Day: August 16, 2012

Mitt Doesn’t Know the Difference Between a Tax and a Deduction

Trish

mittworriedMitt Romney seems unclear on the concept of personal income tax.

“I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years I never paid less than 13%. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. I paid taxes every single year,” Romney said…”Harry Reid’s charge is totally false. I am sure waiting for Harry to put up who it was that told him what he says they told him – I don’t believe it for a minute by the way – but every year I paid at least 13% and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why, the number gets well above 20%.”

If Mitt considers what he gives to the Mormon Church to be a tax, then he must consider all the money he doesn’t get to spend as taxes

First of all, I checked my 2011 return and my actual tax rate was 17.7%. That’s how much the IRS expected me to pony up over the course of the year, with my various deductions, except I didn’t take enough out of my earnings as I went along and had to stroke a check to send in with my return for the remainder.

And I was happy to do it, if only to save those job creators like Mitt Romney from paying even more on their personal incomes, since it’s their personal incomes and not their businesses that they use to create jobs. At least, that’s what I’m told by every Republican ever.

But what really catches my ear in what Willard said today is the part about how, when you add in what he gave to the Mormon Church, why, the number gets well above 20 percent.

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Ryan Pilgrimages to Las Vegas, Pays Obeisance to Sheldon Adelson

Buck Banks

It’s a finance event, not a fundraiser.

— A Romney campaign aide, insisting a meeting between Rep. Paul Ryan and billionaire Sheldon Adelson at a Las Vegas hotel was not a fundraiser, in compliance with laws that prohibit elected officials from explicitly asking donors for super PAC money, New York Times reports. When asked if people were paying to attend, the aide repeated, “It’s a finance event, not a fundraiser.”

Romney Is Defined by His Fake Laugh

Buck Banks

Some public figures get defined by a single image, or a single statement (‘Ask not what your country can do for you’; ‘I am not a crook’). Others have a characteristic linguistic tic or hand gesture that through repetition come to embody them; think of Ronald Reagan’s head shake, George W. Bush’s shoulder-shimmy, or that closed-fist-with-thumb-on-top thing Bill Clinton used to do. …. For Mitt Romney, it’s the laugh. I’m sure that at times Romney laughs with genuine mirth, but you know the laugh I’m talking about. It’s the one he delivers when he gets asked a question he doesn’t want to answer, or is confronted with a demand to explain a flip-flop or a lie. It’s the phoniest laugh in the world, the one New York Times reporter Ashley Parker wrote ‘sounds like someone stating the sounds of laughter, a staccato Ha. Ha. Ha.’ Everything Mitt Romney is as a candidate is distilled within that laugh — his insincerity, his ambition, his awkwardness, and above all his fear. When Mitt laughs that way, he is not amused. He is terrified. Because he knows that what he’s saying is utter baloney, and he knows that we know it.

— Paul Waldman, writing in the American Prospect.