Romney 2012?

August 16, 2012, 12:53 PM191 Comments
Romney Says ‘I’ve Paid at Least 13%’ in Taxes in Past Decade
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Mitt Romney talked about Medicare during a news conference in Spartanburg, S.C., on Thursday. Mr. Romney also answered questions about his tax history and criticized the focus on his taxes as “small-minded.”
Mitt Romney said on Thursday that he had not paid less than 13 percent of his income in taxes during the past decade, but he called the continued focus on his personal tax returns “small-minded” in the face of the nation’s problems.

Speaking to reporters during a stop in South Carolina, Mr. Romney said that he had examined the last 10 years of his tax returns.

“Every year, I’ve paid at least 13 percent,” he said, apparently referring to his effective federal income tax rate.

Mr. Romney needs an adviser on Latin American slang.
He told Cuban-Americans he loves papayas. Papaya, in Cuban slang is a vagina. They call that fruit "frutabomba" (I got to know, my parents were Cuban).

Ann Romney on tax returns: ‘There’s nothing we’re hiding’

Romney's wife is pushing back on pressure to release additional tax filings. In an interview, Ann Romney reiterated that her husband won't release more records, insisting it would just provide more fodder for Democratic attacks.

All right, now this is just getting silly:

Romney’s answer won’t satisfy everyone. (More on that below.) But, in asserting that for the last decade he has never paid less than a 13 percent tax rate, Romney is calling Democrats’ bluff and forcing them now to call him a liar if they argue that he paid any less. In short: The burden of proof has now shifted from Romney to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic party more broadly.

I'm not sure how Mitt Romney pulling a number out of his (censored) and saying that settles the argument counts as "calling the Democrat's bluff." I'm also intrigued by the notion that by claiming he paid, golly gee, at least the pitifully low figure of 13 percent as taxes somehow now makes Mitt Romney look like the good guy. Thirteen percent counting what? For how many years? On how many millions of dollars, and how can the rest of us get in on such a sweet, sweet tax rate?

Narrowly, however, I'm intrigued by this whole burden of proof argument. Mitt Romney has, I might gently point out, not "proved" a damn thing. He has asserted something, without evidence. He has asserted it without evidence because he is explicitly withholding the evidence, and the evidence being withheld—tax returns—is something that other politicians are regularly expected to provide. Even Mitt's own father recognized the inherent dishonesty of not doing such a thing, so I really don't think the Democrats are in a real bind if they think that Mitt Romney asserting something without evidence is not, in fact, the automatic end of the story. I know of no literary mystery that ends with the suspect saying "I did not do that," upon which all the policemen and detectives go on their merry way, considering the case closed.

These are precisely the policies our idiot president is attempting to apply here.