Bill White's tax returns
Wayne Slater blog post:
Rick Perry's campaign has asked why Democratic challenger Bill White had no taxable income in 1995, his last year as deputy energy secretary in the Clinton administration. White has not released his income tax returns for his years at the Energy Department. But his campaign has told the Dallas Morning News that while White had taxes withheld from his $133,000 salary in 1995, the amount was offset by losses starting an energy business.
Perry spokesman Mark Miner says he wants to see the returns -- and until White releases them, Perry will refuse to debate his Democratic opponent. White has released his tax returns for his six years as mayor of Houston. The campaign has also provided The News with a spreadsheet of details about his taxes during his years as deputy energy secretary. Miner says that's not good enough: "The word of Bill White's spokesperson is not sufficient when it comes to the contents of Bill White's hidden tax returns.
Maybe I'm seeing this wrong, but doesn't Bill White undermine his own case for not releasing his tax returns when he releases the topline figure? This means he has the tax returns, he knows exactly where they are, he's even gone back and released the topline numbers of his taxes...but he hasn't actually released the details? That's strange. If there's nothing there, wouldn't it take 30 seconds extra work to click "attach" and then send them to the press?
Truthfully, I didn't expect that Perry's campaign would get anything out of the initial tax records request. I figured they were just seeing if White would make a rookie mistake and not release his tax returns so that they could make an issue out of it. White did screw it up for a couple months, but once he released them it became clear that Perry's team had done their research and had an idea of what the tax returns would show (BTEC).
Posted by Evan @ 09/07/10 06:11 PM
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
Comments
Seems to me Perry keeps moving the goalposts. Why is he so afraid to debate White? Texan voters are owed the chance to see the two of them debate -- and by refusing to debate White, Perry is saying he has no ideas for how to move Texas forward and is leary of letting the voters see that. White's released tax records for his time as mayor. How about if Perry releases the details of his trust? Or at least clues us in on what he plans to do the next four years, if elected.
Posted by DRK @ 09/07/10 07:28 PM
After 10 years in office, it is unlikely that many Texas voters need a debate to know how Perry is going to govern.
As for releasing details of a blind trust...do you understand the reasoning behind a blind trust and why it has historically been a strong point of good government that politicians put their assets in one?
Posted by Evan_ @ 09/07/10 07:34 PM
He's following Obama's playbook (as stupid as it is) with the whole Birth Certificate thing, if the damned thing exists, then just release the SOB and be done with it. But NOOOOOO, they've got to actually give the whole thing legitimacy by refusing to release it. At this point, it seems painfully obvious that both situations exist because there is something very damaging buried there. But at some point, that information is going to surface, and when it does it is going to do damage. The only question is, can the damage be mitigated? Probably not at this point.
Posted by Rorschach @ 09/09/10 08:53 AM
Add Comments
No flames or impolite behavior. HTML will be stripped. URLs will be transformed into hyperlinks.