What Mitt Is Hiding: Rich Dicks Act Like Rich Dicks:
The Rude Pundit's father deeply hated rich people. A great deal of it was just outright class resentment. What would you expect from a man who had to go to work as a kid to support his mother after his own father died and who was in street gangs in Brooklyn in the 1950s? But there was something else that led to the Rude Father's animosity: he hated that the wealthy got to play by rules that weren't available to the rest of us, rules that they made up for themselves. Rude Dad never made the leap to wanting to upturn the system that allowed that to happen, but he knew the game was rigged, and, as a man who was once a minor league player for the St. Louis Cardinals (yes, he led an interesting life), it galled the hell out of him.

But he was American, so you know what galled him even more? That he'd never be one of them.

Here's the deal on the whole battle over when Mitt Romney retired from Bain and over his refusal to release any tax returns other than 2010 and, eventually, 2011: Of course he's hiding shit. The question is whether that shit is illegal or just, in a general sense, immoral, even sinful, if you believe in that sort of thing, with unchecked avariciousness at the core of nearly every decision Romney made at Bain.

What we're seeing in the ludicrous scramble to justify Romney's retirement date and his lack of disclosure of his tax returns is that Romney doesn't want to let the rest of the nation know exactly how sweet the deals are for the wealthy. He doesn't want the curtain opened.

Here's the Boston Herald, May 29, 2002: "Romney 'raked in well over $500,000 last year through seven different companies, and served in unpaid roles in another seven.' Most of that income 'poured in through spin-offs of Romney's venture firm, Bain Capital.' Romney 'retains ownership stake in 36 companies, including many Bain variants.'" And that's on top of the $100,000 he earned while on a leave of absence, but still the CEO at Bain. You got that? So not taking a salary to run the Olympics (while in Mormon central) wasn't exactly a sacrifice, you know?

As far as the contracts and other legal documents go, the ones that were written in 2002, he did, you know, retroactively retire. That meant that the benefits were, you know, retroactive. So on top of the $100,000 salary and other Bain income, he got whatever was in his diamond-encrusted golden parachute. In other words, he got paid twice for not working. In otherer words, motherfucker got paid, in a way that is only available to rich dicks.

The problem that Romney faces, in the retirement date and in the tax returns, is that the GOP nominee exists in an isolated world of rich fuckers in the business world who understand what they're doing and what they're talking about, but the rest of us don't. We don't speak that language. And if you explain it to us, our reaction is "What the fuck? Really?" The tax code isn't written the way it is just to dick over the average working person. It's written that way so that accountants can proctologically probe the law for crevices of loopholes where they can let the rich keep more money.

To put it another way, can you tell the person next to you what actually happened at Goldman Sachs in simple terms? Fuck, no. What you can say is that "A bunch of rich cockmongers got richer by fucking over everyone else."

Here's how Romney explained his work on the board of Staples, which is one of Bain's well-discussed successes: "Actually, Staples, at that point, was an investment by Bain Capital. Bain Capital had already sold its shares or distributed its shares in Staples. And so my involvement with Staples was entirely on a personal basis. I continued to be involved with the firm, but it was as a fiduciary for Staples, not as a representative of Bain Capital, because Bain Capital had no further interest in Staples at that point." What the fuck? No, seriously, what the fuck?

See, it's not that Romney has done anything wrong in his taxes (as for the SEC shit, who knows?). It's that he used every benefit that's available, every shelter, every overseas account, every deduction. Remember Bill Clinton and his used underwear for charity? Yeah, now multiply that by Switzerland.

You can explain it all away as merely working within the law. But it sure as shit makes for an awesome commercial against you, like "Firms," the orgasm-inducing Obama ad that features singing Mitt. You need a cigarette and a towel after it because it's like getting your nipples pinched while your prostate is massaged. The point of the ad is that Romney can say he loves America, but only as an image, not when it counts.

(And one of the things that's gotta be in the tax documents is exactly how many millions of dollars Romney donated to the Mormon church. No, the Obama campaign won't do anything with that, but you can bet that it'd make the evangelical base even more queasy.)