SERVANTS’ DISTURBANCE

I think I am feeling a little better about the new administration. It’s becoming clear that these people don’t like taxes a bit better than a normal person. Down deep they harbor an unconquerable aversion to paying them. The secretary of the treasury now is a character who “forgot” to pay $34,000 in income taxes recently. Now we find that the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services also forgot to pay $150,000 in taxes and interest on his income, which coincidentally came from people over whom he’ll have jurisdiction in his new office. If he gets it, that is. He might not be confirmed. This would be a loss to the anti-tax forces in Congress. As I’ve indicated, I don’t really believe this chatter about “forgetting”. These guys were moved by a deep-rooted psychological imperative not to give up a dime in taxes that they thought they could get away with keeping. That is their secret bond of sympathy with the toiling masses, who share this psychology.

Politicians love to economize in this way. A penny saved is a penny earned, after all. A lot of pennies can be saved by getting your household bills paid by the government instead of coming out of your own pocket. If you hold office you are entitled to have a staff to handle your mail, prepare your correspondence, schedule meetings, take you to and from them, do research, interview visitors, send out newsletters after writing them, also write speeches, handle public relations, prepare legislation, file documents, make travel arrangements, and put out the lights and lock the office door every night.

The above activities would seem to be enough to tax the capacity of a normal person. leaving little time over for any other work. This is true, but the problem can be solved by cutting down the activities to increase time available for extracurricular business. There has recently been a case in New York.

A lady named Dr. Antonia Novello, who used to be the U.S. Surgeon General under President George W. Bush, had been serving for seven years as New York State Commissioner of Health from 1999 to 2007. According to the New York Times she has been accused by members of her staff during that time of using them for personal services for herself for a total of 2,500 hours. That was the equivalent of engaging one of them for a full year on a forty-hour week basis with some overtime thrown in. A lot of overtime actually. On a salary of $256,000 yearly plus lots of perks like a state car and free insurance and medical coverage, it seems like she could have afforded a personal assistant to take her on 300-mile trips to airports and shopping heavens on Fifth Avenue and elsewhere around the tri-state area.

The lady was a shopaholic, according to the employees testifying against her. She hit all the best locations in New York from Albany to Long Island. Always using a state car driven by a state employee who faked his trip records for her. State workers in good health were also found useful by her for moving her furniture and redecorating her apartment. One of them had to bring his son to help him do the moving. Others defended themselves by flooding the office with advertising circulars that would lure the boss out of the place and relieve them of her presence for a while

She has engaged a “prominent criminal lawyer” who’s making the usual noises about “disgruntled employees” spreading scandal about their boss, who sometimes required extra help from them during her countless hours of devoted service to the health community of New York. She herself has refused to talk to state investigators. She knows the ropes all right. If she were still in office she couldn’t have refused to do that.

She’s an exceptionally good story, but there are others. They started back in 1976 when Wayne Hays, U. S. Congressman from Ohio, was reported to have a lady on his payroll as a secretary, who couldn’t type, take dictation or answer the telephone, but who made herself useful in other ways. She did come to the office a couple of days a week, but spent all her time there closeted with the congressman in his private office. The public took a great interest in the story while it lasted, but unlike Dr. Novello, Hays didn’t face criminal charges and got out of the news by resigning in late 1976.

Hays also didn’t use his staff for his housekeeping or shopping trips, but others weren’t as forbearing. Representative John Conyers (D. Mich.) went the whole nine yards and as a result had an admonition issued to him by the House Committee on Official Conduct in 2006, telling him (1) Not to use his staff for his campaigns; (2) Tell his staff they couldn’t work in campaigns or do other non-official work -- cf. Novello -- while being paid by the government; (3) Don’t just make us promises, but give us performance.

In Congress also another “disgruntled former employee” -- aren’t there any gruntled ones? -- accused two Democrats, Harman (Hawaii) and Abercrombie (Cal.) of the same kind of things as Conyers, offending her modesty by recruiting her for work in campaigns on official time. What kind of work isn’t specified in the news story, but let’s hope it was not such as to bring a blush to the cheeks of innocence. Some people will go to great lengths for a vote. But it’s possible the accuser, a Miss Flores, was not so easily shocked as she claims. She does have an embezzlement conviction on her record.

There have been no new cases reported of “trooper abuse” as practiced by Bill Clinton and after him by Eliot Spitzer. This offense is committed by arranging assignations with shady ladies, to which one travels in an official limousine driven by a state police bodyguard. Some people have suggested that the reason the troopers have become indignant at times is that they resent their passive role in all this, but I prefer to believe that what they really resent is its inevitability. Whatever stunt a governor chooses to perpetrate, he has to be escorted by troopers because if he’s not and he’s attacked along the way, the uproar will be greater even than the one arising from the misuse of the escort. It is a no-win situation for state police. All that can be said is that it’s sometimes also a no-win for their client.