| DCW posted four times yesterday: 2 on Mitt and his taxing issues, once on Nancy Pelosi giving cover to all Democrats who might want to skip Charlotte, and finally on Christie as the Keynote speaker in Tampa. Mitt certainly has those money problems: compounded yesterday when it turned out that he HADN'T released his 2010 tax returns, only part of them. Missing is his FBAR - this is the form that details the information about the holdings in his reported accounts: in this case his Swiss bank account. You've filed tax returns, you know the deal. If you say "A" you need the matching form or the IRS gets suspicious and sends you a letter. As in, you say you're itemizing? You can't just say $14,973, you have to show Schedule A. A missing FBAR is bad. Per the IRS: Account holders who do not comply with the FBAR reporting requirements may be subject to civil penalties, criminal penalties, or both.
Think audit. And now on to the conventions. Fat Boy Slim is a nice choice for the Republicans. He's always entertaining, and he'll be able to handle anything from the crowd from the Paulites. But it was the piece about Pelosi that really got me thinking. The quote was: The California Democrat suggested that since Barack Obama is an incumbent, there is less of a need for Democrats to attend the convention.
I checked the source because the term "Democrats" didn't seem clear enough to me. It turns out that the Democrats to whom Pelosi was giving cover are actually House and Senate members. Which makes sense: while there are only 40 working days for the chambers between now and the end of the year, they should (within our perverse system of reelection trumping legislating) be home campaigning. But what about the rest of us? We at DCW love conventions, face it, that's why Matt started this blog and why the rest of us joined him. And in 4 years, when the Democratic primary will be interesting, we'll be here with all the delegate counts, super and not. Oreo and I had been planning on attending the convention and bringing you live posts and video (yes! we have the technology!) But as Oreo commented: The thousands of dollars it takes to get to the convention and pay for hotel rooms could make the difference in smaller districts.
And that's true of Oreo and me, too. Between airfare, hotel and rental car, we'll each easily spend $1,000, probably closer to $1,500. Would that money be better spent on local candidates, or whomever we decide to support? A bunch of nameless, faceless donors spent $14 million last week against Bill Nelson in Florida. Hooker purveyor Sheldon Adelson has spent over $50 million so far. Could our 3 grand make that much of a difference? It would certainly be fun to take our press passes and hob nob. The swag take would be phenomenal. We'd have a great time circulating amoungst fellow liberals. But that money might really make a difference to a local House race. Or to a group that does what the Republicans are trying to kill...like Planned Parenthood, or the ACLU as it fights voter suppression. It's a hard choice. Feel free to use the comments. |
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