The fact that Romney hasn’t released more than two years of his tax returns doesn’t bother me.
The fact that he and his people seem annoyed and belligerent and even surprised over the request is what bothers me.
Candidate Obama released seven years of his, as did candidate Hillary Clinton. George W. released nine years; Dukakis six. Yet Romney’s campaign doesn’t quite seem to know how to handle this situation other than stonewalling or trying to deflect. “It is clear that President Obama wants nothing more than to talk about Governor Romney’s tax returns instead of the issues that matter to voters…” declared Romney’s people. Well, first of all, a president should be able to multitask. I’m betting he can talk about both. Second, in a recent poll, 54% believe he should release them, so obviously it matters to voters. But of those voters polled, only 30% who asked for full disclosure were Republican, so maybe he meant only voters that he cares about.
My point…and I do have one…is that the tax returns matter less than what I call the illusion of transparency. Let’s not kid each other: everyone has šhìŧ they’d rather not have public. Everyone.
But presidential campaigns are incredibly invasive. I know this. You know this. Anyone with two braincells to rub together knows this. But voters want to believe that you have nothing to hide because what they’re really concerned about is whether you’re going to hide things from the public once elected. (Which every president does anyway. That’s not necessarily a negative. If Obama couldn’t keep a lid on things, bin Laden is still alive. Hëll, how far back to you want to go? The majority of Americans didn’t know FDR was in a wheelchair; didn’t make him a less effective president.)
But anyway, candidates put on a show of “I’ve nothing to hide” and reporters say, “Challenge accepted.” And off we go.
And when the things that you’d rather not see out there get out there–as they inevitably do–it’s less about the facts themselves than it is about how you handle it.
And you know what defense rarely works when something negative comes up? “None o’ your beeswax.”
Now if Romney never intended to release more than two years of his returns–well, fine. I personally don’t care. But he should have been ahead of the curve on this, because the person I want for president SHOULD be ahead of the curve. The times when Obama hasn’t been, he’s gotten slapped around for it. And that was when šhìŧ happened that was beyond his control. This was IN Romney’s control. He should have seen this coming and his campaign should have had a strategy in mine to deal with it because it’s no secret that this happens every campaign.
If nothing else, they should have noticed that McCain’s campaign released exactly two returns. That ended well for the GOP. Am I saying direct cause and effect? No, of course not. I am saying that it’s worthwhile to look at campaigns that lost and say, “We should do the opposite.” Instead they’re following McCain’s tax return campaign and nominated a vice presidential candidate who has the exact same opinions as, and only slightly more testosterone than, Sarah Palin. And they seem surprised that the media is focusing on Romney’s tax returns, whereas if he’d released, say, five up front, this simply wouldn’t be an issue. Except now people wonder, “Well, what’s he hiding?” And when you’re trying to present an illusion of transparency, that’s really what you don’t need people asking before you’ve even been made the official nominee.
Yet he didn’t see any of that coming.
THAT is what disturbs me.
PAD
Updated 8/20: This from the Romney camp: Gillespie faulted the Obama team’s focus on Romney’s personal taxes. “It wasn’t an issue in 2008 because President Obama wasn’t trying to distract from a four-year-long record of failed policies,” he added.
They’re still not getting it. It wasn’t an issue in 2008 because no one made it an issue. Obama released seven years worth of his; if Hillary had stonewalled in 2008, then it would have become an issue. As for McCain, who only released two years’ worth, it wasn’t an issue for probably two reasons: 1) He wasn’t the richest man ever to run for president; 2) Sarah Palin was sucking all the air out of the room.
The ONLY reason it’s an issue now is because Romney made it an issue. He brought this entirely on himself and they still insist on blaming it on Obama. It’s a deflection that only the most hard-core of GOP ditto heads are going to accept, and they were never going to vote for Obama anyway. Meanwhile anyone else with cognitive reasoning facilities is thinking, “What’s he hiding?” That’s not Obama’s fault; it’s Romney’s.
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Unless, of course, this is the more usual smoke screen. “What! No, I won’t release my tax returns! Don’t throw me in that there briar patch!!!” In other words, there is nothing there, but in ACTING like there is something there, he focuses the attention of the media on something inconsequential, thereby preventing them from looking at what is REALLY important.
Rather similar to someone else not revealing his birth certificate for a couple of years… 😉
Really? the birth certificate thing is the same thing as the tax returns thing? I tend to disagree…
Presidential candidates don’t drop a birth certificate on the table as a matter of course the way they do tax returns. asking for someone’s birth certificate when they’re already served as a state senator, a US Senator and when one of their parent’s citizenship has never been questioned is kinda… you know… just racist. if someone asked YOU for your birth certificate to prove your heritage and you responded, “F U, sir – I’m an American,” I’d back you up because you’d be right.
Nope! Sorry, Jamie, but it is the same thing. Was there the possibility of doubt? Yes. He did attend at least one college as a ‘foreign’ student to get aid. Did it matter before in his other political races? No, there is no requirement for a senator to be a natural born citizen, but there is such a requirement for president. Would I produce my own birth certificate in such a case? Sure I would, unless I had something to hide. Remember, McCain had a similar problem since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, and there was some question as to whether that made him ineligible for the office.
And, if I needed a passport, I just might have to produce a birth certificate anyway, so I should have one around, right?!
“He did attend at least one college as a ‘foreign’ student to get aid.”
No he didn’t. And, frankly, a lot of people are starting to look flat at retarded at this point by constantly throwing around garbage that has been debunked as much as the birther crap and the crap about his school years.
Not to mention, McCain’s citizenship was never seriously in question, much less viewed as entirely in doubt due to conspiracies and idiocy.
Jamie,
It is not racist..At this point, it is incredibly stupid however.
Jerry Chandler has already refuted that charge, but I figure you may not believe it without evidence (never mind the fact that you obviously believed this false charge against Obama itself wholeheartedly, without any more evidence than a chain Email or blog post or some such [or maybe you heard it on Limbaugh or a few others that fell for it themselves]).
The original chain Email about that was an April Fool’s Day Hoax sent out on April 1, 2009. Here’s what it said:
Here is a complete list of the truths stated in this chain Email:
• The date of the Email at the top (April Fool’s Day, 2009).
• The fact that Barack Obama is President of the USA.
• The fact that from the autumn of 1979 through the spring of 1981, Barack Obama did actually attend Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA, and that he did so under scholarship.
• The fact that the Prime Minster of England is Gordon Brown.
• The fact that the U.S. Supreme Court really does exist and actually does have a Justice named Antonin Scalia.
• Leo Donofrio of New Jersey did try (key word there) to bring a case before the Supreme Court.
• The United States Justice Foundation really does exist, and Gary Kreep really is the executive director thereof.
• The fact that Eric Holder really is the U.S. Attorney General.
That’s it. That’s all of the truth in that Email.
Everything, and I do mean everything, else in that Email is false! And not just false, but a deliberate hoax — a prank played on the Birthers to see just how gullible you people really are!
• The very first thing after the date, the first two letters, “AP”, is false. The Associated Press never published such a story. It did not appear on any of their newswires. Jack Stokes, AP manager of media relations, flatly stated: “The story purported to be from The Associated Press on April 1 is fake.”
• The very first full sentence is false. In fact, there was no such organization as “Americans for Freedom of Information” at the time of the hoax Email. No website for them existed at that time, though a blog site was created over a month later, on May 6, to make fun of those who fell for the hoax. Here’s what its initial post said:
More recently, they cnaged the title to “Americans for Freedom of Information: Really Now, We Do Not Exist.” and here’s a post from seven months after the hoax:
A website does now exist for americansforfreedomofinformation.com, but it was registered May 11 (almost 1½ months after the chain Email was sent out) by a right-winger woman named Debra J. Smith (who also owns 151 other web domains). On her own site, she disclaims having had anything to do with that Email, despite believing that Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen (her rationale is completely wrong for reasons I won’t go into here).
• Obama’s scholarship was not a Fulbright scholarship, a type of which is indeed intended for foreign students. Those are intended for post-graduate studies (master’s and doctorate degrees), not freshmen and sophomores like Obama.
• Obama did not attend under the name “Barry Sœtoro.” According to Occidental College Director of Communications Jim Tranquada, the 1979–80 freshman “Lookbook” lists him as “Barack Obama” as does all other similar public documents from the school at that time. All of the alumni that Mr. Tranquada had spoken to “…from that era (1979–81) who knew him, knew him as ‘Barry Obama’.”
• The Daily Mail never published any story entitled “Obama Eligibility Questioned.” No such article can be found either on their own website archives or on Nexis.
• The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Leo Donofrio’s case on December 8, 2008.
• As stated above under the truths, the United States Justice Foundation really exists and has one Gary Kreep as its executive director. But, there is no mention of Obama spending any amount of money for any reason on their site, and nothing about turning over any info to Eric Holder. FactCheck.org Emailed Kreep and asked him about that, and on May 28, 2009, he replied point-blank: “It’s all a hoax.”
Okay, Charlie E, you have a choice here: you can either be an honest person, or a deliberately, willfully dishonest one. The option of remaining a merely deluded one is no more.
If you’re honest, you will never, ever, make this claim again about Obama taking foreign student aid or using the name “Barry Sœtoro”ever again, to anyone, by any means, for any reason, here or anywhere else. Ever. If I or anyone else here ever sees this claim from you online in any post on any forum dated after this one, you will stand revealed as a liar, not just someone who has allowed confirmation bias (look it up — you haz it, in ♠♠♠♠♠) to deceive him.
Furthermore, everywhere else that you’ve ever posted it, if the forum topic or blog post or YouTube video thread or whatever still allows comments, you will post a retraction and link to FactCheck.org or Snopes or any of the other numerous places where this is very thoroughly debunked as the April Fools hoax that it is. You will also tell anyone to whom you’ve ever personally communicated this, whether verbally or by Email or Facebook or whatever, that you were wrong and how badly you were wrong, and show them the proof of the hoax.
You don’t seriously think you’re ever gonna hear back from this guy, do you?
If he slithers back in here to spread more lies, he’ll likely do it under a new name.
PAD
What I find surprising is that the Romney campaign, which threw millions of dollars at their GOP competition and successfully ground them into the dust, seems utterly incapable of mounting a successful campaign against a Democratic candidate with seriously exploitable weaknesses, mostly of the ecconomic kind. The issue of tax returns seems utterly unfathomable to me. Surely anything that could be found in Romney’s tax returns would be less shocking than what people could create in their own imaginations? I remember a filmmaker once told me, when referring to the scarcely-seen creature in his film, the monster in the closet that you can’t see is infinitely scarier than the one you see when it steps into the light. And the Obama campaign quickly realized thie was a wonderful bit of distraction- Harry Reid comes out and says Romney never paid any taxes and the Romney campaign spends two weeks talking about it. When it finally dies down, the Obama campaign pokes the bear again and it starts all over. It isn’t going to be long before the public perception of Romney is set in cement and it’s all over.
Romney didn’t ground his GOP competition into the dust. Every other candidate imploded. Godfather pizza head Herman Cain imploded due to being crazy. Same with Michelle Bachman.
Romney won the GOP candidacy because he was the less crazy candidate, not because anyone on the GOP actually likes him.
Sure he did. No GOPer has won the Presidency – or usually the nomination without winning South Carolina. After Newt won and had the momentum and a string of strong debate performances, Romney absolutely carpet-bombed him into oblivion, outspending him something like 22 to 1 in Florida and holding his own against an unusually flat Newt to claim Florida…Yeah, Santorum’s cases of not knowing when to shut the fûçk up or be statesmanlike at times hurt him in Ohio and Michigan..but Romney’s superior war chest and organization played a huge role there, too…Romney also got some good zingers in on Perry when the latter was still viable and therefore kept him at bay until he imploded…as for Bachmann, yes, she hurt herself also with some ignorant comments, to the point where Romney was smart enough to actually lob some softballs her way to make her look good..He knew she wasn’t going to recover, but he knew the more conservatives in the race splitting up the vote would better his chances…As for Cain, he rose and fell so dramatically, I have to say he is the only one Romney really didn’t have to help push off a cliff..Cain did that on his own.
Joe, you’ve a reasonable way of looking at it, and you may turn out to be correct; however, given what the U.S. tax code is, any genuinely rich fellow is dámņëd if he does and dámņëd if he doesn’t, so it pays to play hard ball for a little while to see if the other side even can hit the pitch. Romney doesn’t really need to make a decision on this till after the convention, and you CAN’T unring a bell.
What most people don’t realize is that really rich people (like the one I work for) don’t do their own taxes. Instead, they hire lawyers and professional bean counters to do the job for them. The chances of finding anything genuinely illegal in Romney’s taxes are essentially zero (and if anything’s there, they’ll blame the bean counter). Our bean counters even pay the use taxes — you know, when you bought that diamond bracelet for your wife on the internet from a firm out of state, and there was no sales tax, and you’re SUPPOSED to report it to the State of Florida and pay the alternative tax?
Trust me: It was paid. Not because Romney is a saint but because the bean counter does not want to get herself in trouble down the line for a job she could have anywhere, just counting beans.
On the other hand, there are all sorts of things in the tax code that rich people can take advantage of to lower their payments, things which mere mortals like you or I only dream of. It’s the CODE, itself, that’s corrupt, but the host of people simply won’t see that, and that’s just another non-issue for Obama to make an issue of. If your focus is “the economy, stupid” (a la Clinton), then offering Obama unnecessary distractions is not what you want to do.
There are other things which can turn up on a tax return. We don’t need to look at Romney; let’s look at a good (and dead) Democrat. Larry O’Brien was Jack Kennedy’s hatchet man, the one who blew the whistle on Richard Nixon for the questionable loan to Nixon’s brother from Howard Hughes.
Did you know that Larry O’Brien was on Howard Hughes’s payroll? To fix Hughes’s taxes by getting a special exception written into the tax code?
What do you think Richard Nixon’s hatchet men were looking for in Larry O’Brien’s Watergate office?
It sure wasn’t strategy for the Democrats in 1972 — assuming they even had any, Nixon, himself, knew that wasn’t kept at the Democratic National Committee offices and, indeed, bet on that as one reason why it all would blow over (no motive for him to be involved).
Nixon tried to sic the IRS on O’Brien, only to come up with a dry orange. When he pushed the matter, George Schultz cut him off. And, for what it’s worth, the first time I ever voted, I wrote in Schultz and didn’t vote for Nixon. But, that’s another matter.
O’Brien reported his income and its source. End of story, as long as the tax return stays private. He was a sonofabitch, but he broke no law.
I don’t know what’s on Romney’s return — what difference does it make? What if it turned out he had refused to pay anything? That of itself is not illegal. Bottom line is that we’re still borrowing 40 cents of every federal dollar spent, with Obama & Co. shucking off the debt on succeeding generations who obviously can’t vote and will have the same (if not more) incentive to refuse to pay anything.
Chinese Ambassador, please take notice: This inevitably is what happens when you consume the benefits and try to make someone else foot the bill, all in the name of “fairness.” In this case, it’s anti-democratic — taxation without representation — the same thing we threw the King out for when we created this country. And Obama’s the same kind of panhandler, making you, Mr. Ambassador, the same kind of chump.
Readers here want to piss on George Bush? I don’t have a problem with being consistent. And, while we’re at it. let’s shut down the paper-money fraud at the Federal Reserve. The Constitution as written prohibits that too.
Which also might be somewhere in the tax code.
The sad truth is that we’ve become accustomed to a government more corrupt than the one we once threw out by force (bad news for China).
But, the solution could not be to “prove” Romney a tax cheat and steal everything he has — however pleased that make some feel, it won’t put a ding in the nation’s financial problem.
What this country is facing is pending bankruptcy on an institutional scale, and that means changing the institutions. Ultimately, we need to change the game, not just the players in it. Sooner or later, that will happen, because the Chinese ambassador WILL take notice. Then there’s no more “free” money.
Ryan is a breath of fresh air, and it shows real professionalism on Romney’s part (I didn’t think he had it in him). Romney had all of these pressures on him re whom he should pick — Rubio to get some Hispanics, someone else to nail down Ohio, or Virginia, or wherever, or maybe even Cain or another black man or even Condolezza Rice to get more black votes — and all of it politics. Romney kept his eyes on the prize and realized that he not only needs to win the election, he needs a mandate to make what changes we need to put the train back on the track.
Ryan was the perfect choice. Now Obama has to put his purse away — no more swatting at phantoms in the name of “gay rights” — and meet the train head on; and, the engineer of that train is the man who saved company after company from the captaincy of Bain Capital.
That’s the Romney record. He may not have been my first choice for a candidate, but that is his record, and there’s no reason to be ashamed of running on it.
At a single stroke, Romney turned all of his negatives into positives. What he paid in taxes pales toward insignificance, which is appropriate because it is insignificant. We are, after all, not hiring a tax chump. We’re hiring a CEO.
The first requirement for that job is not to let yourself be distracted by irrelevancies.
It’s well known that few pay attention to the American election until after the Olympics (and Romney successfully has run those too). I doubt that Obama has painted him into a corner yet. Romney has played the hand well so far, why this election shouldn’t even be close.
The one thing you don’t do, liberal or conservative, is tell the media “I have nothing to hide” because that might actually wake them up to do their job. Gary Hart discovered that in 1984 as did John Edwards and Mitt Romney is now. The big different to me is that Romney doesn’t like be questioned on ANYTHING.
One problem with your John Edwards example: the media DID cover up for him for years. It was the National Enquirer that actually busted him — the mainstream media did their level best to ignore Edwards’ scandal as long as they could.
“The big different to me is that Romney doesn’t like be questioned on ANYTHING.”
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And Obama does? Which is why he hasn’t held a press conference in three months, has the usually amicable White House Press Corps up in arms and even Andrea Mitchell agitated that he won’t answer any substantive questions but will answer hard-hitting questions from “Entertainment Tonight”? As a candidate and President, Obama has never been put through the wringer the way other Presidents have..That “Saturday Night Live” skit about how thje media was fluffing his pillows and the other where they would ask Hillary the tough questions and then after she didn’t know, give the right answer and then ask Obama the SAME question, has not stopped…The few times he has been questioned in a tough manner he has shown extremely thin skin.
Like today’s press conference? He seemed pretty steady to me, but I’ll let you read into it, Jerome, since Obama’s always so ‘angry.’
I was unaware he had a press conference today..fact remains it had been a while.
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And where have I described him as “angry”..please show where I have..otherwise you’re either a liar or a race hustler.
Although I am happy he addressed this:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-on-priorities-usa-ad-i-dont-believe-romneys-responsible-for-death-of-woman/
I didn’t say YOU said he was angry, just that’s one of the planks in Romney’s recent speeches.
Just out of curiosity, Jerome, did you bìŧçh about the lack of W’s press conferences? If so, please show me where, since Obama has held press conferences with roughly the same frequency as W.
http://www.avondaleam.com/2012/05/average-number-of-news-conferences-by.html
I was always under the impression that one held press conferences when one actually had something to say.
PAD,
“Just out of curiosity, Jerome, did you bìŧçh about the lack of W’s press conferences? If so, please show me where, since Obama has held press conferences with roughly the same frequency as W.
http://www.avondaleam.com/2012/05/average-number-of-news-conferences-by.html”
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Actually, yeah…I thought it was a huge mistake for Dubya to not engage the press more..that’s one of the advantages of the Presidency…If you decide to let people know what you’re doing and why, you have a whole slew of reporters whose entire job it is to cover you and – whether they like it or not – would far rather hear from you thyan Ari Fleisher, Dana Perino, Robert Gibbs or Jay Carney…Despit the caricatures of him, Dubya was somewhat comfortable doing press conferences – the lone exception may be the day after the 2006 election where he looked defeated – and should have used the opportunity to answer his critics and soothe his backers..if he had done so effectively and more often, he could have fought back more effectively against critics of everything from Iraq to his Social Security reform plan..answered tough questions about Harriet Miers and Katrina …and reinforced that the economy was expanding for 52 consecutive months of his Presidency.
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But he refused to do so, refused to speak more frequently, and the reporters filled that vacuum with their own narratives.
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So, yeah, for someone who is supposedly far more eloquent and intelligent than his predecessor, I can’t see why he refuses to do press conferences more frequently. Especially considering that no matter who you think won, I thought his answering questions from Congress about the health care plan made everyone look good.
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What? He can answer questions from the opposition party on a highly volatile issue but doesn’t want to field questions from Jake Tapper? That’s just bizarre.
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And the chart you provided shows Dubya on average did have more press conferences, if by a small margin, than either Clinton or Obama. Bush 41 also had similar numbers..and he is someone who, despite many an SNL skit highlighting his supposed ineloquence, was very comfortable in that setting as well.
No, Jerome: I said “show me where you did.” It’s easy to say it now, long after W. has left office.
You have spewed endless, unwavering, lockstep support for the GOP here over the years. No matter how outrageous the behavior, no matter how unconscionable, no matter how unreasonable, you have always managed to manufacture excuses, toe the party line, and parrot the Fox talking points. I haven’t hesitated to criticize the Democrats any number of times, but it is my perception, at least, that your critiques are one way. Liberals can do no right; conservatives can do no wrong.
It’s very easy for me to make the assertion that you now say that W.’s actions were ill-advised simply to maintain an air of consistency. Since I’ve pointed out that Obama’s press record is the same as Bush’s, you have to criticize Bush in order to make your new argument stick. But since Bush is years out of office, it’s a toothless criticism.
What I’m saying–again–is: show me where you criticized Bush’s press conference frequency while he was in office. The fact that you didn’t do that indicates to me that either you deliberately misunderstood the question, or that you can’t. I didn’t ask, “Did you sit around with your pals over a pint and complain about it?” I’m saying, did you do it here? Or anywhere on line? I’m not being hostile: I’m genuinely interested. Because you seem to me someone who is completely incapable of breaking from lockstep. Hëll, you couldn’t even answer NOW without turning it into potshots at Obama (and Clinton yet!) You literally could not simply say, “W. was wrong.” You had to “justify” it by taking a few more potshots at Obama. Which leads me to suspect that if Obama had press conferences every week, you’d be first out of the gate saying, “Obama should be spending more time governing and less time using the White House as his bully pulpit to influence the press.”
PAD
PAD –
Except for Bill Mulligan*, I don’t remember ANY Conservative in this board (or Michael Davis site) ever voicing any criticism of the GOP or even of conservatives in general. Some do voice criticisms “after the fact”, like Jerome just did, but it’s always years later.
I suppose they all follow the same code as the Catholic Church: Admitinhg that the opposition may be right is a worse crime than pedophilia.
And the funny thing? Few of them admit to be faithful to the GOP, or even conservatives. Crim is a “libertarian”, Russ Maheras is a “moderate” according to him, that guy a few days ago that insulted Jerry was “apolitical”.
Scary thought: if these “apoliticals” are this extreme, just imagine how the true GOP faithful are. The mind boggles.
* I think Bill Mullighan is some sort of transdimensional alien. He comes from a paralell Earth where conservatives are far more moderate.
My secret is out. Now you must die. Which is unfortunate, as I liked you, Rene, but take comfort in the fact that in at least 4 of the multiverses you won the powerball lottery and date Christina Hendricks. You lucky bášŧárd.
As for transparency, I don;t have the time to peruse all the posts I Am behind on but neither party has any right to be taken seriously on it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-wont-disclose-donors-to-convention-until-after-the-event/2012/08/21/460c69a2-e88a-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_story.html
I agree. Politics is made of compromise and morally gray areas. And politicians of all stripes shy away from complete transparency as vampires from sunlight.
Even Liberal politicians that have an inclination to be elected promising greater transparency, and sadly almost never live up to it. They are, in a sense, more disappointing.
But… Christina Hendricks? Ðámņ! I am now a happly married man and I love my wife very much, but I feel very, very, very tempted to swap places with one of my alternate selves, at least for a week.
I like how you totally ignored the part about winning all the money. I admire a man who has his priorities straight. You may live. For now.
I’ll take the cash.
And I promise to invest some of it in independent films in NC.
“Big difference” of course.
On his blog, David Brin likes to point out that four years ago, McCain’s campaign was vetting VP candidates. One of those they looked at was Romney. They got several years’ worth of his tax returns.
And they went with Palin.
Yeah, I’ve had several variations of that one posted on my Facebook pages as well.
That sounds good, but two main factors played into it more:
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1.) McCain was still viewed as too moderate by many conservatives who did not trust him or even like him. If he picked another moderate with a record for flip-flopping, he risked a large chunk of his base staying home.
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2.) McCain was already getting hammered for owning multiple homes. I forget how many each had, but one GOP insider was quoted as saying, “With the economy the way it is, there’s no way in hëll we can run a ticket with 12 combined houses!”
Yes, but it was more of a choice between “vanilla candidate who is rich, boring and Mormon” or “Spicy enchilada candidate that is female, interesting and conservative.” In which case, it was a no-brainer to pick Palin. He needed someone to spice up the campaign, and any way you look at it, she did that!
Hëll, he hasn’t even released two years. He’s released estimates for 2011. And what he has released is incomplete. He apparently did not include the form accounting for unrelated business income taxes for tax-exempts like nonprofits and IRAs that engage in commercial activity. The absence of that form form may be an indicator that Romney’s IRA funds are being held by an offshore account in order to shield them from taxation.
Besides, Romney has learned the perils of tax forms before. He got busted for telling lies in the past when he claimed that he filed his taxes to show Mass. as his primary residence and, oops, that’s not what his taxes said until he quickly moved to retroactively change the filings.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2002/06/07/romney-says-didn-file-mass-resident/cxg3maVKXTA0iIuekT4QPO/story.html
He’s been burned by telling lies about his filings before. Why is he going to, as his wife put it, “give them ammunition” to shoot down his lies here?
For someone who’s been running or preparing to run for President most of his adult life, I find it incredible that Romney could be caught so flat-footed on his tax returns.
I mean, really, this issue was as predictable as sunrise. Why didn’t he plan for it?
I thought it was amusing that Ann Romney, who up until now was thought of as Romney’s secret weapon, whined in an NBC interview that the more they release, the more they get looked at, when in fact up until now, there hasn’t been more. One year of tax returns is as far from more as you can get. Perhaps it would have been have been more appropriate to say, the less they release the more they get criticized. That at least would have been true.
Romney announced he would release his tax returns on Oct. 15. Which returns?…..wait for it…..
Why his 2011 returns, the ones he says are already public.
Why he needs two months to release returns he has already released, I have no idea.
And people still want to vote for this buffoon.
Yeah, you know why? Because they’re tired of struggling and feeling like the guy in the White House is in over his head.
So they feel that the best guy to replace said guy in the White House (who, on the whole, has been adequately on top of things) is someone who is is apparently over *his* head over an utterly predictable issue about his own tax returns?
The whole campaign for him to me seems “I deserve the job! And…I’m not Obama because he messed everything up!” Of course, when it’s pointed out that things got messed up by the previous administration and the current Congress hasn’t allowed anything to get done, it’s just considered ‘passing blame,’ when he’s just stating facts. I might not agree with everything the President has done, but I’ve never seen one get less respect from those who agree with him and has to take it, like Jackie Robinson, to make it easier for the next candidate.
“Those who disagree with him.” Fingers bad.
he had a ton of goodwill and overwhelming majorities in both houses..Did he push for immigration reform? Tax reform? Talk seriously about entitlement reform? .
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No, he spent nearly a trillion dollars on stimulus that had to be passed immediately in order to pay back Democratic constituency groups rather than focusing on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. He even jokes that those shovel-ready jobs weren’t as shovel-ready as he thought. Only the rest of America isn’t laughing.
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The rest of his first two years, when he could have literally passed anything, were taken up by an abortion of a health care law that was and still remains unpopular.
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He’s not Jackie Robinson. He’s Jimmy Carter.
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because now he wants to blame the Republicans, who were voted in in 2010 specifically as a repudiation of his policies for doing what their constituents elected them to do and slow down or satop what they perceive as a liberal agenda.
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Imagine that. Doing what your constituents elected you to do. Doesn’t happen as much as it should in Washington, D.C
“No, he spent nearly a trillion dollars on stimulus that had to be passed immediately in order to pay back Democratic constituency groups rather than focusing on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.”
Actually, much of it did go towards those things. The catch was that most Republicans, like Cantor here in Virginia and Paul Ryan, took the funds back home and made no mention of them being stimulus funds. Hëll, Ryan just got busted for telling lies to his constituents about the fact that his job creating work programs were actually stimulus bill money backed jobs.
And Obama’s comment about shovel ready jobs had nothing to do with the stimulus itself. The biggest frustration involving infrastructure was thathe learned that “one of the biggest lies in government is the idea of ‘shovel-ready’ projects.” It turned out that only about $20 billion to $40 billion in construction contracts were truly ready to go. The rest were tied up in the endless contracting delays and bureaucratic hassles associated with building anything in America.
It wasn’t the stimulus that was the problem. It was the same thing that causes issues with everything else.
“because now he wants to blame the Republicans, who were voted in in 2010 specifically as a repudiation of his policies for doing what their constituents elected them to do and slow down or satop what they perceive as a liberal agenda.”
You know, I don’t think that the Republicans got elected on anything other than fear of an economy that was looking worse then than it does now. And I certainly don’t think that Republicans were elected to block vote on President Barack Obama’s plan to renew expiring tax cuts for all but the highest-income Americans, a tax break for small businesses that make new hires, the jobs bill, a bill to aid small business, the Homelss Women Veterans’ Bill, the immigration bill, the campaign disclosure bill, the cybersecurity bill, the resolution honoring the intelligence community and the SEALS for a job well done in the bin Laden situation, the Bill to Avert Rise in Student Loan Rate, the confirmation of judges (like the confirmation of an Oklahoma judge despite his bipartisan support for him) and so on and so on and so on…
But, dámņ, Ryan did a fine job renaming a Post Office in his home district. And the Republicans loved H.R. 362. That’s the one written to change the name of the a Federal building and Courthouse (currently known as the George Mahon Federal Building) to the George H.W. Bush and George Bush United States Courthouse and the George Mahon Federal Building.
Personally, I think the Republicans have their priorities way out of whack.
A ton of goodwill? Really? Is that why Obama enjoyed a nonexistent honeymoon as the GOP went into lockstep opposition to virtually everything he proposed, including policies they initially supported, like the DREAM Act which they blocked from passing?
Actually, Obama had to pass the stimulus immediately because the economy was in freefall in large part to policies gleefully put into place by his predecessor and his GOP enablers in Congress, and economists agree that the stimulus halted the recession.
(And if you though that Obama’s joke about not-yet-ready shovel-ready jobs wasn’t funny, I’m assuming you found Bush’s joke about not being able to find WMDs to be downright offensive.)
Really? Don’t you remember the historic level of filibustering of pretty much everything offered, including no-brainers such as ratifying START, slowing progress to a crawl? The fact that the Dems only had a filibuster-proof majority for about (IIRC) a total of 8 months? That the “abortion of a health care law” (which becomes more popular as people find out what was actually in it, rather than the mythical “death panels”, etc. Republicans claimed it had) was based on ideas originated by Republicans who opposed it in the hope that its failure to pass would be Obama’s “Waterloo”?
Obama (and I) blame Republicans for putting party and ideology over country and doing their dámņdëšŧ to fulfill their stated number-one priority of making Obama a one-term President instead of trying to help their constituents. The GOP were voted into office in 2010 because the economy wasn’t recovering fast enough, but rather than pass legislation such as the American Jobs Act that contained historically bipartisan policies that would have reduced unemployment, the Republicans preferred to damage the US’s credit rating by holding the economy hostage, pass a laughable and unpopular budget that effectively destroys Medicare while ballooning the deficit, make 30+ meaningless gestures to repeal the ACA, worsen the recovery by demanding austerity measures that hurt the middle class, and spend most of their time arguing about social issues rather than economic ones.
A bunch of tyro TP GOPers making a bigger mess of things and blaming Obama for it. Imagine that. But you don’t have to … just turn on the news.
Jerry,
“Actually, much of it did go towards those things. The catch was that most Republicans, like Cantor here in Virginia and Paul Ryan, took the funds back home and made no mention of them being stimulus funds. Hëll, Ryan just got busted for telling lies to his constituents about the fact that his job creating work programs were actually stimulus bill money backed jobs.”
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Well, Jerry..then if that is true and he had half a political brain he would not only nail Republicans with it, he would build commercials about a construction worker who was out of work forever and now was able to send his kid to college/buy a house, etc. based on working on stimulus project. He would put a human face on it. That would work better and be classier than yet another Bain commercial, don’t you think?
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I would go to every district that has/had a project going on and highlight it. Have the Democrats by his side and invite the GOPers in their district as well. What are they going to do? Not show up? Then he could make political hay out of that.
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Seriously, one thing every incumbent has is the power to headline the news, especially if you’re the POTUS. If he did this day after day, highlighting stimulus projects, and devoted a press conference or two to it, well the cumulative effect would be a net positive I would think.
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Instead he’s playing the obstruction card. Nobody except his loyal followers want to hear that garbage. If he’s got positive stuff to push, then push it. Quit bashing the Republicans and just show you DO have something to run ON.
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“And Obama’s comment about shovel ready jobs had nothing to do with the stimulus itself. The biggest frustration involving infrastructure was thathe learned that “one of the biggest lies in government is the idea of ‘shovel-ready’ projects.” It turned out that only about $20 billion to $40 billion in construction contracts were truly ready to go. The rest were tied up in the endless contracting delays and bureaucratic hassles associated with building anything in America.”
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Then why not EMPHASIZE that..triangulate a bit and just say this in terms people can understand, say “I’m going to make it my mission to cut through the red tape so we can get shovels on the ground and we can get America moving again. Be positive. Most of his ads have been extremely negative and there is no reason for them to be if this stuff is true. That’s on him.
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“It wasn’t the stimulus that was the problem. It was the same thing that causes issues with everything else.”
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See above.
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“You know, I don’t think that the Republicans got elected on anything other than fear of an economy that was looking worse then than it does now.”
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Sorry. I think that’s garbage. Most GOPers I know got energized over the health care issue. Despite the spin – and lie 0- that Tea Partiers are some cult that are all Birthers and racists, the fact is what triggered them adter they were deflated by the last couple years of Bush and McCain’s bûllšhìŧ campaign was spending and the health care issue and, as trite as it sounds, how we are going to continue going this way, with more and more debt and more entitlements and possibly keep our standard of living, let alone improve on it. Most of all, they did not feel their government was listening to them at all. The town halls were emblematic of that. Somehow, this has gotten twisted to “They hate the black guy”. Which motivates these people even more, because it reemphasizes that their concerns are not being heard, that no one is listening to them, that they are being mocked by the media and politicians alike. That is what ha dpeople saying, “We have to stop this” in 2010..and 2012 may shape up to be even more intense.
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“And I certainly don’t think that Republicans were elected to block vote on President Barack Obama’s plan to renew expiring tax cuts for all but the highest-income Americans, a tax break for small businesses that make new hires, the jobs bill, a bill to aid small business, the Homelss Women Veterans’ Bill, the immigration bill, the campaign disclosure bill, the cybersecurity bill, the resolution honoring the intelligence community and the SEALS for a job well done in the bin Laden situation, the Bill to Avert Rise in Student Loan Rate, the confirmation of judges (like the confirmation of an Oklahoma judge despite his bipartisan support for him) and so on and so on and so on…”
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You know what? I’m not sure about all of these bills, but again, why isn’t he pointing this stuff out? He needs to be making HIS case every dsy. This is what Bush failed to do with the wars. He thought people would just know what a good job he was doing. Same with Obama. He needs to make HIS case instead of talking about trickle-down economics and other stuff people have heard 1,000 times and really stae, every day, what he has done, what he is trying to do and what he will do.
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Seriously, has he stated clearly what his rationale for a second term is? Not that I can see.
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“Personally, I think the Republicans have their priorities way out of whack.”
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Personally, I think the Democrats have refused to act like grown-ups. They have no vision for America except more of the same. That’s the way it looks from this vantage point anyway.
Well, here he is this weekend claiming that he just didn’t know what those requests for stimulus funds were. It just “wasn’t his intention” to ask for stimulus funds and he just “didn’t know about” those letters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO46_xctNqw
But, oops, that’s looking more and more to be a bs lie. The letters in question are public record and you can clearly see two things on them –
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ryanletters0813.pdf
– and those two things are that the signature changes slightly from letter to letter. That would indicate that they’re hand signed rather than machine signed. The other thing that you can see is that the words “Recovery Act” are in each of the first three letters shown and in fact in the very first paragraph of each. The fourth one doesn’t have it because it’s merely a second letter supporting a request made in one of the others.
So, yeah, just like Cantor did here and many other Republicans have done all over the country, Ryan talked trash about the stimulus to the national media while grabbing funds and then touting the jobs he was creating back home to the local press while leaving out the fact that it was stimulus funds. Oh, and in Ryan’s case at least, flat out lying to constituents about the funds.
Oh, and in Ryan’s case at least, flat out lying to constituents about the funds.
http://bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/08/16/ryan/2OztjZ23ynaDLGhreyfzyJ/story.html
Look here.
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/default.aspx
You can look up what went where and to whom.
I haven’t finished looking at everything in there, but these are some of the areas in Ryan’s turf that got stimulus bucks:
Kenosha received 113,000,000 in recovery funds
Racine … 58,000,000 in recovery funds
Janesville …. 35,000,000 in recovery funds
Oak Creek… 18,000,000 in recovery funds
Burlington… 12,000,000 in recovery funds
Caledonia… 21,000,000 in recovery funds
Lake Geneva.. 4,000,000 in recovery funds
That’s 261,000,000 of Recovery Act dollars. That’s over a quarter of a billion bucks in Recovery Act dollars.
And, last link of the night, footage of Ryan and other Republicans praising the job creation powers of the stimulus funds that they asked for… And then lying about it later.
Got to love’em.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#48697119
Personally, I think the Republicans have their priorities way out of whack.
The GOP have been very upfront about their priorities: do nothing that could possibly reflect well on Obama so that they can hang all the fall out from the Bush years on him. Serve themselves rather than serve the people. To that end, they’ve been admirably consistent.
PAD
Well, at least that trillion dollars stayed in America, rather than going to Iraq or the Cayman Islands.
The GOP have been very upfront about their priorities
Also: Do nothing about the economy. Repeal ACA and then do nothing. Continue to take rights away, whether it’s gays, women, minorities, or simply anybody’s right to vote.
This isn’t new for Romney. Turns out he’s demanded tax return releases in the past from his opponents, and even an opponent’s spouse, all the while refusing to release his own!
As Spock might say, “Sauce for the goose.”
Or, let’s hear from a certain mid-last-century Presidential candidate on the subject, a man who released twelve years of his own returns, and who in fact started the tradition of Presidential candidates (let alone candidates for lesser offices) releasing multiple years of tax returns:
Honor thy father, Mitt!
That was my biggest complaint with the Daily Show’s hissy-fit over Harry Reid’s comments: They said that it was a low blow for Reid to say that Romney’s father would be ashamed with him. No, it wasn’t, because George Romney specifically said, “Anyone who tries to hide his tax returns from the American people is being dishonest.” If Mitt Romney decides to do something his own father called dishonest, it’s not Harry Reid’s fault for pointing it out.
Actually, what Reid did was wrong, though not an outright accusation (I assume you’re talking about his suggestion that Romney paid no taxes for ten years?). He should’ve kept his mouth shut until he had more definitive information on that and a reliable source who didn’t mind being revealed.
Ted Kennedy WAS a notorious tax cheat.
1) When his mother died, he had her declared a resident of Florida (no estate taxes) and not Massachusetts, even though she hadn’t left the Cape Cod compound for about a dozen years.
2) Ted once declared his DC-area home his “primary residence” to take advantage of tax credits — which would have disqualified him from holding his Massachusetts Senate seat.
And then there’s John Kerry, who registered his yacht out of state to avoid Massachusetts taxes.
On the other hand… Mitt Romney is a resident of Massachusetts (the bluest of blue states), and the Obama administration has been in charge of the IRS for three years. If there was the slightest illegality in his taxes, it would have leaked by now.
Mitt Romney is a resident of Massachusetts
Who’s hiding who knows how much in tax havens outside the US.
“Mitt Romney is a resident of Massachusetts”
“Who’s hiding who knows how much in tax havens outside the US.”
Given that he lied about living in Massachusetts to the people of Massachusetts while running before –
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2002/06/07/romney-says-didn-file-mass-resident/cxg3maVKXTA0iIuekT4QPO/story.html
– who knows what he’s hiding this time?
I too, think Romney should have foreseen the controversy about his taxes. Maybe he did and there is nothing there and, when it will be most effective, he will release the information. I think this because the IRS, whose job it is to find tax cheats, would certainly have done something well before Romney ran for president if his taxes were not in order. That said, what if he paid very little tax, or even none? Shouldn’t his accountants earn their money, (he’d fire them otherwise), and find every legal deduction and tax shelter? That should only be expected. Does anyone here just fill out the short form and pay more than they might if they worked at the return a bit?
I don’t understand why what his father did is pertinent. He is not running against his father. He is running against a man who has paid a lot of money to seal his college transcripts, his college applications, his selective service information and his passport information. No, Obama is not legally required to reveal that information, and apparently the legal requirements only apply to him.
When Obama’s campaign asks for more tax information than he is legally required to reveal Romney should respond by saying, “I am certain that the Obama campaign has exploited all of the resources of the IRS to determine any possible way to damage my candidacy. We have not seen anything from them on this, so maybe the discussion would be more productive if it were about the economy.”
Failing that, Romney should agree to release his tax info when Obama reveals how an admittedly mediocre student without a lot of family money got into Harvard.
I’ve read that Romney released several years of tax returns to the McCain campaign in 2008 and nothing was amiss. Palin was picked because she was a better choice at that time. Her convention speech put the McCain campaign up 7 percent from a deficit of 4 percent. A Romney speech would not have done that. Of course McCain squandered that lead by halting his campaign and going back to Washington when the banking crisis hit as if he had some great plan but in reality did not.
I stopped reading once I got to where you said that you didn’t understand how his father’s words were relevant. If you don’t see that, then the blinders you have on are way too potent to get through.
PAD
And thus you reveal yourself as a gullible dupe who believes anything he reads if it comes from a right-wing source.
No, Obama did not spend lots of money to hide such things. That has already been very thoroughly debunked.
Some right-wing hack of a blogger saw that the Obama campaign had spent close to $2 million to their attorneys for post-campaign expenses. It was nothing about hiding anything. All political campaigns rack up substatial expenses, and many of them are legal expenses, including post-campaign legal expenses.
“I’ve read that Romney released several years of tax returns to the McCain campaign in 2008 and nothing was amiss.”
And they were so chock full of goodness that they went with Sarah Palin instead. I’d say that’s a good bet that something scary was in there if it made Sarah look the better, safer pick. Maybe McCain’s people just found a lot more lies and distortions like the one I mentioned above.
Funny though that he releases years of records for the VP spot but decides that we don’t even get one full year of complete records when he runs for POTUS.
“He is running against a man who has paid a lot of money to seal his college transcripts,”
Talking point lie.
The idea that any Obama school record is “sealed” is a falsehood to start with. The word “sealed” when applied to documents ordinarily refers to records that would normally be public, but that a judge has ruled cannot be released without the court’s permission. Common examples of truly “sealed” documents include records of crimes committed as a juvenile or records of adoptions. None of that applies here. What does is FERPA.
Any school’s disclosures about students are tightly governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA was passed in 1974 and it requires a written, signed release from a current student or alumnus to release transcripts and other student records.
That’s not “sealed” and has nothing to do with courts. If you claim that Obama’s records are sealed via court order then you don’t know what you’re talking about. And FERPA protects the privacy of your school records as well. Did you work to seal them?
And school records aren’t usually revealed by anyone running. Who has refused before? Most prior presidents and candidates. Transcripts for Bush, Gore and Perry were leaked, not released voluntarily. Kerry released his, but only after he was no longer a candidate. We never saw Reagan’s. We have never seen transcripts or test scores for McCain, Palin, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum et al.
We only know W. Bush’s because they were leaked. W. Bush refused to release his.
Tax records are. Almost every one running in my lifetime have given more tax records than Romney.
“Failing that, Romney should agree to release his tax info when Obama reveals how an admittedly mediocre student without a lot of family money got into Harvard.”
By going to Occidental College and then Columbia College and doing well. One of his professors at Columbia, Michael L. Baron, who taught Obama in a Columbia seminar on international politics and American policy, was interviewed quite a while back and said he was a very good student.
“Anyway, if you had read the rest of my post it would have been clear that what Romney’s father did is not pertinent because Romney is not running against his father. He is running against a man with much less integrity, so Romney shouldn’t bring a knife to a gunfight as someone once said somewhere.”
Bûllšhìŧ. We got to see years of Obama’s tax records. Romney needs to put up or shut up.
“I am certain that the Obama campaign has exploited all of the resources of the IRS to determine any possible way to damage my candidacy. We have not seen anything from them on this, so maybe the discussion would be more productive if it were about the economy.”
And the average person, being smarter than you think the average Republican voter is apparently, would know that this is a steaming pile of bovine manure because Romney would have a lawsuit going in a heartbeat if the White House starting looking at his personal tax records and filings for political use.
And finally back to the beginning…
“I don’t understand why what his father did is pertinent. He is not running against his father.”
It doesn’t matter if he’s “running against his father” or not. That’s frankly an asinine statement. His father stated that releasing multiple years of records is, basically, the only right and honest thing to do for the people that have to decide to vote for you or not.
By the standard that Romney’s father laid down, and even Obama and others where tax records are concerned, Romney and his one year of incomplete tax records with a promise to give us a second year right before the election is a joke.
Romney has lied about what’s in his taxes before. No doubt he’s telling lies again.
I’ve read that Romney released several years of tax returns to the McCain campaign in 2008 and nothing was amiss. Palin was picked because she was a better choice at that time.
Neither John McCain or Steve Schmidt (McCain’s campaign manager) ever looked at Romney’s tax returns, by their own admissions. They’ve said that they don’t believe there’s anything in them that disqualified Romney, but they don’t actually know.
Also, those tax returns would only have gone up to 2007. What McCain’s campaign saw wouldn’t reflect the write-off from the losses Romney took in the market crash of 2008, nor would they reflect the tax amnesty that he probably took in 2009 for his Swiss bank account, nor would they indicate whether or not Romney committed voter fraud in 2010 by voting in Massachusetts.
What I found interesting was the title of this post: “The Illusion of Transparency.” I thought for a second you might have been referring to the Obama administration, since he ran on such a promise and has been anything but that.
Anyway, if you had read the rest of my post it would have been clear that what Romney’s father did is not pertinent because Romney is not running against his father. He is running against a man with much less integrity, so Romney shouldn’t bring a knife to a gunfight as someone once said somewhere.
PAD simply quit reading after you posted something that was completely meritless in its own right.
For the sake of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it was Romney’s DAD who actually started the precedent for Presidential candidates to release numerous years (not just “one” and an estimate for another) of tax returns. And you actually have the audacity to ask why that’s pertinent?
What you might want to ask about “pertinence” is why did Romney’s team request more tax records from Ryan than Romney himself is willing to make public. And the source for that claim: Paul Ryan himself. No, he didn’t actually state how many years but he did state “several” years’ worth of returns. Several, to me at least, means MORE THAN TWO (and definitely more than “one year’s return and an estimate for 2011” which is ALL that Romney has actually provided).
5 minutes that covers decades of Romney’s hypocritical tax bs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnC5ejz5bE
Okay, so having seen the link Jerry put up, the solution presents itself:
All that has to happen is for the Kennedy family to release Ted Kennedy’s income tax records. He’s dead so I doubt he’ll care. They release those and then Romney would have to release his, as per his promise in 1994 which was reiterated by his people in 2002. Done and done.
PAD
Anyway, if you had read the rest of my post it would have been clear that what Romney’s father did is not pertinent because Romney is not running against his father.
George…if you’re trying to argue that that somehow makes things better, then you’re not helping your cause. Saying, “he’s not running against his father” is utterly inane. It is bereft of ane.
First of all, the GOP has not hesitated to subject Obama’s parental history to micro-scrutiny. So when Romney’s own father is on record about behavior that his son is displaying, that’s worthy of comment.
Second, he hasn’t hesitated to invoke his father when he was busy trying to connect with the American public and present himself as an everyman. “There were a lot of reasons why my father could have given up and set his sites a lot lower, but my dad believed in America,” Romney declared just a few months ago. Well, y’know what? In the America that his father believed in, a presidential candidate was forthcoming with his tax returns.
PAD
I think (to take a tack that was in PAD’s original posting, not the comments) that the issue of Romney’s tx returns is relevant to the campaign. A very large part of the national debate is reforming the tax code and what direction taxes will go in. If Romney’s taxes show him taking advantage of every possible loophole and utilizing every possible tax dodge, then why would voters believe him when he says he won’t give all the tax breaks to the rich? How could he promise to close loopholes that he used? And (this was discussed) why would voters want a person representing them whose answer about the taxes he paid is “None of your business”?
There was an article a month or so ago and I am trying to remember the main point of it but it was something like this:
The IRS came down on the Swiss banks several years ago to release their information about US citizens. As part of their crackdown, the IRS announced an amnesty for US citizens to refile their returns, claim the income and pay the tax on it but it had to be done by 2009 tax year.
The author believed that this is what Romney was hiding–that he had hidden money in Swiss banks and never paid tax on it and took advantage of the amnesty in 2009. If he released his returns, he would be revealed as a tax dodger.
Now it is obvious that there is no proof of this (and I might have a few of the facts wrong that I read of the article–but I do have the general idea down) but it is a plausible explanation for his refusal to release more returns. If this is true, it would be hard for any tax cheat to claim any moral high ground.
Read that article too (in Slate I believe).
It was a stunt for Romney to release tax returns only for the years when he knew he would be running for President, but it was curious that he only began with 2010. The amnesty theory would explain why he didn’t also include 2009.
We should not compare Romney and McCain on taxes. McCain released several years worth of taxes as a senator. The two years he released for his presidential run were catch-up.
“Sorry. I think that’s garbage. Most GOPers I know got energized over the health care issue. Despite the spin – and lie 0- that Tea Partiers are some cult that are all Birthers and racists, the fact is what triggered them adter they were deflated by the last couple years of Bush and McCain’s bûllšhìŧ campaign was spending and the health care issue and, as trite as it sounds, how we are going to continue going this way, with more and more debt and more entitlements and possibly keep our standard of living, let alone improve on it. Most of all, they did not feel their government was listening to them at all. The town halls were emblematic of that. Somehow, this has gotten twisted to “They hate the black guy”. Which motivates these people even more, because it reemphasizes that their concerns are not being heard, that no one is listening to them, that they are being mocked by the media and politicians alike. That is what ha dpeople saying, “We have to stop this” in 2010..and 2012 may shape up to be even more intense.”
There are two issues with all of that. First, I never said anything about Birthers or racists. I mentioned fear of an economy that was worse then than it is now. And there was a lot of fear mongering on it.
You could also say, as you’ve mentioned the Healthcare issues, that there were a lot of fear created by lies about that as well. Hey, maybe the Republicans were elected to stop things like death panels and to keep Obama from unplugging grandma. Lucky for them then that there were never any death panels and Obama had no intention of unplugging grandma. I know two things that got brought up in the town halls were that the people hated the idea of socialized medical care and that the Republicans better keep the Government from touching their Medicare. Uhm… Yeah…
But at least the Republicans don’t want to touch Medica… Oh, wait, they do.
The other issue I have with the revised Tea Party history that everyone keeps putting out these days is that the Tea Party was a response to Obama’s unprecedented spending, the healthcare debates, Obama’s unprecedented tax hikes, etc, etc, etc…
Obama was sworn into office on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. We had the first Tea Party events less than three weeks after that.
“From the Boston Tea Party to your neighborhood pork protest”
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/16/from-the-boston-tea-party-to-your-neighborhood-pork-protest/
Yeah, they were blaming Obama for having to take actions to save the economy from the oncoming Bush Depression. That bášŧárd!
By February 21, 2009 04:16 AM, Malkin was reporting on/cheer leading the multi-city Tea Party event.
“Tea Party U.S.A.: The movement grows”
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/21/tea-party-usa-the-movement-grows/
Obama had barely done a dámņëd thing at that point. But that didn’t stop people from standing up at town halls and tearfully begging that they get “their” country back.
And, you know what? I’ve said before that not everyone in the Tea Party was racist and that the entire thing wasn’t about race, but the Tea Party dámņëd sure didn’t help itself much with that image issue.
We got to see tons of signs about or around Obama’s race. We got to see Tea Party leaders get busted for circulating racist emails to their fellows. We got to see Mark Williams, the leader of the Tea Party Express post his “satirical” letter supposedly from “the Colored People” to President Lincoln praising slavery and how they were so well off with it in place.
Among other lowlights, Williams wrote –
“Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.
“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”
He also had a bit where he said that blacks don’t want taxes cut because “how will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?”
Mark Williams is also the guy who said, “Allah is a monkey god.” He said, “All Muslims are animals.” He said we need to repeal the 13th and 14th Amendment. He called Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who backed building the mosque, a “Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned rat on Anne Frank.”
Williams’ Tea Party Express is one of the most influential in the movement. It has reportedly raised $2.3 million the year he made those remarks, helped elect Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts and organized a rally in Nevada that featured a rare Sarah Palin speech. It was also promoted to an insane level by Fox News.
They finally removed him from the national Tea Party movement in July of 2010. Interestingly, the things he was saying weren’t enough to do it. It was the heat they were getting in an election year that made them do it.
Hëll, Tea Party leaders in Arkansas are on the defensive now after a board member of a Tea Party group in the Ozarks made a racist joke at a rally a couple of months ago. Inge Marler finally stepped down, but that didn’t quite negate the laughter at the time.
The Tea Party had a large segment of racism in its ranks when it started. It’s still there now, but not anywhere near the same degree that it once was. To its credit, it has moved to deal with the issue, but that does not change the less than clean start that it had in the early days. but, again, to their credit, they were at least smarter than the OWS movement was and saw their own problem children as damaging to their cause. Doesn’t change their history.
Okay, here’s a quote from the Malkin blog you cited that sums up a lot: “In Schmucky Schumer’s world, these American taxpayers don’t exist. A big crowd of them gathered in Seattle this afternoon to raise their voices in opposition to the trillion-dollar, pork-filled Generational Theft Act of 2009 — which will be signed into law by the blind President”
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This is why Obama’s stimulus – and later ObamaCare were so badly timed and such a huge failure politically…After the meltdown in September, they had to deal with TARP, people’s homes being subsidized while they were still struggling to actually pay their mortgages, the GM bailout, etc…This after the Bush/Pelosi bailout which of course did so much also.
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So yeah, a $700 billion bailout by Bush coupled with a $862 billion “stimulus” by Obama withing four months really had even the most docile conservative/moderate saying..”We are are ready to go off a cliff..We need to do something”..ObamaCare would be the thing that pushed many to a breaking point.
Tim, my other post got lost in the net somewhere, but here’s the short version.
They’re joking about the term and what other meaning it has. They’re making Barney Frank jokes around the name. They’re linking videos with comedy bits about that kind of activity and posting photographs that suggest the same.
COMALite J may be acting like a fool with his “it’s fair game” silliness, but you’re being a bit disingenuous here. Playing dumb only does one thing in the end. It makes you look dumb.
Jerry, excellent take-down of Jerome’s Tea Party apologetic. Just one thing: no need to use the term “Tea Partiers.” Call them by the name that they chose for themselves (but now claim is a hideous double-entendre insult): “Teabaggers.”
As you pointed out, Teabagger operations began almost before sound waves from Obama’s Inauguration could reach the West Coast for a Kryptonian’s super-hearing to be able to hear them.
Well, guess what? Within days of that, and before the second such Malkin report that you linked to, there was this thread on none other than Free Republic in which the founding members of the movement actually chose its name!
Note that several of their own warned them about the double entender meaning of their chosen name! But, they went ahead and used it anyway, under the assumption that the sexual connotation would be applied to their perceived enemies instead of to themselves!
For this reason, using the term “Teabagger” to refer to them is fair game. They chose it themselves!
Note that this Freeper thread and all posts therein are dated months before Anderson Cooper first used the term against them on national (cable) television! All but the last couple were before Malkin’s second blog article that you linked to!
I’d hardly call it a take-down. As I said, they’re not as racist as their critics claim, but they’re not as clean as their supporters claim either.
They’ve been smarter than OWS as well in trimming (at least publicly) their trouble children. Although, from news that I’ve seen the OWS people are finally wising up and reorganizing with the idea that not everyone can join their movement this time around.
But the two problems I had with them were that they were starting up and protesting Obama before he did anything and that there was a lot of racism in a number of early Tea Party protests.
And, frankly, they were protesting a solution that worked. As soon as the second stimulus started going into effect the private sector job losses slowed, stopped and started becoming gains. Arguably, had the Tea Party Republicans not undercut the stimulus, lied about the funds they were using to create local jobs in their states and insisted on adding hundreds of thousands more people to the unemployment lines by laying off public sector workers when there were already fewer private sector jobs than people looking for the jobs, we’d be in better economic shape right now.
And calling them Tea Baggers is not fair game. It’s a bit of a dìçk move to call people by a name they don’t like. The moment you start gleefully doing it you have no right to complain about someone aiming derogatory names at groups you like.
But I am all for pointing out that they and their supporters used the term when they claim that they never used it.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520899,00.html
I usually refer to them as the Tea People (the TPs for short). It strikes me as something of an insult to the actual Tea Partiers to refer to these kooks using the same name.
It’s not that they used the term despite claiming never to have used it. It’s that they outright invented the use of the term in the political context, were warned by some of their own about the sexual connotation, and once even the rest of them fount out what it really meant, decided to use it anyway because they truly thought that the “humor” would be applied to their opponents, not they themselves.
Read the thread. The whole thread. It’s less than 1¼ pages long (63 posts, most of them very short). And do keep in mind that this historic thread chronicles the formation of the Tea Party movement itself! By the ones who started it!
That’s what makes it fair game.
Agreed on the racism, protesting a solution that works, etc. But not all of the Obama hate is racial. Much of it, yes.
But much of it is because he’s not a Dominionist evangelical Christian who wants to turn the USA into a Christian theocracy. Sarah Palin was anointed by the laying on of hands by an ultra-extremist literally witch-hunting African minister named Pastor Murthee (video available on YouTube) specifically to lead America “back to” (their version of) Jesus.
Her Wasilla Church is part of the Third Wave of the Holy Spirit aka “Joel’s Army” (their own name for themselves, after the army of devouring locusts prophesied in Joel Chapter 2) movement. These are the people behind the Jesus Camp.
Dominion Theologists believe that the USA and world at large is to be ruled, not just spiritually, but in civic government as well, by Christians in the name of Christ.
The Christian Reconstructionists think that the Dominion Theologists don’t go nearly far enough. They want to outright replace the U.S. Constitution with the Mosaic Law. All of it. Yes, even Deuteronomy 21:18–21 (their founder, the late Rousas John “R. J.” Rushdoony, is on audio record justifying that, yes, that particular passage would indeed become the Law of the Land and enforced as such on believers and non-believers alike). Their current leader, R.J.’s son-in-law Gary North, has publicly said and written things so extreme that when I posted them on various forums and changed only words identifying them as talkign about Christianity to analogous words talking about Islam, and honestly said that they were the words of “a very influential American cleric,” many people responded thanking me for warning of the dangers that Islam represented to our freedom of religion and freedom in general!
Well, guess what? The Third Wavers aka “Joel’s Army” think that the Christian Reconstructionists don’t go nearly far enough!
The Third Wavers started out as a movement within the Assemblies of God denomination, itself heavily steeped in both Dominion Theology and Christian Reconstructionists. The Assemblies of God eventually kicked the Third Wavers out of their denomination for being too extremist even for them!!
So, imagine that you’re a Dominion Theologist or worse, and you see that Sarah Palin, a member of the most extreme version of your beliefs, has been chosen as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate. You see that she has been anointed by the laying on of hands by a minister of God to lead this nation “back to” (your extreme and twisted version of) Christianity.
Surely, this must be the Manifest Will of Almighty God at work, right? Here she is, relatively young and healthy, the running mate of a man already in his seventies who has already twice suffered from melanoma, the deadliest of the skin cancers. Isn’t it obvious? It was the Will of God that McCain and thus Palin win, and He would make it so! Then, whether before or after the Inaurguration, God would “call McCain home,” and Sarah Palin, anointed by the laying on of hands, would do His will and bring America “back to” Him!
And then the unthinkable happened: McCain, and thus Palin, lost! Obama won! B-but, how!? How could the Manifest Will of God be thwarted!?
Now do you see why so many were so quick to call Obama “the Antichrist” (no one person is ever referred to by that term in the Bible: John uses “antichrist” in a generic sense only, never to refer to any individual person, past, present, or future)? Who else could even temporarily thwart the Will of God?
There’s also the sheer hypocritical irony in their calling Obama “the Librul’s Anointed One.” Sarah Palin really was anointed!
Of course, there are almost certainly many people in which both this aspect and racism are in play.
Another small factor for people born between July 7, 1946 and August 3, 1961 (including both the Boomers and the older part of Generation Jones aka Generation W) is the fact that Barack Obama would be the very first President in their lives to be younger than them. This may well be an unwelcome milestone reminding them of their own mortality, which they subconsciously resent. Note how many people in the photos of protests appear to be of that age range.
This sounds a little conspiratorial to me. But I do agree that the impetus behind the Tea Party has more to do with deep-seated animosity against the forces that Obama supposedly represents than anything about “budgets” or “public debt”.
The average joe, on both sides of the political aisle, is always worried about immediate things and/or the emotional issues that strike deep chords in them. The average joe is worried about getting a job or that the President has a Muslim-sounding name, not that the federal budget is expanding and their grandsons supposedly will have to deal with it. The average joe doesn’t get macro-economics. Only pundits and internet guys with much time in their hands worry about macro-economics.
And I don’t say this to say Conservatives are dumb. Liberals too. They only really worry about the environment because they get a real taste of pollution in everyday life. If Earth looked green and beautiful, and only some Joe-El guy showed some charts saying Earth was invisibly declining, Liberals also wouldn’t worry.
So, average joes only really mobilize em masse when something appeals to their fears or hopes in a gut level. So yeah, I’m ready to believe that the Tea Party isn’t really about the budget or anything like that. It’s about a stranger in the White House that represents everything they hate: secularism, internationalism, intellectualism, socialism, and yeah, even “Non-whiteism”, for a few of them.
Interesting point is that the term, “teabagger,” doesn’t appear anywhere in that Free Republic thread. It does use “teabag” as a verb, but clearly it’s applied to the act of sending a teabag to your representative and nothing sexual. Was it wise? Probably not, but it took the Left to apply the term in the sexual sense and use it as an insult aimed at their political opponents.
Which I actually find quite revealing.
The sensitive and tolerant folks among us decided to label their adversaries with a term that accuses them of engaging in homosexual activity. Oh, the irony.
That Tea Party. They are just so gay.
Tim Butler, the revealing thing is that YOU are the one associating “teabagger” with homosexual activity. Freudian slip much?
Actually, teabagging may be done between a male and a female, as well as between two males. The “teabagger” is the one… you know, putting the things in the partner’s mouth.
It’s not a gay thing, if the partner is female.
Romney has some nerve saying that to many people are on food stamps when he,s out there asking for free money campaigning they call it it,s no more than panhandling,that goes for all politicians,this whole political system is a joke on the american people servicemen are out there fighing and dying while they are talking about things that if they can accomplish 10% of what they say.