Well, I think you’d have to admit that the landscape back then wasn’t near as “attack-based” as it is now. Also, although IANAA, I think its safe assume that the tax code back then was significantly simpler, with fewer loopholes and loopholes within loopholes and other complicated stuff that while legal, few no accountants really understand.
Fuck sakes. No one is looking for a smoking gun. We’re looking for a tax return. Like we’ve got from every goddamned presidential candidate in the last forty years.
What makes Mitt so frigin’ special?
While I don’t doubt that the Obama campaign is trying to portray Romney in this manner, the Huffington Post story is about tying Romney to death squads, pure and simple. Despite a lot of talk about “connections” and “unsavory links” and other nefarious goings-on, no evidence links Romney and partners to knowingly accepting funds from anyone directly involved with death squads. Typical of the nonsense that I can only assume is meant to be damning to Romney, is the story of Orlando and Francisco de Sola, and Robert D’Aubuisson, allegedly being involved in two assassinations in 1990, nearly six years after Romney sought investors. How this is supposed to say anything meaningful about Romney, I have no idea. As a story about political corruption and such during the Salvadoran civil war, it’s enlightening. But as an attack on Romney, it’s a joke, and for the purposes of the OP and this thread, completely irrelevant.
Release the returns already.
If your guy really is that thin-skinned, how long do you think he’d survive in DC?
If there are more loopholes now, that’s all the more reason to release the returns. There are that many more opportunities and possibilities for Romney to have taken advantage of, and which the voters should know about while vetting him for the presidency.
While I didn’t make enough to care back then (and still don’t) I recall there were all sorts of legal tax avoiding dodge, like tax shelters, back when the rates on the top brackets were higher. IIRC a lot of movies were funded by funds that were designed to lose money for tax purposes. Credit card interest was deductible back then. Business lunches were fully deductible. I’m not sure if there were more or fewer loopholes then, but they were different.
The American people hate bullying. If Romney’s returns were actually clean, and there was extended nitpicking, he’d probably be more sympathetic. Certainly more than a rich person who seems to be hiding something. So I don’t buy the “they’ll be mean to me” excuse. The Romney camp is far more with-it to actually think that.
Then you should be happy. He already released one. And other is coming out.
It has nothing to do with being thin- or thick-skinned. It has to do with the nitwits like Maddow, O’Donnel and the other slightly more sane in the asylum demanding he deal with every fucking line item and every deduction. It feeds the machine that wants to keep the focus away from the failed community organizer in the white house. Everyone knows this.
So. He took advantage of legal loopholes. So what? Do you think Obama, Clinton, George Soros, etc. don’t take advantage of those deductions/loopholes that they are entitled to take?
They do hate bullying, which is why this will be a win for Romney with Independents. It’s Harry Reid’s empty, lying accusations and the clamoring of the party faithful on the left to get in line behind him VS a guy who people view to be a devoutly religious man who, we can see from the return we do have, paid million in taxes and gave a butt-load to charity.
I’ll take Romney over Reid and his low, transparent tactics any day. It also fits nicely into the narrative that the President and his team want to punish success. Romney is a rich guy. Rich guys, like everyone else, use the tax code to minimize their taxes. News at eleven.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Obama has added several lines to his resume since the 1980s, so you needn’t keep focusing on his early resume like that. Constitutional Law professor, U.S. Senator, POTUS, Nobel Prize winner. You need to think of some new shit, man–calling him a “failed community organizer” just marks you as a rightwing nutjob, which is persuasive only to other rightwing nutjobs, whose votes you locked up long ago.
BTW, what would a successful community organizer look like to you?
Because taxes are a punishment? Is that the GOP narrative?
Yeah, they probably do. Which is why we need to fix the tax code.
No. That being rich is a bad thing. And if you are, well, you’ve no doubt lied and cheated your way to your position.
So what kind of punishment are we advocating?
Deductions, certainly. Loopholes - on your list only Soros has the kind of cash that makes those loopholes attractive and he isn’t running for office - possibly because he doesn’t want to disclose them (Buffet would be another well known liberal who has according to rumor turned down the opportunity to be considered for cabinet positions - perhaps because he doesn’t want the scrutiny - perhaps because he likes running Berkshire Hathaway and isn’t ready to turn it over - perhaps there is no truth to the rumors).
At the end, this is the scrutiny everyone has gone through since the late 1960s. If Romney didn’t want the scrutiny, we could have a Obama/Santorum race. Its like a Supreme Court nominee being shocked when his probable position on abortion is debated. Romney is currently taking a position where he is perceived as either incompetent (not realizing that not releasing his tax returns would be a campaign issue is pretty incompetent, I look for a little more look ahead depth from my world leaders) or evil (he is hiding something and would rather look incompetent).
Can’t comment on Soros, but no Obama and Clinton don’t abuse the system. Neither did Biden, Gore, both Presidents Bush, Reagan, Dole, or McCain. I know this because they all have released tax returns. There’s no offshore accounts, possible undervaluing of stock, questionable write-offs, suspiciously large IRAs, or odd investment practices.
This would be more believable if the richest man in the US, Warren Buffett, wasn’t supportive of Obama and hadn’t been called upon to advise the president. Hard to argue Obama hates the rich unless you want to go the “exception that proves the rule” route.
Good point. He’s also an ex- State Senator with a penchant for voting “present”, a U.S. Senator who accomplished just about zero, and now, a President that hasn’t lived up to the parameters of success that he himself laid out.
Thanks for the opportunity for clarification.
Perhaps I was unclear. I don’t know if Obama was successful or unsuccessful at community organizing. The failure I alluded to goes to his role as President. But just for the heck of it, here’s a community organizer trying to do good work: Here you go.
Agreed.
Just to ask, what do you think that vote means, in a practical and political sense?