Tag Archives: 99%

Fresh off his trip abroad, Mitt Romney’s performance adds new fuel to a fire whose slow burn has been getting hotter.  This tax thing won’t go away, and the Democrats will drive his campaign into a dark corner over it.  If it is as bad as it is starting to appear, I have a tough time believing the powers that be would have let him get nominated.  And yet, Sarah Palin comes to mind.  If he paid little or no taxes over the last decade or so, how could the Republican establishment have endorsed his nomination?  Based on Harry Reid’s recent comments, these tax problems have surfaced before.  In normal circumstances, the faltering economy would make the President’s re-election next to impossible, but Mitt’s wealth and his apparent track record of paying a meager tax bill may offset the President’s economic bad news.  I don’t believe people should pay more taxes than the law requires, but the question here is how far did Mitt go in manipulating arcane provisions of our tax code and moving money offshore.  If he went as far as I suspect he did, then his recent comments about the “cultural” differences between Palestinians and Jews and the U.S. and Mexico, suggest he has no appreciation for the significant advantage that his wealth and his ability to hire the best tax shelter specialists have given him.  More disburbing, they bespeak a belief that hard work amidst unregulated corporations produces financial success for him and anyone willing to match his efforts.  As voters begin to sharpen their focus, these beliefs and the extraordinarily favorable tax treatment he received will not sit well with the 99%.  Before he criticizes those whose circumstances deny them the opportunity of ever achieving his financial success, he should  acknowledge that his privileged upbringing makes such comparisons absurd.  Perhaps he has acknowledged this already (and I applaud his tithing), but I sense that he has moved though life in a delusional existence and has no appreciation for how most of the world lives.  Unless he wakes up and admits that he has been successful in large measure due to good fortune and a very friendly tax code, his campaign will drift inevitably into the hands of an angry mob of voters unfamiliar with such good fortune and who pay a far larger share of their income to the Government he now hopes to lead.