Imagine you go to a restaurant and Anthony Weiner is your waiter. Do you have the stomach for dinner?
Imagine you call an electrician and Weiner shows up at your home. Do you let him in?
Imagine he is your child’s teacher. Do you keep your kid in his class?
Of course you don’t trust him with your food or let him in your home, and you sure as hell don’t let him anywhere near your child. So unless we have a lower standard for government service than for those jobs, Weiner is not qualified to stay another minute in Congress.
Yet his blubbering confession and continuing revelations aside, Weinergate is now about his fitness to continue in office. It’s a no-brainer that he fails the test — and he must go in short order.
But his refusal to resign already illustrates the depths of his depravity. While his low-rent behavior reflects the character flaws that drove his perverted exhibitionism, his refusal to quit reflects the tight grip of corruption on government.
Any official who uses his political notoriety to send naked pictures of himself to strangers, then concocts a defense out of elaborate lies and false indignation, is too far off the beam to trust. The notion that we must pay taxes to pay his salary is outrageous.
But Weiner, his chutzpah intact, demands that his punishment be limited to public shame. He boasts he’s taking “responsibility” as though that’s a heroic act and he has another choice. He is so self-obsessed that he thinks he has suffered enough by admitting some of his lies.
Like fellow New York Dems Charlie Rangel and Eliot Spitzer, Weiner is so corrupted by power and privilege that he has lost all perspective. The only reality in their world is the one you can get away with. There is no objective truth. As he instructed a porn pal in how to lie, the aim is to keep repeating your talking points until the press gets bored or distracted.
This is the mindset of too many modern politicians, who see government as nothing more than one long battle against the other team. Weiner excelled at it and became a cable-TV star because he has no shame and more than one screw loose.
It is worth noting that a blog under his name still features rabid attacks on “Republican assaults on women.” Even by Washington standards of hypocrisy, that’s rich, given his predatory habits with women half his age.
To think he stood a decent chance of becoming New York’s next mayor is to realize that, for all his flaws, Michael Bloomberg is at least a grown-up who respects his office.
Thankfully, we have been spared a Mayor Weiner. But this is no time to go wobbly — the public must drop the hammer on him.
Giving Weiner the benefit of the doubt is to say that all values are negotiable and none is absolute. If he’s good enough for government, then America is finished.
Indeed, we have so many Spitzers and Rangels and Weiners because we tolerate them. We always give them a second chance and a third. The more “compassionate” we are, the more of the bastards we get.
Whatever happens between Weiner and his wife is their business. His public career is ours, and it’s time for a divorce.
TAXES FOR DUMMIES (CITY POLS)
With the City Council determined to restore most of the budget cuts Mayor Bloomberg proposed, demands to soak the rich can’t be far behind. In that case, here’s a primer on who actually pays the city’s personal income tax, which brings in about $7.8 billion a year.
Start with the top .1 percent, or 3,616 filers, who last year paid 29 percent of the total, or some $2.2 billion, according to City Hall. On average, those families paid a whopping $613,717 each.
The top 1 percent, a total of 36,167 filers, paid nearly 50 percent, about $3.9 billion. The top 10 percent paid 77 percent of the tax.
On the other end, 37 percent of New York families paid no city income tax. And many of those actually made money from other taxpayers by taking advantage of various credits.
There are several problems with the tax. It’s too high at the bottom and the range of rates is fairly narrow, although added flat fees effectively raise the tax above the stated rate for higher incomes.
The tax kicks in at the first dollar, and the rate is 2.9 percent for the first $21,600 of taxable income. From there to $45,000, the rate jumps to 3.5 percent plus an additional $600.
The top rate of 3.87 percent, plus a flat payment of $18,000, kicks in with incomes over $500,000.
In short, the tax is a bargain only for those who don’t pay it. And because the wealth already is being spread around, the council will have to find other cuts if it doesn’t like the mayor’s.
O FIDDLES AS ECONOMY BURN$
And then there was one. With Austan Goolsbee jumping ship, the turnover of President Obama’s economic team is complete, with the exception of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who remains.
Gone are Larry Summers, Christina Romer, Peter Orszag and Jared Bernstein. Goolsbee has been with Obama since the campaign but took the top White House job only last September, meaning he lasted less than a year in the post.
It would be a happy departure if it meant Obama recognized his policies had failed and was ready to get serious about jobs, deficits and the debt.
Dream on. With the American jobs machine broken, unemployment rising to 9.1 percent and most other economic indicators showing weak growth, Obama seems devoted only to his re-election campaign. The “fierce urgency of now” is absent.
By one count, 24 million Americans are unemployed, stopped looking or are working in part-time jobs. The number of those out of work for six months or longer is at record highs, and the housing market is in a depression.
The good news? The election is coming.
GETTING TAKEN FOR A RIDE
Let me guess: The number of taxi inspectors working weekends is zero.
In a span of less than 10 minutes last Sunday, I counted at least eight medallion yellow cabs with their “off duty” lights on and passengers inside. This was in Midtown, on and near Seventh Avenue, and police officers were everywhere, but the cabbies had no fear as they snaked through the area north of Times Square. Taxi inspectors probably work bankers’ hours, and the drivers know it.
Most of the passengers were surely tourists, and they got ripped off with inflated off-the-meter fees. Welcome to New York, suckers.
MAID IN THE USA
Speaking of liberal pervs, Dominique Strauss-Kahn had to walk through a crowd of maids protesting his alleged assault on one of their own. You gotta love American notions of égalité, especially because he must have been furious. Good.