If a tree falls in the forest and Mitt Romney still hasn’t released his tax returns, does it make a sound? Is there any message at all that Romney can communicate until he stops the din of people braying for his tax returns? The charge is “out there.” For ten years, Mitt Romney paid nothing at all in taxes. If it isn’t true, then Romney has the easiest slam-dunk in history. He can make Harry Reid look like either a gullible fool or a complete liar. How could an honest Republican politician pass up such a golden opportunity to defend his honor while blasting the reputation of one of Washington’s most powerful Democrats? What is in those tax returns that is so damaging to Romney’s chances that he’d saddle himself with this controversy rather than humiliating his accusers?
Pretty soon, Romney is going to announce his running mate. We’ll chew that over for 72 hours or so, and then we’ll go right back to asking Romney to release his tax returns. We’ll want to know how many years of tax returns Romney saw from his running mate and why we can’t see those, too. Romney gave 23 years of tax returns to John McCain. And McCain chose Palin.
No one is going to listen to Romney until he comes clean.
Well, there’s the income from the pedophile slavery ring that supplies child-brides to traditional Mormons.
Not a big money-maker, but he’s in it for love.
Form 1040, line 21: income from illegal activities, list source and amount.
According to Politico,
If that doesn’t say it all I don’t what else will. Maybe rich porn stars believe Romney will enable them to also not pay taxes. Here is the link:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/click/2012/08/jenna-jameson-supporting-mitt-romney-131021.html?hp=l7
Now, he has a supporter who changes positions as often as he does.
Hey, that’s spit-yer-drink-into-the-keyboard stuff, CG;-)
Hey, IndianaDem, I have some news for you and a couple of people who want to get in touch on the ground out there. Can you shoot me an email and I’ll respond letting you know what’s up?
Will do.
Now, he has a supporter who changes positions as often as he does.
There are so many different directions one could go in with a porn-star-supports-politician story, most of them predictable and low-brow.
Nicely done, Cabin Girl.
That’s a thing of beauty, that is. applause
What about the running mate’s taxes?
Does he refuse to release them, too?
Or does he release them, causing Romney to look even worse?
Suppose Romney announces that he has chosen a running mate, but he isn’t going to tell us who it is? He could explain that releasing his running mate’s identity would only give Obama a chance to distort and lie about that individual’s record. That would be one way to avoid awkward questions.
Good post, but there’s a chance we won’t go right back to asking Romney to release his tax returns.
We might move on to asking Romney why his budget plan raises taxes on 95% of Americans so that the wealthiest 5%—people like Mitt—can have huge tax cuts.
So, you know, there are options here.
(And just think, if Mitt had released those returns at 6 pm on Friday, May 27, 2011 (Memorial Day weekend), this wouldn’t be a story at all.)
We might move on to asking Romney why his budget plan raises taxes on 95% of Americans so that the wealthiest 5%—people like Mitt—can have huge tax cuts.
Well, to be fair, Eric Ferhnstrom already answered that question. He said, “Nuh uh.” So that settles that one at least.
Depends on what is in the tax returns. Might keep us very busy.
If Romney had a slam-dunk, he wouldn’t have allowed this to fester long enough for Reid to allege that he’d paid no taxes for ten years.
Regardless of what team McCain did or didn’t see in 2008 and regardless of whether or not what they did see caused them concern, they didn’t see Mitt’s 2007-2009 returns. Had he released those during the primary and they’re clean enough, this issue would now be dead. Even if he hadn’t paid any federal income taxes in the 1995-2006 period.
unfortunately, I agree with McCain’s statement. Palin was the better candidate AT THE TIME. McCain needed to energize the base. Romney can’t even energize his dog.
I have no idea what is in the income tax files, but any idiot in 2008 could have bet that McCain’s running mate was NOT going to be a charisma challenged robot from Mass. Where do you think the term “Masshole” comes from?
Sarah Palin overdosed on cough syrup to the point of violent facial ticks would be a better candidate that Mitt Romney, and she’s not a good candidate at all.
“Oh, no, we can’t nominate Jon Huntsman! He served his country as Ambassador to China, so he’s got the Kenyan Kooties!” Idiots.
Republicans would never give up a chance of embarrassing a leading Senate Democrat, the third one they like to beat up the most behind Pelosi and Obama. It’s obviously as bad as Reid says, or worse. And if it’s better, Romney doesn’t remember the 2004 Swiftboating. This shit is out there whether he likes it or not, and it could possibly define him until November.
I think it’s fascinating that even Republicans have adopted the term “swiftboating”, as if at some level in their subconsciousness they realize that the whole swiftboat thing was a massive, character-smearing lie, without quite cognoting that they themselves completely embraced that lie and evangelized it to everyone they could.
Sometimes it makes me wonder what they really believe. Do they believe all the shit about Obama being a Kenyanmuslimmanchurianatheist, or do they say it because it’s what their side is saying, or do they have the brain power to know the difference?
But two things I don’t have any doubt about – every human population has people who behave as our tea partiers do, and no other human group can do as much damage as they can do.
Well, you know, there is a certain glee in being mischievous.
I mean, I was pretty upset by how Susan and Larry were behaving in 2008, but I can’t say that I didn’t take a certain delight in running a successful operation on a former CIA officer. He was in the same place Mittens finds himself. Up a creek without a paddle, unable to rebut what I was saying without revealing himself as a liar and having his whole op unravel.
I was sad to have to do that, though, because I understand that there something just not right about being dishonest, even for noble ends. The other side demonstrates almost no qualms about dirty fighting.
Fascinating indeed. Do you have a good link? I found some stories about media figures using the term, but not GOPers.
I was pretty sure I’ve seen this a lot, but my first google on the term swiftboated brought up this:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Left-Swiftboated-America-Conspiracy/dp/0061792896
That’s right, a book by a prominent wingnut pundit that described what the Left is doing as swiftboating.
Then there is this:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/politics/romney-swift-boat/index.html
The Wiki entry quotes quite a few GOP people using the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiftboating
I can’t entirely get over the thought that this could all be a setup. Let the Dems fuss over the returns, release them in mid-Oct, and there’s nothing there. Dems don’t recover from the taint of being liars or fools.
Too clever for Romney, but Rove and such are his puppeteers, after all.
As long as it’s Harry Reid and other surrogates making the claims, I don’t see that it would have a lasting impact on Pres. Obama. And Obama’s very good at handling this kind of issue—gives the other guy the benefit of the doubt…and then shreds him with his own words.
If it were a setup (and it’s not), it would hardly be an original thought. That’s the same play Obama ran on the birthers with his birth certificate.
But, no, this is just a simple case of a rich guy paying a minuscule tax share. Even his single “massaged” return for public consumption had all kinds of overseas shenanigans that are only explained through greedy aversion to paying a fair share. You would think somebody who was governor of a state (a public servant!) and future national office aspirant would be willing to pay the upfront costs to keep his returns clean, but then again, Romney’s entire business philosophy was cutting corners and riding the financial line. Pennywise and pound foolish to the end.
I find it hard to believe that two weeks of “oops, looks like Dems were wrong all along” would outweigh 6 months of speculation about all the outrageous things Romney may be hiding in his tax returns. In terms of electoral impact, that is.
If this is a setup, it’s an insanely risky and foolish one.
It wouldn’t. Oct would be too late for him to recover. He would have had to do it, say latest 2 weeks ago before “this is a holy place” (hah hah)
Given the complexity of his finances, it would probably take several fallen trees to supply enough paper for his tax returns.
Boo, this is one of the best blog posts I have ever read. It cheered me up.
The returns will undoubtedly need interpretation and that’s hard to get voters interested in. BUT the retirement accounts that have $20-$100 million in them… now they’re something that anyone who has struggled to contribute each year into will say now wait a minute, I put up to $6,000 a year in and this guy has not only not paid taxes but he’s found a way to get tax free $100 million retirement fund? Whoa!
Wonder if the money is in a traditional or a Roth? That would be the crowning insult.
thw whole of mitts campaign reminds of a quote from mark twain:
The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny.
methinks that pretty well sums up mitts’ and the rats approach.
Harry Reid is a cautious, experienced politician. He certainly wouldn’t have made the claim if it were easily proved false, and probably wouldn’t have made it if he didn’t feel very confident that it was true.
I think they’ve got something.
And the $100 million IRA is getting attention again. That scam resonates with every middle class pensionless employee trying to scrape together something to prevent a bleak retirement. It hit my resentment button the minute I heard about it, and it’s gnawed at me ever since. “That rich bastard gamed my pathetic benefit.”
Not to pull your string or anything, Veritas, but it is perfectly legal to put as much into an IRA as you desire.
You only get the deduction for a specific amount (I think its $5000). However, the tax benefits are on the earnings of the IRA itself. Those are not taxed until you begin to pull down the money … presumably at a lower rate than when you were “making” all that interest.
I’m not sure about the morality. I wouldn’t do it with millions as it appears that Romney has. But if it is deemed immoral, then put an upper limit on the amount of interest income an IRA can generate without taxes. For the sake of argument, say 25% of everything over 3 times the median income in the State. For MA that would be about $180-200K free of taxes on your IRA.
Seems fair.
Right, so you get taxed once by putting the money there, and taxed again when you pull it out. The point is, Romney is pulling some shit that no one can really piece together as to how he did it, as no one would really put more than that amount in there per year; there are more lucrative investments out there than an IRA, thusly why people need that $5,000 incentive in the first place. It’s higher than $5,000 if your company doesn’t offer a 401k, too, but even then it’s prolly only around $17,000.
Either way: how did he do this, why is he doing this, and what benefit is he getting that no one else can really piece together?
Romney’s tax returns have been like the Deepwater Horizon of dirty little secrets. First we had people saying it would be bad if he paid really low taxes for a year or two. Then people said it would be bad if there was a year he basically didn’t pay taxes (that was called election ending). But 10 years?! And this is a guy who knew he was running for president!!
Ole Harry is keeping the pressure on. Just got an email that reads in part:
” I’m not backing down because, when you run for President, you should be an open book. I’m not backing down because Mitt Romney is hiding something — and the American people deserve to know what it is.
Governor Romney told me to “put up or shut up” — but he’s the one who’s shut up when people asked legitimate questions about his finances, and it’s up to him to put up his taxes so we can see the answers.
We can’t let Mitt Romney get away with this — not with hiding his taxes, and not with a tax plan that would reach into the pockets of the middle class to help multi-millionaires like himself.”
Yeah, when you have $250-$300 Mil in the bank, the onus is on you regarding what taxes you have or have not been paying.
Rmoney’s a dumbass. this issue is not going to conveniently go away