General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 411

Well personally I believe our candidates should be as transparent as possible and that involves releasing their taxes. I don't care about medical records, that's irrelevant. But taxes are important. And we already have Clinton's so Trump should release his. But he won't and it's probably because he's hiding something. People wanna know what he's hiding. If you're running for the highest office in the world, you should be transparent.

 

I may be a cynic (i am), but my immediate thought when I read that was "If you are running for the highest office in the world, you can't be transparent!"

 

Historical context:


Three months after White won his Pulitzer, Nixon resigned from office, not because of taxes but under threat of impeachment for the Watergate cover-up. Among other misdeeds, he was accused of misusing the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the I.R.S. In addition to losing his presidency, Nixon lost nearly half his net worth paying what he owed to the I.R.S.

Until Donald Trump, every major-party presidential nominee since then had released his or her tax returns (except Gerald Ford, who released a summary in 1976). The simple reason is that, on at least one subject, Nixon got it right: The American people need to know if their president is a crook.


Why We Ask to See Candidates’ Tax Returns

 

I get that, I guess I am just saying...isn't the bloom off the rose in that regard?

 

How Breitbart Conquered the Media

"Indeed, what Breitbart understood, what his spiritual heir Donald Trump has banked on, what Hillary Clinton’s recent pillorying has clarified, is that white grievance, no matter how ill-founded, can never be humiliating nor disqualifying. On the contrary, it is a right to be respected at every level of American society from the beer-hall to the penthouse to the newsroom."

This is really good

 

And also why they should have been released months ago.

 

Young Millennials Love Obama, But Clinton Is Struggling To Win Them Over

 

I mean, I suppose. I think one underestimates the extent of the electorate's forgiveness. For example, while the public despises taxes because they see nothing in it for them, they also think millionaires should pay more in taxes. This cuts across party lines. If Trump's taxes demonstrate that he has hid his money from being properly taxed, then he is simply another plutocrat that isn't paying their fair share. This drills deep into the well if resentment that the electorate has towards the elites that don't seem to play by the same rules as the average person. To be sure, there are these hardcore Trump voters who will not care, who believe taxes are a form of theft and so on, but I do not think their ideological commitment is very widespread. The contingent of the working-class that is supportive of Trump, more often than not, have had their general interest in a living wage, good jobs, a system that cares about them organized into a racial backlash because, being that we are a white supremacist/patriarchal country, the dispensation of resources is always-already organized in this way. If Trump was shown to simply be a huckster, someone that, like the previous iteration of politicians, was simply looking for personal gain, a large contingent of them would fall away. They couldn't be mobilized to vote for Hillary, but, in all likelihood, they'd just stay home. I think this understanding is part of why Trump refuses to release his tax returns. Well, that is my suspicion in any case.

 

I'm a statistic, yesssss

 

TIL "decent" Americans can be racist, sexist, homophobic...

 

But isn't Trump a self-proclaimed plutocrat? He admitted as much when he bragged about donating to political candidates from both parties in order to buy power. If the working class Trump supporters didn't fall away then, why would they if tax returns are released?

I think in most other elections, you would be absolutely right. And hey, I guess it's something that is done in every election, so in that regard it should be done in this one.

 

I like how he's tried to turn it from: sexist, racist, homophobic, islamaphobic people support him, to she called everyone that supports me sexist, racist, homophobic, and islamaphobic. It takes an idiot to fall for that. I think it's a mistake for him to go in on it. It's going to keep undecideds away.

 

Do the people that want transparency with the taxes want the same transparency with the wall street speeches?

 

Hillary baited him into getting his campaign to further rally under the banner of -isms, and it looks like he took the bait

 

yeah

 

What would the press do right now if Chelsea tweeted out neo-nazi propaganda? It would go apocalyptic.

And yet there it sits on Trump Jr and Trump's advisor's twitter feeds. Trump himself RT's white supremacists every day. Steve Bannon is the campaign manager. Someone's gotta keep calling attention to this. I'm glad she's not backing down and I hope they run that ad in swing states. I think it's a great Clinton ad, hahaha.

 

James Kirchick: Hillary was right about the basket of deplorables

Hillary Clinton was way off base Friday night when she claimed that "half" of Donald Trump supporters are "deplorable" racists, sexists and nativists. Unsurprisingly, Trump leapt on the remark, calling it "the worst mistake of the political season," and Clinton quickly apologized.

She was right to do so. It's not 50% of Trump supporters who are bigots. It's closer to 100%.

Let's first dispense with all of the acknowledged racists, misogynists and anti-Semites who have proudly flocked to the Trump campaign like hooded men to a burning cross. The Republican nominee's emboldening of the much-discussed "Alt Right," a euphemism white supremacists have cleverly adopted to mainstream themselves as just another respectable political movement, has given professional racists a prominence in national politics they have not enjoyed since the campaigns of George Wallace.

 

I know I sure do

 

I'm more interested in a candidate's WS speeches. I fully expect that every candidate's tax returns show a ruthless attempt to minimize the taxes, whether they preach progressive taxation or not. I don't expect that class of politicians to give speeches to Wall Street actors for money as a bald exchange for political consideration.

 

We basically know what was in the Wall Street speeches. Sure, I'd wanna see them, but a) they're not part of a decade's long tradition of what a candidate should release to the public[1], b) the most likely information within them is different than knowing where Trump's debts actually are (which is very important), what laws he's broken (given what's being found from his foundation, this seems inevitable), where and how often he's lied, and I wanna laugh at him a little too. So, while they're not the same to me from a historical or importance standpoint - sure, more transparency in these things is good.[2]

[1]: Trump still not saying he's put his businesses in a blind trust should get more attention as well.
[2]: Like seeing actual policy proposals from one of the candidates. We're 60 days away from an election and one candidate literally can't tell us how he would run the country.

 

Again: Seeing someone's effect tax rate is not why anyone asking wants to see the tax returns.

 

I even think the Trump list is missing things.