So I know I’m supposed to spend the day after the South Carolina primary talking about Gingrich’s big comeback and how he fought his way past dubious open marriage allegations (probably financed by Romney truth be told) to win a decisive victory that means…something, I guess…Yawn, I’m sorry but I just can’t work up the energy to make another state’s primary look like it will mean something. I’m glad Gingrich won if only because it means Romney will sweat a little harder in the next month, and given all that’s come out about him in the last week, that’s not such a bad thing.
This week’s big political headlines for me (before the smoke-screen of Gingrich’s second ex suspiciously showed up) weren’t about sex, but about money. Specifically, they were about Mitt ROMNEY’s very secretive money. In a matter of days we learned:
1. That even though Romney is sickeningly rich, he only pays a 15 percent tax rate which is definitely lower than anyone making more than 35k a year is SUPPOSED to pay. [It’s funny how we keep hearing that rich people are taxed too much at 35 percent…but no one who’s rich seems to be paying that.] It’s certainly a lower rate than myself or either of my parents pay in taxes even though we’d be lucky to ever make 0.1 percent of Romney’s wealth.
2. That Romney has kept millions of dollars stashed out in a Cayman Islands bank account (some say it’s 10 million, other reports suggest as much as thirty million…and that’s just the money they’ve found out about, imagine who much is probably in swiss bank accounts). So, uhhhh, again, what was all that bullshit about a higher tax rate? This dude isn’t paying ANY taxes on multiple millions.
3. That when Romney was at the helm of Bain Capital, he brokered several multi-million dollar deals for The Mormon Church. The Church apparently requires its members to tithe up to TEN percent of their earnings (wow, that’s loan shark territory) and Romney was able to pay this off not with money from his considerable fortune, but by brokering secretive deals that would give the Church of Ladder Saints’s investment arm (and subsequent front groups) huge amounts of stock in companies like Burger King…that often had no idea that a big part of their company was owned by a church. So it looks like Romney does play a much bigger role in his church’s finances than he’d previously let on.
4. That he didn’t actually win in Iowa. Rick Santorum beat him fair and square, and a lot of Romney’s early campaign momentum was built on a lie. I know this last one isn’t technically money related but to me it seems lousy.
AND we were told Romney wouldn’t release his full tax returns until April, thus giving him three more months to try to hide as much cash as he can. So I guess the choice is America’s but who really wants a dubious businessman (Romney looks more like a white collar crook everyday) in the White House again? After all, we’re just now recovering from eight years of George W. Bush.