DC EXAMINER EDITORIAL: "Death and taxes for all - except Marion Barry"
To go to the Washington Examiner editorial click HERE.By Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
2/10/09 7:23 PM
Marion Barry will not go to jail for failing to file his tax returns.
He knows it.
The judge knows it.
You know it.
“Get over it,” as Barry told his political opponents when he was elected to a fourth mayoral term. This was after he served time in jail on a cocaine rap.
The prosecutor knows it. That’s why U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor tacked on “The Alternative Request” at the end of his seven-page motion to revoke Barry’s probation and send him to the slammer.
If the judge declines to accept Taylor’s argument that Barry’s “failure to file tax returns for the eighth time in nine years cannot be countenanced,” and that “he should be sentenced to a period of incarceration” then Taylor would settle for asking the judge to hold a hearing so Barry can “address the court about his conduct.”
Here’s what the former mayor-for-life would say to the judge: “There is no excuse and no reason that anyone ought to be able to give as to why you do not file and pay the appropriate federal and District taxes. And therefore I will not try to even attempt to make an excuse or a reason.”
This is exactly what Barry told the judge in March, 2006, when prosecutors first asked to send Barry to jail. It worked then. Why not roll it out again?
So get over it: No matter how much Marion Barry flouts the law, in this town he is above it. We used to think nothing was certain but death and taxes. Barry seems immune to both.
Word on the street is Barry is not well, but his malady is a secret. He’s survived prostate cancer. He has diabetes. I hear he needs a new liver. Among the addictions Barry acknowledged back in 1990, before he served six months on the cocaine rap, was his need for alcohol -- thus the bad liver.
Politically, Barry is invincible. Voters in Ward 8 just elected him to another four-year term. His colleagues on the city council -- including Chairman Vince Gray -- are either afraid of Barry or in awe of him. Yesterday morning Gray asked council members to show up at 10:30 a.m. for their official photo; Barry showed up at 11:15, laughing and kibitzing. Greeting an admitted and habitual tax cheat, his cowed colleagues joined the merriment. Only Jack Evans and David Catania have the guts to give Barry the blues.
Legislators in Illinois impeached Rod Blagojevich for his various misdeeds as governor; judges and legislators in D.C. just laugh along with Barry’s admitted dissing the system.
How can we avoid letting Barry define Washington, D.C., as a city of bumblers and tax scofflaws?
What we need is an intervention. If Barry has any friends left, they should sit him down with an accountant and file his taxes. If that fails, his council colleagues should intervene. No muss, no fuss.
Unless, of course, Mr. Barry has something to hide.