the Pen

NY TIMES: "Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, made $27 million in 2010. They held millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account and millions more in partnerships in the Cayman Islands. His family’s trusts sold thousands of shares in Goldman Sachs that were offered to favored clients when the storied investment house first went public. The couple’s effective federal tax rate for the year worked out to 13.9 percent, a rate typical of households earning about $80,000 a year. Yet the hundreds of pages of tax documents released by Mr. Romney’s campaign on Tuesday morning did not readily reveal any elaborate financial legerdemain or exotic tax shelters. What Mr. Romney’s returns illustrated, instead, was the array of perfectly ordinary ways in which the United States tax code confers advantages on the rich, allowing Mr. Romney to amass wealth under rules very different from those faced by most Americans who take home a paycheck."

01/28/12

thedailywhat:

Promising The Moon of the Day: On Florida’s Space Coast today, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich made perhaps the most grandiose promise of any candidate since JFK: A permanent American moon base by the end of his second term.

“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” Gingrich told a rapt audience, which responded with a standing ovation.

“We clearly have the capacity that Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to us,” Gingrich said, adding that he also plans to push for the development of propulsion technology capable of getting a man to Mars.

The initiatives would be a joint public-private endeavor, he noted.

Gingrich immediately followed up his grandiose promises by saying that he believes Americans “are instinctively grandiose.” This, too, got a standing ovation.

[politico / @alexNBCNews / photo: floridatoday.]

“The moon belongs to America…
and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astromen.
Will you be among them?”

01/26/12

thedailywhat:

Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns of the Day: Semi-bowing to political pressure, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his tax forms this morning and — surprise — he’s stupid rich.

How stupid rich? In 2010, Romney made $21.7 million. In 2011, the former Massachusetts governor made $20.9. In both years, the overwhelming majority of his income came from personal investments — capital gains, dividends, and interest.

In both years Romney owed significantly less taxes than the average American — 13.9% in 2010; 15.4% in 2011 (thanks George Bush) — while earning 900 times the median American salary without lifting a finger.

As becoming of the sort of comically wealthy person he is, Romney’s tax forms reveal he also maintained bank accounts in notorious tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Switzerland.

His forms show he paid taxed on all three accounts, before closing them. Of course, given the minuscule glimpse into Romney’s tax history, it’s difficult to tell if the two forms paint a complete picture.

To his credit, Romney did donate some $7 million to charity over the course of the last two years. (The majority of which went to the Mormon Church, but it still beats Biden’s $369 a year.)

All in all, nothing earth-shattering, although the forms certainly cement in the minds of the average voter just how above-average Romney is in the fortune department.

And it’s worth noting, as Wonkette does, that Romney released 23 years of tax returns to the McCain campaign, and they picked Sarah Palin for veep over him, so something in those other 21 years may have spooked them.

[photo: theatlantic.]

01/25/12

“

The President of the United States came out and said under my administration every child can go to college. What elitist snobbery out of this man.

Rick Santorum. Elitist snobbery indeed.

(via think-progress)

01/9/12

the Pen

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