Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I have previously posted about Willard "Mittens" Romney's trial testimony in Massachusetts in 2002 in which he claimed to have had seven years of continuous residency in Massachusetts, a requirement to run for office in that state.
Under pressure from attorneys, Romney admitted that he paid income taxes in Utah while he was living there, but he "retroactively" filed amended income tax returns for the state of Massachusetts. (I have got to get me one of those hot tub time machines!)
Remarkably, this legal fiction was good enough for the trial court to allow him tu run for governor, to which he was elected.
In other words, Romney lied about his taxes previously, and he manipulated the system to gain ballot access for his personal gain. There is one set of rules for the wealthy elite ruling class, and one set of rules for everyone else. Romney is banking on it.
The Rachel Maddow Show aired two segments last week on Romney's Utah-Massachusetts tax lie in 2002. Here is a report from Raw Story. Maddow: Romney’s history shows he’s willing to lie about his taxes:
Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow said that presumptive Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has, if precedent is any guide, given us no reason to take his word on the subject of his refusal to disclose his tax returns. In fact, he has given voters rather the opposite.
What Maddow finds baffling, however, is the media’s strangely blind eye toward Romney’s public record. She called a “willful resistance to looking back at what Mitt Romney has done in public life in the past.”
On Friday, Jim Messina, manager of the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama, made a public statement to the Romney campaign saying that if they would just release five years of tax returns, from 2007 to 2012, the Obama campaign would not ask for anything further. The Romney camp declined the offer.
Romney said that when he looked back over his tax returns from the last ten years, he found that he had never paid less than 13 percent of his earnings and that we’re just going to have to trust him on that. However, Maddow said, in 2002 when Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, it was demanded of him that he release tax returns to demonstrate a residency in that state of at least seven years. Romney refused and insisted that the public take his word for it.
Eventually it came out that Romney had lied. He was forced to pay Massachusetts taxes retroactively, because when he said that the public would have to take his word that he had paid taxes for seven years as a Massachusetts resident, it simply wasn’t true.
Now he wants us to take his word that he has paid at least 13 percent of his massive income over the last 10 years in taxes. Why should we take him at face value? He has demonstrated a willingness to prevaricate on this very subject in his career as a public figure.
“The precedent for trusting them on this,” Maddow said, “is not good.”
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Here is the earlier segment from Thursday night's show.
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