Campaigns have a way of working like the health or infirmities of a body. Virtuous cycles build on themselves or one bad thing bumps into another and then suddenly the whole thing starts cascading out of control. Read More
The winners of the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest. Take a look.
This nonsense has been bubbling around in Republican circles for a while now (it’s partly what prompted Romney’s “off the cuff” remarks about the 47 percent). The idea is that everyone ought to pay at least a little in federal income taxes. It can even be a nominal amount. Even if just a dollar, Rep. Michele Bachmann has said. Skin in the game, they say. Almost a patriotic, community-building thing. And yesterday in the Virginia U.S. Senate debate, Democrat Tim Kaine said he was open to the idea.
But here’s the thing.
As simple and pleasant and harmless as it might sound on its face, what it shows is a blithe ignorance of how the tax code works — of how both parties have designed it to work — to help the working poor. It’s narcotic effect is predicated on that ignorance because let’s face it: most people, including most elected officials, have no idea how the tax code works.
Brian Beutler explains why the call for “skin in the game” is a terrible idea: impractical, self-defeating, and ultimately devastating for the working poor in particular.
Two new national polls are out this morning. Both show 7 point spreads for President Obama, though one of the two, the Reason poll, concluded on the 17th. Read More
We noted Tommy Thompson yesterday saying he’d be doing better in his Senate race if he didn’t have to run with Mitt Romney.
Now Herman Cain is saying he’d be way ahead of Obama at this point if he were the nominee because he has “some depth to my ideas.” Read More
The Romney campaign just announced that it will be releasing the following documents this afternoon online at 3 p.m.:
*2011 tax returns for (a) Mitt and Ann Romney; (b) The W. Mitt Romney Blind Trust; (c) The Ann D. Romney Blind Trust; and (d) The Romney Family Trust.
*A notarized letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers summarizing the tax rates paid by the Romneys for the 20 years from 1990-2009.
*Physician letters about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan “making public their current state of health.”
More soon.
The highlight of a summary of Mitt and Ann Romney’s tax rates for each year from 1990 to 2009, provided by the Romney campaign (the actual summary will be released at 3 p.m. ET), is that the Romneys paid federal income taxes each year. There is no year in which they paid zero taxes or had an effective rate of zero, according to the campaign. “Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%,” the campaign says.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) famously — and repeatedly — said he had a reliable source who claimed Romney had paid zero taxes for 10 years.