Willard Mitt Romney has avoided the release of his tax return history for quite some time, and it appears that he will not release any information until April. Even then he may only release his 2011 tax information.
It has been a tradition for decades for presidential candidates to release their tax records, some back 8 or 10 years. President Barack Obama has released his return information all the way back to the year 2000. Even Mitt Romney’s father released 12 years of returns when he ran for the U.S. Presidency in 1968.
Yet Romney has refused thus far to release multiple years, and will most likely continue to refuse to do so.
If he does not wish to release them, he is perfectly within his rights to withhold such information from the American public; there is no such qualifier to become President of the United States of America.
Still, if he is perfectly at ease with his business practices of the past, why does he hide his financial gains resulting from them? He has clearly shown through his words on the campaign trail that only paying 15% on his taxes does not bother him when many Americans who work much harder than he has had to even imagine must pay a higher percentage. Most of Romney’s millions in yearly income come from investments which are taxed at a lower rate rather than actual work, which is taxed at a higher percentage. Apparently has no problem with unearned income being taxed lower than earned income as he explained this tax scale difference this week without batting an eye.
And he has no problem with his history of running Bain Capital, a company whose sole purpose was to go into other companies like GS Industries, Inc., previously the parent company of Georgetown Steel in South Carolina, squeeze all that it could out financially cutting jobs along the way, and then cast the company away to go into bankruptcy, resulting in the loss of the thousands of jobs remaining.
Of course, it may be the many off-shore accounts at which he keeps a large portion of his money from being taxed in the first place while hard working Americans with much less income patriotically pay their fair share. Eve so, he can campaign on the magic slogan of ‘tax reform’ and minimize the damage from this in the eyes of those who incorrectly think that the American dream is presently equally open to all.
Come to think of it, it may be ‘all of the above’ as each of these in itself would weigh on the conscience of a normal, averagely ethical person. Yet while Romney bellows his rhetoric that his business practices are the 'American Way' of doing business, he still feels compelled to hide the results of his supposed 'hard work.'
A possible and probable conclusion is that he knows perfectly well that he and his wealthy buddies have been unethically and amorally siphoning wealth off the vast majority of America for decades. Though he personally has no problem with this, he is not an idiot and knows that most of America would be completely offended by this.
Such business practices as well as others that may also be divulged in Romney’s tax history are the very reason our country is in the economic shape it is in. A vote for Romney is a vote to continue down the path of economic injustice and greater plutocracy in the government, something the Nation can ill afford for much longer.
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