Month: September 2012

Romney: ‘I have a letter from my tax accountant’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

So Willard "Mittens" Romney wants to end what has been perhaps the worst week of his campaign (so far) with a Friday news dump of his 2011 tax return and, get this — a letter from his tax accountant summarizing the tax rates he has paid since 1990. Is this guy for reals? Romney says he paid tax rate of 14.1% in 2011:

Romney released his 2011 tax returns at 3 p.m. Friday, as well as a summary of his effective tax rates dating back to 1990. Romney tax documents (PDF).

Mitt Romney earned $13.69 million in 2011, mostly income from his
investments, and paid $1.9 million in taxes for an effective tax rate of
14.1 percent, his campaign announced Friday.

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Romney’s 2011 income and tax obligation are significantly less than what his campaign estimated earlier this year. In January, the Romney campaign released an estimate saying that Romney
had earned $20.9 million in 2011 and would pay about $3.2 million in
taxes, for an effective rate of 15.4 percent.

Oops! Wait, it gets better:

Romney and his wife, Ann, donated $4.02 million to charity in 2011,
nearly 30 percent of their income, helping to reduce their tax
obligation, the campaign said.

The Romneys only claimed a tax deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions to engineer a higher tax rate than they otherwise would have paid.
This move was to “conform” to the candidate’s statement in August that
he paid a federal income tax rate of at least 13 percent of his income
in each of the last 10 years, Brad Malt, Romney’s trustee, said in a
statement released by the campaign.

Obama campaign ad: Where Change Comes From

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I like it! Aggressive advertising. As I posted yesterday, Willard "Mittens" Romney and the GOPropaganda right-wing noise machine were once again taking a line out of context from remarks by President Obama to the Univision town hall yesterday:

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change
Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Media villagers echoed Mittens' claim that Obama had thrown in the
“white flag of surrender” on his 2008 campaign promise to change the tone in Washington.

The Obama campaign released a new video overnight contrasting Romney's "47 percent" video with the president's remarks on Univision,
embracing his comments with the tagline, "Do you want a President who thinks change comes from you? Or one who has totally written you off?"

Video below the fold.

Fact Checking the mendacity of ‘Mittens’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Time once again for Steve Benen's weekly fact check of the shameless shapeshifter and pathological liar, Willard "Mittens" Romney. Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXV: I thought many months ago that it was at least possible that Mitt Romney would be more cautious about telling falsehoods as the election drew closer. After all, … Read more

WaPo editorial opinion: The ‘Show Me Your Papers’ state

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Both The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star subscribe to the syndicated Washington Post op-eds. Somehow I don't think they will be republishing today's editorial opinion from the Washington Post. Arizona’s bad immigration law takes effect:

Presente_LicensePlateAZ_300pxAFTER A TWO-YEAR struggle, a federal judge this week authorized Arizona law enforcement agencies to require officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. Wearing the wrong clothes, speaking with the wrong accent or having the wrong skin color could land you in hot water in Arizona.

The state’s “show me your papers” provision — one of the most bitterly contested parts of the obnoxious immigration law enacted in 2010 — is the second such measure to receive a green light from federal courts. The first was from Alabama, where a similar policy was implemented about a year ago.

There, according to a recent report by the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant advocacy group, law enforcement officers have created an “environment of racial profiling” that has encouraged private citizens to discriminate and abuse people they regard as foreign. The report, based on thousands of calls to a hotline, recounted instances of Hispanics, including legal residents, who were repeatedly stopped by police on flimsy pretexts and, in some cases, subjected to prolonged roadside detentions.

Arizona has a far larger population of Hispanics than Alabama does, including citizens, legal residents and illegal immigrants. Many of them have good reason to brace for similar treatment. Although the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s “show me your papers” provision, the justices warned that it could be struck down if it gave rise to a documented pattern of racial profiling or if it caused detentions to be prolonged. The Alabama case suggests that is highly likely.