Tag Archives: show us the tax returns

The rich work hard at wanting more. And with the GOP, that hard work always pays off.

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Sally Kohn in Salon unpacks Romney’s “47 percent” crack, and what it means, specifically, to the Republican Party and their wealthy benefactors:

Now, what’s interesting is that, while complaining that poor people don’t pay enough in taxes, conservatives also complain that the wealthy pay too much.  They do this by focusing on the absolute dollar amount paid, as opposed to percentage.  So, for instance, when Warren Buffett states that he pays lower taxes than his secretary, conservatives protest.  Buffet pays far more in actual dollars, they argue.

Which is, of course, true — 1 percent of $1 billion is $10 million whereas 40 percent of $100,000 is only $40,000.   In absolute dollars, sure, the billionaire is paying far, far more than the middle-class family, let alone a poor family.  Yes, conservatives are right, the top 10 percent of Americans pay more than half of the nation’s total tax revenues — but that’s because the top 10 percent enjoy more than half of the nation’s income.  And that gulf of inequality is only growing.

But does anyone really think the richest of the rich should pay an effective 1 percent income tax rate while the middle class pays 40 percent?

Oh wait, right — Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan think that’s a grand idea!  Under Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which Mitt Romney endorsed, taxes for the middle class would go up while tax rates for millionaires and billionaires would be slashed to unprecedented lows.  And under this tax plan Mitt Romney, who currently pays a less-than-fair share of 15 percent would pay just 0.82% percent in taxes.

In other words, it appears Mitt Romney isn’t angry that desperately poor people don’t pay taxes — he’s jealous!

Read more…

The rich work hard at wanting more. And with the GOP, that hard work always pays off.

Jon Stewart on the denizens of Bullshit Mountain

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via: truth-has-a-liberal-bias

And forget the 47% and how much federal taxes the seniors, the poor, the working poor, students, etc. pay — where are the rest of Willard’s tax returns? We’d like to see if he actually did pay federal taxes for the past ten years.

People respond to Romney’s “47 percent” crack

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Recently, Mitt Romney held a high dollar fundraiser behind closed doors.

We asked Americans what they thought about what he said to his donors.

As one woman shares: “I don’t think anybody’s ever looking for a handout. I think that… we all want chances and opportunities.”

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Mitt Romney’s Oedipal conflicts

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Mitt Romney’s lovely mother, Lenore LaFount Romney, talking about how his father George was on welfare relief as a child, after he came to America as a refugee from Mexico.

[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Mitt Romney isn’t just detached from half of America, he’s detached from his own heritage. George and Lenore might have been better served if they’d loaded that silver spoon they placed in li’l Willard’s mouth (as most parents who can, will do) with some grace, empathy, and appreciation.

For their troubles, they received a kid who felt entitled, who spent his childhood bullying others: a blind teacher, an unpopular gay classmate, or pranking friends and strangers while dressed like a police officer.  A son who spent his young adulthood living in a mansion in France, avoiding the Vietnam draft, and then felt that selling some stock to live on while attending Harvard was the true measure of suffering. A man who went on to become the “King of Bain,” the real-life basis of Hollywood’s Gordon Gekko character, leveraging businesses for personal profit, wiping out American jobs that once paid living wages with benefits, shuttering factories and halting manufacturing across the land. A man who took the fortune he made in all that destruction, and put it in bank accounts all over the world — ensuring the United States government would never see a penny of tax. A man who then decided he had so much, he also deserved to be President. A man who refuses to reveal his tax returns to voters — completely contrary to what his own father practiced and believed.

  
  
  
  

source: sandandglass

OR Mitt Romney would consider his own father’s family to be among ‘those people’ who it’s his job not to worry about — those people who are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them… people who pay no income tax.” 

Video: the top 5 reasons Mitt Romney won’t release more tax returns

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The top 5 reasons Mitt Romney won’t release more tax returns:

5. He pays a lower tax rate than you do.
4. Romney has millions of dollars in offshore accounts.
3. Romney used loopholes (available only to the super rich) to pay less in taxes.
2. Under a plan Paul Ryan proposed, Romney would pay only 1% in taxes.
1. He thinks coming clean will hurt him in the election.

What else is he hiding? Only Mitt Romney knows.

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Romney required 10 years of tax returns from his VP hopefuls

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We already knew Mitt was a liar and a hypocrite, but this information must really grate on his supporters. I know it would me, if I supported him.

The Daily Beast: As part of its vetting, the Romney campaign required at least some of the candidates on the short list—including the eventual winner of the GOP veepstakes, Ryan—to submit fully 10 years of tax returns, according to a knowledgeable source.

The requirement was consistent with the past practices of both Republican and Democratic campaigns.  Indeed, in 2008, Mitt Romney turned over 23 years of taxes to John Mccain’s campaign when he was under consideration to be the Arizona senator’s running mate.

— Romney Asked VP Shortlisters for Ten Years of Tax Returns

What’s amusing is to see all the Romney supporters make excuse after excuse after excuse for their candidate’s weird refusal to do something that has been an unspoken requirement of presidential candidates for decades — reveal his financial background through his tax returns.

Whatever he’s hiding must be really over the top.

Mitt Romney’s ‘stolen’ tax returns: a political maneuver out of Karl Rove’s playbook?

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Some wonder if the Mitt Romney Tax Return Theft hoax (fact?) is really just a political ploy by Karl Rove, or someone like him, to try and move Romney out of the position of “rich asshole who won’t release his tax returns to the American public,” and into the position of sympathetic victim (evil Democrats did it!). 

If so, good luck with that. I’m not sure many would feel sorry for him if his tax returns were released without his consent.

AP: “The plot in this mystery has enough holes that it could be an elaborate hoax. But it comes at a critical moment during the 2012 presidential campaign. In its broadest outlines, the case might be compared to Watergate, the 1972 political break-in that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. But unlike Watergate, which started with the arrest of bungling burglars traced to Republicans, the Tennessee case is a baffling mystery so far, without any clear suspects. There is no evidence Democrats were involved.

“[...] It was unclear even among experts whether the purported theft might be a hoax. The alleged culprit so far has provided no evidence that Romney’s tax returns actually were stolen, such as a scan of a partial page from one of the documents. But for seasoned and committed hackers such a theft was described as entirely plausible, especially for someone who could gain physical access to a company’s keyboards.

“[...] Even if the latest case were a hoax, hackers have been alerted to intense public interest in Romney’s personal finances. ”You’ve got every hacker in the world thinking, `Wouldn’t that be awesome to do?’” Maiffret said. “I have a feeling this is going to be a hoax, but you’re going to have copycats who are going to try to do this.”"

And just in time for all the new hacker-interest:

Larry Flynt Offers $1 Million for Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns: The offer will be featured in a full-page ad taken out in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post and the Tuesday edition of USA Today.

Release those returns, Willard. You’re supposed to be proving yourself, not asking voters to prove they believe you.

Does an anonymous group / individual really have stolen copies of Romney’s tax returns?

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This story is getting better and better! The countdown begins: 22 days. Surely Romney / the billionaires will pay a measly $1 million to keep his secret tax returns secret. After all Romney has spent way more than that in personal credibility by refusing to release this usually common information already. From The Tennessean:

The Williamson County Republican Party this morning notified police about a package received last week that claims to include copies of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s tax returns hacked from an accounting office in Franklin.

A letter in the package corresponds to an incredible claim posted anonymously on a website popular among computer hackers that boasts of having downloaded copies of the tax returns obtained by hacking into systems via PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Franklin office. Whoever is behind the message is threatening to release the filings by the end of the month unless they receive $1 million.

For the same price, someone interested in seeing the returns made public could guarantee that action, according to the letter. Whomever pays first, wins.

[...] Kevin Kookogey, chairman of the Williamson County Republican Party, said his office had not attempted to access the flash drive.

Meanwhile, the Williamson County Democratic Party said they found a similar package at their office Thursday. “Somebody pushed it through the mail slot in the door,” said Gary Moore, a spokesperson for the organization.

Moore initially characterized the alleged scheme as “preposterous,” but said that because a duplicate package was left with the Republican office there may be something amiss.

Oh, please, may something really be amiss!

CNN: The Secret Service said it is investigating, and the company said there is no immediate sign that any such theft took place.

“Using your office” in Franklin, Tennessee, the group tells PricewaterhouseCoopers in an online posting, “we were able to gain access to your network file servers and copy over the tax documents for one Willard M Romney and Ann D Romney.”

It threatens to send encrypted copies to “all major news outlets” and warns, “If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.

They are demanding a cool $1 million, paid in Bitcoins, “an untraceable online currency popular in the criminal underworld,” says Chris Taylor at Mashable. “An anonymous post on Pastebin asking for Bitcoins? That’s basically a parody of hackers.”  says Julia La Roche at Business Insider. — Is this theft even plausible?

 

“Mitt Romney never saw the point of building something when he could profit from tearing it down.”

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“If Mitt was Santa Claus, he’d fire the reindeer and outsource the elves… Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. In Matthew, chapter 6, verse 21, the scriptures teach us that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. My friends, any man who aspires to be our president should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America. And it’s well past time for Mitt Romney to come clean with the American people.” — Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, in his Tuesday night address to the Democratic National Convention.

A tale of two economies: paychecks vs. portfolios (paychecks are losing)

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Wonk Wire Chart of the Day:

– Chart showing corporate profits (blue) and workers’ compensation (red) as a share of GDP, via Jared Bernstein.

“As you can see, corporate profits have not only recovered their post-recession highs, they’ve surpassed it. And compensation as a share of the economy is far lower. You can also compare how different these patterns look compared to last recession in 2001, when the income shifts were not nearly so sharp. It’s truly a picture of two very different economies, one for those who depend on their paychecks and one for those who depend on their portfolios.”

Josh Harkinson: “As the chart also makes clear, widening income inequality in America is no longer just a matter of stratified wages. Today’s investment class—the CEOs, the hedge fund managers, the bankers—owns a stake in an economic system that no longer needs to share much of its wealth with anyone else.”

A brief recap of America’s class war

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And where are Mitt Romney’s tax returns?

World’s wealthiest people now richer than before the credit crunch: We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world’s wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day. The globe’s richest have now recouped the losses they suffered after the 2008 banking crisis. They are richer than ever, and there are more of them – nearly 11 million – than before the recession struck. In the world of the well-heeled, the rich are referred to as “high net worth individuals” (HNWIs) and defined as people who have more than $1m (£620,000) of free cash.

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The average Fortune 500 CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker, as CEO pay has grown more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the last 30 years. The growth in executive compensation that has contributed to skyrocketing levels of income inequality isn’t necessarily tied to performance of the top companies, however: while their pay continues to increase, average stock prices have remained flat, and many of the companies with the highest paid CEOs actually saw drops in their share prices over the course of the year. – Think Progress

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“The Great Income Shift” – This great income shift means the average middle-income American family had about $9,000 less after-tax income in 2007, and an average household in the top 1 percent had $741,000 more, than they would have had if the 1979 income distribution had remained.

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“The top 1 percent now gets almost a quarter of the nation’s total income — a larger share than at any time since the 1920s. The top 1 percent have also received about 40 percent of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts.” – Robert Reich

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Welcome to the Plutocracy | Bill Moyers: Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefited. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years. That’s wage repression.

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A far-reaching new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis… 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.  — Wealth doesn’t trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals

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With all of that information above in mind, remember that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (with a Republican congress), plan to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut spending on programs / services for the poor and working class.

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America doesn’t need a Birther-in-Chief

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And we still want to see your tax returns, Romney.

President Obama: “I can’t speak to Governor Romney’s motivations. What I can say is that he has signed up for positions, extreme positions, that are very consistent with positions that a number of House Republicans have taken. And whether he actually believes in those or not, I have no doubt that he would carry forward some of the things that he’s talked about.”

Hey, Mitt?

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via: @rollingingraves

Meanwhile, the Republican National Convention will feature a grand total of SEVEN BIRTHERS as featured speakers. What’s that tell you about the Republican Party in the Year of Our Lord 2012?

  1. Donald Trump
  2. Actress Janine Turner
  3. Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens
  4. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
  5. Florida Gov. Rick Scott
  6. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
  7. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal

It would be embarrassing to be associated with today’s GOP if you were a person who possessed a conscience and the ability to reason.

Every Romney / Ryan event should have people carrying these signs

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via: deadcrackerstorage