Saturday, September 22, 2012

Headlines - Saturday Sept 22

I don't think anybody is really sure why Mitt Romney decided to reveal his average effective tax rate over the past 20 years, but one thing is for sure: it's given the Obama campaign an opportunity to release a statement questioning why he won't release the raw tax returns and calling on him to open the books:
STATEMENT: Romney Pays Lower Rate than Middle Class, Hides Wealth and Income

Chicago, IL—Obama for America released the following statement from Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter on Mitt Romney's 2011 tax returns:

Today's release of Mitt Romney's 2011 tax returns confirms what we already knew – that people like Mitt Romney pay a lower tax rate than many middle class families because of a set of complex loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top. Yet, Mitt Romney still wants to give multi-millionaires an additional $250,000 tax cut at the expense of middle class taxpayers who will see their taxes go up. While the tax return for the one year released today continues to mask Romney's true wealth and income from Bain Capital, leaving the American people in the dark about critical details about his finances, it does confirm that he continues to profit from millions of dollars invested overseas. These types of investments, the use of tax loopholes, and the resort to foreign blocker corporations enabling him to reduce his U.S. tax obligations, all raise basic and still unanswered question – why does Mitt Romney not just release the full returns , instead of the bare summary he has provided of the last 20 years, so voters can make their own judgments about Mitt Romney's finances? As Mitt Romney's father said, candidates should release several years of returns, because one year could be a fluke. President Obama, Vice President Biden and nearly every other candidate in recent memory has met that test, but Mitt Romney continues to fail it.

As even GOP strategists have conceded, Romney's strategy of releasing some of the information about the past 20 years but not all of it is sort of like saying he's "a little bit pregnant," raising more questions than it answers.
And one of those questions is, as Greg Sargent wrote earlier, what Mitt Romney's actual net tax rate was during that 20 year period. Remember, the figure Romney released was the average tax rate per year—not the cumulative tax rate. That means years in which he had lower income but a higher tax rate are weighted the same as years in which he had higher income and a lower rate. It's sort of a like a baseball player hitting .600 as a rookie in five games and then hitting .250 the next year in a full season, and then claiming a .425 lifetime batting average. It just doesn't add up.
 
Willard has three years to amend his return, so after the election, when presumably he will be the most powerful man in the world, having prevented enough black people from voting to eke out a teeny-tiny win, he will be able to go back and amend his return and pocket another cool 467,000.

How cynical is it to "overpay" your taxes for political reasons (after
claiming that anyone who pays more than he has to isn't qualified to be president), knowing full well that you can go back and amend your tax returns and pocket another half-million dollars?

For that matter, what must it be like to be able to forgo a HALF-MILLION DOLLARS for a few months for the sake of your lust for the presidency?
 
From Harry Reid's statement:
"When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?," Mr. Reid said. "Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes."###
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Once a Bain Co. CEO, always a Bain Co. CEO... 

WASHINGTON -- Hamstrung by campaign finance laws, the Mitt Romney campaign sought a $20-million loan last month, a campaign official confirmed Tuesday, of which $11 million still needs to be repaid.

So let's reiterate. The campaign TOOK OUT A $20M loan. It needed money. So of COURSE you're going to pay out bonuses for the most incompetent campaign ever run?

Mitt Romney's campaign handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses last month to senior staffers, according to new disclosure records filed Thursday.

Richard Beeson, Romney's national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

In addition, records show at least six other top staffers each received $25,000 bonuses on the same date: campaign manager Matt Rhoades, general counsel Kathryn Biber, policy advisor Lanhee Chen, communications director Gail Gitcho, digital director Zach Moffatt and advisor Gabriel Schoenfeld. Two other employees received $10,000 bonuses.

A Romney spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on the payments Thursday.

Guess who's going to get stuck holding the bag when this deal goes south?

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Let's take a look at what Mitt's charitable giving goes to, shall we?

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Romney's culture of lying for the lord

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Oops. Mitt Romney's Son Signed 'Abortion' Clause In Surrogate Birth Contract
 
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Paul Ryan admitted last night in the Friday news dump that he had "overlooked" 20% of his income when he filed his 2011 taxes. The income source was his mother-in-law's living trust.

And that's totally believable. I mean, who among us hasn't forgotten $61,122 that Mom left us?

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Mitt Romney Overpays his Taxes; Admits He's Not Qualified to Become President

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Funny, how it's always a Republican who finds it necessary to resort to disingenuous tactics and lies to prevent people from voting.

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It isn't often that two simple paragraphs in a simple little political fanzine gets me to test the tensile strength of my desk with the center of my forehead.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer sought out Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on the House floor for a talk about fiscal issues late Thursday.

The two men huddled in plain view among the back benches of the Republican side of the chamber and were later joined by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who ranks fourth in House leadership.

There is simply no reason for any Democrat to treat the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin like a congressional savant while simultaneously pointing out (correctly) on the campaign trail that the man is ideologically — hell, theologically — opposed to the very concept of a social safety net. Paul Ryan does not want to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He wants to kill them. He will do it by baby steps if he has to do it that way, but he is bound and determined to get it done, and he will bring his entire party with him in the effort. Steny Hoyer knows this, but... OMIGOD! FISCAL CLIFF! SAVE US, GRAND BARGAIN. YOU'RE OUR ONLY HOPE!

The Great Sellout is coming, folks. Believe that.

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Get it?
 
Pathetic waste of skin and neurons Dr. Jerome Corsi, PhD, has in recent months shifted from being a straight-out birther to claiming that Barack Obama is a flaming homosexualist, presumably because being a birther mostly just gets him merely a tired indulgent laugh these days, even from other wingnuts. So now, yeah, Obama is gay and spends all his time gaying up everything, especially the State Department and the diplomatic corps. So therefore, it's perfectly reasonable for Corsi to ask a very simple question: DID OBAMA SEND A 'GAY' AMBASSADOR TO LIBYA? Note that "gay" is in quotes in the headline and throughout the article, presumably because there is either no such thing as gayness, or maybe because it it such a new term that it must be marked as slang, like the many street names for exotic drugs. Or does it have something to do with Dr. Corsi, PhD, constantly being "hopped up" on "goofballs"? WE ARE SIMPLY ASKING. READ MORE »
 
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