DOWNLOADS: (148)

PLAYS: (1605)

Embed

After dismissing the poll numbers which are not moving in their favor and the uphill battle they're facing with the number of swing states the Romney campaign is going to need to win, Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan made this excuse for Mitt Romney not taking all of his charitable contributions as deductions after having said earlier that paying more taxes than he owed would disqualify him to be president.

BUCHANAN: No, that's simple. He's always paid exactly what's been required by law. Whatever his accountants said needed to be paid, he's written a check, no questions asked. And what happened this year is in January, he estimated, there was an estimate accountants gave him of what he would be paying. And when they finally did the tax return they said, Gov. Romney, I'm sorry but, you're not paying that high. And he said, well I told the people I was going to be paying that much, so that's what I'm going to pay.

And so it was just to make certain that it wasn't a misleading statement that he made in January. You know, this is what's interesting, is last night, Barack Obama said on television, he actually said that the last ten days of the turmoil in the Middle East was a bump in the road. Chris, four Americans were killed. Four Americans in a terrorist attack on our consulate. Flags... American flags are being burned... and, and, and what... this is a bump in the road. It's time to start talking about Barack Obama and how he's completely clueless on foreign policy and the economy.

Yeah, that's going to make people feel better. I had them fudge the numbers because I'm running for office for Pete's sake. I can't have them think I was lying. And then of course let's change the subject to the latest faux outrage of the day based on a lie that appears to have started with neocon Romney fan-girl Jennifer Rubin. They just keep looking more and more desperate, latching onto every single little sound byte they can find and blowing things out of proportion and out of context. They're just flailing around aimlessly, throwing mud against every wall praying something sticks.

And the Romney campaign really needs to get themselves some better spokespeople to come on television. Buchanan was so angry here, she's baring her teeth. I think it's a toss up between Buchanan and Sununu as to who the absolute worst surrogate they keep trotting out there. They're both about as equally angry and unhinged on the air.

DOWNLOADS: (193)

PLAYS: (1762)

Embed

I'm not sure if the Romney campaign actually thought continuing to ask questions about his tax returns was going to distract from the dismal news cycle he's had for the last week or two, and is somehow better than talking about his "47 percent" remarks at that fundraiser, but here we go with a Friday news dump and the release of his 2011 returns.

As David Cay Johnston pointed out on Ed Schultz's show this Friday evening, the poorly worded press release just leaves more questions unanswered than answered and the 14.1 percent rate he paid could easily be amended down later if he fails to win his bid for the presidency.

Here's more from Think Progress on the subject -- 10 Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes:

On Friday afternoon, the Romney campaign released the candidate’s 2011 tax return, which showed that he paid a tax rate of approximately 14 percent on more than $13 million of reported income. The campaign also disclosed that Romney voluntarily forfeited about $1.8 million in charitable deductions to inflate the tax rate he would have to disclose to the public. The campaign continues to refuse to release returns prior to 2010, flunking an accepted standard of transparency, first established by Mitt’s father George Romney, of releasing multiple years’ returns.

In a blog post, Romney’s lawyer and the trustee of his “blind trust” said, “After you have reviewed all of the newly-posted documents, you may have further questions.” Yes, we do. Lots.

Here are 10 unanswered questions about Romney’s taxes:

1. After the election, when the subject of your tax returns is outside of the public glare, will you file an amended tax return to claim your full deduction of charitable contributions? Was the tax rate you reported for other years similarly manipulated?

2. Why was your 2011 income $7 million lower than you estimated it to be in January? How does someone overestimate their income by $7 million?

3. Financial disclosures show that you have as much as $82 million in your tax-deferred Individual Retirement Account, despite the fact that tax rules limited contributions into such accounts to $30,000 per year. Did you lowball the value of the assets you put into your IRA, as tax experts suspect? And did you do the same with gifts into your sons’ trusts?

4. What was the purpose of your Swiss bank account and the myriad offshore entities shown on your return, based in countries like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, if not to avoid taxes?

5. Can you explain what one tax expert has called a “mysterious one-time infusion of foreign tax credits” in 2008?

Follow the link above to read the rest. Rough transcript of Johnston's interview with Schultz, who had some similar questions, below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (202)

PLAYS: (1818)

Embed

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says that leaked tapes insulting the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes as "dependant" on the government have given the world a "rare look at the real Mitt Romney."

Earlier this year, Reid had suggested that the Republican presidential nominee refused to release his tax returns because he had not paid any income taxes over a 10-year period, a charge that the Majority Leader renewed during a scathing speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

"This week we learned that Mitt Romney only wants to be president of half the United States," he explained. "If Mitt Romney were president he wouldn't waste time worrying about the 47 percent of Americans who he believes are 'victims,' who Romney believes are 'unwilling to take personal responsibility.'"

Reid continued: "For all we know Mitt Romney could be one of those who have paid no federal income tax. Thousands of families making more than a million dollars per year pay nothing in federal income tax. Is Mitt Romney among those? We'll never know because he refuses to release his tax returns."

"We know that Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than middle-class families, thanks to a number of things he's done: Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Islands tax shelters. And we can only imagine what new secrets would be revealed if he showed the American people a dozen years of tax returns like his dad did."

Reid pointed out that most of "those people" who Romney talked about "are not avoiding their tax bills using Cayman Islands tax shelters or Swiss Bank accounts like Mitt Romney. Millions of the 47 percent are seniors on Social Security, who don't have Bain Capital retirement funds or inherited stock to fall back on."

"This rare look at the real Mitt Romney, this rare look from a man who was a fundraiser for him, proves one thing: He's completely out of touch with average Americans," the Nevada Democrat concluded. "And if he won't stand up and fight for every American as president the he doesn't deserve to serve any American as president."

For his part, Romney insisted in August that he had paid more than 13 percent of his income in taxes — or more if donations to the Mormon church were included — over the last 10 years, and accused the people who want to see his returns of being “small minded.”

(h/t: ABC News)

DOWNLOADS: (204)

PLAYS: (1445)

Embed

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland delivered a barn burner of a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention this Tuesday night and landed some body blows to Mitt Romney for everything from his offshore tax havens to his vulture capitalism at Bain to wanting to allow Detroit to go bankrupt, which would have devastated Ohio's economy.

The HuffPo has the entire speech, but here's the portion from the clip above:

Now, Mitt Romney, he lives by a different code. To him, American workers are just numbers on a spreadsheet.

To him, all profits are created equal, whether made on our shores or off. That's why companies Romney invested in were dubbed "outsourcing pioneers." Our nation was built by pioneers—pioneers who accepted untold risks in pursuit of freedom, not by pioneers seeking offshore profits at the expense of American workers here at home.

Mitt Romney proudly wrote an op-ed entitled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." If he had had his way, devastation would have cascaded from Michigan to Ohio and across the nation. Mitt Romney never saw the point of building something when he could profit from tearing it down. 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.

On what he's saying about the president's policy for welfare to work, he's lying. Simple as that. On his tax returns, he's hiding. You have to wonder, just what is so embarrassing that he's gone to such great lengths to bury the truth? Whatever he's doing to avoid taxes, can it possibly be worse than the Romney-Ryan tax plan that would have sliced Mitt's total tax rate to less than one percent?

My friends, there is a true choice in this election. Barack Obama is betting on the American worker. Mitt Romney is betting on a Bermuda shell corporation. Barack Obama saved the American auto industry. Mitt Romney saved on his taxes. Barack Obama is an economic patriot. Mitt Romney is an outsourcing pioneer. My friends, the stakes are too high, the differences too stark to sit this one out. Let us stand as one on November 6th and move this country forward by re-electing President Barack Obama.

DOWNLOADS: (144)

PLAYS: (1303)

Embed

Ann Romney says that her husband is "used to" passing up multi-million job offers and that the "poor guy" didn't even get paid for running the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

During an interview on Friday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade noted that the former Massachusetts governor had gotten a job offer for $30 million a year after he lost the presidential nomination to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008.

"How hard was the decision not to do that?" Kilmeade wondered.

"Well, we’re used to kind of passing offers up like that," Ann Romney explained. "For us, our life is not about making money. We’ve been very blessed financially. Our life is now about giving back."

"I always trust that Mitt can always make another dollar," she added. "Poor guy, he took no pay when he did the Olympics for three years and no pay when he was governor for four years."

Earlier this year, Ann Romney told Fox News that even though she is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, she didn't consider herself to be wealthy.

"You know, we can be poor in spirit," she said. "I don’t look — I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing. It can be here today and gone tomorrow. And how I measure riches is by the friends I have and the loved ones I have and the people that I care about in my life. And that’s where my values are and that where my riches are."

The couple reportedly has a net worth of $250 million, but Ann Romney has repeatedly complained about having to release her tax returns as a part of her husband’s campaign for the Republican nomination.

“You all know that he’s been successful in business,” she told a crowd in Miami earlier this year. “Unfortunately that was made abundantly clear yesterday when our tax forms were released.”

The candidate's wife insisted to ABC's Robin Roberts in July that she and her husband had "given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our life"

And during an interview with NBC earlier this month, Ann Romney confirmed that there would be “no more tax releases given” by the wealthy couple, but she also insisted that “there’s nothing we’re hiding.”

“We have been very transparent to what’s legally required of us,” she told NBC’s Natalie Morales. “But the more we release, the more we get attacked, the more we get questioned, the more we get pushed. And so, we have done what’s legally required. And there’s going to be no more tax releases given.”

(h/t: Think Progress)

DOWNLOADS: (151)

PLAYS: (1584)

Embed

From this Saturday's The Chris Matthews Show, it seem the Villagers believe the Obama campaign is going to quit going after Mitt Romney on the issue of his taxes once the Republican convention rolls around. I'm not sure why they would do that but that was the consensus here.

After discussing how poor old Mittens was somehow “baited” into discussing his tax returns last week during his little whiteboard fiasco and the fact that the Obama campaign has been happy to keep the discussion on Romney's taxes going, Chuck Todd weighed in with this statement on how long that discussion might go on:

TODD: But it seems to me like we're getting to an expiration date.

COOPER: I think so. Don't you? (crosstalk)

GARRETT: Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Swiss bank accounts. That's one year of tax returns. The Democrats look at five or ten years and say, whoa... (crosstalk).

TODD: Kelly, don't (inaudible) thinks, if I get to the convention...

O'DONNELL: That they'll move on.

TODD: They'll move on.

Quite a far cry from Todd's colleague Rachel Maddow and her reporting last week: Maddow: Romney’s history shows he’s willing to lie about his taxes:

Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow said that presumptive Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has, if precedent is any guide, given us no reason to take his word on the subject of his refusal to disclose his tax returns. In fact, he has given voters rather the opposite. [...]

Romney said that when he looked back over his tax returns from the last ten years, he found that he had never paid less than 13 percent of his earnings and that we’re just going to have to trust him on that. However, Maddow said, in 2002 when Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, it was demanded of him that he release tax returns to demonstrate a residency in that state of at least seven years. Romney refused and insisted that the public take his word for it.

Eventually it came out that Romney had lied. He was forced to pay Massachusetts taxes retroactively, because when he said that the public would have to take his word that he had paid taxes for seven years as a Massachusetts resident, it simply wasn’t true.

Now he wants us to take his word that he has paid at least 13 percent of his massive income over the last 10 years in taxes. Why should we take him at face value? He has demonstrated a willingness to prevaricate on this very subject in his career as a public figure.

So why would the Obama campaign drop this issue? I'm not sure when they taped this show and if it was before or after his interview with NPR, but as of this Friday, Major Garrett claimed he'd never even heard about the issue with the tax returns from 1999-2001 and the issue in Massachusetts. You can read more details about that here: Ex-Fox's Major Garrett: Never Knew Romney Caught Lying On 1999-2001 Tax Returns.

My guess on Todd's hackery here is this is what we're going to hear out of him once the convention rolls through. This is an old issue and it's time to move on. And he'll have plenty of help as well. Here's to hoping the Obama campaign ignores him and so far this election season, I'm happy to say they've been doing a lot of that and ignoring the cries by the beltway Villagers.

DOWNLOADS: (297)

PLAYS: (2481)

Embed

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday insisted that he had paid more than 13 percent of his income in taxes over the last 10 years, and accused the people who want to see his returns of being "small minded."

During a press conference at the airport in Greer, South Carolina, the GOP hopeful told reporters that he couldn't understand why people keep asking about his taxes.

"I just have to say, given the challenges that America faces -- 23 million people out of work, Iran about to become nuclear, one out of six Americans in poverty -- the fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very small minded compared to the broad issues that we face," Romney explained.

"But I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past 10 years, I never paid less than 13 percent," he continued. "I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So, I pay taxes every single year."

Romney added that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) assertion that he had not paid any taxes over 10 years was "totally false."

"I'm sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was that told him what he says they told him," the former Massachusetts governor said. "I don't believe it for a minute by the way."

"But every year, I paid at least 13 percent," he insisted. "And if you add in addition the amount the goes to charity [at the Mormon church], well, the number gets well above 20 percent."

During an interview that’s scheduled to air on Thursday, Ann Romney said that there would be “no more tax releases given” by the wealthy couple, but she also insisted that “there’s nothing we’re hiding.”

“We have been very transparent to what’s legally required of us,” the candidate's wife told NBC's Natalie Morales. “But the more we release, the more we get attacked, the more we get questioned, the more we get pushed. And so, we have done what’s legally required. And there’s going to be no more tax releases given.”

“There’s nothing we’re hiding,” Ann Romney said. “You know, we’ve had a blind trust for how many years? We don’t even know what’s in there. It’s been managed by blind trust since before Mitt was governor, you know, 2002 forward. And so, you know, I’ll be curious to see what’s in there too.”

Over the course of the summer, President Barack Obama’s campaign has successfully attacked Mitt Romney by connecting him to American jobs that Bain Capital allegedly helped send overseas. It has also hammered him for not releasing more than two years of tax returns and having offshore investments and tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland.

DOWNLOADS: (336)

PLAYS: (4715)

Embed

Ann Romney, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, recently said that there will be "no more tax releases given" by the wealthy couple, but she also insisted that "there's nothing we're hiding."

During an interview that's scheduled to air on Thursday, NBC's Natalie Morales noted that people were still calling for the Romneys to release more than two years of tax returns.

"Have you seen how we're attacked?" Ann Romney said, leaning forward in her chair. "Have you seen what's happened?"

"Are you angry that it's been in the press?" Morales wondered. "I mean, should you not be questioned about your finances?"

"We have been very transparent to what's legally required of us," Ann Romney replied. "But the more we release, the more we get attacked, the more we get questioned, the more we get pushed. And so, we have done what's legally required. And there's going to be no more tax releases given."

"To the American people, though, when they hear about perhaps accounts with your name on it overseas and tax shelters, they feel like you may be hiding something," Morales pointed out.

"There's nothing we're hiding," Romney explained. "You know, we've had a blind trust for how many years? We don't even know what's in there. It's been managed by blind trust since before Mitt was governor, you know, 2002 forward. And so, you know, I'll be curious to see what's in there too."

Over the course of the summer, President Barack Obama’s campaign has successfully attacked Mitt Romney by connecting him to American jobs that Bain Capital allegedly helped send overseas. It has also hammered him for not releasing more than two years of tax returns and having offshore investments and tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland.

After the Romney campaign made the decision to release two years of returns in January, Ann Romney told a crowd of supporters in Miami that “unfortunately” everyone now knows how “successful in business” her husband had been.

DOWNLOADS: (165)

PLAYS: (1230)

Embed

In what was one of the more useless, softball interviews I've seen in some time, CBS's Bob Schieffer allowed Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan get away with one lie after another with little to no push back during their first interview together on 60 Minutes this Sunday evening. Here's one portion where Schieffer allowed Ryan to play the Solyndra straw man instead of responding to his question about the rich not paying their share in taxes.

He then allowed Romney to dodge his question about the rates not being fair and use the weasel words that the wealthiest pay the "largest share of taxes" knowing full well the question Schieffer was attempting to ask him. And he allowed him to lie about his plan not raising taxes on the middle class when the experts at the Tax Policy Center say that's not true. Then he let Ryan get away with the whopper that there are enough tax loopholes they can close to be able to lower the rates for the rich, when that same study "concluded that there aren’t enough loopholes in the tax code to balance out the cuts."

SCHIEFFER: You said yesterday, I'm going to quote you Mr. Ryan “America is a place where if you work hard and play by the rules you can get ahead,” but the fact is a lot of people don't think that's true any more. They don't think the rules are fair. They think corporations and rich people are getting all these breaks and they're getting stuck with paying the bills. They see some of the wealthiest paying the lowest tax rates. How are you going to fix that?

RYAN: What I see is a new amount of crony capitalism and corporate welfare, which both parties have been engaged in, but the President has brought this to a whole new level, where President Obama is picking winners and losers based on connections, based on fads like Solyndra and basically giving handouts to businesses, giving preferences to the tax code. We want to get Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers. We want entrepreneurs to have the barriers removed from in front of them, so that people can work hard and succeed. We want to turn the American ideal back on. We want a system of upward mobility and what we think we need to do is bring fairness back to the system by getting government bureaucracy and political clout out of the system. Those are the kinds of reforms we've been talking about.

SCHIEFFER: Well, doesn't fairness dictate that the wealthiest people should not be paying the lowest taxes? Because that's what's happening many times.

ROMNEY: Well, fairness dictates that the highest income people should pay the greatest share of taxes, and they do. And the commitment that I've made is, we will not have the top income earners in this country pay a smaller share of the tax burden. The highest income people will continue to pay the largest share of the tax burden and middle income tax payers, under my plan, get a break. Their taxes come down, so we're not going to reduce taxes for high income people and we are going to reduce taxes for middle income people.

SCHIEFFER: You say that of course the wealthiest people pay the largest share, but don't they also pay the lower rate when you figure in capital gains and all of that?

ROMNEY: Well, it depends on the individual and what their source of income is, but if you look at the top one percent or five percent or quartile, whatever, they pay the largest share of taxes and that's not something which I would propose making smaller.

RYAN: What we're saying is take away the tax shelters that are uniquely enjoyed by people in the top tax brackets so they can't shelter as much money from taxation, so we can lower tax rates for everybody to make America more competitive.

Ryan followed that up by telling Bob Schieffer he was only going to release two years of his tax returns: Paul Ryan: I Gave Romney ‘Several’ Tax Returns, Will Release Two:

Mitt Romney knows more about Paul Ryan’s taxes than America will.

Ryan told 60 Minutes Sunday that he gave Romney’s campaign “several” years of tax returns during the vetting process, but promised only to release two publicly, in keeping with the number Romney has promised to release.

He dismissed calls from both Democrats and Republicans for Romney to release more of his tax returns.

“I think these issues are more or less distractions to try and take us off the fact that the president has given us failed policies that are putting us deeper into debt, that are costing us jobs,” Ryan said.

The 42 year-old congressman said he went through a “very exhaustive vetting process” before being selected as Romney’s running mate. He said the process was “confidential.”

Mission accomplished Bob. I'm sure they'll both be more than willing to come back on your network and on your Sunday show and lie some more.

DOWNLOADS: (77)

PLAYS: (239)

Embed

Billionaire birther Donald Trump on Monday revealed that Republican officials are hoping that he will play a part at the Republican National Convention in Tampa later this month.

During a weekly call-in interview, Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade noted that it had been confirmed that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Fox News host Mike Huckabee and others would be speaking ahead of Mitt Romney's formal acceptance of the Republican nomination for president.

"Do you think that you're going to have a role there?" Kilmeade asked Trump.

"Well, I know they want me to," Trump replied. "And I'll see what happens."

Just one day before the convention kicks off, Trump will already be in Tampa to receive the "Statesmen of the Year" award from the Sarasota County Republican Party.

Conventional wisdom is that Trump's insistence that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen would bring Romney unwanted criticism at a time when the candidate is trying to win over independent voters. But those views didn't stop the former Massachusetts governor from attending a political fundraiser with Trump in Las Vegas earlier this year, just one day after the reality star told CNBC that "nothing's changed my mind" that Obama was born in Kenya.

“In his own words, @BarackObama ‘was born in Kenya, and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’ This statement was made, in writing, in the 1990s. Why does the press protect him? Is this another Watergate?” Trump opined on Twitter the day after the Romney event.

And on Monday, Trump was at it again, insisting that Romney should not release his tax returns if the president continued to refuse to release documents that the billionaire believes will prove his point.

"I'd like to see his college records, I'd like to see his college applications, I'd like to see something about his past, which many people know nothing about," Trump told Fox News. "I'd like to see his passport records, which are sealed. You know that Obama's spent over $4 million in legal fees to keep these things quiet, and then he stands up and says he wants to see [Romney's] tax returns."

"If Obama gives some of his sealed records where all of this money has been spent to keep them sealed, I would certainly make that trade," he added. "I think that would be a trade that you'd like to see. I tell you Fox & Friends would like to see it. I'd think you'd find some things that are very, very interesting and very shocking."

(h/t: Politico)