by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
The Romney campaign has been stumbling all over itself this week as it tried to put some distance between their candidate and the company he founded - a company that made lots and lots of money by stripping and selling the assets of companies it acquired - and sending jobs of good Americans overseas. Mitt and his team want the American public to believe that while he founded Bain Capital and ran it for a quarter of a century - a period of time when he accumulated personal wealth of a quarter of a billion dollars - he was responsible only for the good things Bain did, but has no ownership in the sleazy business practices which resulted in obscenely huge profits for his company through asset-stripping and outsourcing jobs overseas.
Mitt calls outsourcing "off-shoring" and seems to feel that is somehow more acceptable. But sending American jobs overseas, regardless of the terminology, is detrimental to our national economy and devastating to the workers who lost those jobs.
But before poor Mitt could get the outsourcing mud wiped off of his Italian shoes, people started talking about his taxes. Well, maybe not people in general, but the Obama campaign, a phalanx of reporters, and even some prominent Republicans. Romney has released his 2010 taxes, though not in-full, and has promised to release his 2011 returns as well as soon as they are ready. (I had to have mine prepared and paid last April.) And while other presidential candidates have traditionally released multiple years of their tax returns, Mitt has drawn and line in the sand and says he will not release any more than those two years.
George Romney, Mitt's father, released twelve years of tax returns when he ran for President in 1968.
The 2010 tax returns of Mitt and Ann Romney alerted the press - and thus the public - to his use of banking accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The candidate argues that if he releases more, reporters and the Obama campaign will comb through those records and raise more questions. His team, of course, has the opportunity to raise questions about things contained in the Obama tax returns. But the Obama tax returns are obviously small, dull potatoes compared to those of the Romney's.
And Mitt doesn't want more questions. He just wants it all to go away. A report on the Internet yesterday suggested that Romney would not have run for President if he had known that he would have to disclose his taxes and business dealings.
But it's not going away. Today the Romney campaign sent Ann Romney out to face a morning show host and try to pour cold water on the tax returns issue. Unfortunately, Ann was not up to the task and wound up snapping that she and her husband have "given all you people need to know."
You people? Really, Ann? It sounded a bit like the Queen leaning over the castle wall and yelling at the peasants. Mitt is running for President and you, by extension, are running for First Lady. It shouldn't be "you people" - it should be "we the people." The White House was built to serve real people, not royalty.
Citizen Journalist
The Romney campaign has been stumbling all over itself this week as it tried to put some distance between their candidate and the company he founded - a company that made lots and lots of money by stripping and selling the assets of companies it acquired - and sending jobs of good Americans overseas. Mitt and his team want the American public to believe that while he founded Bain Capital and ran it for a quarter of a century - a period of time when he accumulated personal wealth of a quarter of a billion dollars - he was responsible only for the good things Bain did, but has no ownership in the sleazy business practices which resulted in obscenely huge profits for his company through asset-stripping and outsourcing jobs overseas.
Mitt calls outsourcing "off-shoring" and seems to feel that is somehow more acceptable. But sending American jobs overseas, regardless of the terminology, is detrimental to our national economy and devastating to the workers who lost those jobs.
But before poor Mitt could get the outsourcing mud wiped off of his Italian shoes, people started talking about his taxes. Well, maybe not people in general, but the Obama campaign, a phalanx of reporters, and even some prominent Republicans. Romney has released his 2010 taxes, though not in-full, and has promised to release his 2011 returns as well as soon as they are ready. (I had to have mine prepared and paid last April.) And while other presidential candidates have traditionally released multiple years of their tax returns, Mitt has drawn and line in the sand and says he will not release any more than those two years.
George Romney, Mitt's father, released twelve years of tax returns when he ran for President in 1968.
The 2010 tax returns of Mitt and Ann Romney alerted the press - and thus the public - to his use of banking accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The candidate argues that if he releases more, reporters and the Obama campaign will comb through those records and raise more questions. His team, of course, has the opportunity to raise questions about things contained in the Obama tax returns. But the Obama tax returns are obviously small, dull potatoes compared to those of the Romney's.
And Mitt doesn't want more questions. He just wants it all to go away. A report on the Internet yesterday suggested that Romney would not have run for President if he had known that he would have to disclose his taxes and business dealings.
But it's not going away. Today the Romney campaign sent Ann Romney out to face a morning show host and try to pour cold water on the tax returns issue. Unfortunately, Ann was not up to the task and wound up snapping that she and her husband have "given all you people need to know."
You people? Really, Ann? It sounded a bit like the Queen leaning over the castle wall and yelling at the peasants. Mitt is running for President and you, by extension, are running for First Lady. It shouldn't be "you people" - it should be "we the people." The White House was built to serve real people, not royalty.
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