" Nannygate " is a popular term for 1993 revelation that led to two choices of President Bill Clinton for the US Attorney General to slip.
In January 1993, Clinton's nomination for corporate lawyer Zoe Baird for the position was attacked after it was discovered that he and her husband had violated federal law by employing two illegal aliens from Peru as caregivers and chauffeurs for their young child. They also failed to pay Social Security taxes to workers, called "Nanny Taxes", until just before the disclosure. While the Clinton administration considers this issue relatively insignificant, the news has caused a storm of public opinion, largely against Baird. Within eight days, his candidacy lost political support in the US Congress and was withdrawn.
The following month, Clinton's choice of federal judge Kimba Wood for the job was leaked to the press, but in one day it was discovered that he also had hired immigrants without documents to care for his son. Although Wood has done so at the moment it is legal, and has paid Social Security taxes for workers, disclosure is enough to cause Wood's immediate withdrawal from consideration. The Clinton Administration later said that the recruitment practices for domestic help would be checked for all the more than a thousand presidential pledges under consideration, causing the entire process to slow down significantly. Determined to elect a woman for the post of Attorney General, Clinton eventually elects state prosecutor Janet Reno, who is confirmed and served for eight years of rule.
The Nannygate problem causes rich Americans to ask each other if they also have a "Baird problem", since employing illegal aliens and paying household help from the books is equally commonplace. Two fault lines, sex and class, were exposed in discussions about Nannygate: in the first, a double standard was seen in which women raised were at greater risk for interrogation and disqualification based on their parenting arrangements, while in the second, prosperous professionals women who are able to afford a parenting arrangement live are seen as trying to escape by illegal acts. Nannygate type controversy has influenced other political appointments both in the US and elsewhere.
Video Nannygate
Baird nominations
President-elect Bill Clinton has vowed to assemble a government that "looks like America", and it is widely assumed that one of the main cabinet posts will be given to a woman. In particular, he wanted to nominate one for the position of the US Attorney General, something that was also asked by women's political action groups. There are no women previously assigned to this post. The choice, whose candidacy was announced on December 24, 1992, was ZoÃÆ'Â B½ Baird, a 40-year-old senior vice president and general counsel at Aetna Life and Casualty Company who previously worked for the Department of Justice during the Carter administration.
Not many people know before the nomination (Clinton has not met him until their interview), Baird is a skilled networker who has become a protégé of some of Washington's strong men, including Clinton transition team leader, Warren Christopher and the former White House and will come. Counsel Lloyd Cutler. Choosing Baird gave Clinton the ability to satisfy the desires of women's groups while still showing independence by not choosing one of their preferred options. Despite the lack of familiarity and warm response from some Clinton supporters - those in the public interest community law say "ZoÃÆ'« who? "And his corporate sympathies downplay the liberal - Baird is expected to be confirmed in the US Senate. Baird and her husband, Yale Law School professor Paul Gewirtz, have a three-year-old son.
On January 14, 1993, a one-page story on The New York Times broke the news that Baird had hired an illegal couple from Peru, Lillian and Victor Cordero between 1990 and 1992. Peruvian women served as the nanny of Baird's son and Peruvian man as a part-time driver. Furthermore, Baird has not paid Social Security taxes for the couple, until making a lump-sum payment early in January 1993. Baird has submitted this information with pleasure to transitional officials and officials conducting background checks; He says that he thinks that the fact that they sponsor spouses for citizenship makes recruitment acceptable, and that they can not pay taxes to people who have not been in the country legally. (Baird immigration lawyers will dispute some aspects when exactly sponsorship is in demand.)
This is the first time a presidential candidate from the presidency has faced such a problem. When Clinton's transition team learned about the issue during Baird's examination, they underestimated the seriousness of its impact. Their attitude about Baird's offense is that it is a technical offense and that 'Everybody does it'. The Clinton operatives initially thought that Baird's disclosure was not a big deal and would quickly lose media and public attention.
The work of illegal aliens was not uncommon at the time, but in Baird's case, public relations were particularly bad, because the Attorney General was responsible for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Baird's wealth - he earns $ 500,000 a year in his job and along with her husband has a combined income of $ 600,000 - making it, in the context of the early 1990s recession, an unsympathetic figure not to pay taxes. In addition, Baird and Gewirtz have been rich enough to pay for legal childcare, but instead pay Corderos $ 250 per week plus a board, well below the minimum wage. The news brought a massive and immediate negative reaction. As a Trustee , U.S. correspondent Martin Walker later wrote, "[Baird and Gewirtz] are higher-paid yuppies and lawyers everywhere that American voters have hated."
On January 16, Baird paid a $ 2,900 fine for a violation to the INS. This is over $ 8,000 in Social Security taxes he paid earlier. George Stephanopoulos, director of communications transition, said that "Clinton's elected president has full confidence in ZoÃÆ'« Baird. "
Some people in Clinton's inner circle insist on believing that Baird's offense is the same as a traffic ticket in seriousness, but Democratic senators say otherwise; The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Joe Biden of Delaware more likens it to "road accidents."
Baird met Biden twice, both times leaving his office in tears, although Biden publicly stated that he did not think this problem would prevent his candidacy. Baird actually got faster support from Orrin Hatch ranking member, who called it "no big deal." This reflects a considerable Republican support for Baird, as they decide that he is more in tune with their attitude about some issues than the possibility of replacement.
Appeared before the Justice Committee on January 19, Baird apologized for violating the law consciously: "In my hope of finding appropriate parenting for my son, I gave too little emphasis to what was described to me as a technical offense. " He added that, "People are wondering whether there is an individual class that is holding back on the law. Baird's statement that her husband had dealt with many legal issues surrounding Corderos's work drew little support for her. Overall, the question of Baird is tougher than Democrats on committees rather than Republicans, again reflecting his recent support for Baird. At the close of the initial testimony, Baird's confirmation still seems very likely.
When the inauguration of Bill Clinton took place on January 20, the nominating crisis reached its final stages, with Biden telling Clinton at lunch after the ceremony that the next day or two would be very important. But political and public opposition continues to increase. Calls against nominations flooded the congressional switchboards. Senator David Boren from Oklahoma reported getting a thousand calls to his office, with 80% of them opposed to candidacy. Senator Paul Simon from Illinois also received a thousand phone calls. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said, "In 18 years in the Senate, I have not seen so many phone calls, spontaneously, in such a short time."
The television crew lurked Baird's house in New Haven. As one of the top Senate officials later stated, "There are phone calls to the office, local editorials.. People are just way ahead of us." This problem created a storm of fire on the radio of conservative talks, then emerged as a potential force in American politics. Talker Rush Limbaugh is primarily involved in this issue, for example weighing to say that the "blame-it-at-husband-Baird" defense is a "feminazi" tactic. The CNN/Gallup US poll Today /shows that 63 percent of American public do not think Baird should be confirmed; his reaction was vast, with the Republican and Democratic majority, men and women, and young and old all against him.
Clinton faced a good option quickly throw it away, and risk seemed weak, or challenged to continue supporting it, and against the popular waves; he chose to wait and see more. There was also a lot of confusion about when exactly Clinton knew about Baird's problem, with Christopher saying he had told Clinton about it during the transition and Clinton said he did not. This leads to "What does the President know and when he knows it" baked Stephanopoulos on January 21 during his first press conference as Director of Communications of the White House. The treatment of Stephanopoulos is rude and his avoidance answers are bordering on nonsense.
The second round of the Judicial Committee hearing also took place on 21 January, and at that time, Baird was politically isolated, without any large groups coming to his defense. More senators appeared against Baird during the day, including two Republican members of the Justice and Democratic Committee of influential centrists John Breaux of Louisiana and David Boren of Oklahoma. Baird bravely continued to smile and testify until late at night, but when Stephanopoulos later wrote, "He has not found out yet, but he toasted." Biden called Clinton and said that the nomination was gone.
On January 22, 1993, two days after Clinton occupied the presidency, the White House announced midnight Baird's nomination withdrawal.
Clinton now publicly declares that he has been told about hiring Baird from an illegal alien after discussing his position with him but before actually nominating him. He did not stop the process of getting all the information but had been mistaken by nominating to meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline to name his cabinet. On January 23rd, Anna Quindlen used the term "Nannygate" in her syndicated column and was soon used on a large scale.
While Lillian and Victor Cordero have done their job well (before hiring them, Baird has made several attempts to hire US citizens, but nothing works), on January 22, the INS said they are trying to question them and most likely deport them. The couple had previously split up and were about to divorce. Lillian Cordero agreed to leave the country and return to Peru, under a 30-day "voluntary departure" program. Victor Cordero first went into hiding, hoping to stay in the country; his lawyer said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that, "He does not understand why he's being shunned." But on January 29, he has also voluntarily left the US for Peru. None of them ever appeared in the media. Although illegal households are rarely deported unless they have been involved in crime, the INS states that the couple were treated no differently from other illegal aliens brought to their attention.
Maps Nannygate
The Wood near-nomination
On February 4, 1993, the Clinton White House made it known through a deliberate background statement to some of the major newspapers that a 49-year-old US federal judge Kimba Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York would be his new. choice for the Attorney General. However, no official announcements or nominations were made, pending the completion of background checks and for measuring reactions to the options. White House officials indicated that First Lady Hillary Clinton had insisted that the position was still filled by a woman. Wood, a prominent New York socialite, married Time magazine writer Michael Kramer and the couple had a six-year-old son.
However, later that day, an investigation by the White House office of Counsel and FBI background checks was resolved, and Clinton and the White House learned that he had employed illegal immigrants to look after his son, even though he had done so when it was legal to do so. Immigrants, from Trinidad, were employed in March 1986, several months before the enactment of the 1986 Immigration and Control Reform Act of 1986 made illegal foreign illegal recruitment. The caregiver gained legal status in December 1987, and overall worked for Wood for seven years.
Clinton decided the nomination could not advance, and the next day, February 5, Wood openly withdrew from consideration.
The case is different from the Baird case in which Wood does not violate immigration law and has paid Social Security tax to that person. Nevertheless, the White House is afraid of reactions from Congress and the public, as well as that of radio and television talk shows, in clear, if not actual, repetition of Baird's controversy, and asks Wood to step down. A further burden was the disclosure that when he was a student in London, Wood had been practicing for five days as a Playboy bunny. The White House is upset with Wood, as they say that when they initially asked him if he had a problem "Baird ZoÃÆ'«, "he replied in his country. Ally Wood gave a very different report and said that he had fully come about the details of his relationship with immigrants. According to Gallup Polling, 65% of Americans do not think Wood should be forced down.
other Clinton recipients
One of the few people who made a short list for the Attorney General's election, Washington's lawyer Charles Ruff, was removed from consideration by the White House on Feb. 6, as he has not paid Social Security tax for years for a woman who cleaned his house.
On February 8, Stephanopoulos expanded the scope of the affairs by announcing that hiring former illegal aliens would "probably disqualify" to applicants to one of 1,100 presidential pledges subject to confirmation by the Senate. As one White House official put it, "If you intentionally hire an illegal alien, it is a murderer.If you hire someone who is legal but does not pay Social Security taxes, you may be fine, but only if you come clean and pay back taxes. "
Several people appointed by Clinton then advanced. Trade Minister Ron Brown said he failed to pay taxes to a helper. Brown's case attracted considerable attention, with 40% of Americans thinking he should step down as a result (he does). Transportation Secretary Federico PeÃÆ'Â ± a said he would pay back the tax owed for a part time caretaker. Other designated people say they have checked their records and are clean. Stephanopoulos himself gets his attention, but says the cleaners he leases come from the cleaning company. This problem resulted in a slowdown of hiring for all positions, in what the Secretary of Defense Les Aspin called "terrible effects". A third of the nominees for the US State Department were detained while being questioned for the question.
Several other Clinton cabinet recipients fled from Nannygate based on their personal circumstances. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala is not married without children, while Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright have growing children. Carol Browner, chosen by Hillary for the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and someone who has a small child, avoids the Nannygate problem by never using a nanny.
Reno Nomination
On February 11, 1993, Janet Reno was nominated for the post. Clinton has known him since his days with the Miami Drug Court, where as a state lawyer he has worked with public defenders and Clinton's brother-in-law Hugh Rodham, but on the contrary even though eligible for the job has no federal experience and is relatively unclear. Reno is aged 54, has never been married and has no children, and, as Clinton later wrote, "Public service is his life." With no chance of caregiver problems, and by cutting the lawn alone reduces the chances of immigrant problems, Reno is the perfect choice after the failure of Baird and Wood. In addition, Reno's down-to-earth image contrasts with the lawyers of the wealthy Baird and Wood companies that are socially salient. (Reno will instead face something often experienced by an unmarried woman at her age, speculation about her sexual orientation.)
In making the announcement, Clinton said that he had considered the man for the job and that "I have never felt incapacitated by any commitment, even though I did want to name a woman Attorney General." When asked how he would handle the election, he would do it again, Clinton replied, "I'll call Janet Reno on November 5th."
Reno was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on March 11, 1993, and thus became the first female Attorney General.
Reno remains Attorney General through both Clinton terms as president. Wood remains a federal judge. While the consequences of Nannygate persist, Baird himself quickly returns to public obscurity. Clinton then pointed Baird to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and in his memoirs 2004 reiterated that the failure of the failed candidacy was his, not his. Baird employs an American citizen to become the next caregiver.
Political and cultural impact
The Nannygate issue caused some damage to the Clinton administration politically. The cover of the Time magazine, featured a half-portrait of Baird, entitled "First Blunder Clinton" and subtitle "How is the criticism of the people shocking the Washington elite". Baird's candidacy is another symbol of difficulty Clinton has had during his transition and first days in office, including the most prominent being the promised middle-class tax cuts and the resistance to his proposal to allow gays in the military. Stephanopoulos later wrote that "We should never let Baird's nomination go that far, but our system fails at every important step." And the timing of the withdrawal timber distracted the signing of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the first legislative achievement of the Clinton administration. While the Gallup Poll shows that only 22% of the public say that Clinton's difficulty in naming someone for the Attorney General lowered their confidence in his ability to lead the country, overall, Clinton experienced the highest rejection ratings at the start of any presidency since the ballot. started. His "presidential honeymoon" period is very short.
Clinton's desire to appoint a woman to the post raises some criticism for devaluing positions to the affirmative action post, and Stephanopoulos later admits that "we put ourselves in the box". Failure of picks Baird and Wood, along with a failed Lani Guinier nomination (for unrelated reasons) with the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division a few months later, made the Democratic Congress cautious in favor of Clinton's future choice of personnel. When federal judge Stephen Breyer was first considered for a US Supreme Court vacuum in mid-1993, he was not elected, in part because he also had 'Baird ZoÃÆ' Â «problem (he would be nominated and confirmed the following year, after the other). emptiness).
Baird's case became the first national scandal over parenting arrangements, but the situation faced by these candidates is partly at least one thing that is common to Americans. Two-thirds of American women with school-aged children are in the labor force and three-fifths of married men with children have working wives. They all need some form of childcare, and in the absence of an organized or subsidized childcare system in the US, many families turn to regulation in the underground economy. That this government is experiencing this problem is considered ironic, given that Bill and Hillary Clinton are the first dual career couple to occupy the White House.
After the Nannygate issue became news, the question "Do you have a Baird ZoÃÆ'« problem? "Becomes frequently asked by Americans to each other in casual conversation, with many answers being affirmative. The US Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data show that only a quarter of people employ domestic help paying Social Security taxes to workers, and even that figure may be higher than the real one because people do not respond to surveys honestly. Most of those who do recruitment do not think about breaking the law or being caught.
Meanwhile, Baird has passed within hours of anonymity to a dubious icon. One of the heads of labor agents who only employ official domestic workers said, "You do not know, frustrate, sit here, knock your head against a wall, try to do what's right, and then you have ZoÃÆ'« Baird that exposes the fact that people unlawful. "The phrase" having trouble ZoÃÆ'Â «Baird" becomes rooted in American professional and political class vocabulary.
This issue reveals the almost inaccessible underground family economic practices and most illegal immigrant suppliers. The owner of one of Manhattan's nannies states, "It's just a fact of life without an illegal girl, there will be no caregivers, and mothers should stay home and take care of their own children." This practice has developed well because married women and single-mothers and girls entered the labor force in large numbers during the 1980s, with extended hours and long trips from many professional positions further aggravating it. Immigrants migrant domestic workers Irish and Central American and South American Americans coupled with people from the Philippines, China, Ireland, or Poland. People who employ caregivers often prefer illegal aliens, who are considered easier to find, much cheaper, and more loyal if they work and are easier if they do not do so. As one of Floral Park, Queens, the woman said, "I want someone who can not leave the country, who knows nobody in New York, who basically has no life, I want someone who is totally dependent on me and loyal to my family. " Americans themselves are mostly unwilling to do work.
While some men are influenced by Nannygate, most public comments revolve around his influence on women. The February 10, 1993, op-ed page of The New York Times, which brings Nannygate coverage in general, is exclusively intended to address it as a women's issue. The press itself came up for some criticism in this regard, with the Justice and Accuracy group reporting in complaining that the Times and other media focused on Nannygate's effect on white, upper secondary women. , and put aside the perspective of real immigrant parenting workers. Stuart Taylor, Jr., in his 1993 March 1993 "In the Whirlwind: How ZoÃÆ'Â B Baird Was Deeply Attracted Because Of The Severest Sin, Pounded by the Press and the Popular Truth, and Crucified by Prejudice and Hypocrisy" for American Lawyers >, concludes that Baird is perpetrated by a media-political culture that bends to populism and symbolic blood sports and that he is punished for being honest. He also said Baird had been the victim of "cold and fickle fate".
Two fault lines, sex and class, are exposed in the debate about Nannygate: in the former, double standards were seen in which women raised were at greater risk for interrogation and disqualification based on their parenting arrangements, while in the second, rich or female upper middle class professionals who are able to live in a parenting arrangement are seen as trying to escape the white-collar crime. In particular, competing gender narratives revolve around whether a prosperous Baird is considered "one of us" by women. Baird failed to win the support of some feminists, who believed that as a protà © à © from the powerful Washington men he did not pay his feminist dues. The University of Michigan's Diane Sampson publishes a collection entitled "Bad Mothers": Political mistakes in the twentieth century America, sees Baird trying to be a mother as a 'site' in deciphering his qualifications. for the Attorney General during the confirmation hearing, an attempt that was overthrown by his wealth and his income far more than his husband did. Sampson concludes that "The incongruity between Baird's rhetoric and his life's life is jarring" and that his case shows "culturally accepted markers from a bad mother".
The modified and fictional account of the Baird nomination formed the core of the 1996 Wendy Wasserstein An American Daughter drama, which was later made into a 2000 television movie. Wasserstein saw the episode, as well as what happened to Wood, as an example of a double standard and sexism, and used it as a vehicle to explore the nature and status of American feminism in the 1990s. He said of his role in illustrating feminist issues, "I mean, if Nannygate does not exist, how great is that as a way to talk about it." Daughter of America became one of Wasserstein's most ambitious works, and also the most political.
Mary Romero, Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University, discusses the class aspect in the new edition of her classic Helpers in the US. . He sees Nannygate as a follow-up to the long-running "servant problem", and illustrates how labor and immigration laws are still structured to benefit employers rather than employees. As Lovell Banks, Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at the University of Maryland Law School, sees Nannygate also has a racial dimension, because it illustrates how a professional class exploits colored domestic workers.
Behind Nannygate, effectively 1995 Congress changed the way taxes for domestic help were filed, creating Form 1040 of Schedule H that shifts federal reporting charges from separate documents to major returns for income taxes. (The new rules still focus more on employers than on domestic workers.) Complete procedures for handling Social Security and Medicare tax payments, as well as state and federal unemployment insurance premiums, for domestic help and childcare remain fairly complex, however, and for two the next decade, self help articles are published under titles like "How to Avoid Your Very Own Nannygate" and "Time to Clean" and with warnings like "we all know what happened to Kimba Wood and ZoÃÆ'« Baird. "
Next example
Then the case of political problems caused by the hiring of a somewhat illegal nanny has also been nicknamed "Nannygate", both in the US and beyond that.
In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Linda Chavez as Minister of Labor. He is the first Hispanic woman to be nominated to a United States cabinet position. However, he withdrew from consideration after it was revealed that he had given money to a one-time dark immigrant from Guatemala who lived in his home more than a decade earlier. Chavez claims that he has been involved in charity and affection rather than work, and that he is now a victim of "personal destruction politics", not enough to save his candidacy. The Chavez case further illustrates the question of the status of women's illegal aliens in households across the country.
In December 2004, Bernard Kerik was nominated by President Bush to replace Tom Ridge as US Secretary of Homeland Security. After a week of press control, Kerik withdrew his candidacy, saying that he had unwittingly hired an undocumented worker and paid no taxes. The Times writes that the "Nannygate curse" has returned to claim fourth-highest casualty. When Jim Gibbons campaigned for the governor of Nevada in 2006, it was revealed that more than ten years earlier, he and his wife Dawn Gibbons had hired illegal immigrants as domestic servants and nannies. Gibbons then won the election. In 2009 and Nancy Killefer's resignation as a candidate for Chief Performance Officer of the United States at the beginning of the Obama administration, at least ten top-level cabinets or other federal appointments have found it difficult to fail to pay "Nanny Taxes." "Despite the possible dangers, most Americans still pays their babysitter from the books.The problem is repeated at the California governor's election in 2010, where candidate Meg Whitman lost despite spending more than $ 140 million of her own money.His campaign has suffered serious damage over the past two months by the revelation that she employed illegal immigrants caregivers and housekeepers, and in an alleged manner in which he treats (and fires) the housekeeper.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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