Please Make It Stop

by Walter Brasch

      Pennsylvania, which had been a no-contest state in presidential primaries because of its late balloting, is a now a swing state with less than a week until the election. Just about every voter by now has received dozens of robocalls, e-mails, letters, postcards, and exposure to almost-uncountable TV, digital, satellite, and social media ads. Most are attack ads, with similar messages.

      The ads focus upon homeland security, taxes, immigration, pro-life/pro-choice, and bringing jobs back to America. The conservatives have thrown in the phrase “liberal extremists” in many of their ads in an effort to shock all America to believe that liberals are somehow tied to Muslim extremists. The liberals are pushing an agenda that defines the conservatives as greedy plutocrats who have little thought for the middle class. This election, from local offices to the presidency may be the dirtiest since 1800 when Thomas Jefferson challenged John Adams.

      Donald Trump, who has outsourced much of his clothing line and construction materials, now says if president he will bring jobs back to America, stop illegal immigration, defeat Isis, repeal Obamacare, lower taxes for families while miraculously raising the budget for defense, and perform myriad miracle acts that are not part of a president’s constitutional responsibility.

      On his march to the presidency, Trump has focused upon Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, a scandal that isn’t one. Congressional hearings and the FBI have cleared her; innumerable times, Trump has continued to attack her. Clinton has already apologized for using a personal e-mail server during her four years as secretary of state. What turned up among more than 30,000 e-mails is about 55 e-mails that received a “confidential” tag, the lowest of three classifications, with another 55 receiving “secret” or “top secret” classification. As a cabinet officer, and fourth in line of succession, she had the right to classify any message. A few of the messages came from other agencies. About 2,100 messages were classified retroactively.

      Clinton, still ahead in numerous polls, has attacked Trump for his crude behavior. One of her TV ads, which penetrates

 almost every TV show, is a fast-paced collage of his many comments; among them, Trump mocks a disabled reporter, uses obscene language, and treats women as chattel.

      Both candidates call each other unfit to be president, with Clinton asking voters if they really want Trump to be the person in charge of unleashing the nuclear arsenal, and Trump asking voters if they want a corrupt liar in the White House. Trump has also played upon Clinton’s 30 years of public service, linking her as an insider and him as an outsider to Washington, D.C. politics. The “outsider” label has been resonating with voters at all levels of the election campaigns as voters believe they are outsiders, alienated to government, and are willing to be led by insiders who claim to be outsiders.

      The cost of airing ads by both candidates for the presidency and members of Congress is more than $4 billion, and that doesn’t include the cost of producing them. More than $600 million, spread among all major Democratic and Republican candidates for the presidency, has been spent on broadcast TV ads, according to Borrell Associates.  During the past 21 weeks, Clinton has spent about $211 million on broadcast TV ads; Trump has spent about $74 million, according to data compiled by BloombergPolitics. However, Trump has used both Twitter and free TV time, due to outrageous statements, to equal Clinton’s campaign. During the final week prior to the election, Trump will spend $25 million in broadcast TV ads. Clinton and Trump have each secured $5 million in ad time for Pennsylvania TV stations during the final week. The Trump totals don’t include a $3 million TV ad buy from the NRA, which stokes the fire of fear that Clinton, if elected president, will violate the Second Amendment and take guns away from civilians.

      By Tuesday’s election, it will be doubtful that either Clinton or Trump will know how many ads were placed by their campaigns or by SuperPACs on their behalf that aired on broadcast television.

      In the race for senate from Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey and Katie McGinty have each attacked the other for being millionaires.

      With McGinty it’s a case of benefitting from going from business to government, where she was the Department of Environment Protection administrator, back to the energy business, back to government where she was Gov. Tom Wolf’s chief of staff, and then to membership on the boards of energy firms she had previously regulated. Toomey also attacked her for tossing about $2.8 million of state funds to two non-profit organizations that her husband is an advisor.

      With Toomey, the attacks are because he was a stock broker who went into politics, favors Wall Street, and owned a bank that foreclosed on numerous customers. McGinty’s ads stress her blue-collar family of 12, emphasizing that her mother was a restaurant hostess and her father was a police officer.

      The two candidates’ campaign committees and their SuperPACs have spent more than $55 million to be elected to the Senate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; it’s a job that pays $174,000 a year.

      There is one reality in all the advertising— negative ads generally don’t work, and exist only to reinforce a candidate’s base of support.

      [Dr. Brasch, who has covered politics and government for four decades, is author of Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit.]

     

      

Romney Tax Return Provides a Window to His Soul

by Walter Brasch

            When a craven of buffoons and bigots disguised in the bodies of Birthers figured that anyone with dark skin and a foreign name had to be born outside the U.S., Barack Obama provided a birth certificate. Not just the usual “short form,” but a state-certified copy of the “long form” that detailed he was born in Hawaii, which some birthers apparently think is a foreign territory, to a mother who was a natural-born U.S. citizen.  

            That, of course, was not enough for the whackadoodles who claimed, among other things, that the President’s birth certificate was altered or forged. All of their claims have been debunked by scientific evidence. Of course, they produced their own poorly-forged birth certificate that they said “proved” President Obama was born in Kenya.

            In February, billionaire Donald (Look-at-How-Wonderful I-Am) Trump, an unabashed Birther, stood next to multi-millionaire Mitt Romney in a Las Vegas casino and endorsed him for the Republican nomination. A few months earlier, Trump had gotten significant face-time in the media while flirting with the idea of running for the presidency while whining about Romney. “He’d buy companies. He’d close companies. He’d get rid of jobs,” Trump crowed. But now, with Romney running well ahead in the primary contests, Trump was trying to be relevant and stay in the political spotlight. Romney, for his part, smiled and said nothing to suggest that Trump could be wrong about pursuing the birther argument. Trying to have everyone like him, one of the most unlikable presidential candidates refused to repudiate Trump’s birther views.

            Unlike Barack Obama, Mitt Romney does have a secret. This one is buried within what he either did or did not report to the IRS.

            It’s traditional, but not required, that presidential nominees release copies of their tax returns. Most people have no idea how to read a tax return, especially one with dozens of amendments, filings, and schedules. But, the posting of the returns is a form of trust.

            Barack Obama has released his returns. Romney’s father, George, former governor of Michigan and presidential candidate in 1968, released 12 years, thus setting a standard for future presidential candidates.

            At first the flip-flopping Romney said he didn’t plan to release the returns. Then he said, “Maybe.” Then he declared he’d release only the previous two years’ returns. Then he said that because of the complexity of the return, he filed for an extension from the IRS so he could file after the April 15 deadline for the 2011 return. Then this past week before a fundraiser he said he “never paid less than 13 percent. . . . So I paid taxes every single year.” He expected us just to believe him. He never defined whether that was just income taxes, or included all taxes paid, including social security, local, and state taxes, thus making the federal income tax even lower.

            But, let’s pretend he meant income taxes. Even at 13 percent, it’s one of the lowest tax rates. In 2011, Romney had a gross income of about $21 million, according to a partial return Romney finally allowed to be posted. The effective tax rate for persons with incomes over $1 million, according to the Tax Foundation, averages about 25 percent.

            But, most of Ann and Mitt Romney’s reported income in 2011 was based on capital gains. In 2003, the Bush–Cheney administration had lowered capital gains taxes to only 15 percent, primarily benefitting the wealthy. If the Romneys did not take most of their money from investment capital, their tax bracket would be 35 percent.
            There are a number of questions that need to be answered.

            The first questions are about that extension for the 2011 taxes. With a fleet of lawyers and accountants, why did the Romneys need at least a five month extension to file a return? Was it to massage the data for public consumption? Equally important, if he needed this extension to file a personal income tax return, what does that say about his ability to govern a nation with a $2.3 trillion budget?

            Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints tithe to the church. The Romneys acknowledge donating $2.5 million in cash to the church in 2011. Were they overly generous? Or, does that contribution reflect that the Romneys’ income may have been about $25 million. If that is the case, where did the rest go? Ann Romney told NBC News, “We also give 10% of our income to charity.” According to a partial return in 2011, the Romneys claim they donated about $4 million to charity. If Ann Romney is a accurate, that would be a $40 million income, twice what is claimed.

            Why Romney won’t release tax returns prior to 2010 may be because secrets are buried in 2009. According to BuzzFlash’s Mark Karlin, citing Lawrence O’Donnell’s pointed queries, “Romney may have taken advantage of a 2009 IRS amnesty period to disclose hidden income in offshore accounts but subject to US taxation. The amnesty offer allowed such persons to escape potential criminal prosecution for tax evasion.” It would be nice to know how much income was diverted to off-shore accounts in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Switzerland, and into various tax-shelters the average American has no idea even exist.
            That leads to an obvious question. How much of the Romneys’ income over the past decade, not just the two years when he was planning to run for president, had deductions that might be questionable to the average person who doesn’t have lawyers and accountants on retainer? Certainly, taking a $77,000 write-off in 2010 for a show horse isn’t something the average American can do. Working with an onerous tax code, loaded with myriad special interest loopholes, the Romneys know how to take everything wealthy Americans are entitled to receive. It may be legal, but is it ethical?

            Frankly, it doesn’t make much difference how much Romney earned, how he earned it, what he did with it, or how he and some extremely bright tax advisors took advantage of the system created by lobbyists and Congress. What does matter is that by stonewalling, obfuscating, and refusing to give full disclosure, he appears to have something to hide. And upon that—and that alone—the people and the media need to pursue why Romney is reluctant to release financial data. It’s a matter not of how rich he is, but a matter of trust and a window into his soul.

            [Walter Brasch has been covering local, state, and presidential political races for almost four decades. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed journalistic novel, Before the First Snow, which looks at the American counter-culture and media of the ’60s as a base to understand today’s social issues.]