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It appears not only is irony lost on Mitt Romney but it’s also lost on the so called “fact checkers” at PolitiFact. The organization took a look at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that someone connected to Bain Capital informed him it is unlikely Romney paid any taxes for a decade. Politifact could find no proof that someone didn’t say this to Reid nor any proof that Romney did pay taxes, but it still declared Reid’s statement a “pants on fire.”
How does PolitiFact justify labeling something as their highest level of lying without proof? They claim the burden of proof is on the politician to back up their statements. From PolitiFact:
On Aug. 6, a Reid spokesman confirmed to PolitiFact that the majority leader still maintains the information came from the anonymous Bain investor. Our Truth-O-Meter guidelines say we hold officials accountable to back up their words. By those standards, Reid has not proven his allegation.
[...]
Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source. Romney has denied the claim, and tax experts back him up, saying that the nature of Romney’s investments in Bain make it highly unlikely he would have been able to avoid paying taxes altogether — especially for 10 years.
Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up. Pants on Fire!
(emphasis mine)
You see what they did there? They declared Reid’s pants are on fire because he made a claim about Romney taxes but didn’t offer proof to back it up. Yet they let Romney get away with making a counter claim about his taxes even though this whole issue started because Romney refused to provide proof to back up his own statements about his taxes by releasing his returns.
I think declaring a claim the highest level of untruthiness until proven is a bizarre standard to use. But if this is the one PolitiFact is going to use, they need to apply it consistently. Romney has made multiple statements about his taxes that he refuses to back up and which he could easily prove (or disprove) by providing the returns that are solely in his possession.
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Rachel Maddow also covered this last night, mentioning this weird “finding” by Politifact, and mentioning in passing…”we don’t need to take [Politifact] seriously any more.”
Ouch.
Not that they care. All they care about is Republicans’ opinons, obviously.
They made clear with the last outrageous dustup (lie of the year 2011, wasn’t it?) that they are practicing “balance” in their conclusions, not objective truth.
you can go after Dem and GOP in exact equal amounts or you can be truthful but you can rarely be both.
Of course he’s lying. That’s not the point. There’s something really bad in those returns for the GOP to go into attack mode to defend not releasing them.
Personally, I want the GOP on the defensive. They said the rich pay “too much” in Taxes. Well, let’s see how much is “too much”.
Hot balls, hot balls, hot balls.
Mr. Pierce has a very good take on this whole Harry Reid controversy thing. Here.
Did you notice that “truthiness” made the new Oxford dictionary????
Of course you did. silly me.
Because I know I didn;t get enbough credit for this the other day……
I heard that Reid actually has a “source” on his Romney tax statements.
He’s called “elongated larynx.”
Willard is, for all pratical purposes, interviewing for the job of Commander in Chief. As I see it, these tax returns are a critical part of his curriculum vitae. Accordingly, the voting public has every right to demand that the returns be released. To the extent the documents are withheld, it can only be assumed that things are deliberately being hidden. My guess is that the “paid no taxes” meme (even if it is true) is the least of it. There’s something dirty there – like tax amnesty, for example.
It was Saint, Ronnie Reagan who said, “Trust, but verify.” I thought all these wingnuts wanted to be just like Saint Ronnie.
It’s really pretty simple. Politicians ALWAYS want good news and ALWAYS, when the news is good, SPREAD IT! ERGO, these tax returns are BAD news. Romney is not a gambler. He knows that his tax returns are much more negative than positive. If they were positive, he would make them public in a millisecond. The Dems don’t seem to be able to make that argument. They need to consult Elizabeth Warren to help them make that message more memorable. Elizabeth Warren for President!
If you are looking at the issue from the other side, releasing more returns than he already has will only result in much larger and more complex questions from the President’s team. His returns are more than 200 pages each, likely comprised of various forms for the number of entities where he has an interest. Since those are only K-1′s (or similar forms) that show only the partners income, each of those will result in complex questions aking for the release of the entity records and questions on deductions, costs and the like. It could run to thousands of pages for each of the ten years.
If I were Romney, I would guess that it is much less painful to put up with the comments of the Obama team and Sen. Reid. Ergo, no more tax returns.
If I am right on that, then it remains a viable line of attack right up to November. Does anyone here think that is a winning strategy?
There are so many things going on here. . .
1) Harry Reid might be telling the truth that someone told him that Romney can’t release his tax returns because they’ll show he paid zero taxes for the last 10 years. We could assume he’s telling the truth here, but the story that Romney didn’t pay any taxes in the last 10 years has to be false, because if true, the IRS would’ve caught up with him after about 3 years, and it would be public knowledge.
2) Romney has complex tax returns that also refer to his businesses and business partners, so there is plenty of stuff in there to pick at, I doubt any of it is illegal, or again the IRS would’ve caught him, but it could look bad politically.
3) Politifact is calling the story that Romney paid zero taxes false not the story that someone told Harry Reid this story.
4) Many tax experts have tried to figure out a way that Romney could’ve legally paid zero taxes in the last 10 years, and they can’t come up with a way, so he must’ve paid some taxes, probably 13% or 14% a year.
5) It’s a calculation that Romney is making that it’s better to hear President Obama call for him to release his tax returns, than to actually release them, and be forced to defend every deduction for a political standpoint.
6) to sum up Politifact made the right call it’s a false charge that Romney paid zero taxes for 10 years.
To recap, a surrogate for the Kenyan Muslim gun grabbing Affirmative Action socialist fascist Nazi said something mean about Mitt Romney. In other words, this is exactly the same as the “birther” claims that Mr. Romney had no problem with.
Romney refuses to demonstrate that Reid is a liar, which advances Reid’s credibility. The GOP response is a week of whining with no end in sight.
Well played, Mr. Reid.
Harry Reid should buy Mitt Romney a gold-plated microphone and rent a stadium. We wouldn’t want anyone to miss a minute of whining.
Nice try there. We’ve seen plenty of examples of Corporations paying zero tax because of “legal” loopholes. Why not Romney?
And these tax “experts” are…? Link, maybe? Also, without access to Romney’s tax documents, just how did they “figure” this? Ouji board? Crystal ball? Miss Chloe from the psychics network?
7. Profit!
Politifact should be in prison. They are only true to the first half of their name: yes, they are political. But, no, they wouldn’t recognize a fact if they woke up in bed with one the next morning.
Yes, ouch. Unfortunately, I’m thinking the same way about Rachel, too. She seems to be spinning things pretty fast, nowadays. She’s brilliant, but MSNBC has got her by the metaphorical balls.
>>
when ya’ll put down them pom-poms and the pep rally is over you may want to read :
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/04/obama_the_pioneer/
oh! how those mean republicans disdain transparency!!! it is a national scandal!
&
H.Reid – 25 years in DC – did not do a thing to make the tax code more progressive and did not do a thing to end rewarding of the rich and felonius for moving their money off-shore – hey harry, when you going to help the poor and tax the rich? or are you just going to limit social security and medicare like the democratic president wants?
sell out
Politi-fact sucks. Nuff said.
Horse hockey on the 200 page tax return. I had to print out my complete, all schedules, tax return for a home equity loan in May and last year’s for me was pretty close to 150 pages. If Mitt’s is only 200, then he’s definitely doing something shady.
My assumption is, his tax form is shorter than mine. It’s what happens when you don’t have one.
Yes, and yes. Say them loudly, over and over again, because they need to be said.