I really, truly believe that he thought he could just walk in and take over the place. He’s NOT USED TO BEING QUESTIONED! His entire life people have been doing what he wants because he has a lot of money and comes from a politically aristocratic family. All of this blowback from shudder peasants is a shock to him.
“We’ve given all you people need to know.”
That sums up the Romney’s attitude.
I had wondered about this since the first time he declined to release returns during the primary.
Romney was a bishop and stake president. He has conducted a thousand interviews in which a parishoner’s “worthiness” was determined in part by swearing to Romney that they pay a full tithe. In the linked article, Ann Romney describes how she cries tears of gratitude every time she is privileged to donate a 7-digit tithing check.
What if his tax returns show that his tithing is less than 10% of his gross income? This would mean that he lied to get his own temple recommend, and that he had been hypocritically denying others their recommends. The American voter may forgive him, but it would strain relationships with his church, his family, and his wife (presumably she thinks the family is paying a full tithe).
I used to be a full tithe-paying Mormon. I can hardly imagine the embarassment if my wife and my bishop had learned via the national media that I was lying in my temple worthiness interviews.
After years of playing eleven-dimensional chess with Monopoly money in order to reduce his reportable income, the habit is probably so ingrained that he may have sort of drifted into twentiething rather than tithing without quite making a conscious decision to cheat.
If he’s tithed 10% of his actual gross, I would vote for him.
That’s like, “If he’s tithed 10% of his actual gross, I’ll eat my sombrero,” only much safer.
Early results from the Gawker document dump:
Perry gives a nice explaination of foreign tax credits here: Start Making Sense: Has Romney paid all the U.S. federal income taxes that he legally owes?
Fleischer explains and defends his assertions about Fees Conversion here: http://victorfleischer.com/archives/306
(bolding mine)
If he doesn’t want the American public to know that he tithes then why does he keep bringing it up? In his “13%” speech he actually talked about how if he included charitable giving he was donating more than 20%. I have often speculated that the issue is that he doesn’t tithe the full 10%, and if he releases the returns now, the public will know that he lied about how much he gave to his Church. Then again, I could be wrong and he has just suddenly decided that he doesn’t want to talk about how much he tithes. In fact, he consideres it so private that he makes a point of mentioning it in the article discussing why he wants to keep it so private.
Is it 10% of your (as in LDS member’s) gross (global) income or just 10% of what is reported on the US tax return? His numbers as released on the 2010 return seem to squeak by the 10% when you count the LDS related charities under his personal 501c3, but they don’t seem to be near 10% of what could be his global income if you consider some of the stuff that Gawker released.
Ten percent of gross. Imagine Romney talking to his Bishop saying “Well, I made a billion dollars this year but I was able to run loops around the tax code so to the government it appears I only made $1.50! Here’s your fifteen cents, church!”
It’s not fair, really. The church should give them a break on income earned from capital gains. That would encourage them to invest in companies that would grow the economy and hire more mormons.
Hell, Sermon on the Mount is just all about entrepreneurship and capital gains, read it the right way. And that whole fishes and loaves thing, nothing more than demonstrating the miracle of compounded interest.
That also strikes me as a possible motive for Reid’s source and/or the Gawker leaker. If I were honestly upholding a fairly heavy burden imposed by my religion, and a professed co-religionist who used his “man of faith” credentials for public credibility were cheating and shirking, I’d be pissed.
I know it’s been said a million times before, but I don’t understand why people don’t laugh themselves silly at the thought that somebody who believes in golden tablets and personal planets, enough to donate millions to the grifters who push such nonsense, is actually running for President. And that the Republican base is going to vote for him.
Is that weirder than believing in the ritual cannibalism of a Jewish zombie?
Since Mormonism includes that, yes it is. I’d say it’s worse than Dianetics, since Mormonism’s unique beliefs are just as crazy, but Dianetics doesn’t include the other crazy stuff you mentioned.
But I agree that it’s bizarre that many Christians will happily vote for Jews, and now evidently Mormons, but they don’t consider atheists or Muslims to even be citizens, let alone serious candidates for office.
I don’t know of *any *religion’s tenets that don’t include things that seem pretty crazy to nonadherents; do you?
But… but… he has magic under-panties!
I’m no scholar, but a lot of religions seem less goofy to me than the Abrahamic ones. Some forms of Buddhism seem harmless enough, and even the Greek myths make a lot more sense than the Bible.
The world is much more easily explained by positing capricious, competing gods who play favorites, than an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Jehovah who not only has his great plan for his Creation derailed in about five minutes by a talking serpent, but takes 4000 years to come up with a solution for it, namely allowing himself to be tortured and killed.
In fact, the older parts of the Bible seem henotheistic, so it got even stupider as it went along.
Do you know the only Protestant in a significant elected position of power in the US govt is Obama? VP, Supreme Court justices, Minority Leader, Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House are all Catholic, Mormon, or Jewish.
Nitpick. SC Justices are not elected officials - although the point about the first ever entirely non-Protestant Court is valid.