Much has been said and a lot of arguments made for and against Mitt Romney to disclose his tax returns for more than two years. I have absolutely no reason to believe that Romney has committed tax fraud. In fact, I believe that he has almost certainly complied to the letter with our tax laws. Count me on the side of disclosure, though, because the issue isn’t about breaking the law. Anyone running for public office gives up an awful lot of privacy, and the higher up the office, the less privacy a candidate has. A presidential candidate pretty much has no personal privacy left in his life by the time his opponents and the media gets through raking over every last detail from birth to the present. How much detail is relevant is a separate debate.
Disclosing tax returns, in my opinion, is a very relevant issue for the voters. Tax returns can reveal where and how a person made his money, how many tax credits and deductions the candidate took, what esoteric tax laws allowed the candidate to avoid paying taxes, and other information. And this is where the returns become important. The voters should know what tax loopholes were available, in this instance, to a candidate that made millions of dollars but only paid fourteen percent in taxes in 2010. This is a matter of public policy that should be debated. I think most Republican and Democratic voters agree that we need tax reform in a major way. But most major legislative changes occur only when there is either a crisis or strong movement. Perhaps Romney was fortunate enough not to have paid any taxes for a period of years---legally. Shouldn’t the American people know that? Maybe many voters would be outraged, and maybe not. But if there is outrage it can be expressed to our elected representatives and serve as the impetus for tax reform.
Some may argue that Romney paid far more of his income to charity, a good thing, which allowed him to take a sizable tax deduction. What is troubling about that is that rather than pay taxes that fund a myriad of costs that benefit all Americans, to include the armed forces, he gets to choose where his money goes and puts nothing into the national pot. There is not a single tax paying American that supports all the government spending. Many wouldn’t have given a dime to pay for the Iraq war. Others wouldn’t choose to fund various welfare programs. But only those at the very top of the income ladder have options.
I want to stress that I support making money and achieving a high level of prosperity. I also want to be clear again that I honestly believe that Romney has complied with all tax laws. I just would like for all voters and tax payers to know from a presidential candidate’s tax returns what laws were applied to minimize or avoid paying taxes so that this can become a public policy issue to be debated and argued in the media and the deliberative bodies of the Congress. Recall that there was very little controversy over the draft in the 1950s and early 1960s. When the Vietnam war heated up that all changed. And that ultimately resulted in the public debate that led the Congress to eliminate the draft and turn to a volunteer military.
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I just figured, falsely of course, that you might grow up one day and tire of making such a complete fool of yourself, day and day out.
But, as I have uirged you before, hang in there sunshine. You and your writings provide a much needed distraction from things of real importance and substance.
My message was to someone who can respond to a dissenting point of view without insults, juvenile bhavior and restating charge for which he has no basis, back up or documentation.
That is not a descriptio of you. You respond to everyone who does not grovel at the feet of your alleged intellectual superiority, by attacking them, ridiculing their opinions and regurgitating the same crap over and over.
Grow up for Heaven's sake!
Just vote for him because he's the white guy.
Romney was all for the war and then bolted for France the second it was his turn to get drafted (but he wanted to serve, as usual, Mittster trying to have it both ways): "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there, and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."
As to the people being drafted, not long ago I did some research into that subject and found that only a relitively small percentage of those eligible got draft notices. So the question reamins, would Romney have been called if he did not have student deferments? Does having a student deferment invalidate your right to have an opinion or express that opinion? Do you fault him for the missionary trips, which are the religious duty of young Mormon men? Did you support amnesty for the draft dodgers who ran off to Canada to avoid going to Vietnam?
Finally, if you do not see the hypocrisy in demanding that Romney release information not required of him, yet exempting the President of that same obligation, then, Yes, I am afraid we look at evidence in entirely different lights.
As to Obama's "shadowy" past, you are a conspiracy buff that connects dots without supporting evidence. If you think for one minute that Hilary Clinton and John McCain didn't have people doing some serious checking on Obama's past in order to destroy him, I have no rebuttable comment. I'll accept that we examine information and evidence differently. Either you or another blogger that opposes a need for Romney to release his tax returns has made the arguement that any release would only result in a demand for more releases. Obama produced his long form birth certificate, yet the demands for more proof never stop. It's interesting to note that if Obama falsified his birth certificate he would have committed several felonies, including filing government documents certifying that he was American born. Unless you believe that the FBI is part of a cover up to investigate it, I am satisfied that Obama is in fact a native born American. And two Hawaiian newspaper reports of his birth also support that.
My final point is that Obama has no legal authority to seal his school records. These are privacy issues regulated by federal and state laws. Otherwise the media would have gotten his and Romney's records by now. And unless there are more than rumors, gossip, and innuendo, which there seeems to be no end to, I see no reason for Obama to ask Pomona College, Columbia and Harvard Universities to release his academic records than any other candidate or earlier president.
When anyone runs for public office especially the presidency the life of the candidate become a fish bowl.
I don't begrudge anyone a good or very good living, but Romney is hiding his wealth from taxes and wants us to believe his presidency will be transparent.
What possible difference could it make whether or not Romeny took offered deferments, unless you have reason to think he broke the law?
On the other hand, there are unanswered questions about Obama's educational records and you know, as well as I do, that those questions have nothing with his grades. More to the point, they have to do with his shadowy past. More to the point they have to do with going to college as a foreign exchange student, and then claiming to be a citizen when it suits his needs. He either did those things, or he did not. There has been too much evidence, however substantial, offered to ignore the questions. Obama needs to clear up those issues if he is going to gain the trust of the people. There is a reason he has spent money and used his position to have those records sealed and so long as they remain sealed, the trust issue will remain.
The "bury your head in the sand" attitude is not going to resolve the issue.
On another point, you say that when running for office, a candidate relinquishes a great deal of his right to privacy. On that basis, then, do you also believe that Obama must unseal all his college and other records which he has used his office to seal, and conceal from the public?