Keep grasping at straws, trollie. Keep grasping at straws.

why do you respond to me? you're just a name caller.

I respond to you to call you out on your right wing talking points.

You are just a troll who doesn't like to be called out for being a troll.

And I will continue to do so.

a simple minded name-caller who never left the 6th grade mentally, if indeed you even got that far

a wanna be blogger still living in his mother's basement that is jealous of Benen and his success.

Sucks to be you.

not me, I read things OTHER than Benen too.

How is life inside the bubble going?

Yet you come here, day after day, making numerous posts about just how big a liar Benen is.

Just how much of a jealous and desperate failure are you?

GM staying in business saved jobs. What does GE not paying income tax for years and their employee numbers go down do for job creation? What about the oil subsidaries that Republicans refuse to stop, they are not producing jobs.

I want to know what tax loop holes someone like Romney uses, to ensure that our elected leaders close them. I want to know how:

According to Romney's disclosure documents, the candidate has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million parked tax-free in his IRA -- a significant proportion of his total wealth, as noted by Mark Maremont in the Wall Street Journal. There are limits to the amount of money individuals can contribute to their IRAs. Before Romney was elected Massachusetts governor, federal law capped annual pre-tax IRA contributions at $2,000 and annual 401(k) retirement contributions at $30,000 with a company match as the Journal notes.

I want to make sure our leaders limit them or lift the limits off the rest of us.

Come now. If you think Mitt is hiding something devastating about his taxes, you have to allow someone else to assume the same about Obama hiding his past. Yes, hiding his past. We've seen how Obama let a bio of him being born in Kenya circulate. Why is that?

Sure!

Except Obama released 10 years of his taxes!

But other than that you are right!

Except that the right wing loons like yourself have been killing themselves to come up with a scandal about Obama and have come up with nothing.

Anyway: you all have vetted robme as as much has you have robme...no, not really....

Keep shooting those right wing blanks, shooter. Maybe you will have a point to make.

See, the only people who think Obama is hiding some terrible thing in his law school transcript are the ones who think Latin honors at Harvard Law can be based on something other than grades or that Harvard somehow violated its own rules on what it takes to graduate magna cum laude because even in 1990, they were in on some vast liberal conspiracy to trick people into believing Barack Obama was in the top ten percent of his law school class.

As for the college transcripts, no presidential candidate in the history of the Republic has released them. In 2004, Kerry and Bush's were, in violation of the law, leaked to the press. To very little effect. In the end, people still thought Bush was dumb and Kerry, whatever his other flaws, was smart notwithstanding the fact that they both made some C's.

As for the other conspiracy krazy you guys seem to think you can "prove" with those secret transcripts, it makes me wonder whether you understand that a "transcript" is just a record of what classes you took and what grades you made.

Ah, so maybe the problem is in his application, or writings, or something else.

You know at this point we'd be happy if he delivered the fast and furious docs. Especially now that one of the drug cartel guys is saying Obama was arming his group against the other cartels. Sounds absurd to me, but who would have thought a Nobel Peace Prize President would kill an American without due process.

joca

I remember at the RNC Chair debate the candidates were asked "What is your favorite Book?" Priebus kept repeating "Reagan Diaries" over and over again in a Rainman-like manner. It was very weird.

I find everything Priebus says is weird. And creepy. What is going on with his accent? I've never heard anything like it. And his speech has a very strange, lifeless cadence. That probably has a lot to do with your Rain Man comparison. Hearing him speak makes me feel like I need to take a shower.

It's one of the job requirements.

Seems to involve some kind of horrific brain surgery. The side effects can be unpredictable. Apparently, it turned Steele into a blithering, self-parodying idiot, Melhman gay and Priebus into a colossal douche (which, as it happens is a synonym for "Rinse."

Oh, wait. Turns out they were all that way to start with. Never mind.

I thought it was a feature they looked for and if they do well at being disconnected and not making any sense, MSNBC hires them as pundits.

Okay.

Still doesn't change the claim of the source being credible.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats actually come right out and issue corrections when something needs correcting.

Huntsman denies he is the source, shooting down yesterday's speculation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/jon-huntsman-sr-longtime-romney-backer-calls-on-him-to-release-tax-returns/2012/08/10/9f343a8c-e312-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html

The internet is alive with speculation that the secret source Harry Reid claims to have on Mitt Romney’s tax returns is Utah industrialist Jon Huntsman Sr. He is the founder of Hunstman Corporation and the father of the former GOP presidential candidate — and the speculation is based on the fact that his profile fits with much of what we publicly know about Reid’s presumed confidante.

But I just got off the phone with Huntsman, and he confirmed to me that he is not Reid’s source.

Because, hey, there's nothing like calling a guy up and asking him if he's exposed himself to massive liability by violating a bunch of draconian confidentiality agreements he signed for soliciting an honest answer.

His transcripts are supposed to prove that he only got into college because of "affirmative-action" which of course means that he's never had a job, never learned nothing, never did nothing and is totally unqualified to be the president! (just pointing out how the teatards see it)

And yet those same "standards" weren't applied to W., whose family purchased another wing @Harvard to enable him to graduate...Yea, I'll bite....

source?

80sGirl ... His college transcripts wouldn't show that he was an "affirmative action" beneficiary. His high school transcripts might give some indication, but not those after he was admitted. Nor would his college grades provide much evidence that he shouldn't have been admitted to law school. Congress is full of lawyers whose undergraduate achievement wasn't exactly sterling.

I doubt that he was, but if he were, the fact that it led eventually to his being elected President of the U. S. would seem to offer a strong argument in favor of that policy.

mpguy, you don't have to tell me! I'm just pointing out that the teatards are drooling over the prospect of discounting every single achievement that Obama has made in his life based solely on their belief that affirmative action is bad.

And according to the birthers, Obama's college records are supposed to show that he got a "foreign student" scholarship.

There is no point in trying to disprove a conspiracy theory, they just become more elaborate to accommodate any contrary evidence that's presented.

The problem is that the mouth-breathers who believe this nonsense have apparently never actually seen a college transcript. Which, as it happens is usually just a single smudgy page or two printed--in those days, at least--by a crappy nine pin dot matrix printer with an old ribbon that shows the semester, the courses the student took that semester, the grade the student got in each course, and sometimes, the student's GPA and class rank at the end of each semester.

I don't get the obsession with President Obama's transcripts at all. Right-Wing Tea Party people have contempt for educated people, especially someone from an Ivy league school.

For argument's sake assume that he got in on affirmative action, and then scammed his way through both Columbia and Harvard Law school the way the guy in "Catch Me if You Can" Frank Abagnale, Jr. did. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Actually, no. If, god forbid, Romney is actually elected president, I'm still going to want to know if he paid his taxes or not.

Well, thank god you've shown up Bill. We're really getting bored with the same old trolls spouting Faux News talking points. Clearly, you're going to spout the same horsesh!t but at least it's a new name.

As one troll in particular likes to say: you didn't post any links, so you're lying.

Oh good, my lunch has arrived. I see this a lot on Huffington Post, too. Everything that doesn't fit with the progressive worldview is a "lie." It's not that conservatives are sometimes correct, too. It's not that there are legitimate differences of opinion. Nope. Everyone who has an alternative point of view or brings counterfactual data is either a "liar" or a "troll." Interesting coming from a political philosophy that supposedly prides itself on intellectual diversity. Do you wish to redeem yourself by pointing out the specific ways in which I am lying? Otherwise, it's feeding time in America. And you're on the menu.

Oh geez. Gosh. I'm to be had for lunch. I'm quaking in my fu king boots. No really.

Here's how it works in the real world of intelligent debate. When you show up and make blanket statements about any particular theme ("only half of us pay taxes"), it is actually YOUR responsibility to have some proof. It's not my job to prove your statement to be balderdash.

So, where is YOUR proof that 50% of Americans pay NO taxes?

@Bill - Please, you're spouting the same old right wing lie, "Well, at least the half of us that do pay taxes at all." Almost everyone in the nation pays taxes, sales tax, property tax, Medicare, Social Security, State Income Tax...I'm probably leaving a few off. Federal income taxes are not the only ones out there, yet the right wing noise machine seems to want everyone to believe that they are.

There, I pointed out your lie, would you care to retract your lying statement about half of the people not paying taxes?

Isn't kung fu done barefoot? I do shotokan, which is an Okinawan form of karate so I don't know of such things.

The figure, which is widely cited and understood applies to federal income taxes. Obviously, the government claw still gets ya with sales taxes, etc. I'll give you a few links.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/08/john-cornyn/john-cornyn-says-51-percent-american-households-pa/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/28/46-percent-of-americans-e_n_886293.html

And for the occasional wayward conservative who wanders on here: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/19/chart-of-the-week-nearly-half-of-all-americans-dont-pay-income-taxes/

Any other issues to address?

Bill: I think the question is what facts do you have to support your claim of "...how in this down economy, all of us should be paying less in taxes. Well, at least the half of us that do pay taxes at all." Then we can discuss substance and perhaps solution as you stated "We need to find a more efficient way to deliver services to the "tax eaters." ".

Fair enough. Perhaps my initial approach was overly inflammatory. While I don't necessarily expect many readers of this blog to buy into a counterfactual grounded in supply side economics, I do think that we should all be able to agree that government services are costly and expansive and that we need to "buy" better results. Both sides propose these band aid solutions, e.g. "Make cuts!" "Raise Taxes!" but we need to look deeper. We are throwing out trillions in social services ("human" costs outpace even defense contrary to popular belief) and we are not getting results. The poverty rate is eerily close to what it was at the start of LBJ's war on poverty.

There are one or two other issues Bill.

For one, your original accusation was that half of Americans don't pay TAXES. When asked to prove that, you move the goalposts to talk about "income tax". THEN, you use as one source ... Politifact? That bastion of independent analysis which has been sucking up to Fox News and the GOP in ever increasing strident tones for some time now?

To add insult, you link to an article by THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION?? Good lord. Why didn't you just link to what Rush Limbaugh had to say about it.

There are people, yes, who do not pay income taxes. Why is that Bill? Is it because they are barely making a living wage? (cue the "blame Obama" muzzak). Isn't it enough that they are poor for you folks? Or must they have aspersions cast upon them in order to score political points for the reichwing?

Don't bother answering that. Lunch is over.

enjoyed the chat between you both

Bill: Yes. I myself don't use the general poverty rate, I think even closer to societal home is the child poverty rate of 23%, which has been going up since Bush2 took office and has continued under Obama. Any more facts to support your last post?

Yes, you were quite tasty. Bring your friends. It's time for dessert. There are any number of sources that confirm my income tax figure, many of them in thrall to the left. In fact, I liked to Huffington Post. Surely, you are not debating the validity of my argument--no, statement of fact--that about half of Americans pay no income taxes. I'll not quibble with you over sources for an accepted fact.

Poor for you folks? I'm not sure what that means. Is that some sort of racial thing? An attempt to single out people of a particular political persuasion? A dig at the wealthy (which I assure you, I am not)? People are not poor "for" anyone. They are poor because of life choices, and yes, in some cases the dubious notion of "systemic poverty." Mostly people are poor because of pathological behaviors. Reichwing, nice. I am sure that goes over real well with your deep thinking and not at all nasty left leaning friends.

Now bring me some wet naps and a six foot tall version of the kind of bucket you discard chicken wings in.

Social services costs and the poverty rate can probably be linked to unemployment, the fact that middle class wages have stayed flat for 30 years or so, and the fact that the "job-creators" (despite 10 years of tax cuts) are not, in fact, creating jobs.

By the way, those "human" costs you speak of represent actual people.

Bluesmoke; and I agree with you that such a poverty rate is shameful in the United States of America. Clearly we bear a continuing cost for this. My problem as a conservative is not that "we" help the poor. It is that we pay many trillions to do so without result.

What else do you want proof for?

Damskippy; you raise some good points. First of all, nowhere did I say that "human" costs do not represent real people. These are also known in public policy circles as "human resource" costs. I'm not putting "human" in quotation marks because I am dehumanizing anyone.

Unfortunately, the poverty rate has remained awful even when employment is high. Ditto the consumption of social services. We can agree or disagree as to why, but there remains a class of people mired in poverty as opposed to the "there but for the grace of God go I" types.

damskippy: That "30 years or so" is since 1973, since when wages have remained flat relative to worker productivity which doubled.

Bill: I think your "...problem as a conservative..." is shared except for cause and solution and I don't know what you mean by "result". I say the result of an increase in child poverty would not have occurred but for wages not keeping up with the wage-earners own productivity and solution would be to find a way to close that gap of pay-for-work that does not call for further sacrifice from those whom are due fairness. All based on facts given in these posts to draw a conclusion that employers have not given employees their due for work performance, and there's always more (more people on welfare than ever before for the same reasons and more).

Poverty is a choice? Wow. And getting rid of social nets because they don't do well on Wall Street? [ So an anxious, overworked, overstressed population that's pennies away from total ruin is okay? That doesn't lead to any oh revolutions and beheadings and savage changes in types of government ]

We've given all kinds of breaks, gifts, subsidies, welfare and ass kisses to the ' job creators '. [ Bailing out the banks, making corporations people, anything to do with oil for examples. ] Without results. [ Where are the jobs is becoming a very weary, hoarse-voiced cry anymore, which gets met with-- stop being lazy, choose to be rich. And then people, who should be applauding the can-do spirit, come on-- get mad at hookers and drug dealers, are they not choosing to be rich and powerful...like you cynically asked Americans to be? ] Giant big business profits go up[ GE anyone? ], everyone else not on the Board gets a cut in salary if not let go. Why are you defending this?

And taxes...come on. You say no one but the poor little richies [ Sorry, job creating superheroes ] are paying for the rest of us, then forget about the loopholes, secret bank accounts on pretty little islands, tax lawyers, tax shelters and friends in high places that help them keep their dimes in multiple piggy banks across the planet. I know a woman living in her car who's working, is she lazy or bad or choosing to be poor? Uh...no.

Okay, well for starters, that 51% you guys are always obsessing over do, to quote Romney, pay taxes and lots of them. People below the income tax threshold still pay FICA taxes, excise taxes on imports, state and local income, sales and property taxes, and federal gas taxes (regardless of whether they drive or take the bus).

Second, most of those people you're obsessing over are retirees who spent their whole lives working and paying taxes and yet lack sufficient retirement income over and above their Social Security to fall into the lowest income bracket. Do you think folks in their 80s just need to suck it up and go back to work so you can have a tax cut, or are you just wanting the people earning less than $17,000 a year to pay for it?

Reid can't lose it's true mainly because it's a fiction. Even if Romney showed returns of 15-20%, Reisd would just say that's not what his imaginary source told him.

Anonymous accusatons work precisely because they can't be refuted no matter what the subject says or does.

As usual, you've completely missed the point. Read my post again. This isn't about making things up or not making them up. There are many situations where people can make things up and pay a big political price.

For example, Michelle Bachmann and the nonexistent person who supposedly related the HPV vaccine to mental illness. I don't know that Bachmann has much credibility with anyone who isn't a right-wing wacko to begin with, but, if she did, she lost it with that comment.

This is about decision theory and political strategy. Reid has this one figured out.

Reid can't lose it's true mainly because it's a fiction.

source?

Even if Romney showed returns of 15-20%, Reisd would just say that's not what his imaginary source told him

Reid has been very clear in his accusation: Robme paid no taxes for 10 years. Robme can release his taxes which showed that he paid taxes for 10 years, which would show Reid to be a liar.

And robme can refute this anonymous source by releasing his tax returns.

Trying to defend robme is really getting harder and harder for trolls. Sheesh.

mpguy:

The problem with the Bachmann quote and the difference is that what she said couldn't be true, or at least according to the doctors who should know. That's what made her statement unusually ludicrous. Whereas it is possible that Romney could have not paid taxes, no matter how unlikely.

I am not disagreeing with you that Reid has done well politically if you accept the basic premise.

"Robme can release his taxes which showed that he paid taxes for 10 years, which would show Reid to be a liar."

No, it wouldn't because Reid would just say that's not what he was told. Reid was very careful in the interview to say that he personally didn't know, it was this other person who told him.

"No, it wouldn't because Reid would just say that's not what he was told. Reid was very careful in the interview to say that he personally didn't know, it was this other person who told him."

It doesn't matter what Reid says. If Romney doesn't release his tax returns, Reid will be pereceived as being at least on the right track. If the returns are released, there will be so much dirt in there that everyone will forget about Reid and focus on them. His goal is to get those returns out, and he will have succeeded in doing that. That's why his strategy is sound.

My guess is that Romney paid no, or at least very low, taxes in 2008 and 2009. The only thing that might be worse is if he made a ton of money betting against the middle class and the American dollar by being on the winning side of those credit default swaps.

The other years' returns will probably be a mixed bag, but he will never have paid more than about 15%. The examination into myriad shelters and other complex tax reduction/elimination strategies will keep people like David Cay Johnston busy explaining tax avoidance on the networks until November.

Either way, there will be a negative impact on Romney's election chances. And that's the endgame.

Generally speaking, I agree with you that the effect on the Romney campaign is negative, either way. I think if he was going to do so at all, several years back would have been the time or at least before the GOP primaries.

He's probably calculating that he will get only one kind of negative publicity for not releasing them whereby as you hint at, if he releases them the angles of attack multiply.

Really bb,

Your asinine post about this is just as stupid as Robme's response to it.

Reid says robme paid no taxes for 10 years. Robme releases those taxes to show that he did. Game over. Reid, no matter what other points that he brings up will be shown to be a liar.

now you make sense!

Wow, Dan

bb didn't get what you were saying there! LOL!

how did I get my own personal stalker? Did your ex-husband move too far away for you to get to?

bb,

you really wish that you had a stalker. That way you could feel better about yourself and less jealous of Benen's followers.

Did your mother kick you out of her basement yet?

But Romney is WHITE. And he had legacy admissions to top universities. Why would he have to show anything? (/sarcasm off)

When Bush was busy running up the debt and the deficit with 2 unpaid for wars and the unpaid for Medicare Part D--where was the criticism, the outrage? I realize this is not an argument to continue on the same path, but when the country is falling into the deepest recession since the great depression, and the new President needs to do something to aid the American people and try to pull the entire country out of the recession--it is NOT the time to concentrate on the debt and deficit. There will be time, once the country is back on track, to begin a policy for paying off our bills. The fact that the Republicans have been undermining this recovery, every step of the way, has been on an agenda akin to treasonous behavior. We could have been recovered by now--we will never know, because the Republicans, effectively, put the kibosh on any way of finding out. And NOW they insist on using it against him, every minute of every day. How is that helpful to any of us? I can tell you what the Republican agenda is, to try to pull us up by our bootstraps: austerity for US, more prosperity for THEM! More tax cuts paid for (or not paid for at all--like Bush) by hurting the poor working poor and middle class; getting"rid of" vital services that poor people (working poor and middle class) depend on, and repealing Obamacare (which would cost this country more than it would help--in dollars and in human costs). GREAT PLAN! Helping the wealthy get wealthier hasn't worked up until now, but we're expected to believe, suddenly, it WILL--(miracles DO happen?!!?!?!). President Obama's agenda, although, stifled and crippled by the GOP, has been having a positive effect. We KNOW what HE believes. We know that Romney will tell everyone something different just to get elected.