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Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim
A federal investigation has been launched after hackers claimed to have stolen Mitt Romney’s tax returns. The hackers have given Romney until September 28th to pay $1 million in bitcoins or they say they will release the returns. From the article: "The claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone who snuck into the building and made copies of the document. The message author threatened to release the files publicly on September 28 and said copies of the files had been given to Democratic and Republican leaders in that county. Democrats have made Romney's refusal to release his tax returns a key point in their criticism that he is not in touch with working class voters."
Your conspiracy theory seems like another example of the well-recognized cognitive dissonance that Democrats have about Republicans: We're all really stupid, except when we're able to hatch these amazingly sophisticated conspiracies to steal elections. Move on, indeed!
No one is saying that Republicans are stupid in terms of playing politics. They have stupid policies such as force-feeding creationism in science class, but they are geniuses at fear-mongering, name-calling, and just flat-out lying in order to get what they want. You want to talk about leaving Iraq? Well, you're a cut-and-run coward who hates America. You want to help the poor and middle class? You're engaging in class warfare, and you hate success. These guys are freaking geniuses at political gamesmanship. Look at ObamaCare. They were able to stop even a single Republican representative from voting in favor of the bill. Are you telling me that not one of them thought the bill was a good idea or was the leadership that absolute? Hint: it's the latter.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Well that guy is an idiot.
1. If he does have the real document how will he prove it? I mean all Romney will need to say is Those are not my returns but a forgery made by some crazed radical liberal who is willing to lie and cheat to get his party to win. The main stream democrats will not use this information because it is not from legal means, If they do you can get the republican conspiracy theory linking the democrats to an event similar to Watergate.
2. Bit coins? Really? here is a guy who is publicly saying he committed a crime. FBI goes to the Bit Coin Servers with a warrant sends the million and tracks every Bit to see who finally receives it. Oh it goes to a PO Box... That is OK, you get an FBI agent waiting right next to that PO Box to arrest anyone who opens it.
3. How politically damaging is the truth anyways? It seems like the only people who really care will not vote for Romney anyways. He already admits that he pays less percentage in tax then most Americans. After months of digging you may find that he missed the rule here and there. But then the other side will find that he could have benefited from other areas where it balanced out.
There is the argument If Romney doesn't have anything to hide then why isn't he releasing his taxes. This is on the same vane the only people who should opposed to airport searches are people with something to hide. Why would he not want to release taxes? Because his taxes are long and complex, it isn't like our W2 done on the simple form. His opponents will distract his discussion of what he considers important issue and bogged down defending every line item in his taxes that he probably paid a team of accountants to do for him.
I personalty don't care for Romney and I don't think I will vote for him. But I am sick of this extremism partisan crap. Where we actually celebrate politically motivated criminals who brake the law that causes something to favor our political stance.
These hackers are not hero's, they are petty criminals who can't stand a world where people have opposing views to them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is that the mantra? Is there some reason we shouldnt be going after someone committing this kind of blackmail: "Give us money or we put your private info (potentially including SSN) out for the world to see?" Wow, what heroes.
The SSN was never intended to be a secret number, just unique.
As for tax returns, many countries see this as public information - the lists are made public, and searchable. Why should this information be excluded from transparency rules regarding government sources of income? What's the rationale for keeping the information secret?
For me at least, it isn't a case of 'should we go after them', but how much more attention gets paid to a case by law enforcement if the target if famous or politically connected. The Palin one was is a classic example... a type of hack that is not unusual and gets reported to the police fairly frequently, but very little is done about it. Yet all the stops came out to track down the person when Palin's emails were stolen.
I am all for people like this being tracked down and arrested for their crimes, I just wish it did not matter so much who your victim is.
Or for that matter, his college records. As much as I'd like to see those from Obama, he's under no obligation to release them, and it would be just as wrong to release them illegally as it would be to release Romney's tax returns.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Mitt Romney pays less taxes (~15%) because his money was taxed when it was initially earned and now he's paying taxes on his investments so he's being taxed twice - a fact often omitted form reports.
By that logic, my plumber should only have to pay 15% on his taxes, since that money was already taxed once when me and all of his other customers earned it. But of course things don't work that way for ordinary people, only for the 1%.
How in the world did you go from 'these crimes should be prosecuted even if the victim is a nobody' to 'watergate should never have been prosecuted'?
I am just tired of the 'people with power deserve more justice then regular people'. Crow, a crime like this probably has less personal impact then one on a regular person... you think something like this would actually impact Romney in any significant way? Hacks like this are about as politically dangerous as fumbling a line during an interview. On the other hand when some average person has their personal information stolen it can be life destroying. So in a very real way this is a less serious crime since it is unlikely to have much impact on anyone or anything.
That's not really double-taxation. If I work to earn $1M and pay $300K in taxes (or whatever it is after deductions) then I have paid taxes on the $1M. If I then invest $200K of that after-tax money in something, and sell it a year later for $1M, then the $800K difference has not been taxed yet. My understanding is that it's this $800K that gets the 15% rate, and the original $200K is not taxed again.
If I go on to invest and sell, then I continue to pay 15% on all of that income, independent of my declared income from working, and regardless of how successful I am at it. How is that being taxed twice? I think this is how many people understand it, and it is the basis for most of the complaints that I hear. Is it incorrect?
proving once more that bitcoins are the currency of thieves, drug dealers, pedophiles and gun runners
As are dollars. There are about 8 million bitcoins at about $11 a piece. That's 88 million dollars worth of bitcoins. That doesn't even come close to the money stolen by ONE GUY at MF Global.
If you despise thieves, aim your hatred at the finance industry and the politicians that protect them. Bitcoin is negligible compared to these crooks.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I didn't think anybody was dumb enough to think that we have the resources to "track down and arrest" someone for every crime that is reported. So I assumed (incorrectly) that your point was every instance of a crime should be treated the same as all other incidents of that crime. Since we can't possibly prosecute them all, we should either prosecute none, or just randomly pick some to prosecute. It is unlikely that Watergate would have been prosecuted to the extent it was in those circumstances.
Like it or not, prosecution of crime (like everything else we do) is going to have priorities assigned. We do not have infinite resources. And like it or not, any crime which is done for the purposes of influencing an election is going to get a high priority, whether you think the crime would actually influence the election or not.
Bullshit! You don't think the Democrat politicians games the same IRS rules like the Republicans in office? Here's a clue for you Micky, every rich man, women, and child does. BECAUSE THEY DO **NOT** DO THEIR OWN TAXES!!! Some other firm does it for them whom specializes in US tax code.
Both the players and the game suck. But lets start with the common denominator here. Overhaul the US tax system. Go flat tax if we have to. But absolutely nothing will change in behavior with those with disposable income to obfuscate.
Life is not for the lazy.
There is no law 'requiring cabinet nominees to submit a shed load of documentation'. There certainly is no law that says you lose your right to privacy by virtue of being a cabinet nominee. Now, you may not get confirmed by the senate (ie voted in) if you don't voluntarily give up some of your privacy, but that is far, far different than saying you lose your right of privacy.
Now, if the American people decide not to vote for Romney because he did not disclose his tax returns, that is up to them. But saying that he forfeits his right to privacy (and laws protecting such privacy) simply because he is running for office is ludicrous.
There is a huge difference between demands for financial disclosure and forced disclosure.
There is a simple solution to this. If the American people 'demand' that he disclose his finances, and he doesn't, don't vote for him! What could be simpler.
What kind of ridiculous non sequitur is this? Can we just agree that GPs post was ridiculous nonsense, that the rhetoric is uncalled for, and that the blackmail should be prosecuted?
I agree mostly with the parent, but not entirely.
To the extent Romney legally made a lot of money, and legally paid his taxes the actual amounts are pretty nearly irrelevant.
However, there is some interesting speculation out there that what's in his returns is in fact he was a tax cheat. You see, in 2009 the IRS had an amnesty program for people with money stashed overseas. We already know Romney had a bunch of money stashed in overseas accounts. The amnesty was because a high percentage of folks with overseas accounts (upwards of 80%, by some estimates) had failed to report their assets in the required way. Since they are the 1%, the Congress passed a "one time out" program, admit breaking the law, but rather than get thrown in jail or pay a penalty simply pay the tax you would have owed.
We don't know if Romney took advantage of the program, but the odds are quite high he did. If so, what he did by participating was admit he had cheated the tax code for some number of years. That would absolutely be relevant for a political candidate.
The SSN was never intended to be a secret number, just unique.
Reality intrudes. Regardless of how dumb of an idea it is to have SSNs be treated as secret, you would be silly to give yours out.
Why should this information be excluded from transparency rules regarding government sources of income
Because its personal income; when Romney files a tax return, he does so as a private citizen.
While I understand (if not entirely agree with) the logic behind capital gains taxation, It's not that simple for Romney. There are smoking guns in the current returns he's released, such as the disclosure of a >$100m IRA. Given that contributions are limited to something around $50k/year (at most, assuming a self-directed IRA), that's the accounting fraud/tax evasion equivalent of having a body with a bullet hole in it. You still have to find the murder weapon to prove the crime, but there's no question that something went horribly wrong. The only way for that kind of IRA inflation to happen is if you misrepresent the value of assets you transfer through the accounting firewall into your IRA, or manipulate the value post-transfer.
There's also the question of whether he paid the proper gift tax on the transfer of $100m in assets to a trust for his sons (the existence of which is also revealed in his currently-released tax return). His own vague statements on his tax payments imply that he hasn't, because the tax resulting from that one action would have been >$30m. Gift tax is rarely audited aside from asset transfers shortly before death, so many people ignore it for both that reason and the reason that it has a statute of limitation of something like only 3 years.
Given the above, let alone the vagaries of complex and legitimately grey (as in not even the regulators know for sure whether it's OK, so no one can say for sure that they're illegal) tax avoidance strategies routinely employed in the management of that kind of accumulated wealth, it's mind-boggling why Romney released any tax returns at all. That being said, this extortion attempt is really a stroke of luck for him, as it will make the issue toxic and untouchable whereas it would probably have otherwise dogged him clear to election day.
I would love to see them. I'll bet he hasn't paid taxes in years. They offshore their profits and domesticate their losses.
I have no proof for my ideas, but given the very personal nature of the tax return disclosure tradition (it was his dad that started it), the fact that he refuses to release more tax returns tells me there's a not-so-tinfoil-hat-crazy conspiracy to hide something.
Personally, I think that he failed to disclose his offshore wealth, and he used the IRS' amnesty program to declare it all and pay the back taxes that he previously dodged. When he said a few months ago that he paid "at least 13%" of his income in taxes in each of the last ten years, I think that he is stating his "revisionist" tax rate after paying his back taxes, not what he originally filed and paid.
Given how few years of taxes he released, I have to believe that there's an indication of this occurring very recently - or at least an indication of him settling this debt recently. I suspect that either the 2008 or 2009 returns would show amendments or other notes that would explain this in far more detail, and hence his inability to release even a few more years' returns to mollify critics.*
* (Not that releasing two more years of tax returns would mollify most.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
What could be simpler.
A third party making the entire issue moot.
The real problem here has nothing to do with privacy, or conflicts of interest, or even really anything at all about the sources and magnitude of Romney's income. The real problem here comes from focusing on Mit's taxes, from demands for birth certificates, from stains on blue dresses, from the Swift Boat Veterans Against Obama, from all the myriad piddling little distractions, that dominate the media coverage of arguable one of the most important choices the world makes every four years.
We have people dying in deserts, we have the entire world economy on the brink of ruin, we have people starving and farmers going bankrupt while millions of tons of red spring wheat rots in warehouses, we get irradiated and/or molested if we want to travel, we have both sides of the political spectrum eroding the buffer that keeps the poor from eating the rich... And we quibble over whether fabulously-rich-guy made "disgusting" or "-obscene" amounts of money by outsourcing jobs to China???
I support these guys releasing Mit's taxes solely because it will take one (of many) non-issues out of the spotlight.
Which is relevant why? Maybe you should change your laws but until you do don't go pretending that what other countries do is an argument to defend breaching someone's privacy. Stoning is included in the laws of 7 countries, that does not mean it is less wrong if I stone someone to death in a country that doesn't allow it.
There's plenty of reasons to think this should be public; none of it excuses this, nor means it shouldn't be condemned. It's amazing how hypocritical many readers are when it comes to thinking 'anything' they do should be private and yet having no qualms about defending those who out private information about others.
It's a gimmick. It's right up there with having a Philly cheesesteak in Gino's versus Pat's. American politics is filled with those kinds of traps.
All the issue is there to serve is to suggest Romney is "not one of you" and fits the stereotype of "rich white republican."
Truth is, Obama is rich, too. You can't really do federal politics without being quite wealthy.
Time wasted talking about tax returns, or birth certificates, or whatever is time spent not talking about the facts. And when you look at FACTS, both Republicans AND Democrats have each done massive harm to this country over the past 80 years.
More Twoson than Cupertino
A fine example of whataboutery. The issue is not that Romney is wealthy - it's a matter of public record that his wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined - but that he may have been illegally evading taxes through the use of off-shore banks, and took advantage of the 2009 amnesty.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush