by | ARTICLES, BLOG, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, LAW, POTUS, TRUMP
It’s really sad that Mitt Romney went off the deep end with regard to the commuting of Roger Stone’s sentence. Trump’s timing was definitely politically stupid and over the top. However, presidential pardons and commutations are often self-serving and inexplicable. Although Roger Stone was convicted of a relatively minor infraction of lying about something that was not of major significance, even that conviction was suspect because of clearly stated bias of the lead juror that should have led to a new trial. As such, his commutation was certainly less appalling compared to other pardons sometimes involving really horrific human beings.
Therefore, it is ridiculous that Mitt Romney declared Stone’s commutation was “unprecedented, historic corruption.” This is so absolutely wrong and incompetent that it could only be attributed the most vile case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It seems that Mitt Romney either doesn’t know his history or is flat-out ignoring the fact that Stone’s commutation is one of a long line of Presidents using their Constitutional powers of pardon to benefit friends. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon pardoned Jimmy Hoffa. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger Clinton and Marc Rich, the “fugitive financier.” Clinton also commuted the sentences of 16 members of FALN, the terrorists responsible for more than 130 bombings spanning several years against the wishes of Congress. Likewise, Obama commuted the sentence of one of the FALN masterminds, Oscar Lopez Rivera, who rejected the original commutation in 1999. Surely these pale in comparison to Roger Stone? As it is, Stone remains a convicted felon because he did not receive a full presidential pardon so he is not completely off the hook.
Romney’s assertions are completely unfounded and shows that his judgement continues to be unreliable. His response was so off the charts that it should make everyone doubt the credibility of anything that he says.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Mitch Romney’s appearance on Fox News Sunday the weekend before Election Day confirmed that he should not be a candidate for President in 2016. Indeed, his inability to answer any of Chris Wallace’s questions made it painfully clear why he lost his election bid in 2012.
The first question had to do with the old “outsourcing jobs” bit, which has been an omnipresent theme in several races, such as Quinn for Governor in Illinois, and Perdue for Senate in Georgia. The way Chris Wallace asked about it gave Romney the perfect chance to explain how the outsourcing attack is utter nonsense, but instead, he ignored the question and derided the Democrats for making ad hominem attacks.
Even though the aforementioned candidates won their bid, much of America still honestly believes the “exporting jobs” claim against Republicans — which is why the Democrats tried so hard with it. Had it been a different election cycle, it may very well have stuck better in those race. And Romney missed the opportunity to explain how “outsourcing” those relocated jobs can and do strengthen American business. But he didn’t.
He said nothing about how when the U.S. economy can’t compete in the world market with these lower level jobs here in the US, moving the jobs abroad increases global sales which grow the higher level (administrative, executive, engineering, research and development) jobs remaining here. And nothing about how, in some scenarios, not exporting jobs to stay globally competitive often means, as a result, firing people and closing the business outright. But Romney — the businessman, mind you — ignored all of this and acted as if the other side was right…but just mean.
The second question Romney messed up was in regard to immigration reform. Wallace suggested that the Senate passed a comprehensive plan but that the House GOP refused to pass it. Here, Romney ignored this point again, saying that well, if the GOP gets control of the Senate, they can make immigration laws too. That’s not the point He totally failed to discuss at all how the comprehensive immigration bill was a Democrat style bill which contained provisions unacceptable to the GOP regarding spending and border control. That is the entire reason why it has been rejected soundly by the Republicans.
The last question was in regard to Reince Priebus’ recently published “11 points”. Wallace asked Romney if he thought it was a mistake for the GOP to have made these points. Romney basically ignored it. He could have talked about how, once the elections are over and Republicans victorious, the GOP can move forward. He had the opportunity to build up the Republican brand, to wax poetic about why Republicans are better and use even some of the 11 points to discuss it. But he didn’t. He said nothing.
To use a baseball analogy, it was strike three. Romney is not a good contender. In an arena as easy as Chris Wallace and Fox News Sunday, it was extremely disappointing We need someone that knows how to answer the damn question. To articulate the positions of the GOP on their feet. To prepare the points that need to be made. To get the sentences out swiftly and succinctly. The nominee for 2016 needs to be able to think on his feet, defend liberty, promote prosperity, and speak the principles that we hold dear. Romney has proven, once and for all, that he is unable to do such a thing.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ELECTIONS, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Romney’s appearance on Fox News Sunday this past weekend confirmed that Romney should not be a candidate for President in 2016. Indeed, his inability to answer any of Chris Wallace’s questions at all made it painfully clear why he lost his election bid in 2012.
The first question had to do with the old “outsourcing jobs” bit, which has been an omnipresent theme in several races, such as Quinn for Governor in Illinois, and Purdue for Senate in Georgia. The way Chris Wallace asked about it gave Romney the perfect chance to explain how the outsourcing attack is utter nonsense, but instead, he virtually ignored the opportunity by not answering and addressing Wallace’s question. All he did was basically state that the Democrats make ad hominem attacks…and that’s about it. Nothing about how those relocated jobs can and do strengthen American business. Nothing about how the U.S. economy can’t support many of these businesses anymore, so they have to go elsewhere. Nothing about how, in some scenarios, not exporting jobs to stay globally competitive often means, as a result, firing people and closing the business outright. But Romney — the businessman, mind you — ignored all of this and acted as if the other side was right.
The second question Romney messed up was in regard to immigration reform. Wallace suggested that the Senate passed a comprehensive plan but that the House GOP refused to pass it. Here, Romney ignored this point again, saying that well, if the GOP gets control of the Senate, they can make immigration laws too. He totally failed to point out that the comprehensive immigration bill was a Democrat style bill which contained provisions unacceptable to the GOP regarding spending and border control.
The last question was in regard to Reince Priebus’ 11 points. Wallace asked Romney if he thought it was a mistake for the GOP to have made these points. Romney basically ignored it. He could have talked about once the elections are won, the GOP can move forward. But he didn’t.
To use a baseball analogy, it was strike three. Romney is not a good contender. We need someone that knows how to answer the damn question, to articulate the positions of the GOP on their feet. To prepare the points that need to be made, get the sentence out swiftly and succinctly. The nominee for 2016 needs to be able to think quickly, defend liberty, promote prosperity, and speak the principles that we hold dear. Romney has proven, once and for all, that he is unable to do such a thing.
by | ARTICLES, HYPOCRISY, TAXES
While Mitt Romney’s tax rate has been calculated to be around 14%, there are a few unreported factors that account for the small percentage. Additionally, as will be detailed below, Mitt Romney paid taxes on $1 million + in income that does not exist. As a lifelong CPA, I was asked to review it for several media outlets. First, let me say that his return is standard, normal, well prepared, and detailed, with nothing unusual given the scope of his assets. That being said, his tax return is 203 pages. Roughly ½ – ¾ of the pages have nothing to do with tax calculation at all. They relate to the ridiculous and over burdensome compliance of several different natures. These include:
- All foreign owned investment companies
- Details of amounts transferred to foreign investments
- Disclosure of any transaction of anything done that looks like it might be a transaction involving something listed by the IRS as an abusive tax shelter.
For instance, some of his tax shelters involve the use of foreign exchange trading. So, if you have foreign investments with foreign exchange trading, you risk the IRS saying you have characteristics of an abusive tax shelter. His are not; they all fall under broad categories, but in order to safeguard against any appearance of impropriety, he spent the majority of his return providing excessive documentation. However, these pages have nothing to do with his tax rate calculation.
Now, his Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) isn’t exactly as it seems. After you arrive at the AGI, you then subtract your deductions, and then you subtract your exemptions, and then, if you are liable for the AMT you adjust with your add-backs. Then, you have your general income tax rate. However, you are not quite done. One thing in particular with Romney’s return is the foreign tax credit, which is a credit you get for earning income abroad. How it works is that you pay foreign tax on foreign income and then you get a credit on your federal return for having already paid tax on that income. Romney’s credit is $130K. $750K of his income was earned abroad, and so he got credit for the $130K he already paid. This figure was then subtracted from his AGI which makes his AGI look smaller (hence a smaller percentage figure).
Additionally, his AGI was reduced by paying a lot of Massachusetts taxes. State taxes are deducted when calculating taxable income, but then, because of the AMT, some of it was added back. Also, as has been reported, Romney made a large amount of charitable contributions, which further reduced his tax rate. These contributions were made at his discretion – he tithed and then some. His AGI was reduced by that total amount. So, those are the key items that factored into his smaller percentage.
However, the most stunning information on his return is the fact that, due to inequities inherent our tax code, Romney paid taxes on more than a million dollars of income that didn’t exist. How is this possible? When you have hedge fund investments, rather than reporting and paying taxes on profit, the IRS requires you to break it up into component parts. For Romney, those component parts are interest, qualified and non-qualified dividends, short term gains, and long term gains. These are all things that contribute to the positive side of calculation. On the negative side, you have interest and expense. The net of all those you would think he’d pay taxes on, except for one thing.
From the income items, off comes the subtraction for interest. However, all of the other expenses that reduce profit – which, with hedge funds, include virtually all operation expenses to earn income, including fees to the operators – are required to be recorded as miscellaneous itemized deductions. You cannot deduct your share of expenses unless that amount exceeds 2% of your AGI. What’s worse, even if your expenses do exceed the threshold, and you are subject to the AMT you can’t deduct them at all. This inability to deduct necessary expenses incurred while generating that income means that Mitt Romney paid taxes on $1.017 million of income that does not exist.
As I have written on the subject before, regardless of whether a taxpayer is wealthy or not, the fact that the tax code has a floor for deducting the cost of earning income is an injustice that should be amended. You would think that someone would wonder about a tax law that requires a taxpayer to pay taxes on $1 million more of income than he actually earned. But alas, that is not the case.
After being interviewed by three agencies (Bloomberg, NYDaily News, and CBS Evening News), and extensively explaining the nuances with Romney’s AGI and this particular income item, none of the media chose to report it. Curious, I sent this information off to some folks with whom I have worked at Fox Business, but received no reply. I then communicated with a reporter from the Boston Globe, Ms. Beth Healy, who reported erroneous information on this subject in one of her articles, and offered to explain to her the misinformation. After this polite exchange of emails, she never followed up with the phone call she offered to make
. Only choosing to report the general figure of total income tax paid doesn’t effectively tell you the whole story. But perhaps the greater story here — more than the fact that Romney paid taxes on $ 1 million+ worth of income that doesn’t exist — is that five news agencies chose not to discuss how Romney paid “more than his fair share of taxes”. Perhaps doing so would challenge two prevalent narratives 1) hedge funds are bad and 2) the rich should pay more. Update: See how this story relates to the July 3 coordinated media smears on Romney’s finances by the WaPo and Politico
