Mitt Romney has told more lies in the last year and a half than any American candidate for any office in history. He is quite simply the most dishonest person ever to run for any office of any kind in America. You could not find a compulsive liar who has told more lies than Mitt Romney in the last eighteen months.
Every single day he goes out and tells whoppers, and very often the inspiration for the whopper is to misrepresent his immediate environment or to lie about what he said yesterday, when he was lying about the day before.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#49576203
The result, if he is elected, will be national calamity. Our Founding Fathers understood that bad people can go into politics, which is why they tried to limit power. We have survived many self-serving demagogues, crooks, and liars, and even people with delusions, although we are remarkably lucky that our presidents before have had at least an idea of a public good apart from what they could steal. But we have never tested the system with such a thoroughgoing evil before. Even George W. Bush had the saving grace of sloth, and an unwillingness to use WMD except in depleted uranium weapons. Romney has a lot more energy than Bush, and no moral limits at all.
Here's the danger part: our Republic used to be so large that people could do unspeakable things in one section (slavery, Jim Crow, genocide, corporate corruption), but countervailing centers of power would contest and (eventually) neutralize them. That's not happening anymore. The U.S. has never been larger in population and diversity, but it has never been smaller in concentration of political, economic, and communications power. All Americans are getting the news from the Associated Press, controlled by Republicans, and from a limited number of television outlets, controlled by Republicans. Their credit is being controlled by a few companies and their creditors are a few banks. Their votes are being counted by a small number of companies, all Republican. There is no foreseeable rebellion that could take on the U.S. military, and no sense that organization would split into different factions. Wealth has never been more concentrated, or more concentrated in fewer locations. There are no rich guys in Alabama or Nevada who could organize to launch a populist assault on Wall Street. If the New Yorkers don't do it, nobody will, which is why Occupy Wall Street has caused such an extreme vindictive response.
The result is that in power centers our BIG republic has become a small one. Our Founding Fathers rightly saw that small republics had a harder time remaining republics, and that, conversely, Republics could be too big.. James Madison used the former as a principal reason for abandoning the Articles of Confederation for a stronger Federal Union. When Republics grow too big, he said on the other hand, "The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained, and the less difficult to be counterfeited." National Gazette Dec. 19, 1791. We see that peril every day when we are told to take on faith news reporters' assertions about the true beliefs of 300 million Americans.
If Romney is elected, domestic enemies will likely be assassinated, since Congress gave Bush that power and never repealed it. Nuclear weapons will possibly be used under trivial pretexts, since only the moral character of the president has prevented that happening since 1945. The economy will sputter and fail. You cannot elect Mitt Romney president without consequences. There have been bad liars as president, and one reason the system is so broken today is that the American people have had such a high tolerance for them. Mitt Romney, though, is not like any other politician in American history, even George W. Bush. Mitt Romney can justify anything to himself. He's a perfect storm of magical thinking, manic energy, and the challenged masculinity and bullying nature of the spoiled rich kid.
Every day, new dirt on Romney emerges.
He set up a trust with a million dollars of shares that would go to the Mormon church on his death. When that trust buys and sell shares under his management they pay no taxes. Meanwhile, every year the trust pays Romney 8% of its assets. Since he is not managing the trust to make money, Romney is running it down, effectively taking back his "charitable donation." Essentially, it was a way to trade shares but avoid tax. Lots of rich people did it, which is why the loophole was tightened by Congress, but not for trusts already created, like Romney's. It was always and obviously unethical, though, especially as Romney probably included the original deferred gift as satisfying his church tithe. Romney probably doesn't do his own taxes, but he certainly agrees with principle of going to any length to cut taxes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-29/romney-avoids-taxes-via-loophole-cutting-mormon-donations.html
An accountant has found pretty strong smelling evidence that Romney actually had a Net Loss, not Net Income, in tax year 2009, and that his statement about paying 14% tax is either 1) a lie; or 2) including other taxes such as foreign income taxes; or 3) likeliest of all, Romney is saying paying negative tax on negative income is still positive 14%, even though the public would interpret that as a man worth at least $250 million paying no tax in 2009.
Moreover, admitting a Net Loss in 2009 would puncture his supposed business genius. He might have had losses related to some Madoff type investment, which would make him look gullible. If, in contrast, he got there by writing off the money he loaned his 2008 campaign, people would say, you know it shouldn't reduce your taxes that you wanted to be president so badly that you spent $40 million on it.
It also raises the question of Romney's reason for running for president. Perhaps his plans are so vague and his lying is so obvious because he never intended to be president, and all along he's just done it so he can write off what he spent against taxes. I don't think that's true: I think he's been burning all his life with a desire to be president. But you can't prove it by his actions, and still less by his tax returns.
Romney received exactly $1 back on his federal return for 2010 for creating American jobs, and his tax returns show he has substantially more overseas investments than has been admitted to in his campaign disclosure forms.
http://www.accountingtoday.com/ato_issues/26_10/A-reaction-to-the-Romney-tax-return-64133-1.html
I don't think the public care if Romney is a tax cheat. What they should care about is that he can't tell the truth about anything, which means he has no respect for the public's opinion of him.
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