Obama foolishly thought that the Republicans would cooperate for the good of the country. Now the Dems are finally fighting back and the bullies, as they always do when their victims punch them in the nose at last, are crying and running home to momma saying it is so unfair.
Think about that story for a sec. How would a Bain Investor know whether or not Romney paid taxes?
I disagree. I think people are naturally suspicious of politicians finances, that they used their previious positions of power to immorally profit themselves, and so the tradition of releasing returns is to head off accusations of financial misdoings.
I don’t think Obama, for example, released his returns because he thought people were interested in his book royalties.
He repeated a rumour and said he didn’t know whether it was true or not, so your wrong saying he was making a pronouncement about “what he believes”. Reid’s pressuring Romney to release his returns by noting the speculation that’s out there, which is probably the only mechanism of “figuring it out” available to him.
I’m not. I said many times that Reid cited an undisclosed Bain investor as his source. The fact that he’s added “I don’t know for a fact that this is true” really doesn’t matter since he has repeatedly made the accusation and insists it’s credible.
Here’s a story about George Romney’s tax returns. As far as I know he didn’t make a statement about why he was doing so, but when a reported asked him for his latest tax returns, he initially said no and then offered 12 years of returns.
Obama did it because it’s been a tradition for 40 years now. I agree people are suspicious of politicians in general, but I don’t know that that’s where this tradition came from.
He created a rumor. I had not heard anyone say specifically that they had information indicating Romney was not paying taxes, and Reid didn’t treat it as a rumor. A rumor is ‘people are saying ,’ not ‘I don’t know if this is true, but someone in a position to know told me .’ Reid said he had the information from a confidential source that was “extremely credible.” That’s to specific to count as noting a speculation or a rumor.
He’s just asking questions! It’s a time-honored tradition.
According to the local CBS News in Boston, Reid is hinting that Romney is more concerned about his income and his tithing to the Mormon Church.
You think they wouldn’t have personal conversations as well as business ones? It’s very possible that Romney would have said that to someone he wanted to bond with who he thought might be impressed by it.
Oh no, that might cost him Utah. 
I barely know you but let’s have some drinks and I’ll tell you how I dress up like a french maid while violating tax laws. :rolleyes:
Would that be the ultimate irony or what. Romney’s not going to take Massachusetts, probably not New Hampshire (where he has a home), Michigan’s still a tossup, California (another home) is out, so I’m sure he definitely thinks that Utah is the one place in the country that’s his for sure.
The argument that he’s afraid of the Mormon church finding out that he stiffed them (if that’s true) doesn’t really wash to me. I think it’s far more likely that he’s afraid of what the American people will think when it’s revealed how much money he’s given that church. I’d say that a non-negligible percentage of Americans look a little askance at the Mormon church, regardless of how good of people they are or how much good they do, and may see Romney as being more beholden to that church than they’re comfortable with. Remember Kennedy and the public’s belief he’d be beholden to the Pope? Same thing here.
It’s just like with how little tax he’s probably paid. I really, really doubt that he’s done anything illegal with his taxes (except maybe the tax haven thing), and I’m pretty certain that he’s paid everything the tax laws have required of him. That’s not the issue - the issue is that he has (and has made use of) tax dodges that are unavailable to Joe Average, and that’s the political killer here. When a millionaire pays far far less of a percentage of his income in taxes than does the middle-manager making $70K (even though the millionaire probably still pays millions more in actual dollar amounts), that doesn’t play well politically. Especially not on today’s Main Street.
Romney is not going to lose Utah unless he cheated the Mormon Church and gets caught cursing on national TV after spilling an Irish coffee on his lap on election day.
I don’t know. There’s an awfully skeevy picture of him out there looking like he’s hitting on Jan Brewer.:eek:
Any picture of anyone potentially hitting on Jan Brewer would look awful and skeevy.
If Romney did anything similar, you’d pop a gasket. But, as ever, IOKIADDI.
Regards,
Shodan
Remember the Swift Boaters? Kerry provided plenty of evidence about what really happened. If he had stonewalled on that, or if Obama did it on the birth certificate, I’d have no big problem with the spreading of rumors.
All Romney has to do is release his returns like his father and so many others have. Why do you think he refuses?
By Romney saying so. I’m sure that Romney did pay some taxes, btw. (Though if I’m wrong I’ll laugh like hell.) I suspect it is more a case of him doing everything possible to reduce his taxes to the level of noise for his income, which shows he is not one of those “what you can do for your country” types.
I really don’t think “I gave a lot of money to my church” is going to hurt him with his base or just about anyone, especially since this is expected of Mormons. I doubt he stiffed them either -, he was too high up in the church and I bet they wouldn’t take no for an answer if they wanted to see his tax returns.
Maybe, though, if you multiply his donation by 10 it will come up as a lot higher than his reported income.
The very fact that he won’t release his tax returns is becoming a real issue.
It has come up in conversation two or three times in the last week among my friends who are remarkably apolitical.
This may be a show-stopper.
It is rather notable that Mr. Romney’s handlers have not yet stepped up and stopped this from becoming a serious hemorrhage.
That is, perhaps, the key question here.