"All right, we're done. That's all you peons will be getting from either of us."
And now for the Mitt Romney Friday Night News Dump. The Mitt Romney campaign, in an act of beneficence toward the little people, have released more tax returns! Not Mitt's of course, but Paul Ryan's. And only two years' worth.
Here they are.
Presuming these turn out to be complete tax returns, Paul Ryan has now released two more years of full returns than Mitt Romney has, since Mitt has released only "estimated" 2011 returns and an incomplete filing for 2010. There is also no word on whether or not Mitt asked for more than two years of tax returns from Paul Ryan before picking him, just to make sure Ryan's financial history was on the up-and-up, or if he just decided that two years was enough information to just trust him on the rest of that stuff.
Some initial tidbits:
- Paul Ryan's effective tax rates of 15.9 percent and 20 percent for the two years released are considerably more than the 13-point-something percent that Mitt Romney asserted as his own typical tax rate, which makes sense because Mitt Romney is much, much richer and therefore a better person than Paul Ryan.
- Paul Ryan's inability to do basic math continues even into his home life, as their 2011 return needed to be corrected after Ryan forgot to mention slightly over $60,000 in income the first time around.
- The Ryans donated $2600 to charity in 2010, but $12,991 in 2011. No word on whether the conspicuous $10,000 increase was the result of a lost bet with Mitt Romney, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
I was wondering how the Romney camp was going to handle this, since there was no way in hell they could credibly release more information about Paul Ryan's taxes than the guy at the top of the ticket. Indeed, they chose the most obvious solution.