A4 Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Most people accept the notion that politicians don’t always tell the truth. Some lies are harmless enough; others more consequential. L yndon Johnson skirted the truth when he promised during the 1964 presidential campaign not to send any more American troops to fight a land war in Southeast Asia. He knew then that American intervention would eventually be necessary, but the lie helped him win the election. After the election, Johnson sent additional troops, more American lives were lost and the war escalated. Richard Nixon claimed he knew nothing about Watergate. “I am not a crook,” he said. Lies. In 1976, Jimmy Carter promised never to lie to us, a promise that rested on a perception of his own virtue. Given his sad record, the country might have willingly exchanged veracity for compe-
A trust deficit OPINION
CAL
THOMAS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
tence. Bill Clinton? We know about one of his most famous lies, emphasized by that wagging finger and video showing him lying under oath as he labored to define the word “is.” Clinton’s lies led to his impeachment. The public didn’t seem to care that much because as Democrats and the media repeatedly said, it was “just about sex” and everyone lies about sex. Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather had a curious spin on lying when he told Fox’s Bill O’Reilly that even though Clinton lied about not having sex with
Monica Lewinsky, he still believed Clinton to be an honest man: “I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things,” said Rather. George W. Bush was accused of lying when he justified invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein by claiming he had weapons of mass destruction. WMDs were never found. President Obama’s most famous lie (so far) has been his promise: “If you like your (insurance) plan you can keep it.” Same with your doctor, he said. And he promised health insurance and treatment costs would go down under Obamacare. Not for everyone. Oops. According to CNN.com, former congressional chief of staff and Washington lobbyist Ed Uravic, author of the book “Lying Cheating Scum,” claims, “Every president has not only lied at some time, but needs to lie to be effec-
tive.” A president can lie up to a point, but when a president’s lies extend beyond protecting the country (white lies) and drift into a darker area that is self-serving (black lies) it is something quite different, often prompting public rejection when he’s exposed. Speaker John Boehner says he and his fellow Republicans can no longer trust the president due to what they believe is his repeated lies. Last week, Boehner said House Republicans are not prepared to move ahead on immigration reform this year because they do not trust President Obama to follow the law. Boehner and his GOP colleagues are particularly disturbed by the president’s assertions he can go around Congress when he wants to, changing the health care law and writing executive orders when it suits his fancy. Claiming an American presi-
Roswell Daily Record
dent is not trustworthy ruins whatever credibility he brought to the of fice and this president brought a lot. Most people wanted to believe in him and a large majority did believe in him at the start. Many no longer do, as his declining approval ratings demonstrate. In dealing with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan employed a Russian proverb, “trust but verify.” Boehner and the Republicans seem to be saying there is no need to verify with this president, because he can’t be trusted. The inability by a major party to trust a president is more than lamentable; it is not good for the country and our standing before other nations and groups that wish to do us harm. (Readers may e-mail Cal at tcaediThomas tors@tribune.com.) (c) 2014 T ribune Content Agency, LLC.
EDITORIAL
IRS should hold of f on employee bonuses Ten years ago last month, scandal-ridden and bankrupt Enron Corp. dared to propose paying up to $45 million in employee bonuses. The fallen energy giant’s bankruptcy lawyer said the ‘incentives’ were necessary to retain employees who were, in effect, working themselves out of a job. After it’s own scandal-ridden year in 2013, the Inter nal Revenue Service announced Monday that it has decided to pay its employees $62.5 million in bonuses for last year. And though there was little danger the IRS rank and file would abandon their secure civil service jobs — which pay as much as $130,000 a year — the federal tax collection agency said its failure to pay out bonuses for 2012 ‘significantly affected employee morale.’ Well, forgive us for being unsympathetic. We find the decision to bestow bonus money on IRS employees almost as outrageous as the windfall for Enron’s employees. IRS suggested that its employees were entitled to the $62.5 million in financial awards, but that they were put on hold because of last year’s sequester. It supposedly ‘reinstated’ the bonuses to avoid a legal dispute with the National Treasury Employees Union. ‘I firmly believe that this investment in our employees will directly benefit taxpayers and the tax system,’ IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. ‘Payment of these ear ned awards to employees is an important step recognizing their valuable contributions to the IRS and the nation,’ said NTEU president Colleen Kelley. The American people obviously do not share the sentiments of Mr. Koskinen and Ms. Kelley. In a Gallup poll last May, 42 percent said the IRS is doing a ‘poor job.’ Some 60 percent said the agency ‘frequently abuses its powers.’ It’s not that the taxpaying public has a visceral antipathy toward those who collect their taxes — well, maybe some do. It’s more that IRS employees have been guilty of using their enforcement powers to target law-abiding groups and individuals. Indeed, a May 2013 audit by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration revealed that the IRS Exempt Organizations Division circulated a ‘Be On the Lookout’ list for conservative nonprofit groups with such names as ‘Tea Party’ and ‘Patriot.’ Meanwhile, in her 2012 annual report to Congress, the IRS’ national taxpayer advocate stated that the agency culture encourages workers to ‘treat people like widgets,’ to ‘get the next case out and don’t engage with the taxpayers.’ That very well may explain the recent report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University research group, that criminal tax prosecutions have soared 23.4 percent under the Obama IRS, compared with those during the Bush administration. ‘This is certainly reflecting a get-tough attitude,’ Susan Long, TRAC co-director, told Reuters news service. Abuses of power by IRS employees, revealed by Treasury’s inspector general, and the mistreatment of the taxpaying public, confirmed by the taxpayer advocate, hardly deserve to be rewarded. While there are, undoubtedly, conscientious civil service employees working for the IRS — as there almost certainly were at least some conscientious Enron employees — the gross misconduct of the relatively few produces deleterious consequences for one and all. Reprinted from The Orange County Register
High school confidential
MARK SHIELDS CREATORS SYNDICATE As my savvy precinct committeewoman used to say, “A month is a lifetime in politics, and six months is an eternity.” On Jan. 9, the Quinnipiac Poll stated: “New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie is the hottest politician in the country.” Democrats were openly nervous the Republican Party might have an unexpected attack of pragmatism and actually nominate Christie in 2016. Less than a month later, after Christie’s of fice was revealed to have been directly involved in a scandal that had
Doonesbury
DEAR DOCTOR K: I’m an older woman in good health, but I can’t get a good night’s sleep because I keep waking up to go to the bathroom. What can I do? DEAR READER: “Nocturia” is the medical term for the need to get up frequently to urinate during the night. It’s a common cause of sleep loss, especially among older adults. In severe cases, a person may get up as many as five or six times during the night. This can lead to sleep deprivation and daytime fatigue. One common cause of nocturia is easily corrected. Watch (and consider cutting
for days deliberately tied up commuter traffic on the George Washington Bridge, the CNNORC national poll, which, in December, had shown Christie leading Democrat Hillary Clinton 48 percent to 46 percent, now indicated that Clinton would crush Christie, 55 percent to 39 percent. And all these polls were taken before we got a full, if unwelcome, look at what I can only call the “unappealing smallness” of Christie. In his marathon two-hour press conference in the second week of January when he testified that he had neither involvement in nor knowledge of his
ASK DR. K UNITED MEDIA SYNDICATE
down on) how much you drink in the two hours before bedtime. Be particularly careful about drinks containing caf feine and alcohol: They both cause the kidneys to pass more water. Nocturia becomes more
appointees closing the bridge, Christie went back 30 years to distance himself from his man at the Port Authority, David Wildstein, who had been a year ahead of him at Livingston (N.J.) High School and who received, and allegedly executed, the order from the governor’s office to snarl bridge traffic: “David and I were not friends in high school. We were not even acquaintances in high school ... We didn’t travel in the same circles in high school. You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don’t know what David was doing during that period of time.” These are
the words of a small man who brags, I was the popular jock who had an assigned seat of honor at the exclusive cool guys table in the school cafeteria while David was nowhere to be seen, let alone included. But that was gentle treatment compared to what the governor’s office unloaded on Feb. 1 after Wildstein’s attorney wrote that there existed evidence, contrary to what the governor had unequivocally asserted, that Christie knew about the bridge lane closings. Proving he and his team were totally unready for the prime-
common with age, and several different conditions can cause it. Some are just the result of aging and some are diseases. As we get older, our brains produce less antidiuretic hormone. Nor mally, this hormone travels in the blood and causes the kidneys to make less urine. Since we make less hormone as we get older, we make more urine at night. Sometimes doctors treat this condition with a drug that causes the same effects as antidiuretic hormone. Age also reduces the holding capacity of our bladder. Even when you don’t have that much fluid in the blad-
der, it senses that it is full. As a result, the bladder sends urgent signals to your brain that you need to urinate. There are several diseases that can cause nocturia. Heart failure causes blood to be pumped less ef ficiently through the kidneys. That leads to a buildup of excess fluid in the blood and the rest of the body. And that, in turn, causes the heart and kidneys to do everything they can to pass as much of that excess fluid as possible out in the urine. Diabetes is another exam-
See SHIELDS, Page A5
See DR. K, Page A5