Serious Question

11 Comments

1. 

   Richard Bachman on July 23, 2012 at 1:00 pm

   I imagine much of the for-profit media are ready to move on to asking the President about his alleged teenage drug use. Much more exciting to them than that boring old tax stuff.

2. 

   donnah on July 23, 2012 at 1:27 pm

   Oh, I believe Ann Romney handled that, my friend, asked and answered. “us people” don’t need to see those returns because the Romneys donate to their church and that explains plenty, thankyouverymuch. Nothing to see here, just move along…

3. 

   mainsailset on July 23, 2012 at 1:28 pm

   I’d like to see a tact where Romney becomes more representational of how the rich abuse taxation; talk about how Romney shares Adelson, Koch, Walton etc.’s misuse of funds that should reside in our infrastructure accounts. Never mention Romney’s name without the specific name of Koch, Walton or Adelson.

   How can there not be a question of the Walton family owning a fortune equal to the wealth of the lower 40% of Americans…is this what Romney and his friends see as a goal…why not 50%, 60% ?

   Ask what their corporate tax returns show for what they’ve paid, are they in the same 15% Mitt rate? Or lower?

   • 

     mainsailset on July 23, 2012 at 1:44 pm

     On second thought maybe we should just stop referring to Mitt as the head of the Rep Party and instead call him the Leader of the Corporatists.

4. 

   hz on July 23, 2012 at 1:39 pm

   Apparently he’s pushing the fake “Obama sez you didn’t do what you did” theme to Olympic athletes:  http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/07/23/565491/romney-to-olympians-you-didnt-get-here-solely-on
   -your-own/

   • 

     Marie2 on July 23, 2012 at 2:54 pm

     He retroactively withdraws those words and denies that it ever happened:

     Opening Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics, crediting the community for helping individuals achieve the pinnacle of success:

         ROMNEY: You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities.

     The internet is really screwing up this guy’s effort to be all things to all people, one select group at a time.

5. 

   joe from Lowell on July 23, 2012 at 1:43 pm

   Whether Mitt Romney took advantage of the Swiss bank account amnesty in 2009 seems like a good late-July conversation to me.

6. 

   MassCommons on July 23, 2012 at 1:55 pm

   Yeah, I don’t know whether it will come back this week…but I think it will come back as an issue in the campaign.  

   I addressed it some in a couple of recent posts:

   http://masscommons.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/magic-word-gaffes-why-they-dont-matter/

   http://masscommons.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/for-romney-paper-cuts-have-just-begun/

   Basically, both with the tax returns and with Bain Capital there are lots (and lots and lots) of pieces of official paper—hundreds of pages of tax returns, dozens of SEC filings, minutes of board meetings, corporate emails, etc.  

   That means lots of angles for further developing the story (drip, drip, drip…), and lots of questions for reporters to ask Romney, his campaign staff, and his allies.  Not to mention the October debates.

7. 

   rikyrah on July 23, 2012 at 2:40 pm

   not only did he not release the other ones…

   he didn’t even release the one that he SAYS he released.

   so, the number of COMPLETE TAX RETURNS RELEASED BY WILLARD ROMNEY?

   ZERO YEARS.

8. 

   DaveW on July 23, 2012 at 3:57 pm

   A new study of tax avoidance by the world plutocracy provides ample new questions for Romney: “New information shows that the world’s richest individuals have squirreled away more money in tax avoidance havens than the entire wealth of the United States — at least $21 trillion. You appear to be among them. Is that why you refuse to release your tax returns?”

   The world’s super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.

   James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system.

   ….

   “This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of ‘source’ countries,” Henry says.

   Using the BIS’s measure of “offshore deposits” – cash held outside the depositor’s home country – and scaling it up according to the proportion of their portfolio large investors usually hold in cash, he estimates that between $21tn (£13tn) and $32tn (£20tn) in financial assets has been hidden from the world’s tax authorities.

   “These estimates reveal a staggering failure,” says John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. “Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people.

   “This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich.”

   In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore, according to Henry’s analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn – $9.8tn – is owned by just 92,000 people. And that does not include the non-financial assets – art, yachts, mansions in Kensington – that many of the world’s movers and shakers like to use as homes for their immense riches.

9. 

   MNPundit on July 23, 2012 at 4:13 pm

   I prefer asking him if he lied about the Australian government, given that they’ve officially said Romney’s version of their meeting was incorrect.

   Did you spin it Mittens, or is it a straight up lie?