More Free Advice for the Democrats

Mitt Romney's refusal to disclose his tax returns has gotten some media attention lately, but I don't see that this attack has successfully migrated out of the pundit zone and into the heads of most average American voters.  I think a lot of this has to do with the way Obama and the Dems have pushed the story so far:  "Every other presidential candidate in the modern age has released more than two years of tax returns," and "If there's nothing to hide than there's nothing to fear," and etc.


So far, Romney and his surrogates have responded to the demand for the release of additional tax returns by simply lying about precedent.  For example, Romney claims that John Kerry only made two years of tax returns public before he ran for president, a claim that John McCain repeated a few months ago on Face the Nation.  In fact, by the time he ran for president John Kerry had actually released about 20 years worth of tax returns -- not the two that Romney and McCain claim.

The fact that McCain has been shilling for Romney is telling.  After all, 4 years ago when Romney was angling to be McCain's running mate Romney made 23 years worth of his tax returns available to John McCain as part of his vetting process -- a vetting process that Romney failed to pass.  Indeed, John McCain ultimately decided that Sister Sarah Palin would be a better running mate than Mitt Romney.

If you look at it that way, the way to get some traction for this story is simple:  make it a conspiracy.

Writing My Senator

I’ve been paying attention for months now to the rumblings on Capitol Hill about granting a tax holiday to multinational corporations to allow them to repatriate the billions of dollars in profits they have sitting overseas without having to pay U.S. taxes on those profits.  Congress did this only seven years ago, with disastrous results.

So I was quite dismayed the other day to read this article at ThinkProgress.org explaining that Senators John McCain and Kay Hagan have indeed hatched a plan to allow multinational corporations to repatriate these monies at the low, low rate of only 8.25%.  What particularly troubled me is the participation of Senator Hagan – she’s a Democrat and, more importantly, she’s my Senator.

So I took the time to draft a letter to her urging that she abandon her support for this idea.  I tried to be as respectful and polite as I could be without also sacrificing the necessary tone I thought the situation warranted.

My letter to Senator Hagan is below the fold.