Thursday, September 06, 2012

Publish And Bedamned

"Hackers,*" the TV newsies chortled this morning, "have stolen (???) Mitt Romney's income tax returns and are holding them for One Million Dollars ransom."

C'mon, Mitt, man up. Tell 'em to go ahead and publish -- heck, beat them to the punch and release the returns yourself, only with even more data. It's just income taxes; people already know you've made heaps of money.

Besides, we have one candidate who tiptoes around, sealing up records in palm-sweating trepidation lest anyone learn he ever went by "Barry," claimed not to be from here, and/or had less-than-perfect grades. Don't be that guy, Mitt, it just looks silly.

Speaking of silly, turns out there's more than one tiptoe-er: we have another guy runnin' for The Worst Job On The Planet who's playing coy about his tax returns: Gary Johnson of the LP.

How low have we sunk, that earning a splendiferously good living is something to hide? Do voters really go into the booth thinking, "Oh, screw them successful guys, I want a schmuck that hasn't done much better than me tryin' to do the day-to-day running of the fed.gov." Gads.
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* Dammit, that's not what the word meant; it used to be neutral at worst, way back when a "computer" was a series of huge great cabinets locked in an air-conditioned basement, lorded over by a grad student or oddball accountant sitting at a console just like at NASA. "Crackers" were the guys who grabbed data and Did Bad Things with it. Hackers just snuck around like good campers, learning all the paths, seeing the scenic wonders and "taking nothing but pictures" and leaving not even footprints; they were the rare and special folk who could hack code. That word got evil fast, once the stupid laid hold of it.

13 comments:

Kip Condor said...

Link fail.

Dale W said...

I wonder if it has occured to the "slack jawed mouth breathers" that the IRS has probably scrutinized those returns pretty closely...

Anyone as risk adverse as Mittens was while running Bain isn't going to go "Wesley Snipes" about his taxes.

- No one can fault a guy for using whatever legal tax strategies might be available.
- Those "loop-holes" they cry about were voted into law by Congress (of which both Barry and VP clueless were/are members.
- I wish I had the problem of how to shield 250 Million from parasites and underachievers.

Anonymous said...

this link is broken: another guy runnin' for The Worst Job On The Planet who's playing coy about his tax returns.

Steve_in_CA

Robert Fowler said...

To bad the "hackers" can't get Barry's college transcripts.

Anonymous said...

What Robert Fowler said...
AND, his Bar records, Social Security records, and employment records!
WAIT - he doesn't have any work history!

gfa

Bubblehead Les. said...

Something tells me that this is more about Anne Romney than Mitt. It's not unusual for the Really Rich to transfer Funds into the Spouse's and Kids names for Tax Purposes. Legally it's fine, unless one belongs to the Madoff Family. But Politically? Well, all those Multimillionaire Left Wing Political Elites HATE the concept that anyone but them uses Legal Means to shelter Money from the "Poor, Huddled Masses." Think of the Kennedy Clan. And if it turns out that Anne is (on paper) wealthier than Mitt, why, that's PROOF that as Multimillionaire Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren said yesterday that "the System is Rigged!"

Bubblehead Les. said...

BTW, didn't Michelle Obama make most of the Money while Barry was "Community Organizing?" Maybe SHE needs to open up HER Tax Records, eh?

Borepatch said...

Don't know why they used the term "hackers". From what I heard, it didn't involve computers. Rather, sumdood snuck into a building in the dead of night and swiped the file.

We used to call these people "burglars".

Roberta X said...

Les, don't the Obamas file jointly? ...There is a huge long list of data they won't let nobody look at nohow, but they have shared at least some tax-return info.

As for the other two, one theory is they're trying to hide the fact that they've had a couple of bad years. I doubt this -- but if true, it's just a silly as concealing success.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

If I recall my history aright (and I do -- see here), the first "hackers" were MIT students who pulled "hacks" -- AKA pranks -- around campus.

It was only later that the word came to be associated with computing.

Ritchie said...

Of course the system is rigged. "Is system. Is rigged." Once you know that, you can proceed accordingly.

JohninMd(HELP!) said...

As per R.A.Hienlien, "Of course the game is rigged. If you don't play, you can't win."

Ken said...

Slick Willard ought to offer to release returns for every year since Harry Reid first went to Mordor-on-the-Potomac...

...the minute Reid releases his for the same years.

The phrase "no visible means of support" leapeth to mind, when considering the evolution of Sen. Reid's net worth.