In case you were wondering.
This is all really too stupid to get more than an extended title out of me.
No, I don't care about his tax records.
UPDATE: OK, this is REALLY not going to make me popular, but something occurred to me. The one thing you can say for birthers is that at least the documents they request are Constitutionally relevant.
Mitt Romney is applying for the most important job in the world. He comes in and claims that he knows how to put Americans to work. He says that the wealthy would invest more if they were taxed less for the greater benefit of all. He holds up his wealth as proof of his economic acumen.
ReplyDeleteGive your head a shake Daniel. If Romney made his wealth by pushing down wages directly and indirectly of American workers - if that is the skill set he is offering to bring - then that is of legitimate interest to voters.
If Romney has been investing his resulting wealth outside of the country that also goes to his claims.
His refusal to provide his tax returns goes to his integrity. Since he is asking to have the power of life or death over most of the world he has no right to privacy and his refusal to disclose should disqualify him for the job.
I shook my head. Nothing happened.
DeleteDaniel - we bring different skill sets and different concerns to this question. When Romney said:
ReplyDelete“Sometimes a foreign entity is formed to allow foreign investors to invest in the United States, which may well be the case with the entities that Democrats are describing as foreign accounts.” http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/07/17/romney-explains-cayman-island-investments/?mod=google_news_blog
Remembering that he is talking about his own recent tax returns and the investments disclosed therein, the use of the construction "which may well be" is to me an indication of lying. Not sure what the lie is but there is a good chance that he is being deliberately misleading about the purpose of his investments in the Cayman's.
Absalon,
ReplyDeleteFrom your third paragraph: if Barack Obama has investments in international mutual funds is he as dirty as Romney, proportional to the size of his investment?
From your fourth paragraph: if you remove "tax return" and replace with "long form birth certificate" or "college or law school transcripts", is the underlying malfeasance still present?
Why would I expect personal data contained in tax returns to be any more or less damning than personal data contained on long form birth certificates or college or law school transcripts?
Charles
ReplyDelete1) If Obama made a conscious decision to move a proportionate amount of his money outside of the United States to tax havens and Swiss bank accounts then he would be as blame worthy as Romney is for moving millions to offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts.
2) No. Romney's fault lies in resorting to tax havens and Swiss bank accounts. The admitted fact that he has resorted to tax havens and a Swiss bank account are what makes the further disclosure required. If called on Obama should prove that the was born in the United States - and he did - and prove that he in fact graduated from University - and I assume that he has done so, or could prove that he had done so if called on.
3) Because (a) no one can be blamed for what his mother put on a birth registration when he is a few days old (b) the tax returns are much more recent than the college or law school transcripts (c) no one runs for President on the basis of his marks in first year torts twenty years ago but Romney is running for President based on his success as an investor (d) college transcripts prepared by the schools are an improbable form of evidence of malfeasance but tax returns are a good potential source of evidence of malfeasance.
There is a report that Ann Romney has a huge IRA but has never worked outside the home. There may only be a 5% chance that something improper was done to achieve that result but when running for the President of the United States that 5% is enough to justify full disclosure just as it would if Romney were applying for any highly sensitive job.
This issue makes me shake my head. Everyone is playing it safe and blaming somebody else for this issue.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know my thoughts about outsourcing, just click here.