Mitt Romney thought he could resolve the controversy surrounding his hidden tax returns once and for all on Friday. Romney, who has released his 2010 returns and promises to eventually release the 2011 materials, declared on CNN, "[T]hat's what we're going to put out.... Those are the two years that people are going to have."
The firm rejection of additional disclosure was apparently intended to shut down the discussion altogether. It appears that no one, not even his own allies, found this persuasive. Indeed, instead of settling the issue, Romney appears to have made it worse.
Yesterday on Fox News, for example, Bill Kristol presented Romney with some advice: "Here is what he should do: he should release the tax returns tomorrow. It's crazy. You've got to release 6, 8, 10 years of back tax returns."
If it were just Kristol, Romney might have an easier time defending his secrecy, but Kristol is just the beginning. George Will said yesterday that Romney "must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them." Republican strategist Matthew Dowd added "there's obviously something there" in Romney's returns that he doesn't want voters to see.
Republican strategist John Weaver said, "Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns." Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) added, "I think he ought to release everything. I believe in total transparency. You know if you have things to hide, then you may be doing things wrong."
Keep in mind, those quotes are just from the weekend, and don't include the many Republicans, including top Romney allies, who've been saying the same thing for a while: release the damn returns.
And here's the real kicker: what's Romney's explanation to defend the lack of disclosure? He doesn't have one.
After months of questions about why he won't release the tax returns, Romney's only attempt at an explanation came Friday, when he said additional disclosure isn't "necessary." Neither he nor his aides have managed to come up with a more compelling spin to justify the secrecy
Given the increasingly-serious questions about his Bain background, offshore finances, controversial investments, unanswered questions about his individual retirement account that somehow ended up with more than $100 million, and claims about his business that contradict SEC filings, releasing these materials would go a long way in helping Romney move past the controversies.
But he still refuses. Romney was willing to turn over 23 years of tax returns to John McCain's campaign team four years ago, but he doesn't want American voters to see what McCain saw.
Also note, the Romney campaign argued yesterday that if John Kerry only released two years' worth of tax returns, it's acceptable that Romney do the same. The problem with this argument is that it's a lie -- during the 2004 race, voters had access to Kerry's tax returns for the previous 20 years. If Romney wants to meet Kerry's standard for disclosure, he has a long way to go.
And finally, let's also not forget that when President Obama sends the Senate a nominee for a cabinet post, Senate Republicans require the nominee turn over at least three years' worth of tax returns. By Senate GOP standards, Romney wouldn't even be eligible for a confirmation hearing.
Leave a Comment:
As Tom Cruise said, "Show me the money!"
(Of course, all those Republican talking heads have not seen what is in those tax returns, or they might not be so quick to call for their release.)
Or, this is a last ditch effort to rid themselves of this candidate before the convention.
Would not these guys normally be shielding their candidate and their party with rabid tenaciousness, as was done for Bush II?
I don't think Mitt's won the proper allies in this fight. The conservative media is the backbone of Republian spin and damage control, and Mitt doesn't seem to be the recipient of that much-needed benefit.
I was in Salt Lake working for Delta Airlines during the Winter Olympics. There were many years of planning leading up to the games. Romney was a Johnny come lately that was brought in to deal with the Mormon power base that was being very difficult with Olympic planning issues. He did not do very much that I know of to "organize" the Olympic games.
Delta warned very early on that, when the games were over, everyone would want to leave at the same time which was logistically impossible for the capacity of that airport. Delta had a plan to stage departure boarding through the hangers. Romney said no. The airport was mobbed after the games were over and it was very inconvenient for many travelers.
What did Romney do? He got on the news and blamed Delta for not being properly prepared and said their poor operation was inexcusable.
What a POSER! We are in big trouble if this jerk becomes our president
So his lack of honesty goes back a lot further than we thought.
You don't understand the "investment banker" mindset. Romney actually thinks that meeting the "legal requirement" is all he is obligated to do. This is one of my major problems with this peculiarity of the libertarian/free-market philosophy...no grounding in any morality. How many times did the banks defend their bad investments in 08-09 by saying "yeah, but it wasn't ILLEGAL" or "we were within the bounds of the LAW."
So for Romney, he feels no moral or ethical compulsion to release his returns and saying "we met the legal requirements" is a perfectly acceptable answer.
It is all he's obligated to do Don't like it? Get the rule changed. This is your problem not his.
I totally agree, Shooter. I hope Romney goes with that message.
Yep, that's all he's technically required to do. It'll be cool watching the Lyin' Sack of Mitt hang on to that. Because he knows Americans are in the mood to watch a Wall Street guy hang his hat on legal technicalities.
The longer he hangs his hat on that, the more fun it'll be for us who can't stand that lyin' POS.
Hang on for dear life, Mittster.
You pulled that same bs logic on another thread, blanks.
Bottom line: it is Robme's problem. Which is why he doesn't want to release them. Which is why he is getting hammered by his own people. Which won't go away and will dog him right up to November.
And Robme did release 23 years of returns to McCain's camp. And they went with Palin.
Now Robme won't release those returns because he knows that it would further diminish his narrow chances of winning this election.
I agree with largenose: keep going with that "It is all he's obligated to do Don't like it? Get the rule changed. This is your problem not his."
It will do wonders for Robme's all ready shrinking poll numbers.
Shooter, you're right: complying with the bare minimum that the law requires is all we expect of a Republican President. Sometimes we even get it. Perhaps the Romney campaign would get the message across better if he were to put out a campaign ad announcing:
We all know Americans will be eternally forgiving of a man worth $250,000,000+ who as CEO, President, Chairman of the Board, and sole owner of a company can claim he had no responsibility for direction, leadership, and actions of the company should something go wrong. Because they can relate to that so easily.
They know when they go to work, none of their actions on the clock have any repercussions toward them either. And so why should a man who got rich -- when it didn't matter whether the companies he raided succeeded or not, he profited on them all by using the rules set up to do just that -- not be able to retire retroactively to a time he feels the history works in his favor? If Rmoney wouldn't be allowed to do this in the court of public opinion, that just wouldn't be fair by the public, would it?
Entitled POS, isn't he?
well, I missed alot while I was at school.
Shooter, the point is that there are obligations OTHER THAN legal ones. Especially for people in leadership positions.
As I tried to make plan, this is MY criticism of Romney specifically and libertarianism generally. So your point that this is MY problem is exactly correct. However, I feel obligated to observe that you did actually respond to the criticism.
This is why it's so rich that Romney and his surrogates are out there trying to convince people that somehow, it's Pres. Obama that's running a dishonest campaign. At every turn, Romney lies. Now, he's lying about John Kerry! Unbelievable. But even more unbelievable, is that Bain's SEC filings say one thing, and Romney says another - yet, it's supposed to be the Obama campaign that's dishonest! That's the kind of thinking that's pathological.
But, as Shooter noted, it's not ILLEGAL. Therefore, it's perfectly OK. Ethics, morality . . . all that jazz . . . has nothing to do with it. After all, he's only seeking to be the leader of the free world. To Romney, that's a step down.
Romney is correct about one thing. It is not necessary to release all those years of tax returns.
Know what else isn't necessary? Voting for a bottom-feeding scavenger who siphoned jobs, and the fortune he made off the ruined landscape he left behind, offshore.
College transcripts are not necessary either ;>
Keep with that, stknmov. Make that FoxTalkingPoint central to your pushback.
Because Americans sure can't tell the difference: Romney sole reason for Americans to elect him is his private industry experience in the financial sector on Wall Street and Obama's reason is not his stay at Harvard as a student.
Just keep that same pushback. Democrats welcome that bit of nonsense out of your Fox education.
It's just the diversion of the week to prevent any discussion of real issues facing America which they both suck at. Neither of these @!$%#s have outlined a plan to stimulate the economy or get congress to work together.
The latest parlor game: How many days will it take?
Next question is: How many years will be released?
IMHO, the secrecy is because he likely paid zero taxes in that wild and crazy year of 2008, possibly 2009 also, when he had no capital gains since the economy fell off a cliff due to Republican economic strategies. Can't wait to see if I am right!
Next question: His "average" tax rate over however many numbers of years will be less than or higher than 10%?
I really don't care about '08-'09, etc. I'm sure whatever they show can most likely be described as "meeting the legal requirement."
What I want to see is the returns from 1999-2002. I want to see if those returns "meet the legal requirement" since there seems to be at least two opposing storylines being told about those years. In charge or not in charge, Responsible for signing legal documents or not responsible. Sorry, it can't be both.
Romney working 16 hours a day on the Olympics. Now that is outright bs. Romney sitting on a golf coarse stroking his rich buddy’s as they have their fancy drinks is not work. Those fancy suck ups was hardly work. And in reality, Romney did actually very little real work as everybody else really did the work is not work. Romney actually doing 16 hours a day of work is a load of crap. This is just another bald face lie. Romney flapping his mouth a little during the day is the only work Romney did. Anybody could have come in and done the job Romney did. This picture they are trying to push Romney as doing something really marvelous is just an illusion of bs for a political career. Just the typical crap in trying to fool people. In essence, Romney hasn’t really done anything productive for other people, except where it suits his interests. Romney is a rehearsed liar and puppet of the extreme rich. Romney has had years of practice at lying, why would you think it would be any different now?
Apparently Romney gave McCain his tax returns, and McCain rejected him as the VP. "But after receiving them, the Campaign thought that Mitt Romney's tax returns would be too damaging to John McCain if he was picked to share the Republican ticket in 2008. So they went for then Alaska Governor Sarah Palin."
The guy was thrown over for Palin !!!! This should be a fun week!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/13/1109574/-Gov-O-Malley-McCain-saw-Romney-s-tax-returns-and-picked-Palin
It is very interesting that McCain said no to Romney as VP after seeing those returns. Not sure what is in them or how big a factor they were. No doubt Romney made McCain's campaign sign a confidentiality agreement over those documents.
Romney is running an I'll tell ya later campaign.He expects voters to elect him on his promise to cut taxes on the wealthy and deregulate everything that provides protection for the middle class.The man is a dope,that thinks we are dupe's
there's political gold in those tax returns. ...for the Obama team
There's gold in Romney not releasing his tax returns. The controversy will continue with voter mistrust growing by the day. If he does release the returns, then the later he does it, the better for the Dems. This issue will not go away and if he releases the returns, it will strengthen the fairness argument. Now is the time for the Occupy movement to mobilize and keep the "fairness" issue before the voters. The issue is visceral to the average voters who are going to tune out the "job creator" rhetoric if the Dems do not go off message.
Just four years ago, Mitt Romney gave the McCain campaign 23 years of tax returns -- and didn't get picked for the VP slot. If he was willing to provide that many years to be VP candidate, why would you do less to be Presidential Candidate? Mitt Romney’s
response to provide more tax returns than 2010 and an estimate (so far) for 2011 is that he has provided what is required. Shouldn’t the man who wants to be President want to go beyond the legal tax requirements and release his tax returns from 1999 to 2009? President Obama released 12 years of returns, Former President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton released 8 years, and Former President Regan released 6 years. Oh yes his Father released 12 years of tax returns when he ran all those years ago. Romney doesn't mind claiming his father's civil rights activities as his own, but does not want to emulate him on his transparency.
George Romney started the tradition of releasing tax returns, 12 years' worth. He also ran a real American business--the kind that actually hires Americans to make stuff and sell it to people. He ran HUD, helping poor people get housing. Thirty years later, Mitt was making a profit off of getting people their VIP seats for figure-skating.
Mitt, you're no George Romney.
So I'm sure that Romney will now be forthcoming and apologize to Kerry for misstating the number of years that Kerry's tax returns were available to the public?
Disavowing the 'rules' of the Corporately Owned Media which say that nobody can say anything questioning a republicon unless they have proof 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' of what they suggest and that democrats can be questioned about everything unless they can prove it false 'beyond a shadow or two of doubt'; I want the following questions answered:
1) Did Willard Romney receive 'tax amnesty' for his Swiss or other offshore accounts?
2) How did Willard accumulate $100 Million in an IRA when their are yearly limits to IRA contributions?
3) Has Willard evaded or avoided U.S. taxes thru his offshore accounts?
This is the goal of most of the "red blooded American corporations".
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/labor-ready-jobs-temp-workers-investigation
thanks for the link, sunmusing!
From the article:
"In 1989, only 1 in 43 American manufacturing jobs were temporary. By 2006, 1 in 11 were."
I'm sure not a lawyer, but I have an interesting question or two:
The IRS "has" all this info in storage, I'm sure. So, in essence, this info IS in government hands already.
What laws would prevent the government from making this info 'public' ??
Must be really frustrating for them to sit and look at that stuff and maybe even know there are "problems". (notice the word- maybe).
Couldn't the IRS, independently, run a full-on audit and investigate these matters ??
Then if they have 'evidence', go to the AG ??
Seems they are giving Romney a chance to man-up, but what if he doesn't ??
I, personally, think ALL candidates must be required to pass a "lifetime" financial audit, psych evals, oh... and of course, like a lot of us other citizens- drug screening.
The office of the Presidency is WAY TOO IMPORTANT to allow "just anybody" to run.
Let the Public vet these fools.... but we gotta have the data to do that !
They're barred from disseminating that info without permission. I forget exactly where the ban is, but unless there's actual criminal behavior, they can't let it out. If they could, whoo boy, there'd be people in Congress sweating .50-caliber bullets.
If Romney was not the Bain CEO in 2000, 2001, 2002 then did Bain have a CEO, if it was a different CEO then who was it?
Simple enough; put a face on the CEO for each of those years? (2003, 2004, 2005, ...
To answer this question is to address the millions of words spent on this already.
Would anyone dare think that Romney was not at Bain at all, ever, but was recruited as figure head, a place holder in the stable of potential candidates, to be available for plug and play Presidencies? Now would anyone want to have selected a figure head to represent their beloved party, rather than represent all Americans, the party system offers much needed distractions so that we never are really governed by our own choices.
So Romney admits that he was just a pretentious CEO. Does this hint that he aspires to be a pretentious President of the United States?
Hey MODs: To RMS, TLW and TES, get Steve Schmidt on the air, ask him what he saw in those tax returns. He was in a position to know.
I wouldn't trust him to tell the truth.
John McCain's 2008 campaign had 23 of Romney's tax returns when Mitt was being considered for veep. Perhaps the returns were why McCain chose Palin. Did Romney's returns signal to McCain's vetters that Mitt's money, how he made it and how he stashed it, would be a big nasty bomb for the GOP ticket? Just wondering...but I think so.
You are so right. The deafening silence from John McCain, who isn't defending Romoney here, and Steve Schmidt saying he wouldn't release more tax returns, says all one needs to know about the nasty stuff in those papers.
additional disclosure isn't "necessary."
But keeping them hidden certainly IS necessary. I wonder why.
I keep thinking it can't be long now until some disgruntled former McCain staffer leaks Mitt's details. Even if the physical (or electronic) documents are not to be found, given the volume of material involved there have to have been dozens of people poring over them--people who probably made notes or, at the very least, have memories of what they saw.
Romney pleading the fifth, is an admission of guilt. Think about this, if you're running for the highest office in the land, would'nt you expect to be vetted by the people. This is not some private club. This is the United States.
the 23 years is an interesting number, why not 20? why not 25?
23 years from 2008 would have been 1985/1986, right at the point when Bain was becoming profitable. It's possible that at that 23 year mark was when financial finagling began, and so previous years either would no longer still be around (who keeps tax records for 23 years?) and/or be rather bland.