tax returns

Ann Romney Fail

August 29, 2012 by Bitchy

I think that everybody understands that Ann Romney’s mission last night was to humanize Mitt. After she was done, I asked my Facebook fans if they felt she had accomplished that goal. Most of my admittedly biased fans didn’t think she did. Pundits seem to have mixed opinions, mostly guided by their party affiliation.

I thought she failed. I initially thought she failed based on stylistic mistakes. There was no subtlety in the speech itself. She seemed to me to be the unpopular geek in high school, begging you to like her by doing your homework for you. She used the word “love” fourteen fucking times, which just made the whole thing weird. I was irritated when she proclaimed, “I love you women!”. As opposed to “you people” who have all the tax returns you need from Mitt? The stuff about how she and Mitt met and fell in love was fine. She should have said more along those lines.

But the more I thought about her speech, the more I realized that the issues with it weren’t stylistic. The main issue was the fundamental premise of the speech. Here’s the part where she really fucked up:

I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

When he was 15, dad came to America. In our country, he saw hope and an opportunity to escape from poverty. He moved to a small town in the great state of Michigan. There, he started a business — one he built himself, by the way.

He raised a family. And he became mayor of our town.

My dad would often remind my brothers and me how fortunate we were to grow up in a place like America. He wanted us to have every opportunity that came with life in this country — and so he pushed us to be our best and give our all.

Inside the houses that lined the streets of our town, there were a lot of good fathers teaching their sons and daughters those same values. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of those dads was my future father-in-law, George Romney.

Mitt’s dad never graduated from college. Instead, he became a carpenter.

He worked hard, and he became the head of a car company, and then the governor of Michigan.

When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together. I was an Episcopalian. He was a Mormon.

We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn’t care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days.

First of all, no one believes that you two were ever poor. And trying to make yourselves something that everyone knows you’re not just enforces the idea that you’re panderers. That was the most disingenuous and disgusting part of the speech. It was disgusting because of the premise upon which that pandering was done.

Their assumption is that Americans don’t like them because they’re rich. They’re dead wrong, and they’re insulting Americans by believing that about us. They really think that we’re a nation of envious assholes. Never mind the fact that no one ever hated Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Conrad Hilton, and hundreds of others for being rich.

Let me set the Romney’s straight; we don’t hate you for being rich. We hate you because it’s clear that you won’t do anything to help Americans that aren’t rich. We don’t hate you for what you are. We hate you for what we know you won’t do for the middle class. We hate that you’ve lived a life devoid of any empathy, or any attempt at understanding how average Americans live. We hate you for thinking that Americans should just borrow some money from from their parents to get an education, or start a business. We hate you for thinking that we’re assholes for not thinking of that obvious solution. We hate you for being on this earth for over sixty years, and not bothering to understand that this isn’t possible for the vast majority of Americans.

And now, Mitt and Ann we hate you for the disdain you have for us.

No-Doc President

August 10, 2012 by Bitchy

If there’s one thing that republicans, democrats, and independents can agree on, it’s that no-doc loans were a factor in the subprime mortgage collapse in 2008. We need to see documents that verify that what you say is the truth, right?

So why the fuck would anyone want to elect a no-doc president? If Mitt Romney is running on his business prowess, he needs to prove it by showing us his tax returns. He needs to show us his tax returns more than any presidential candidate in the last sixty years, because he’s running on his exceptional skills at running a business.

And to be honest with you, the more he doesn’t want to show his tax returns to me, the more I want to see them. I learned a lesson by seeing the part that no-doc loans played in the financial collapse. There’s no way in hell that I’m voting for a no-doc president.

And to the fucking children on the far right that demand to see Obama’s academic records, immunization records, driving test sores, and whatever else you’re demanding to see before Mitt releases his tax returns, let me say; grow the fuck up. The foundation of your “argument” is based on a childish tit-for-tat. Childishness aside, (I can’t believe this needs to be pointed out) no presidential candidate has ever been asked to provide their birth certificate, never mind their academic records. Every presidential candidate in the past seventy years has provided their tax returns. Mitt Romney does not get an exemption from that tradition.

And frankly, I don’t know why he would want one. He has the opportunity to crush Harry Reid once and for all. All Mitt has to do to prove that Reid is a liar and a buffoon, is to release his tax returns and disprove Reid’s claims once and for all.

If you’re not going to release your tax returns to crush your political enemy Mitt, do it because you know that the American people aren’t foolish enough to elect a no-doc president.

The UnAmerican President.

January 25, 2012 by Bitchy

If Mitt Romney ever managed to become president, any movie made about him should be called “The UnAmerican President”. I’m not being hyperbolic. I find Mitt Romney to be a deeply unpatriotic piece of crap that, as far as I can tell, has only ever leeched off of this country without giving back a god damned thing.

Let me start with his tax returns. I know that everyone is focused in on the 13.9% he paid in federal taxes, as well as the Cayman and Swiss bank accounts. These things are bad, but they’re not what stood out to me when I read the details about the returns. The 13.9% isn’t necessarily something that I’m upset with Mitt over. We have a fucked up tax code that rewards not working, and punishes working. When you have a tax structure in which capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than earned income, you have a society that says it doesn’t value hard work. In my opinion, nothing should be taxed at a lower rate than your paycheck. Not a god damned thing. Taxes on earned income should be the floor of taxation. Everything else should go up from there.

The Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts are things that I hold Mitt accountable for. It is not legal to put your money in an offshore bank account for the purpose of avoiding taxes that you owe on that money. That’s a scummy and unpatriotic thing to do and in Mitt’s case, it’s gratuitously greedy. Paying those taxes would have absolutely no impact on his quality of life. When you’re worth over $200 million dollars, losing even $10 million a year has zero impact on your life. It’s unnecessary greed. In Mitt’s case, it’s unnecessary greed on steroids. He’s been running for president for the past 5 years. He knows, from the 2008 campaign, that the perception of him as a self entitled rich fucker is his biggest liability. He had to assume that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid releasing tax returns forever. And yet this guy is so fucking greedy that he can’t suck it up and pay an extra 5% – 10% in taxes for a mere 5 years, in order to diffuse that perception. It’s irrational greed. You’re jeopardizing your chances of becoming leader of the free world over $20 – $30 million dollars that you won’t miss, don’t need, and probably aren’t even aware are there? What a fucking moron.

I agree that the absurdly low tax rate and the offshore bank accounts are newsworthy, but they’re not the most telling or relevant pieces of information that the tax returns revealed. The first thing that jumped out at me is that Mitt Romney gave more money to the LDS Church than he paid in federal income tax. He’s obviously got the money to give, and he’s willing to give it, but not to his country. Not to help pay for 2 wars that he supported. No, he’s happy to give it in order to propagate his religious beliefs. This isn’t the first time he put church before country. Remember that he never served in Vietnam because he was on his mission in France at the time.

Let me take a moment to rant about that. Why the fuck do we allow people to get out of mandatory service, so that they can instead prosthelytize their religion? What the fuck is that? Seriously, it’s bullshit. They’re not doing missionary work to help the poor or needy. They’re not out there helping widows or other people that are collateral damage in the war effort. No, they’re out there serving their own self interest by trying to convert others to their way of thinking. I think that’s a bullshit reason not to serve, and we shouldn’t allow it for any religion. Go preach on your own time. We’re fighting a fucking war.

Speaking of the Vietnam war, here’s a lovely picture of Mittens advocating for a war that he wasn’t willing to fight. Charming, no? Honestly, can this man be a bigger piece of shit?

I honestly feel like Mitt has nothing but take advantage of everything this country has to offer, while giving the bare minimum back to it.

And the sad thing is that he’s still not the most loathsome person running for president.