We should be grateful to Mitt Romney. No, not so much for what Paul Krugman calls his "dance of the seven veils" as he gradually, coyly, reluctantly offers little hints of his financial shenanigans but for what his use of the tax code tells us about the code.
...The larger question isn’t what Mitt Romney’s tax returns have to say about Mitt Romney; it’s what they have to say about U.S. tax policy. Is there a good reason why the rich should bear a startlingly light tax burden?
For they do. If Mr. Romney is telling the truth about his taxes, he’s actually more or less typical of the very wealthy. Since 1992, the I.R.S. has been releasing income and tax data for the 400 highest-income filers. In 2008, the most recent year available, these filers paid only 18.1 percent of their income in federal income taxes; in 2007, they paid only 16.6 percent. When you bear in mind that the rich pay little either in payroll taxes or in state and local taxes — major burdens on middle-class families — this implies that the top 400 filers faced lower taxes than many ordinary workers. ...Paul Krugman, NYT
Don't try to make his actions sound like a contribution to the greater good. Neither these laxities in the law nor Republican cant make for a healthier economy, more jobs, lots of trickle-down. A fairer system works better for all; Romney is a common cheat; his victim is America.
... The economic record certainly doesn’t support the notion that superlow taxes on the superrich are the key to prosperity. During that first Clinton term, when the very rich paid much higher taxes than they do now, the economy added 11.5 million jobs, dwarfing anything achieved even during the good years of the Bush administration.
So Mr. Romney’s tax dance is doing us all a service by highlighting the unwise, unjust and expensive favors being showered on the upper-upper class. At a time when all the self-proclaimed serious people are telling us that the poor and the middle class must suffer in the name of fiscal probity, such low taxes on the very rich are indefensible. ...Paul Krugman
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"Common cheat" is a phrase, it just occurred to me, that can be used to describe Newt Gingrich, too. Run through Republican candidates over the past ten or fifteen years and you wind up with a list of people who, one way or another, have a history of cheating. This may explain the ease with which the "birther" theory caught fire among Republicans. They have become so accustomed presidential cheaters that Barack Obama -- perhaps the most open about his background of any president in years -- just had to be a "cheat," too. This includes invention: "Al Gore claims he invented the internet!" It fuels "Swift Boats." It subsidizes media like Limbaugh and Fox. Even leaving race aside, we can almost hear them wondering how a newcomer like Barack Obama have succeeded without corruption and cheating? Must of bin born funny...
