While the country, the blogosphere, newspapers and the 24/7 news channels, are all abuzz with the news that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, I hope this diary will serve as a reminder that we can not allow this noise to distract us from one of the most important issues of this campaign: Mitt Romney and his income taxes, or more importantly, his propensity towards tax avoidance schemes.
On Friday's night show, Rachel Maddow started out by explaining how campaign ads are public information and the FCC has made it mandatory for stations across the country to make political ad buy data available online. Then she declared that the political ad that won the week, was the Priorities USA Action Ad titled "Understands" because the right spent the past week lighting their hair on fire about the ad featuring Joe Soptic, the steel worker who was fired by Bain Capital, whose wife died of cancer after they lost their health insurance.
But, here's the kicker. Priorities USA has not put the ad on television, yet. They actually spent zero dollars promoting this ad, and still the right made it the centerpiece of all their whining and bellyaching for the entire week. This was an ad put out by a SuperPAC, not the official Obama campaign. Why all the fuss? Rachel theorizes that it is because they don't want you to pay attention to the actual ad that President Obama has put on television in four swing states that Romney is scheduled to visit with his new sidekick, Paul Ryan, over the next few days.
While the right is losing its mind about this ad that is not running anywhere, so far there has not been a peep from the right about an actual Obama campaign ad that is not only out at the same time, but is actually running on television. In Florida, and in Ohio, and in Virginia, and in North Carolina ... all swing states where Mitt Romney is due to visit next week. The official Obama campaign ad actually running on actual tv in those four swing states, effectively poisoning the ground for Mitt Romney before he gets there on his next big campaign trip. And that ad, makes a rather outrageous assertion. Or at least it asks a rather a rather outrageous question.
Clip from Obama Son of Boss ad:
Video of ABC News Report: ABC News’ David Muir: Was there ever any year where you paid lower than the 13.9%?
Mitt Romney (chuckling): I haven’t calculated that. I’m happy to go back and look.
Narrator: Did Romney Pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know.
Right. You don't know. But you are suggesting that he paid nothing in taxes anyway. In an official campaign ad that is running in four swing states on tv, you're paying a lot of money to get this message out there. No reaction from the Romney campaign so far. Just as Senate majority leader Harry Reid offered no evidence, other than hearsay, for his allegation that Mitt Romney paid zero percent in taxes for a decade, the Obama campaign is offering zero evidence for at least implying the same exact thing by asking that question in this ad. The ad did go on to say this:
Narrator: Did Romney Pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know.
But we do know that Romney personally approved over $70 million in fictional losses to the IRS as part of the notorious Son of Boss tax scandal. One of the largest tax avoidance schemes in history. [See Did Romney enable a company's abusive tax shelter?, CNN, August 9, 2012]
Isn't it time for Romney to come clean?
Son of Boss. Son of Boss, was in fact, a tax avoidance scheme that the Marriott Corporation used to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes while Mitt Romney was on the Board of the Marriott Corporation. And, in fact, he was on the Audit Committee of the Board of that corporation, which means he had plenty to do with that company's finances and presumably with how that company tried to avoid paying its taxes. Marriott participated in this Son of Boss scheme to avoid taxes. They and a lot of other companies got caught doing it. For that, and for other tax avoidance schemes while Mitt Romney was on the board and responsible for exercising oversight over the company paying its taxes, the company ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the government for what it got caught doing [See "$220 million settlement with the IRS" Romney as Audit Chair Saw Marriott Son of BOSS Shelter Defy IRS, Bloomberg, February 23, 2012]. All of that is in the new ad from the Obama campaign that is running on television in the swing states, that apparently the Romney campaign does not want to talk about. They're trying to raise a stink and attract attention instead to this other thing that they found on the Internet.
It should be noted that what the Obama campaign is alleging in the new ad by putting this Son of Boss thing in this ad, it's not about Mr. Romney, personally. It's not about Mr. Romney enriching himself, at least. It's not about him personally avoiding paying his personal taxes. It's about whether or not he ethically and legally discharged his responsibilities as a member of a corporate board when that corporation was avoiding taxes. By raising that issue in this ad, the Obama campaign is adding to the evidence that Mitt Romney has spent his whole life dodging taxes; in his business life at Bain, in his business life at other companies that he was involved in, and yes, in his personal life. That's why they're doing this. They are trying to create the political impression that Mitt Romney's life has been one scheme after another to dodge taxes. That is the impact of the Marriott Corporation Son of Boss thing that is in the new Obama campaign ad that the Romney campaign is studiously avoiding and trying to distract from by talking about a web ad from a SuperPAC instead.
The Bloomberg article that Rachel references was published in February. While Rachel mentions that while serving of Marriott's Board, he also served on the audit committee, what she did not highlight was the fact that he was Chairman of the audit committee. Oh, and he was actually named after Marriott's founder.
Mitt Romney has long had close ties to hotel operator Marriott International Inc. (MAR) The candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, whose full name is Willard Mitt Romney, was named after the chain’s founder, J. Willard Marriott, a friend of his father. He joined the company’s board in 1993, and has served on it for 11 of the past 19 years, including six as chairman of the audit committee.
During Romney’s tenure as a Marriott director, the company repeatedly utilized complex tax-avoidance maneuvers, prompting at least two tangles with the Internal Revenue Service, records show. In 1994, while he headed the audit committee, Marriott used a tax shelter known to attorneys by its nickname: “Son of BOSS.”
A federal appeals court invalidated the maneuver in a 2009 ruling, siding with the U.S. Department of Justice, which called Marriott’s transaction and attempted tax benefits “fictitious,” “artificial,” “spectral,” an “illusion” and a “scheme.” Marriott had argued the plan predated government efforts to close such shelters.
Romney as Audit Chair Saw Marriott Son of BOSS Shelter Defy IRS
Romney's involvement in the Son of
Sam Boss scheme is important because as the Chairman of the Audit Committee, he either knew about it and condoned it, or he didn't know about it which reflects poorly on his business skills that are his claim to fame. Either way, it's a no win situation for Romney, and that's why he just wants this ad to be ignored. If he tries to defend or deny his involvement in the scheme he loses. Will the low-information voter understand the complexities of the Son of
Sam Boss scheme? Probably not, but they will understand that
Marriott’s transaction and attempted tax benefits “fictitious,” “artificial,” “spectral,” an “illusion” and a “scheme.”
You have to give the Obama campaign kudos for how they are rolling this information out in small, edible bites, so that voters don't get completely confused. They are building the case against Romney a little piece at a time. This is why we have to share this ad, talk about this ad, and help our family, friends, neighbors and coworkers understand this ad, and not give Romney what he wants.
Reporter: "Was there ever any year where you paid lower than the 13.9%?"
Mitt Romney: "I haven't calculated that. I'm happy to go back and look."
Voiceover: "Did Romney pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know."
"But we do know that Romney personally approved over $70 million in fictional losses to the IRS as part of the notorious Son of Boss tax scandal. One of the largest tax avoidance schemes in history."
"Isn't it time for Romney to come clean?"
The video and transcript of the entire segment of Rachel explaining why Romney doesn't want voters looking too closely at this Obama campaign ad is below the fleur-de-orange. After a commercial break, Rachel had Chris Hayes on to discuss Romney and his taxes ... an issue that should never go away. That video and transcript are also posted below the fleur-de-orange and well worth watching or reading in its entirety because Rachel and Chris provide solid reasons for continuing to demand that Mitt Romney release his tax returns.
Whew! This diary is already quite long, but I do want to draw your attention to one more thing, and that is Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this past Thursday night. Yes, Jon took the bait from the Romney campaign and talked about the ad that Republicans are setting their hair on fire over, but he does it in such a way to hilariously point out how ridiculous they are being about it and making things even worse. And it helps point out that the purpose of the ad was to demonstrate the consequences that occurred in peoples lives after Mitt Romney and Bain Capital came to town, and how the impact is still being felt years later. The clips are well worth watching for a bit of laughter while keeping in mind that Jon Stewart is responsible for informing and educating the important younger voter demographic.
I didn't transcribe these videos beacuse BruinKid has already done it. They transcriptions are available here.
Happy Friday. If you want to buy a political ad on tv, legally speaking, the station that you want to buy the ad on; they have to give you their lowest advertising rates for airing your ad. Advertising rates on good stations in big tv markets are still not cheap, even if you're getting the cheapest rate, but by law, you have to get the lowest rate for airing a political ad. And that's because there is a public interest in making sure political speech can compete with commercial speech, and we can all learn about the issues and the candidates in forthcoming elections. Because there is a public interest at stake; because political advertising is regulated in a different way than commercial advertising, information about political ad buys on tv is public information. You have a right to know. You have a right to know who is spending how much money to put what ads on your tv station.
Until recently, though, if you wanted to get that information, you had to physically go down to the office of your local tv station and ask them to see the physical papers in something called the "public file." You could copy that information down, and then presumably, you could go to all the other tv stations in your tv market to get that same information. You could aggregate that information and home, and then try to understand what was going on in your media market in terms of political advertising for that day.
I mean, technically, the information is publicly available, and you have a right to know it, but realistically there was no real way to get your hands on it in a useful way. Well, after some very effective prodding on this issue from the investigative news outfit, ProPublica, the FCC decided they were going to fix that problem this year, which is kind of great if you're interested in getting your hands on this data. Now in the top 50 U.S. media markets, all of the affiliates of all of the major networks, have to post online basic information about who is paying how much money to put political ads on those stations. [see FCC votes to require online disclosure of political ad spending, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2012 ]
So, for example, now we know without having to drive to WSYX in Columbus, Ohio, and having to sweet talk the receptionist there, and have a lot of dimes ready for the copy machine ... now we know that over the course of one week, the Koch brothers' astroturfy, corporate funded, right wing group, Americans for Prosperity ... they bought 40 separate ads to run on just that one station in just that one week. Neat. [see FCC Database Creates Headaches for TV Stations in Battlegrounds, Roll Call, August 10, 2012]
For that one week, on that one station, in that one media market in Columbus, Ohio, in that one swing state, the Koch brothers group dropped $23,000 running those ads [see TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files]. It makes you appreciate ... when you learn that, it makes you appreciate where all those millions go. Right? In politics. I mean, however much it costs you to make a political ad, it's really the cost of paying to put it on tv in all these media markets, in all of these different states all across the country, that is where the bills really add up.
So if you want to know who leveraged the best week in presidential campaigning this week. Who made the biggest political impact while spending the least amount of money to do it. It is definitely no contest. It's the pro-Obama SuperPAC, Priorities USA. It's not just the Romney campaign out raising the Obama campaign, which they are doing month after month now. The SuperPAC money on the right is absolutely swamping the amount of SuperPAC money there is on the left. When we looked at it on this show a month ago, Republican versus Democratic SuperPAC money looked sort of like this. That was the ratio in terms of the amount of money on both sides. My hunch is that it's gotten even worse since we looked at it last month.
But, Priorities USA, the pro-OBama SuperPAC, they are a very small fish in the big money pond. And this week, they were nevertheless able to be the small fish that ate everything else in the pond. They won the week. Because their ad showing a laid-off steel worker from a plant that was shut down by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, that ad not only dominated the political discussion this week, but it earned just a furious right wing freakout reaction. The Romney campaign ceding the political press today with multiple stories about how upset they are about this ad, and how horrible this ad is. The Romney campaign spokesman outdoing even his own typical hyperbole at Romney campaign headquarters today, telling reporters specifically about this ad, quote I don't think a world champion limbo dancer could get any lower than the Obama campaign right now. He accused the president of and his allies of diminish[ing] the office of the president and insult[ing] the American people [see Romney aide Fehrnstrom calls Obama campaign lower than a ‘champion limbo dancer’, The Washington Post, August 10, 2012].
The Romney campaign even put out their own rebuttal advertisement, saying the SuperPAC ad on the other side was a terrible, terrible, terrible ad. Even the Karl Rove Crossroads SuperPAC put out their own ad responding to it calling it terrible, terrible, terrible. Here's the amazing, though, about this full-scale, Code-Red, all personnel freakout over this Priorities USA ad dominating this week in politics. Priorities USA did not air it anywhere. It is not running on television.
So, sure it cost them something to make this ad, but this is how much they have spent to run it. Zero. Zero. And while that means the chronically underfunded Obama-SuperPAC is getting some really good bang for its buck, bang for no bucks in this case, in context the freakout on the right about this ad is even weirder. Because while the Romney campaign, and all the pro-Romney outsider groups, are lighting their hair on fire and are trying to get as much media attention as they can, criticizing this Priories USA ad; this third-party, outside group, non-campaign ad about this steel worker and his wife dying of cancer after they lost their health insurance.
While the right is losing its mind about this ad that is not running anywhere, so far there has not been a peep from the right about an actual Obama campaign ad that is not only out at the same time, but is actually running on television. In Florida, and in Ohio, and in Virginia, and in North Carolina ... all swing states where Mitt Romney is due to visit next week. The official Obama campaign ad actually running on actual tv in those four swing states, effectively poisoning the ground for Mitt Romney before he gets there on his next big campaign trip. And that ad, makes a rather outrageous assertion. Or at least it asks a rather a rather outrageous question.
Clip from Obama Son of Boss ad:
Video of ABC News Report: ABC News’ David Muir: Was there ever any year where you paid lower than the 13.9%?
Mitt Romney (chuckling): I haven’t calculated that. I’m happy to go back and look.
Narrator: Did Romney Pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know.
Right. You don't know. But you are suggesting that he paid nothing in taxes anyway. In an official campaign ad that is running in four swing states on tv, you're paying a lot of money to get this message out there. No reaction from the Romney campaign so far. Just as Senate majority leader Harry Reid offered no evidence, other than hearsay, for his allegation that Mitt Romney paid zero percent in taxes for a decade, the Obama campaign is offering zero evidence for at least implying the same exact thing by asking that question in this ad. The ad did go on to say this:
Narrator: Did Romney Pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know.
But we do know that Romney personally approved over $70 million in fictional losses to the IRS as part of the notorious Son of Boss tax scandal. One of the largest tax avoidance schemes in history. [See Did Romney enable a company's abusive tax shelter?, CNN, August 9, 2012]
Isn't it time for Romney to come clean?
Son of Boss. Son of Boss, was in fact, a tax avoidance scheme that the Marriott Corporation used to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes while Mitt Romney was on the Board of the Marriott Corporation. And, in fact, he was on the Audit Committee of the Board of that corporation, which means he had plenty to do with that company's finances and presumably with how that company tried to avoid paying its taxes. Marriott participated in this Son of Boss scheme to avoid taxes. They and a lot of other companies got caught doing it. For that, and for other tax avoidance schemes while Mitt Romney was on the board and responsible for exercising oversight over the company paying its taxes, the company ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the government for what it got caught doing [See "$220 million settlement with the IRS" Romney as Audit Chair Saw Marriott Son of BOSS Shelter Defy IRS, Bloomberg, February 23, 2012]. All of that is in the new ad from the Obama campaign that is running on television in the swing states, that apparently the Romney campaign does not want to talk about. They're trying to raise a stink and attract attention instead to this other thing that they found on the Internet.
It should be noted that what the Obama campaign is alleging in the new ad by putting this Son of Boss thing in this ad, it's not about Mr. Romney, personally. It's not about Mr. Romney enriching himself, at least. It's not about him personally avoiding paying his personal taxes. It's about whether or not he ethically and legally discharged his responsibilities as a member of a corporate board when that corporation was avoiding taxes. By raising that issue in this ad, the Obama campaign is adding to the evidence that Mitt Romney has spent his whole life dodging taxes; in his business life at Bain, in his business life at other companies that he was involved in, and yes, in his personal life. That's why they're doing this. They are trying to create the political impression that Mitt Romney's life has been one scheme after another to dodge taxes. That is the impact of the Marriott Corporation Son of Boss thing that is in the new Obama campaign ad that the Romney campaign is studiously avoiding and trying to distract from by talking about a web ad from a SuperPAC instead.
That same issue, that idea of Mitt Romney as a chronic tax avoider, is also the importance of the front page story about Mitt Romney's finances that runs in The New York Times today. This is information, this story is based on information not from his tax return which we have not seen, but instead from his investment disclosures, his financial disclosures that he legally had to make as a candidate. Among all the other sources of income that Mr. Romney has declared, among all those other things he's done to make money, there's this house that you see right there. It's a house in Missouri City, Texas. And the Missouri City, Texas, couple who lives in this house on Gentle Bend Drive in Missouri City, every month they write Mitt Romney, personally, a check for $600. They don't have their mortgage on this house through a bank. There mortgage is with Mitt Romney, personally. He is their mortgage provider. He's like Fanny Mitt. As recently as two months ago, they refinanced with him. I mean they didn't refinance with a bank. They refinanced with Mitt Romney, personally, while he was running for president. They send their personal checks written out to him as a person. Why is Mitt Romney this one couple's mortgage lender? Well, apparently, it dates back to an investment scheme that he got involved with of five rental homes back in the eighties in Texas. Why would a high-flying Boston, future private equity financier, end up personally mortgaging rental homes in Texas? Ah, it's the tax avoidance scheme, quote Mr. Romney jumped into a speculative deal geared toward "affluent free enterprise capitalists who desire a quality investment with tax shelter benefits," according to a prospectus. The guy who set up this deal for him with these houses in Texas describes it as a, quote "marvelous scheme". A scheme allowing investors to write off depreciation and mortgage interest on their taxes without risking their own money. [See In Real Estate Deal, Romney Made His Loss a Couple’s Gain, The New York Times, August 9, 2012]
This is a weird little detail in his finances. A couple that he does not know in Texas sends their monthly mortgage check to him. Because of a tax avoidance scheme he got involved in in the 1980s. The Son of Boss thing for the corporation that Mitt Romney was on the board of that turns up in the new Obama campaign ad, that too was a tax avoidance scheme. A tax avoidance scheme was also at the heart of a controversy over Mitt Romney's residence when he ran for governor in Massachusetts, which we've reported on a lot of the last couple of weeks [see here and here]. Mr. Romney for political reasons, desperately wanted to be seen as a Massachusetts resident, even though his taxes showed him declaring his primary residence in Deer Valley, Utah. In what he described to the The Deseret News as a tax avoidance scheme [see "But Romney has declared his Deer Valley home his primary residence for tax purposes." Is governor's mansion in Romney's future?, The Deseret News, April 11, 2000].
Honestly, for a guy running on his financial wizardry, right; his financial background. For a guy who is running on that, we know next to nothing about Mr. Romney's actual financial background. But what we do know about his financial background is essentially just a string of tax avoidance schemes. I mean even the Olypmics thing. With the Olympics winding down over the next few days, we are left to ponder the fate of poor Rafalca. Rafalca? Yes, Rafalca. The Romney dressage horse. The Romney dressage horse did not medal in the London Olympics, but Rafalca's fame will forever be enshrined as an attempted $77,000 tax write-off on Mitt Romney's tax returns. Even his family's multimillion dollar horse ballet hobby, when it turns up in Mitt Romney's financial records, turns up as a tax avoidance scheme. This stuff adds up. I mean, financially, I'm sure it adds up. If you talk to really, really rich people about other really, really rich people, the rich people they envy, they say, read the tax code for fun. That's how you get really rich. I'm sure financially, pursuing this as a life-long habit adds up, but politically it is adding up too. Harry Reid has still offered no evidence for his hearsay accusation that Mr. Romney found ways to avoid paying taxes at all for ten years, and that's why he won't release his tax returns. But while that unsupported allegation lingers in the political atmosphere, it is also true that all of the real evidence we do have of Mr. Romney's financial history is evidence of him using exotic, aggressive, and in the case of this Son of Boss thing, occasionally illegal tactics to avoid taxes.
Tax avoidance ... as a life long hobby. Since Harry Reid first made his unsupported hearsay allegation about Mr. Romney not paying taxes for a decade, no evidence has emerged to disprove that allegation. And the only evidence that has emerged, frankly, points the other way. And so the issue is not going away, and Harry Reid is making sure it's not going away. One of his staffers last night continuing to stoke the fire by asserting, and then partially retracting, more tantalizing details about the supposed source of the hearsay [See Harry Reid's Mitt Romney Tax Source A Republican, Says Top Aide (UPDATE), The Huffington Post, August 9, 2012].
Nate Silver of The New York Times tweeted today about the fact that all of these questions and the few pieces of evidence that we've got about Mitt Romney's taxes and his finances are in a quantitatively measurable way leading people, in general, to ask more questions about Mitt Romney's taxes; to wonder about it; to try to find out more. See the red line there? See the red line there, that you see? The red line represents Google searches over the past few months about Romney and Bain Capital. You can see as the red line drops, that means those searches have tailed off over recent weeks. But look at what has taken its place. The blue line? Searches about Romney and taxes, just skyrocketing since the end of July. That sort of interest is translating into political pressure, even on the Republican side.
In an interview with Greg Sargent at The Washington Post today, John Huntsman's dad, John Huntsman, Sr., who is one of Romney's biggest, longtime supporters. John Huntsman, Sr., watered down rumors today that he was Harry Reid's source on the Mitt Romney didn't taxes for ten years allegations. But, Mr. Huntsman, nevertheless told Greg Sargent this, quote I feel very badly that Mitt won't release his taxes and won't be fair with the American people ... Mr. Romney ought to square with the American people and release his taxes like any other candidate ... I've supported Mitt all along. I wish him well. But I do think he should release his income taxes [see Jon Huntsman Sr., longtime Romney backer, calls on him to release tax returns, The Washington Post, August 10, 2012]. So says one of Mr. Romney's biggest supports. The Romney campaign may not want to talk about it. They may want to talk about anything other than this, but this story just keeps getting bigger and not smaller. Chris Hayes joins us in just a moment.
Commercial break, before the remainder of this segment.
Clip from Obama Son of Boss ad:
Video of ABC News Report: ABC News’ David Muir: Was there ever any year where you paid lower than the 13.9%?
Mitt Romney (chuckling): I haven’t calculated that. I’m happy to go back and look.
Narrator: Did Romney Pay 10% in taxes? 5%? Zero? We don't know.
Right. You don't know. Nevertheless, (giggling) that's the new ad from the Obama campaign that is running in four swing states right now. It suggests that Mr. Romney may have paid zero percent in taxes at some unspecified point. You would expect the Romney campaign to set its hair on fire over an ad like that, but the Romney campaign, curiously, is not making much of a peep at all about that ad, even as it runs on tv in four important swing states. And even as they raise holy heck complaining about other unrelated anti-Romney ads. Joining us now is the host of MSNBC's weekend morning show, Up with Chris Hayes, he's also the author of Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy. Mr Hayes, it is good to see you.
CH: It is wonderful to see you.
RM: Our friend, Chuck Todd, our colleague here, had an interview ...
CH: Yes he did.
RM: ... with Mitt Romney today, in which Mr. Romney said, he wanted his business record to be off limits in the campaign. How did this happen? Wasn't it going to be businessman versus Obama?
CH: The entire argument. I mean, he got up at a primary, at primary debate after primary debate, in terms of his comparative advantage against other people in the Republican field. Right? When he was trying to distinguish himself against the lifelong politicians such as Rick Perry, or other folks that he was competing with, Newt Gingrich, etc. That was his comparative advantage there. And then when he got in the general election, his comparative advantage was this is someone who doesn't know how ... the argument in one sentence was, Barack Obama has never been in the private sector, doesn't know how to create jobs; I'm in the private sector, I know how to create jobs. It's just preposterous to now turn around and say that the entire justification for the entirety of why you're running for President of the United States was that you had this private sector experience, is now out of bounds.
RM: Do you think that it is fair to relate his personal financial history, in terms of tax avoidance and other issues that have been raised by the Obama campaign very directly now, to his experience as a business leader who through his business experience can lead the country into a brighter economic future? Are those things closely enough, closely related enough that the Obama campaign can rebut this assertion from Mitt Romney that his business career, at least his tax returns, are irrelevant to his political future?
CH: Oh look, here's what I think is fair. I think the fact that what Mitt Romney is doing, this is the key point here, Mitt Romney's experience with the American tax system isn't just about Mitt Romney. It's actually a deep and profound point. Not just about tax policy in this country. Not just about whether the rich pay taxes and how they do or don't pay taxes. But about the entire rigged game that is the American social system right now, in which people with a lot of money are able to subvert the rules to benefit themselves in ways that people making 40,000 and 60,000 and 80,000 and 100,000 dollars a year, or 10,000 dollars a year, are not able to. That is a fundamental aspect of the American experience right now and Mitt Romney has thrown in his lot with the fellow plutocrats in both policy, in how he has defended his activities and in his actual behavior such as we have seen that he has revealed. That is a deep, profound, substantive point. It is a profound, substantive point about whether the wealthy are going to be taxed, how they're going to be taxed, whether we have a state that's possible, that has a capability of extracting revenue from people at the top? All of that is fair game, and also substantive. So yes, I think it's fair.
RM: And he has put himself in an ideological spot that would indicate a real difference between Republicans that have gone before him, specifically, his father. We've talked about this before on this show and I feel like it hasn't really spread as a broader idea in terms of a discussion here about his taxes, but I think it's really important. Mitt Romney's dad not only put out a lot of years of tax returns and said one ought to, and famously said that you can't just put out one year, it might be done just for show, with his son having put out just one year. That's obviously a direct parallel. But the other parallel is that when Mr. Romney's taxes, the senior Mr. Romney's taxes, were released, the reporter who wrote a book about that experience noted that there were a lot of places where he could have taken tax breaks that he did not take. And he didn't do it because he didn't like the way it would look when he was going to be running for president. Mr. Romney, the younger, now says if I paid a dollar more in taxes then I legally had to, that should disqualify me from being president.
CH: Right. That is profound about ... That says two things. There are two aspects of George Romney's tax returns that were fascinating. One were the individual choices he made not to take the exemptions he could, and two, how much the man paid in taxes. Our top marginal tax rate at the time was 90%. The amount that he paid, as an effective rate was 35, 36%. We're talking about 14 or 15% for Mitt Romney. And here's the thing. Those rules about taxation changed the norms of how elites comport themselves and there is a connection between those two things.
RM: Yes.
CH: And so in that sense, Mitt Romney is remarkably representative, not just of who Mitt Romney is as a person, but actually of an entire ruling class, frankly, that has loosened itself from the bounds of a kind of norm of good conduct, of probabty, of following the law in its intent and spirit and not just its [inaudible].
RM: And in seeing own behavior as rationally related to the health of the country.
CH: Absolutely.
RM: I will say that I would like this discussion, those things that you just said in this discussion we just had, to implicitly be the rebuttal to anybody who says the tax returns discussion is not substantive and a distraction. It's absolutely about the central economic issues of the campaign.
CH: Absolutely. This is the big question.
RM: Chris Hayes, the host of Up with Chris Hayes, which is back tomorrow?
CH: We are back tomorrow at eight a.m.
RM: Back tomorrow, eight a.m. Eastern. Chris' new book is called Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy, and it's great. Get some sleep sir. Thank you.
CH: Thank you.