Imagine you are Josh Romney. A couple of years ago your daddy ran for a big job, and that job was President of the United States. In the course of running for this job, quite a few people said mean things about Josh’s daddy, because that's how political campaigns work. One of those people was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who snickered and sneered that Josh’s daddy hadn’t paid a dime in taxes in ten years. So many people were stricken with the vapors over this brutal assault on Josh’s daddy’s integrity, which he could have easily cleared up by releasing those tax returns, as presidential candidates traditionally do. But he didn’t, because he had already released two years of returns, which should have been more than enough for you people. Then he went out on Election Day and got stomped like the Serengeti grasslands in an elephant stampede. Poor Josh’s daddy, left alone with just his wife and his five kids and his dozens of grandchildren and his multiple homes with elevators to carry his cars up and down and his hundreds of millions of dollars.
That Harry Reid, he sure fights dirty! Being a boxer, he’ll throw a punch. Yesterday Josh Romney, having nursed his grievances for a year and a half, punched back.
Why, just look at Josh’s daddy, standing in a long line in the La Jolla post office on a Tuesday like any other poor retired schlub, all set to mail off his tax returns. That will show that mean Harry Reid not to mess with the Romneys.
A couple of points we feel compelled to make to poor Josh Romney and his eternally wounded fee-fees. First, no one ever accused your daddy of not FILING tax returns, just of not paying any taxes. So until you tweet a picture of the check (preferably with lots of zeros on the end of it) your daddy was mailing to the United States Treasury yesterday, we’re going to continue to think he’s a rich douchebag who has hired an army of accountants to keep all his money -- and your tax-free inheritance -- away from the government this year, and damn near every other year for the last decade-plus.
Second, yr humble Wonkette is nowhere near your daddy’s tax bracket but even we coughed up ninety bucks to do our taxes online and electronically file our returns. Surely the army of accountants who take care of your daddy’s finances could have done this and spared us all your public temper tantrum.
Speaking of entitled, smug douche noodles whining about taxes, Donald “Donald” Rumsfeld released a letter to the IRS yesterday, something he apparently does every year. Donald is very melancholy because oh my goodness, he can’t say for sure that his taxes are accurate despite the fact that as a rich guy, he could also afford to hire a bunch of accountants to do them for him, and so they remain one of those known unknowns, or unknown unknowns, or known known unknown knowns that he has always found so vexing.
The tax code is so complex and the forms are so complicated, that I know I cannot have any confidence that I know what is being requested and therefore I cannot and do not know, as I suspect a great many Americans cannot know, whether or not their tax returns are accurate.
Jesus H. Christ flipping over the moneychangers’ tables, let us make a couple of points to Donald Rumsfeld as well. First, as many, many people immediately pointed out, the IRS does not write the tax code, it just enforces it. If Donald Rumsfeld wants the tax code to be simpler, he should talk to Congress, where we suspect he might have a contact or two.
Second, the tax code is complex partly because it’s filled with loopholes that were written by and for people with Rumsfeld’s wealth who are trying to reduce their tax burden as much as possible. We’re perfectly fine with closing the loopholes that allow a person of Donald Rumsfeld’s worth to hide or deduct as much of his taxable income as he possibly can. Will he be okay with that? We suspect that if Donald Rumsfeld's taxes go up by so much as a dollar he'll scream like a baby that just dropped its rattle. Hell, he'll probably get himself appointed Defense Secretary again just so he can invade another Middle Eastern nation out of pique.
Third and finally, we think Donald Rumsfeld should be praising God and Jesus and Allah and whatever other sky deity he wants that he is spending his money on accountants and not defense lawyers, and that he remains free to pay his taxes in America instead of sitting in a jail cell in the Hague trying to whittle a skeleton key out of a bar of soap, or being forced to do a naked dogpile with Cheney and Gonzales and Dubya while guards point and laugh at his withered and wrinkled nutsack. Really, some people just don’t know when to quit.
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josh romney and donald rumsfeld sound like a punk band.
An endgangered species if the GOP gets its way.