Mitt's taxes part 2

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Originally Posted by peggy

Secretive, arrogant, greedy... your kind of guy, I'm sure.....He has that R (well, more like an etch-a-sketch R) on his butt.......I guess I can see how republicans could care less if this guy has cheated on his taxes.....their focus is on the dismantling of America.....raping and plundering.....

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Take a deep breath peggy. I figured out a long time ago that we're not going to convert you and I'm sure you came to the same conclusion regarding most of the conservatives here. That's ok. There is still value in talking to each other, but pounding your fists on the table and insulting people diminishes your message. Passion is good, vitriol isn't.

There's a lot of people in this country that don't think the President has us on a good path. It might pay to actually listen to what they have to say. Not all of them are your target Fox/Rush junkies. Not all of them are uber-wealthy. They aren't all ignorant rednecks being spoon fed right wing ideology. They are just as diverse as Mr. Obama's supporters are. You (the proverbial one) can rant and rave and draw cheers from the crowd that already has the same party line ideas you do. That's a great way to get an ego stroke, but it won't change anything. Mitt Romney is doing pretty well in the polls because he heard what people think the President is doing wrong and is promising to change that. I think Mr. Obama would be doing better if he listened a little closer to the exact same people because there are apparently a lot of them.

:+1: Gregg!

I don't see the real point in ganging up on peggy. For what? Partisanship? Partisanship is a major problem, but there's just as many partisans on the other side.

As for presidential candidates: my problem has always been where I have the most profound disagreement with the President's path, Romney seems to take the same positions, he's an echo not a choice! Civil liberties, expansive military action etc.. So what is the real gain of trading tweedledee for tweedledum? Beats me. I have other issues with the President where I doubt Romney would be any better either, for instance this administration has done a horrible job of protecting the environment. But .... Honestly if all we are going to get is the same policies but more cutting of Medicare, color me completely unimpressed. That's the sell?

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

As for presidential candidates: my problem has always been where I have the most profound disagreement with the President's path, Romney seems to take the same positions, he's an echo not a choice! Civil liberties, expansive military action etc.. So what is the real gain of trading tweedledee for tweedledum? Beats me. I have other issues with the President where I doubt Romney would be any better either, for instance this administration has done a horrible job of protecting the environment. But .... Honestly if all we are going to get is the same policies but more cutting of Medicare, color me completely unimpressed. That's the sell?

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ANM, you've hit upon a very important point. Aside from whatever posturing and kowtowing Obama and Romney may do for the more -- ahem, vocal -- elements of their parties, they really are not that different. Romney 1.0 (the MA Governor) actually was fairly centrist. Obama, reviewed through the lens of Democratic liberalism, is somewhere just to the left of Nixon, if that far away. There is no real choice here, no third parties with viable candidates. And we all suffer for that lack of diversity because it means the differences are the fringes.

I think Ron Paul is a terrific candidate -- for some other country. I don't think that even the Tea Party is up for his brand of self-reliance. But Paul vs. Obama would be a real choice. But we won't get that choice, because there really is nothing beyond Democrat and Republican in the U.S. I would love to see ranked runoff non-Electoral-College voting for President, with people able to rank and vote for their first three choices. No one makes a majority? Runoff of the three biggest vote-getters. Right now I get to cast a vote for Obama or against Romney (or vice versa); there's no good way to indicate a preference in politics or philosophy. Here we are. Would it kill us to try something different?

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

I don't see the real point in ganging up on peggy.

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Nobody's ganging up on peggy. She's an intelligent person with very (VERY!) strong opinions. She's also the author of this thread. If you start a thread with a controversial topic you have to be prepared to defend your position. As an experienced poster peggy already knows that. Several of the other contributors to this thread happen to have an opinion in opposition to hers. If we were to take people voicing those positions as "ganging up" and then attempted to reduce the quantity of opposition that would be censorship and that's not what we're about.

More interesting to me, and perhaps more telling, is that more people have not stepped up with an energy level similar to peggy's. I agree with her general statement that Mr. Romney should open up his taxes. That is standard protocol and I do not know why there is a problem with that. I'm sure the DNC will continue to press it as an issue, I'm just surprised there isn't a much higher level of coverage considering the perceived media bias in this country. The only reason I can think of regarding why millions of people don't seem to feel peggy's passion on the issue is that they are just tired and ready for a change and Mitt Romney is the only other option (even though he may not really be much of a change in some ways). YMMV.

Yes, i did start this thread, and the 'gang up' is kind of business as usual here. But I can certainly take it...and dish it.
Thanks anyway ANM, you are right. there is partisanship on both sides. And usually the 'ganging up' only happens when the other side doesn't have anything else to bring to the argument. Kind of a 'so's you mother' come back. If they get really stumped, they get huffy, and threaten to block you or take their ball and go home.
My passions aren't any stronger than a lot of folks. I just pose logical questions that stump them cause they really don't have any good answers, so talking about my 'passion' or how 'forceful' I am fills in.
Kind of like my question as to whether they would invest so much into a company without rigorous investigation into the financial history/tract record of that company, and why is anyone willing to toss aside that standard when selecting the man for the most important job in the world? Gregg has answered. He doesn't care, and will vote for Romney anyway. Well, maybe he says he cares, but he's voting for him anyway. No one else has answered.

But, I'm still waiting for the thread on how wonderful Romney is as candidate. I'm waiting for the thread laying out his plans and programs, and how exactly he will lead us to a better place.


There IS talk of it, gregg, lots of talk wondering what he is hiding, just not in the republican echo chamber. There IS a difference between the candidates. For one thing, Romney has said on day one he will give himself a huge tax break, without justifying it. All he has to do is show us his taxes and we can see for ourselves what a burden he lives under.

Romney believes in trickle down economics. He really believes that giving all the corn to the cow will feed the birds. That's a huge difference between the two. Saying there isn't any difference between the candidates is one of those things people say, but isn't really true. There is a difference. Just look at the economy under Clinton, then what happened when we gave the keys to Bush. He totally crashed the economy. His policies, his doing, his insistence in trickle down. One of the first things he did was give the top 1% a huge tax break. Well, we see how that turned out. Record deficit, and lost wages and jobs. So where are the jobs? If trickle down really worked, we would be pooping in tall cotton. It doesn't work. It never worked, and they keep trying to bring it back. There is a difference in the candidates, and if Romney gets in, you will see another economic crash, along with all the meanness that comes with the Ryan budget, which Romney has said he would sign if it crossed his desk tomorrow. He would repeal Obamacare, shift medicare to a voucher system, cut infrastructure spending by 25%, cut food stamps, medicaid, aid to WIC, cuts in education....and a huge tax cut for himself and his buddies!
Whatever you think he was before, he isn't centrist now. He selected Ryan as his running mate, and embraced Ryan's budget plan. That's hard right, nothing center about that. And incredibly mean too. Read Ryan's budget plan. it's all in there. Ryan doesn't keep any secrets, unlike Romney and his taxes.

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Originally Posted by peggy

Gregg has answered. He doesn't care, and will vote for Romney anyway. Well, maybe he says he cares, but he's voting for him anyway.

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Don't twist it too much peggy. I do care and even said a couple times that I agree with you that Mitt Romeny should turn over his taxes, but that does not mean it is the most important issue of the election for me. There are other things that will gain or lose my vote before this will, that's all.

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Originally Posted by Gregg

The only reason I can think of regarding why millions of people don't seem to feel peggy's passion on the issue is that they are just tired and ready for a change and Mitt Romney is the only other option (even though he may not really be much of a change in some ways).

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I will admit to being tired. I voted for Obama quite willingly in 2008. But it's 2011 and Gitmo still is open; health care reform got further than it would have but it's still far behind what it could have been; and I believe the prosecution of Wall Street wrongdoing was -- well, ignored. In fact, I would have been very happy to have Obama turn to Bush 43 and Cheney on Inauguration Day 2009 and tell them they were under arrest to be tried for war crimes. So I'm disappointed.

But I don't believe Romney presents a positive change. I find him socially clueless and I am concerned that he's so desperate to be President that he'll say anything to get the job. He's certainly a more plausible choice than some of his competitors on the GOP primary trail, some of which are just breathtaking in their arrogance and inability to filter whatever pops into their minds. But beyond Romney, every last Republican -- at least publicly -- seems to believe that repeating the same failed policies of the last 30 years will work if we just try them one more time. Reminds me of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle bit where Bullwinkle goes to put a rabbit out of his hat and Rocky asks, "Again? That trick never works!" (And, sure enough, it doesn't.) Call it "trickle down", call it "tax cuts for job providers", .... it hasn't worked in three decades and yet, for some reason, half of this country believes it will work for them and for their families better than it has so far.

Finally, Citizens United put the last nails in the coffin of our republic. When the candidate's exhortation is not around policy or discussions of the important topics before us, but around selling another $3 "raffle ticket" or proclaiming that more and more money is needed to fight the PACs or the opposition will win, ideas are dead and it's simply a matter of who has the biggest purse. I'll vote for Obama to take care of my civic duty, but more and more these days, it strikes me as a hollow exercise.

So, yeah, I'm tired.

Here's my take on Romney not being willing to release his tax records - feel free to disagree with me. I don't have a problem with him taking whatever deductions he legally can to lower the percentage he pays - I may not like it, I may not agree with it, but you know, I am thinking of setting up a small business myself and yes, I would claim every deducton I legally could too if I do. So I can't fault him for that. What bothers me is didn't he put a large amount of money in an account in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxation? If I am wrong, feel free to call me on this.....If this is true, and he is elected President, and no one else sees a major problem with this, then I say the US deserves him. This is coming from an Obama supporter who is less than thrilled with his overall performance but still think he's better than the alternative. Rob

we have an old college friend, deep into Washington (see him somewhat frequently on cable news shows as an analyst), and his private opinion is that the ONLY thing that would be enough of a deal breaker for Romney to continue to stonewall on releasing the taxes, would be that he had Swiss bank accounts where he was criminally hiding money from taxes, and took advantage of the amnesty where the IRS allowed people who had committed tax evasion in that way to come forward, file amended returns, pay the taxes and penalties owed, and in return, the government offered amnesty from criminal charges of felony tax evasion.

This would not have shown up in the returns furnished to the McCain campaign, as they had returns only through 2007. And while those returns may have shown a lot of tax avoidance schemes, and a low rate of taxes paid, it's unlikely that would be any more damaging than the stuff that has already come out about offshore corporations, and tax avoidance schemes. Just more of the same. We already know he makes a lot of money, takes advantage of every sophisticated tax avoidance loophole he can, many of which are in the grey area of possibly o.k., possibly not.

BUT.......if he was hiding money from tax in Swiss accounts, and fessed up and accepted the amnesty THAT would show up, probably on the 2009 return. He couldn't release what he gave to McCain, with a glaring hole of missing 2008 and 2009 returns, but the chances are very likely that those returns are the ones that would sink his ship.

He is getting an incredible amount of grief about the missing tax returns, even from many Republicans. SOMETHING in those returns has to be worse than the damage being inflicted on him by the stonewalling, and our friend's assessment, he says, is shared by a number of tax experts, who feel that the amnesty program is where the smoking gun is.

And, to think, that Romney, himself, could prove all this speculation wrong, just by revealing the tax returns, as every other Presidential candidate has done for the past thirty years or so, including Romney's own father. WHY isn't he doing that? WHAT is he hiding? Is there anyone who can think that it isn't something way worse than what he is suffering from just stonewalling and refusing to release the information?

Where are Wikileaks when you need them? ;-)