New London’s own Joshua Green speculates that Romney may have paid no taxes in 2009, thus the argument that he need only disclose back to 2010:
The “zero tax in 2009” theory—again, this is sheer speculation—gains further sustenance when you consider it’s the only year for which nobody knows anything about Romney’s taxes. He’s revealed what’s in his 2010 and 2011 returns, and he reportedly submitted 20-some years’ worth of returns to the McCain campaign when he was being vetted for vice president in 2008. Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist in that campaign, said on MSNBC last night that while he didn’t examine Romney’s returns himself, nothing that McCain’s vetters found in them disqualified Romney from consideration.
That would indicate that 2009 is singularly important and, if there’s anything to this theory, incredibly vexing for Romney because there’s no way he could release additional returns without including that year. And the chaos that would ensue would be bad enough that it’s probably worth enduring significant damage to avoid.
(via Businessweek)
The theory may be true, but I wouldn’t take Schmidt’s statement to the bank. My guess would be that they never seriously thought about Romney and were just vetting him for appearances sake. After all, everyone who has ever run against him thinks he’s an asshole, and McCain is likely no exception. So, faced with the prospect of reviewing hundreds to thousands of pages of returns they couldn’t understand anyway, for a guy they had no intention of choosing, they probably just punted and went with the obvious choice: Sarah Palin. Which, by the way, proves just how penetrating their vetting process was.
I understand that focus groups have refused to believe that anyone running for president would actually take the positions that Romney has taken. That’s one of the reasons, of course, that Republicans (e.g., Linda McMahon) try so hard not to tell anyone what they will do if elected. Better to spout banal talking points. But I digress. I doubt that the group was even told about this, but I’m fairly certain they would not have believed it had they heard it:
The plan Romney has endorsed would change the US tax system to one of territorial taxation. That means that foreign income from US multinationals would be exempt from US taxation. While this seems intuitive, it would turn every country in the world into a foreign tax haven, and encourage US companies to book profits abroad and abandon the US. As Clausing says, this is justified with a bit of legerdemain:
Advocates of a territorial system argue that because many of our trading partners have moved to a territorial system, we need to follow if our multinational corporations are to remain competitive. Yet most countries with territorial systems have hybrid versions of territoriality that are far different from the version being suggested for the United States. Those hybrid systems include tough antiabuse provisions that discourage the shifting of income and employment to low-tax havens; the result is often a higher tax on foreign income than applies in the United States.
In other words, you can move to territorial taxation with these other controls and discouragements; but that’s not the plan on offer. Instead, the plan is to turn loopholes into freeways for Mack trucks. In fact, other countries’ territorial taxation regimes typically tax profits from tax havens which offer drastically lower tax rates.
(via FDL News Desk)
The idea, of course is to create a world where no corporation goes taxed. Now, the Romneybots justify this by arguing, as noted above, that we really must keep up with the rest of the world, except, it need hardly be said and therefore it is not, for those antiabuse provisions which smack of regulation. Among other things, it’s funny how we are often advised to follow foreign examples, except in those cases, such as health care, in which doing so would benefit the common person. Then, the USA is number one by definition, and following the example of the foreigner is unpatriotic.
TJ Walker, described as a subscriber to Forbes, has penned 35 questions that Mitt Romney should (and never will) answer about his years at Bain. As a sample, here’s five through seven (I especially like seven)
5. You earned at least $100,000 as an executive from Bain in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings according to filings with State of Massachusetts. Can you give an example of anyone else you personally know getting a six figure income, not dividend or investment return, but actual income, from a company they had nothing to do with?
6. What did you do for this $100,000 salary you earned from Bain in both 2000 and 2001?
7. If you did nothing to earn this salary, did the Bain managers violate their fiduciary duty by paying you a salary for no discernible reason?
(via Forbes) (via Buzzflash)
The rest are well worth reading. Good for Obama for keeping up the pounding and not letting the serious people stop him.
Barry Ritholz devotes a long post to proving something we all know intuitively, that many Wall Streeters and politicians, are psychopaths:
According to psychologists and sociologists – many on Wall Street and D.C. are not like you and me. They are literally psychopaths.
Reuters reported Tuesday:
In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.
A number of commentators think the numbers are low, because of self-reporting. For example, Richard Eskow writes:
I discussed the survey with a few other people familiar with the banking industry, and they had the same reaction I did: If anything, those numbers sound low. That makes sense. Admitting your criminal inclinations to a total stranger isn’t as easy as telling a them your favorite color or what kind of music you like.
(via The Big Picture)
Apparently, some of our overlords actively recruit psychopaths, which makes a weird kind of sense. They are ideally suited to the pursuit of money no matter the cost to other humans.
As with the bankers, the political culture is now such that being a psychopath is practically a requirement of the job, though I would argue it’s for slightly different reasons. Who else would endure the slings and arrows of modern day politics, in which anyone who has a shred of decency is inevitably exposed to endless and baseless attacks? Only a small number of otherwise normal people can absorb that sort of punishment and remain decent. Psychopaths, on the other hand, can not only absorb it, they almost glory in it, so they can survive and thrive in today’s political climate. And, of course, they are willing to do anything it takes to win, having neither empathy, conscience, or principles. The Democrats have their share of these folks, but their natural homeland is the Republican party, which has long since expelled any politician with a particle of integrity. While this process has been going on, the American people have been trained to expect their politicians to be psychopaths. They expect nothing more, and rarely get it. The reaction of the nation to Watergate now seems almost quaint. Similar crimes were committed almost non-stop in the Bush years, and no doubt Obama has committed his share, but no one would dream of impeaching a president for those kinds of crimes. If Obama is ever impeached, and it may happen if the Republicans gain control of the Senate, it will be for crimes that can be perceived only in the fevered brows of the psychopaths who will be doing the impeaching.
It’s truly amazing what the government can do when it sets its mind to it. The Obama Justice Department has made a name for itself by going after internet “pirates”, read: people who Hollywood believes is costing it money.
Richard O’Dwyer, an enterprising 24-year-old college student from northern England, has found himself in the middle of a fierce battle between two of America’s great exports: Hollywood and the Internet.
At issue is a Web site he started that helped visitors find American movies and television shows online. Although the site did not serve up pirated content, American authorities say it provided links to sites that did. The Obama administration is seeking to extradite Mr. O'Dwyer from Britain on criminal charges of copyright infringement. The possible punishment: 10 years in a United States prison.
(via New York Times)
When I was in law school, and I admit it was a different era, it was considered black letter law that a country’s criminal jurisdiction stopped at its borders. That is, it could not punish a person for behavior that violated its laws, if that behavior took place elsewhere. I’m fairly certain that we still hold to that rule in reverse, and that we’re not about to allow other countries to put our citizens in jail for activities performed here and legal here. Apparently, England feels differently, as Mr. O’Dwyer is going to be extradited, if court rulings against him stand up.
But, sleeping under bridges, and all that. The law, I’m sure, would forbid bankers to do as Mr. O’Dwyer has done, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't do it, but somehow can’t find a way to prosecute them for the criminal behavior that we all know helped bring the economy to its knees. More akin to O'Dwyer’s situation, the law can’t seem to find a way to stop corporations from avoiding their taxes by taking advantage of offshore tax shelters. A British citizen is subject to U.S. copyright law, but somehow it’s impossible to subject American corporations to U.S. tax law, not to mention Republican candidates.
The Republican argument, boiled down to its essence.
It seems many Republicans are upset about the fact that Obama is successfully introducing the real Willard to the American public:
Conservatives have lit up talk radio programs across the country, worrying whether Mr. Romney’s business record has been “Swift Boated,” referring to attacks waged against Senator John Kerry’s military record in 2004.
The Romney campaign headquarters in Boston has been inundated with advice and criticism from donors and supporters who worry that Mr. Romney has lost an opportunity to introduce himself on his own terms.
“Team Obama is doing just what we did in 2004, which is to define the opposition furiously and early,” said Mark McKinnon, a strategist who worked on George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. “Most voters don’t have a deep sense of Romney other than he’s not Obama. And in this cycle, that may be enough, but it’s a very risky approach.”
(via NYTimes.com)
Many years ago the Republicans tried to introduce the term “bork” for unfair, spurious or groundless attacks on a political figure. It never caught on, and was certainly never used by Democrats, because it referred to the confirmation hearings of one Robert Bork, who was denied a Supreme Court judgeship not based on any lies about him, but on a cumulation of truths that convinced even normally spineless Democrats that he should be rejected.
The term “swift-boat” on the other hand, introduced by the Democrats and others of like mind, has now apparently been adopted by the Republicans, implying a recognition that the campaign they waged against Kerry was bottomed in lies, something they would have denied with vehemence at the time. Alternatively, of course, they might be conceding that Obama’s claims about Romney are true (which they are) but that there is something still unfair about them. That dog, of course, won't hunt. In truth and in fact, Romney is not being swift boated. He is being exposed for precisely what he is. Kerry was portrayed as something he was not. But when the Republicans use the term, they are confessing to their past sins.
You truly couldn’t make this country up. Anyone who's been paying attention knows that for reasons no one has ever bothered to explain, the right thinks that Obama’s use of a teleprompter proves how stupid he is. Yes, I know it’s really a shorthand way of saying he’s stupid because he’s black, but still.., a decent respect for the opinion of mankind and all that would seem to require some small measure of consistency, at least from someone, like Mitt Romney, who has joined in the anti-teleprompter chorus.
Well, take a look at the video here (I can't find it on youtube to get the embed code) , where it’s perfectly clear that Romney is reading from his teleprompter without paying the slightest attention to what he’s saying. Not only is he reading the words, he’s reading the prompts.
But on second thought, it’s perfectly reasonable that Romney should use a teleprompter while Obama should not. Obama, after all, is reasonably consistent and pretty much knows what he’s going to say at any given time. He should have it down cold. Romney, on the other hand, can’t be expected to remember what he’s supposed to say to whichever group he may be in front of at the moment. It’s a tough world out there for serial liars, and a teleprompter is just a reasonable accommodation to their handicap.
Seems Karl Rove has been pretty blatantly coordinating with the Romney campaign, secure in the knowledge that no one will do anything about it.
WASHINGTON — Karl Rove was the featured speaker at a previously unreported luncheon held just outside the Mitt Romney campaign’s recent retreat for high-dollar donors, according to three Republican fundraisers who attended the event.
Rove’s luncheon speech did not appear on the retreat’s official agenda because Romney’s campaign didn’t host it. Instead, the event was hosted by Solamere Capital, a private equity firm founded by Tagg Romney, the candidate’s eldest son, and Spencer Zwick, the Romney campaign’s chief fundraiser who is often described as Romney’s “sixth son”.
(via The Huffington Post)
The article goes on to make a fairly damning case that Rove is violating both the spirit and letter of what is now the law (until the Supreme court gets to rule), and includes this paragraph:
“This kind of activity [by Rove] is the last thing the Supreme Court had in mind when it ruled that spending by an outside group had to be ’totally independent’ and ’wholly independent’ from a candidate the group is supporting with expenditures,” Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, said in an interview. “The FEC lives in a pure fantasy world in the way it attempts to define coordinated activities as not being coordinated activities.”
I beg to differ. I’m not sure which Supreme Court ruling Wertheimer is referencing, but it seems pretty clear from Citizens United, and the court’s recent brush off to Montana, that this is precisely the type of activity the court has in mind. The country is now up for sale, and the Supreme Court ordered the auction.
Posted with Blogsy
