...I think he has a 'crime problem'...
When even the festering cesspool of lies and mis-direction laughingly calling itself Fox "news" has Obama beating Rmoney by 49 - 40 in their most recent poll data, you get the sense that the as yet not-nominated republican candidate, is in some pretty deep shit.
He is being taken to task about the outright lies in his campaign commercials, but this time these criticisms have come from traditionally republican-supportive media outlets, and NOT the so-called 'liberal media'. His campaign has already pulled out the "war on religion" card in some markets, which is traditionally used to motivate the bible-thumping base just before the election not typically used before the party convention, and he steadfastly refuses to come clean about his tax returns.
Willard 'Mitt' Rmoney may be many things but stupid isn't one of them. He must surely know how this continued stone-walling is causing his campaign to rapidly take on water, so why not release them and face the music?
George Will, a conservative commentator no less, made his once-a-campaign salient point recently, that Rmoney as a businessman is used to looking at risk v. reward all the time, and has obviously done the calculations regarding his tax returns and concluded that NOT releasing them will cause his campaign LESS damage than releasing them would. Everyone immediately started to try and guess as to what could be so toxic in those returns that his campaign would be better off taking the hammering that it has, rather than just throw the raw meat to the baying hounds and let them have at it for a few days. Surely it can't be as simple as the fact that he just paid alot less in taxes than everyone else, can it?
Look, he's a rich guy that likes to pay minimal taxes, we get that, that's the game the rich have always played, so sure, if he releases them and it shows that he paid an effective tax-rate of 0.00% for the past ten years he'll take a hit, but he'll use that as a badge of honour amongst his supporters. He'll use that as an excuse to say that the tax-code needs to be revamped, and that everyone should pay lower taxes and that's why he's running for office. He would actually be able to turn it into a positive for his campaign.
Unless, of course, his effective tax-rate isn't the only issue.
I know enough about the tax code and the IRS to not fuck with either, and I take my yearly fleecing with as much good grace as possible, but when you're rich you can hire lawyers and accountants whose sole function is to do precisely that. Their job is to fuck with the tax code and the IRS as far as possible, without winding up with their clients wearing silver bracelets and getting a one-way ticket to Club Fed. This is how the rich keep their money, by classifying regular income as 'passive investment returns' or 'dividend reinvestments' or 'refunded asset depreciation allocations' or any number of other gobbledygook sleight-of-hand card tricks, but ALL of them have one thing in common. They are all at least vaguely legal. Which leads me to believe that Willard isn't worried about fallout from paying less taxes than most folks that hold down two minimum-wage jobs nowadays, or the fact that he used offshore banks to hide some of his money, I think he's worried that his accountants have done such shady stuff over the last ten years that if the IRS took a real hard look at them, never mind losing the election, he could wind up losing his freedom...
And one last thing to ponder, of all of the people that are calling the Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid a 'dirty liar', or that his comments asserting that Rmoney hasn't paid any taxes in the last ten years "belittle his position in the Senate", bear in mind that none of them are speaking from a position of authority. None of them have actually seen the returns. The one person that HAS seen those returns, Senator John McCain when he vetted Mittens for a potential VP slot in 2008, hasn't said a single word about whether Harry is telling the truth or not. And in this case, that silence definitely speaks volumes.
Stay tuned kids...this could get mighty interesting...
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