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After Newt Gingrich was rewarded with a surge in the polls, for playing the race card during the South Carolina GOP debate, Mitt Romney has launched

Progressive Breakfast - 1/19/2012

by Bill Scher | Jan 19, 2012

Mitt Romney's ultra-low tax rate on his ultra-high income is reviving questions about the breaks and perks that the wealthiest of the 1% receive from the rest of us. One of these is a special low tax rate for investments -- as if anyone needed special tax incentives to induce them to make a bundle.

High Incomes At The Top

After a painfully wobbly response to a debate question regarding whether he would release his tax returns, Mitt Romney has relented and said he would release his 2011 tax return once it was

James Fallows has some reader follow-ups to an earlier discussion of Newtie's "food stamp president" quip. And they've made me rethink whether or not this is a real dogwhistle.

One of his readers says that it wasn't racist in the least, that it was simply a dry, philosophical point about the virtues of hard work. This, of course, is nonsense. I quoted this yesterday, but it bears repeating since this is all taking place in South Carolina, the home of Lee Atwater, who famously said this:

Because our fight for a people-powered democracy and an economy that works for all Americans depends on a free and open Internet, OurFuture.org today is standing in solidarity with the many websites that are protesting two bills pending in Congress that are direct and profound threats to that freedom.

Mitt Romney probably pays a lower percentage of Federal income tax than you do. At a press conference today, Romney said that the effective rate he's been paying is "probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything."¹

Mitt makes out like a bandit because capital gains are only taxed at 15 percent, whereas ordinary folks who earn above $35,000 are taxed at 25 percent (the rate gradually goes up to 35 percent above that). He also scored big because nonproductive game-players like Bain Capital take most of their fees as a percentage of the money they invest -- which is also taxed at 15 percent!

Then there are all the other tax breaks for millionaires, which is why 1,470 households made more than a million dollars and yet paid nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- in Federal income tax in 2009.

Sure, these tax breaks benefit Mitt. And they help the people he cares most about. (Some of those "people" are corporations ...) But they're hurting everyone else. Before we cut Social Security to reduce the deficit (to which it doesn't contribute), let's see what would have happened if Mitt had paid his fair share of taxes.

Romney's worth $250 million. Let's see: What would Mitt Romney's proper tax contribution on that money -- just Mitt's, nobody else's -- have provided for the nation that has given him so much?