Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (20476)	7/23/2012 10:49:11 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

I'm on it. Willard to Olympians... "You didn't do this." "You Olympians, however, know you didn't get here solely on your own power,” said Romney, who on Friday will attend the Opening Ceremonies of this year’s Summer Olympics. “For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. All right! [pumps fist]." nymag.com speaking of which, Romney’s Olympic records to be released before election, with cuts Posted by Rachel Weiner <!-- -->at 01:49 PM ET, 07/23/2012 TheWashingtonPost Archivists at the University of Utah are aiming to release records from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics “well before the 2012 election,” ABC News reports. That release could bring newfound scrutiny to one of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s biggest successes — turning around the scandal-scarred 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Journalists have been attempting to gain access to those papers for years. However, many key documents will likely not be released and some have probably been destroyed. Gregory Thompson, curator at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, told the Post in the spring that the Olympic records “were pretty well scrubbed before they got here.” Inventories available at the time suggested that there was no complete set of meeting minutes, e-mail records, contracts or financial data. Kelly Flint, who served as general council to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) told ABC News that “legally privileged or confidential information” was destroyed, and it was unlikely that e-mails, appointment calendars and other correspondence was saved. Romney’s campaign says the candidate had no role in the archive staying unreleased for so long. “Mitt Romney resigned from SLOC in early 2002 to run for governor of Massachusetts and was not involved in the decision making regarding the final disposition of records,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul. But journalists have complained since 2001 about difficulty obtaining Olympic records — even before Romney left Utah. And Romney had promised a higher standard. He told the National Press Club in 2002 that “all the documents inside our organization are available to the public,” including correspondence. “It is fair to say that SLOC was the most transparent organizing committee in Olympic history – perhaps among the most publicly accessible organizations in America,” he wrote in “Turnaround,” his book about running the Olympics. “For all intents and purposes we were naked.” Romney’s refusal to release back tax returns and his aides’ decision to destroy e-mails from his gubernatorial tenure have raised questions about the candidate’s transparency. Romney’s Olympic leadership has not gotten much scrutiny from rivals, in either the primary or general election. While there’s some disagreement over how much credit Romney deserves, the games themselves are seen almost universally as a triumph. Our Factchecker gave Romney “a rare Geppetto checkmark” for his account of saving the troubled Games. But Democrats have started needling Romney for not asking for a moment of silence in honor of the Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A 2002 Boston Globe story found that Romney overstated the Games’ financial troubled when he took over. Deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter recently told Politico that Romney’s Olympic record was “less than wholesome, shall we say, in terms of the decisions that were made there, the contracts that were signed and the basic operation.” After months of back-and-forth on Bain Capital and Massachusetts, the Olympics will likely get more scrutiny in the days ahead. washingtonpost.com

To: koan who wrote (20476)	7/23/2012 11:36:00 PM
From: Little Joe	6 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

You can twist it any way you want. He said what he said and it was perfectly clear to any reasonable person. lj

To: koan who wrote (20476)	7/24/2012 1:30:38 AM
From: onepath	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

This is hilarious...... TART Thirty shades of grey in Mitt Romney’s income-tax returns Tabatha Southey Special to The Globe and Mail Published Friday, Jul. 20 2012, 8:26 PM EDT Last updated Friday, Jul. 20 2012, 8:26 PM EDT As the pressure on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to disclose his tax returns increases from all sides, speculation as to why he refuses to do so has grown. Did Mr. Romney pay no federal income tax in 2009? Did he take the amnesty offered to U.S. citizens, disclose an undisclosed Swiss bank account and avoid prosecution? Do his returns merely reveal the kind of aggressive tax planning that allowed a multimillionaire to pay a tax rate of just 14 per cent in 2010? I offer some alternative theories to explain his reticence: 1. Because of a filing error, his 2006 returns contain all the poetry he wrote in junior high. 2. He tried to deduct the cost of new beliefs and principles for 2011. 3. There’s nothing in his filings that would hurt Mr. Romney politically. He is just concerned because his 2007 forms contain a spoiler for The Dark Knight Rises. 4. He deducted travel to the place of his birth – Rhodesia – but never produced the promised memoir. 5. The family dog was stapled to his 2004 returns and it has been some time. 6. Mr. Romney claimed a charitable-donation deduction in 2000 for a contribution of $2.3-million made to the Winston-Moffat Foundation for Research into Methods by Which We Can Correct the Height of Those Fugly Trees in Michigan. 7. There is concern among Mr. Romney’s advisers that some of their candidate’s opponents may make an issue out of the fact that, much to the confusion and inconvenience of the Internal Revenue Service, all of Mr. Romney’s accompanying documentation is engraved on one-inch- thick gold tablets – in French. 8. The 2004 returns reveal substantial retroactive retirement payments to Mr. Romney originating from the East India Company. 9. They’re scented. 10. It’s all on the up and up financially, but Mr. Romney dots his i’s with a heart. 11. Filings show that in 2006 he bought nine copies of Kevin Federline’s Playing with Fire. 12. In 1999, he was particularly rich and frankly he doesn’t want to appear gauche. 13. He owns Wednesday. 14. His father, George W. Romney, started the tradition of releasing tax returns when he was running for president. And while I’m not saying there are daddy issues at play here, whenever someone mentions the disclosure of tax returns to the current Republican candidate, he gets a migraine, starts to hum softly and outsources something big to China. 15. In the margins of his 2004 returns, Mr. Romney outlined a program that would cost-effectively provide universal health-care coverage to 95 per cent of the residents of Massachusetts and scribbled some sound, non-isolationist economic policy. If any of that got out, he’d effectively be committing Republican political suicide. 16. A single line item in his 2003 returns reveals that he was the one who cancelled Firefly. 17. In 2001, he claimed a deduction of legal expenses for out-of-court settlements after he let the dogs out. 18. He does not understand this thing you humans call transparency. 19. His wife told him that women are not interested in seeing his tax returns. They are only interested in the economy. (He has no way of determining whether this is true without talking to an actual woman – like that is ever going to happen.) 20. He has folded them into a thousand paper cranes to end gay marriage. 21. He chewed them all into a pulp and used them to plug a hole in a dike during Hurricane Katrina. What the hell is wrong with you people? 22. He sold his tax returns to the devil at the crossroads for the gift of song. The devil just doesn’t value tax returns all that highly. 23. His main focus is the economy and no there’s money to be made disclosing his tax returns. He is considering releasing them as an e-book. 24. His returns are marching with Martin Luther King. 25. He has just moved and he still has a lot of crap in boxes. Why you gotta be such a hard-ass, America? 26. They’re just a lot of generalities anyway. 27. His personal finances are irrelevant, as Mr. Romney isn’t running based on his success as a businessman. He’s running based on … on … oh, never mind. 28. It’s just as Ann Romney says: “We’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation.” 29. That’s right, she said “you people” – who are not going to grasp this stuff anyway. 30. He licked them. theglobeandmail.com