Mitt Romney’s magical IRA

The saga over Mitt Romney’s finances keeps getting more complex. The latest involves his Individual Retirement Account.

The IRA was introduced as a means to encourage people to save for their retirement by putting away some money each year that was tax-deductible (up to a certain income level) and where the accrued interest was tax-exempt. The idea was that when you started withdrawing the money in your retirement, your tax rate would be lower because you were now in a lower income bracket. For most people, it is their IRA, coupled with the Social Security income, that they depend upon in their later years. [Read more…]

Curiouser and curiouser: The strange case of Mitt Romney’s finances

Every presidential election something occurs that dominates the news over an extended period that has nothing to do with any substantive issue that affects any of us directly but consumes so much media attention that people seem to talk of little else. This year that issue is turning out to be Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and his objection to releasing his tax returns except for 2010, and for 2011 when they are completed. (It beats me why someone who must be paying an army of accountants to do his returns still needs an extension to file.) [Read more…]

Romney’s personality problem

Much has been written about Mitt Romney being booed by the audience when he spoke to them at their annual convention about repealing ‘Obamacare’. It was immediately obvious to me from his use of this label instead of the correct Affordable Care Act that he was deliberately provoking them to get this reaction. He has likely written off the black vote and now uses them as a prop to court white voters who see the black community as representing those who favor more government involvement in society. [Read more…]

You mean ‘religious’ does not mean ‘Christian’?

Those of us who have argued for a strict separation of church and state warned those who wanted the wall breached that if they were successful they should be prepared to live with Muslim and other minority religious encroachment in public life in those communities where those groups happened to be the majority or had significant influence. [Read more…]

Jonathan Krohn in his own words

I wrote recently about Jonathan Krohn, the former conservative child star, who grew up. He has written quite a funny piece for Salon explaining what happened and the reactions to news of his drift away from conservatism. He echoes what I said, “So this is what this story boils down to: A 17-year-old has different opinions than he did at 13. People may be disappointed by how underwhelming that is, but it’s how the world works.” [Read more…]