Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, did not pay $7,040 in taxes between 2005 and 2007. She paid the back taxes and penalty after they were identified.

(Health nominee Sebelius reveals tax troubles, LA Times, 04/01/09)

I mean … what’s up with the tax dodging and hollering?

I’m no tax prude; I’ve owed back taxes three times in my life: once due to a false filing by an ex-employer, once due to my own neglect, and once due to the Douglas administration retroactively changing tax policy without any input from the legislature.

Two out of three of those times I ended up paying some penalties and the back tax. On the last one Vermont’s General Assembly undid the Douglas administrative tax increase (happy to tell you about that one if you’re interested … very short story).

What I’m trying to say is: I know there are situations which arise without ill intent that result in owing back taxes.

And to be fair, Ms Sebelius’ tax debt is not very large, and she claims some very innocuous and possibly good reasons for her tax problems. She may be absolutely innocent of anything worse than small oversight errors.

But how many folks in public life can we go through and keep finding this kind of problem? It seems the norm rather than exception which violating law is supposed to be for the ruling elite of our nation.

On top of that we have Republicans screaming like pigs in a botched slaughter about these tax issues. The same Republicans that have helped develop tax havens and have made tax bashing a national pastime. The perfect definition of hypocrisy: working hard to destroy our nation’s finances by attacking how we raise our common money and then bemoaning the fact that people take them seriously and view taxes as a pain in the ass to be avoided rather than a valuable contribution to society that should be embraced.

Republicans hate taxes (except when they’re to pay off national debt that Republicans have helped create by siphoning our nation’s money off to their uber-wealthy friends … ‘nother story though). They should be applauding their friends from the “other side of the aisle” who have come to agree with them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is it looks like there’s nothing more than lack of attention to a very small detail involved in Sebelius’ tax problem; but if we were to view taxes as an important means to accomplish worthy goals far fewer of us would be so lackadaisical about accurate tax filings … especially when in the very public sphere of national political life.

Plus we could use a little better than this Palin style vetting of Cabinet wannabes.