience with money we have to hire this one. In “normal” times, I wouldn’t want a homicidal maniac in a key leadership position at the DoD, but given the state of the world, we really need this homicidal maniac in place.
We are always in “normal” times. There are always critical events occurring in the world, and we need to react to them. That’s a part of living. Using such a rationale in justifying the appointment of an unfit person to the position of Treasury Secretary is disingenuous at best.
What Conrad is saying is that ethics don’t really matter when times are tough. Except that’s when they really matter.
Maybe Geithner will do a really good job as Treasury Secretary. I hope so. Maybe it was an honest mistake (doubtful, in my mind), or Geithner is truly repentant for his past actions. But I don’t buy Conrad’s implied argument that it would take too long to find a suitable alternative (surely the Obama transition team had a list of possible nominees), or that Geithner is the only person who can fix things, and that therefore one must
Previous 
Next 
Categories
Tag Cloud
Blog RSS
Comments RSS
Last 50 Posts
Back
Void 
Life 
Earth 
Wind 
Water 
Fire
In ‘normal times’ this guy would have been convicted of tax evasion and fined and/or jailed. But we do have a class war going on – the ruling class vs. the rest of us. It really doesn’t matter if he has a D or an R next to his name, they protect their own.
Declaring times to be not “normal” allows them to excuse anything.
Times are always normal, there are just different sets of circumstances with which we are dealing.
And I just now noticed that the end of my post got cut. I’ll have to fix that.
Conrad was lying. They confirmed Geithner’s nomination because he’s one of them and they want to appear to be all one big happy (Democratic) family. And, as you said, they’re using the current economic crisis as an excuse.
A politician was lying? I’m shocked!