Marion Barry says dialysis distracted him

[okarol]

Barry says dialysis distracted him

February 11, 2009 - 9:35am
A
WASHINGTON -- D.C.  - Council member and former mayor Marion Barry says there is no excuse for not filing his 2007 taxes, but Barry admits his health problems did distract him.

"I was just distracted, to be frank with you. I'm getting ready to get a kidney transplant. I'm on dialysis. Quite frankly, it's all-consuming in my head," Barry tells Channel 9.

Barry has been undergoing dialysis three times a week for four hours at a time.

Prosecutors have urged a judge to revoke Barry's probation. He was placed on probation after pleading guilty in 2005 to not filing from 1999 to 2004. He wasn't in office at the time.

Barry hopes the judge will take his medical condition into account.

The kidney donor is said to be a family friend.

"I've been very blessed to have a donor whose blood type matches mine."

No date for the kidney transplant at Howard University Hospital has been set.

(Copyright 2009 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1598688

[thegrammalady]

i only have 2 things to say "bull pucky" and "jails do dialysis"

[Chris]

I agree, go to jail and do dialysis. You do the crime, you do the time. I don't care if you are a politician, you don't deserve special privelages. People worse of than him file taxes.

[Rerun]

What in the hell is going on with all these politicians skipping out on taxes!  They should be held MORE accountable because they are in public office.

Go To Jail and do NOT collect $200.

[willieandwinnie]

This makes me so angry. He was in trouble and on probation for not paying taxes for 4 years, both federal and DC taxes. This guy thinks he is above the law. 

[twirl]

oh, so I have an excuse to break the law -
"but, your Honor, I am on dialysis."

[kitkatz]

I have paid my taxes for the last ten years I have been on dialysis.  What bull crap!  Grow up and do the time. You did the crime!



Sounds like a good excuse to do anything I want to do. "But I am on dialysis!"

[okarol]

Illness Could Keep Barry Out of Jail, Experts Say

By Hamil R. Harris and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, February 12, 2009; Page B01

D.C. Council member Marion Barry's new disclosure of his health problems highlights a contradiction about the 72-year-old former mayor. Although he maintains an active schedule of council meetings and social events, he also struggles with a growing list of physical ailments and the effects of aging that friends say contributed to his failure to file his 2007 tax returns, thus risking imprisonment.

The paradox was on display yesterday at a hearing about the need for job training. Barry spent five hours presiding and questioning witnesses and took only one break. That extended activity came just a day after Barry revealed that he is undergoing dialysis and awaiting a kidney transplant and cited concern about his health as the reason he failed to file his most recent federal and D.C. returns.

Legal experts said Barry's medical condition could keep him from being sent to jail even if prosecutors convince a federal judge that he violated his probation by not filing the tax returns. On Monday, prosecutors asked a judge to imprison him for the offense, the eighth time in nine years that Barry has failed to file his taxes on time, they said.

"His medical condition could be used by a defense attorney to seek mercy," said Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in the District.

Barry, who has survived cancer and a shooting, says he has had diabetes and low blood pressure for two decades. Friends and casual observers have noted that his motor skills are declining.

"I am very familiar with the medical challenges that he is dealing with," said the Rev. Anthony Motley, a friend and adviser who ran Barry's reelection campaign last year. "He was focusing on getting reelected, and he is still suffering over the loss of his ex-wife, and both of these things have taken up a lot of his thinking."

Motley said he has accompanied Barry when he goes to dialysis, a process that takes three to four hours of his week.

"He lost track on what he needed to do in terms of his taxes," Motley said. "When he does file, we believe that he will probably be able to get a refund. It isn't like he is trying to skirt his responsibility."
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Barry said Tuesday that his health matters have been "consuming." Although that was "no excuse" for not filing the 2007 returns, he said, "that's the reason."

Barry's defense team may be able to convince U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson that jail time would be inappropriate for the former mayor, who turns 73 next month.

If Robinson determines that Barry is too sick for confinement, she could let his three-year probation run out, extend it or sentence him to home detention, said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who specializes in sentencing issues.

"She has lots of flexibility in this," Berman said.

Raising such medical problems could backfire on Barry. In addition to keeping up the robust work schedule, Barry received permission from Robinson a few months ago to leave the country for a vacation in Jamaica, court records show. If Barry was well enough to travel, the experts said, he will have a harder time convincing the judge that he was too preoccupied with his illness to file his taxes.

Barry pleaded guilty in 2005 to not filing federal or D.C. tax returns from 1999 through 2004. Robinson sentenced him to probation, which is scheduled to end next month.

In early 2007, prosecutors asked Robinson to revoke Barry's probation because he did not file his 2005 returns. She denied their request, ruling that prosecutors had not proved that Barry "willfully didn't file."

This time, prosecutors wrote in court papers that a two-year extension of probation would be acceptable if Robinson does not send Barry to jail.

In a footnote, they wrote that authorities could arrange a jail sentence around an undisclosed "medical issue" that Barry is resolving in the next few weeks. They did not explain further.

Barry's colleagues say he remains a fighter. "Don't anyone count Marion Barry out," said council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/11/AR2009021104177.html

[Chris]

Ahhh phooey! Excuses after excuse. Normal jail inmates get dialysis who are also diabetics. Just another politician who thinks he's above everybody else.

[thegrammalady]

my neph had a neph  in his practice for awhile who's previous job had been with the state of colorado providing neph services for people in colorado prison system on dialysis. if this judge decides barry is to sick to serve time that opens the door for any lawyer with a dialysis patient as a client to avoid jail time for his client. he can't be sicker than any of the rest of us and we go to school, hold down full time jobs, raise families and sleep. 

[Kitsune]

So now being on dialysis lets you do what you want when you want now? Great, I've decided I want to rob a bank then and then say to the judge, "But Your Honor, I'm on dialysis and waiting for a kidney, I can't go to jail!!" Essentially that's what Marion Barry has done, evading taxes and using dialysis as an excuse. My friend Patty not is only on dialysis, she uses a walker and has arthritis, a pin in her hip, and a myriad of other health problems, and guess what? She files taxes like anyone else!! So there's no excuse for this lowlife's failure to file taxes. Put him in jail and let him dialyze there. He should like it, he doesn't have to do anything there, not even file taxes.

[Wenchie58]

Its America!  The land of the free.  Equality for all!  If Barry gets and "out of jail free" card I say everyone currently on dialysis can stop paying any sort of tax.  Can't treat anyone differently now can we? 

[okarol]

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Taxing Our Tolerance
   
Monday, February 16, 2009; Page A14

As a longtime District resident, I find it difficult not to grudgingly admire D.C. Council member Marion Barry's colorful career. However, with his latest excuse for his tax dodge, he has topped even his own remarkable record ["Barry Says Kidney Issues Kept Him From Filing Taxes," Metro, Feb. 11].

Although I would have assumed that we had little in common, apparently we share similar medical experiences. I have been on kidney dialysis twice now for a total of 10 years, separated by 20 years of a successful transplant.

If I was allowed to use my kidney failure and being on dialysis as an excuse not to pay my taxes during the past 30 years, well, the Internal Revenue Service never told me about it. I wonder just how sympathetic either the IRS or Mr. Barry's own D.C. government would have been to my use of such a hyperbolic rationale.

ROBERT GOLDSTEIN

Washington

......

I'm not attempting to defend Marion Barry, really [" 'No Excuse,' " editorial, Feb. 11], but it seems to me that after the two highly publicized cases of tax antics, or, as some say, oversights, by high-ranking, well-heeled federal civil servants, it's ludicrous to go after Mr. Barry with such zeal.
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HARISE POLAND WRIGHT

Silver Spring

.......

[Chris]

We need to write in to this paper to show our views 

[okarol]

An Example Waiting to Be Made

By Raw Fisher: From Marc Fisher's Blog
Tuesday, February 17, 2009; B03

Should Marion Barry go to jail for failing -- yet again -- to file his tax returns?

His last stint in the clink didn't seem to have much of an impact on the former mayor. As recently as 2005, he tested positive for marijuana and cocaine use. And in 2002, U.S. Park Police said they found crack cocaine and pot in Barry's Jaguar.

Should Barry be jailed for doing yet again exactly what got him placed on probation in 2006? That time, after he failed to file federal and D.C. income tax returns from 1999 to 2004, a federal judge let him off. The Ward 8 D.C. Council member walked out of the courthouse smiling and laughing.

As is his wont, Binary Man sees only two options here: jail or permission from the judge for Barry to continue thumbing his nose at the system. Fining Barry wouldn't make sense; he has little in the way of assets, and he has proved throughout his career that he is not driven by any desire to get rich. Even as people around him were ransacking the public treasury during his many years in power, Barry has always led a modest, even bare-bones, lifestyle.

Is it necessary and important to jail Barry to maintain or restore credibility to the government's efforts to make everyone pay taxes? Should Barry be treated the same as you or I would be in the same situation, or should he get the Tom Daschle-Timothy Geithner special treatment?

Barry, of course, is already trying to muddy the waters. In a friendly interview with Channel 9's Bruce Johnson, Barry reveals that he didn't file his tax returns because "I was just distracted" -- a standard Barry line, but with a new twist: "I'm getting ready to get a kidney transplant." Turns out the former mayor is undergoing dialysis -- three days a week, four hours a day, he says -- and has identified a donor for a transplant.

"That's no excuse" for not filing his taxes, he concedes, "but that's the reason."

No one would wish Marion Barry anything but the best of health. It is difficult to imagine politics in Washington without him. But his kidney problems have nothing to do with his consistent failure to do what all citizens must do -- report his income and pay the government what -- if anything -- he owes. True to form, Barry blames the prosecutors who now want him jailed: "I should have known these prosecutors. They're vicious and they'll do anything to try to embarrass me and try to get at me."

Barry was quick to play the Daschle-Geithner card. Let's skip his whining about how "the media was rather kind to" President Obama's Cabinet appointees when it turned out they had been less than honest in reporting their personal income, and focus instead on the disparity between Daschle and Geithner on one hand and Barry on the other.

Daschle -- who in 1998 opined that "tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter" -- had to cough up about $100,000 to cover taxes on the limo and driver he got from a friendly donor. That's about half of what Barry had to pay after his last bout of tax distraction. Sure, Daschle lost his chance to be a member of the Cabinet and suffered public humiliation, but no prosecutor is asking for jail time for him.

Barry, however, is a repeat offender, someone who seems to believe, even after years of prosecutorial and media attention on this matter, that he need not play by the same rules as the rest of us.

Daschle lived like a king; Barry, like a modest civil servant. Daschle expressed regret for his actions; Barry seems reluctant to concede wrongdoing.

In all of these cases, Binary Man thinks it's in the government's interest to come down hard on scofflaws. If you can't make a bright public example of high officials, you don't have much hope of winning tax compliance from Joe Average. Even if a couple of months in the slammer wouldn't change Barry's ways, even if he is 72 and in shaky health, the feds and the judge ought to see value in holding Barry not to some astronomically high standard of ethical purity, but just to some minimal, basic standard of acceptable behavior.

Embarrassment didn't work, probation didn't work, tough talk didn't work. It's time to send a message, both to Barry and to the broader public. And prosecutors should start a file on those other guys while they're at it. For too long, public corruption hasn't been a strong focus of D.C. prosecutors, so it's good to see them try to get tough on Barry. Now they need to broaden their selection of targets.

Each week on the Raw Fisher blog, Binary Man seeks to settle disputes, solve problems and make life better. Got a quandary for him? E-mail him at binaryman@washpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601376.html

[kitkatz]

 


IDIOT!

[Chris]

You know, I'm planning a space ship ride to the moon for all these idiot stars, athletes, musicians, and politicians. I'll make room for this idiot.

[willieandwinnie]

lastest update

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/local/021909_marion_barry_kindney_transplant

[Wenchie58]

Cool!  Good for him.  Get him transplanted....get him healed...then get his butt in JAIL!