September 14, 2012

Quote of the Day: Romney Still Not Making Sense on Taxes

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From Mitt Romney, explaining his tax plan:

So number one, [] don’t raise taxes on middle-income people, lower them. Number two, don’t reduce the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest. The top 5% will still pay the same share of taxes they pay today.

Hold on. The top 5% will pay the same share of taxes they pay today. But that means the bottom 95% will also pay the same share they pay today. Right? That’s just arithmetic.

So everyone will pay the same share of taxes they pay today. But we’re going to lower taxes on the bottom 95%. So that means we have to lower taxes on the top 5% too. That’s the only way to keep their shares the same.

In other words, Romney is going to lower everyone’s taxes. Not just tax rates, actual taxes. And yet, his plan is going to be revenue neutral. How? Most likely it has something to do with Romney’s tax cuts creating new incentives that will supercharge the economy blah blah blah.

I guess believers gotta believe, but if you believe a word of this, you’re the kind of mark who’d still fall for the wire scam even after seeing The Sting a dozen times on late-night cable. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.  After all, it’s been less than ten years since George W. Bush ran the same swindle, and we all remember how that panned out, don’t we?

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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