Reynolds ‘done w/ America?’ I thought Chicago was “done” w/ Mel long ago

One-time member of Congress from Chicago Mel Reynolds, the man who more than two decades ago made the phrases “peach panties” and “did I win the Lotto?” words worth snickering at, has added a new one to the lexicon of ridiculous things spoken by political people.

REYNOLDS: From Congress to incarceration

Reynolds, who back in 1995 was found guilty of having sex with an underage girl, was sentenced to prison this week on charges he went four years without filing income tax returns.

HIS REACTION TO getting a six-month prison term?

“I’m done with America,” he said, even though he admitted his sentence was far less than the just-over two years of prison time prosecutors sought, and that it is assured he’ll be free before year’s end.

Reynolds says that after he serves his time and is released, he plans to leave this country and live the rest of his life in an African nation. Possibly South Africa, where it turns out one of his daughters has resided for several years.

Reynolds, in talking with reporter-type people following his sentencing at the Dirksen Building federal courthouse, made it clear he thinks he’s the one being victimized – just another black man being constantly hounded by law enforcement and being sent off to prison just because he’s tried to make something of his life aside from menial labor.

NOW I DON’T doubt that there are elements of our society that do seek to keep black people from accomplishing much; or making any success they do achieve as difficult to do so as possible.

There may even be some who are taking a perverse pleasure at the thought that Reynolds – who served two terms in the House of Representatives from Chicago’s far South Side and surrounding suburbs in the early-to-mid-1990s – is now on his third term of incarceration.

But I can’t help but think that most people who heard of Reynolds’ fate on Thursday got their snicker from what they perceive as the man’s awfully-high perception of his self-importance.

Reynolds is “done with America?” I think it’s more accurate to say that America, particularly that segment of the nation that is Chicago, is “done” with Mel. To the point where most of us haven’t thought about him in ages – and may have even been a little shocked to learn the man is still around.

I SUSPECT WE’LL get over the idea of a Mel-less society, particularly since even the people who were supposed to be his strongest supporters were never that thrilled with the man.

Reynolds was a product of the 1992 election cycle that gave us Bill Clinton as president. There also was Gus Savage in Congress, and his oft-outspoken ways that provoked the sensibilities of non-black people (to be honest, he didn’t care what they thought) created a gap for a challenger.

Which was Mel, a Mississippi-born and Chicago-raised man who got a chance to attend Harvard University and also was a Rhodes Scholar.

I remember that many black people were apathetic about Reynolds, largely because of the perception that Mel thought he was better than everybody else. Which created conditions that – when he got into legal troubles – too many were more than willing to laugh at him and enjoy his misery.

AS FAR AS an Africa-residing Reynolds is concerned, my reaction is to wonder which nation would actually accept him. One of Reynolds’ more recent predicaments was an arrest in Zimbabwe – which makes me think that no matter where he goes, he’s going to manage to tick people off and be harassed by the local officials.

Some people just bring out the worst.

Although there may well be one other bit of significance to the Mel Reynolds saga. The man who once had the whole wide world at his grasp will have lost it all and wind up living off of his daughter.

For his sake, he’d better stay on her good side, since he might not have any other friends left.

  -30-

Rauner makes appeal to Hegewisch-ites to prolong the state budget battle

It’s not every day political people pay any attention to Hegewisch – as in the neighborhood at Chicago’s far southeastern corner where Indiana is a daily reality.

Pate won his political fight in Hegewisch

I remember then-Senate Minority Leader James “Pate” Philip back in 1990 making the trek from his suburb near O’Hare International Airport to visit Hegewisch to reassure the residents that he would oppose all efforts to pave over their streets and homes to develop a new Chicago-area airport.

PATE WON THAT political fight. But the reason the event sticks in my mind is that it is among the few bits of attention paid to Hegewisch by anyone with political influence.

Will Rauner be less successful in his brawl?

Political people making the trek out to Hegewisch do it so infrequently that it is still considered a big deal locally that the final public appearance Richard J. Daley made as mayor was to Mann Park out on 131^st Street – where he shot a basketball through a hoop. He died later the same day in December 1976 while visiting his doctor at a Michigan Avenue office.

That is why it is unique Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner felt compelled to make the trip to Hegewisch on Wednesday, where he hoped to encounter a sympathetic audience of people as part of his last-ditch effort to urge the General Assembly to go along with his rejection of a state budget -- thereby keeping the political battle alive.

Specifically, he went to one of the few places in Chicago where the eastern boundary isn’t the Lake Michigan shoreline, but is State Line Road – with the Hoosier State of Indiana lying just across the street.

130th Street/Torrence Avenue one of the few entrance points to Hegewisch

IT IS A place that in recent weeks has been getting appeals from Indiana-based supermarket chains telling them that they can avoid paying the proposed sales tax hike on pop and other sweetened drinks if they cross over the state line and buy their goods.

Just like they can get gasoline for their cars for anywhere from 20 to 30 cents per gallon less in Indiana.

Hegewisch is the land by the landfills where Chicago used to dump its trash

And now, Rauner wants us to think he’s sympathetic to Hegewisch-ites (or is it Hegewischians?) who live so close to the border that they will feel the direct impact of having to cope with a higher income tax rate.

Rauner might as well be doing the work of Chamber of Commerce groups throughout Indiana in letting people know how miserable a place he thinks Illinois will become. What with him dragging out business-types from the Hegewisch neighborhood who were willing to say they’d be willing to “pick up and drive two minutes to Indiana.”

ALTHOUGH I DON’T think the governor is really that concerned. He’s trying to minimize the damage to his political reputation since it appears that the winner of the partisan battles of the past two years will turn out to be Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

He’s going to be able to claim he and his allies on Thursday finally got a budget passed – with no help from Rauner or his people.

Of course, Rauner will claim over and over (actually, he’s already started) that Madigan’s plan is a tax hike of some 32 percent. Actually, it’s a 1.25 percent boost in the rate, meant to produce some 32 percent more revenue, but facts and details rarely matter to the people spewing partisan nonsense.

DALEY: It all came to an end in Hegewisch

Personally, I think it is sad it took two years to reach this point. This particular increase could have been done during the spring of 2015 and we never would have known the misery of the past two years watching our politicos stumble about like rubes.

WHICH IS WHY there really isn’t a winner. There’s merely a stage set for the partisan nonsense we’re going to be subjected to between now and the general elections of November 2018.

Voters will get their chance at that time to show which of the two political leaders they are most disgusted with – both are convinced that it has to be “the other guy.”

Madigan has made statements about “working with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to begin healing the wounds of the last several years.” Although the interesting point will be to see which wounds develop on the GOP side.

I’m sure those Republican legislators who wound up switching sides against Rauner’s budget rejection will lose out on the financial help the governor would have provided to their re-election bids. How much more spiteful Rauner can be remains to be seen.

  -30-

“32 percent-ers” want to keep playing politics with the Illinois state budget

It seems our state’s Legislature has come to agreement on a spending plan for Illinois government, and also an increase in the state income tax rate to ensure there’s enough revenue to fulfill the state’s financial responsibilities.
 

RAUNER: Senate overrode his veto w/in minutes

Not that I’m about to offer up many rounds of “huzzahs!” for the Democrats who run the General Assembly.

I’M SURE THEY’RE going to claim to have made the incredibly difficult choice necessary to ensure that Illinois state government can start the process of returning to normal operations – a process that’s going to take a few years to complete.

But I find it pathetic to see Democrats now being so eager to vote to support an increase in the individual income tax rate to 4.95 percent. That’s the increase meant to raise some 32 percent more revenue for the government – which is why the conservative ideologues are going on and on with their rants that the income tax is being raised 32 percent.

Actually, the rate is being raised from 3.75 percent to the aforementioned 4.95 percent – retroactive to Saturday (the beginning of the current state fiscal year), while the corporate rate will go from 5.25 percent to 7 percent. Combined, they would produce about $5 billion more in revenue per year.

No matter how one wants to explain it, a 1.25 percent increase in the rate is not a 32 percent increase in the rate. It’s just a rant from people whose primary desire to cut state funding is to annihilate programs they’d rather not be bothered with.

SIMILAR TO THE line of logic that the outspoken anti-tax activist Grover Norquist espoused when he said he wanted to shrink government to a size small enough, “where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

 

How quickly will Dem leader pair ...

Meaning that I think the people who are going to offer up praise for Gov. Bruce Rauner for saying he’ll veto the General Assembly’s actions even if it means the budget stalemate continues are full of it for claiming that they’re against a 32 percent hike in the tax rate.

But I’m still not about to offer up undying praise for Democrats for doing this – largely because I can’t help but wonder why they couldn’t have done this a few years ago.

If they had expressed the political will to take this very same action two years ago, our political people would never have been in this position to begin with.

 

... offer up praise for themselves?

REMEMBER BACK TO the days when Pat Quinn was governor and the state enacted an increase in the state income tax rate that was set to expire in four years? But in his final months in office, Quinn wanted the Legislature to make the increase permanent.

Only the Democratic majority of the Legislature, which never really liked having to deal with Pat Quinn in the first place, felt compelled to stick it to him by doing nothing. Letting the increase wither away and creating the conditions that caused the new governor to feel compelled to fight it out with the General Assembly.

I don’t doubt that even if the General Assembly had given Quinn his final gubernatorial desire, Rauner still would have found excuses to take on the General Assembly. The man did come in with desires to undermine organized labor’s influence over state government, and that would not have gone away!

But Democrats now are willing to approve an increase in the income tax rate that they could have done years ago? I can’t help but think that somewhere, Quinn is smirking. I can hear the “I told you so” in my mind.

WHICH SCARES ME if I’m hearing Pat Quinn voices. It terrifies me almost as much as the potential for the financial harm that could befall the state of Illinois if action doesn’t occur soon – as in the coming days.

 

QUINN: Will he say 'told you so"

It didn't take long for Rauner to follow through with his threats to veto -- he did so on Tuesday. We'll now see if the General Assembly coalition of the Democratic majority and a few Republicans manages to hang together to allow for a gubernatorial override. The state Senate did vote to override within minutes of Rauner's rejection, while the Michael Madigan-led Illinois House held off on acting, for the time being.

I’m sure Rauner and his GOP acolytes will then claim this to be an entirely Democratic tax hike, and one in which they will try to place as much blame as possible leading up to the Nov. 6, 2018 statewide elections.

But the reality is that there has been enough juvenile behavior in the name of partisan politics to spread around to all the political parties. Anybody who goes on and on with claims of a “32 percent tax hike” is one who apparently favors the nonsense to continue, rather than trying to resume the concept of responsible governing for the people.

  -30-

Chicago the site of the Trump ‘chicken dance,' and also paid protesters?

I get that President Donald J. Trump is p-o’ed with the thousands of people who decided they had nothing better to do Saturday than participate in rallies to complain that the president is too cowardly to make public his income tax returns.

Even his rant that the “election’s over” is predictable, if not terribly clever or witty.

BUT THERE’S SOMETHING just ever so pathetic about Trump’s insistence that there were “paid” people showing up to create the image of an American populace that doesn’t think highly of our newly-elected (he’s still in his first 100 days of office) president.

I know personally I learned of the rallies being held across the country off a website that encouraged people to go (I didn’t). Those included the Daley Plaza rally that attracted a few thousand individuals in its own right, along with rallies in the outer suburbs of Naperville and Chesterton, Ind., that drew a few hundred.

But there wasn’t anything indicating any form of compensation for anyone who showed up. It might have been more accurate for the Trumpites to argue these people need to “get a life,” (dancing in front of a giant, inflatable chicken erected outside the Trump Tower in Chicago) rather than they’re being bribed.

Particularly since there is evidence that Trump, during his campaign, goosed up the size of his own supportive crowds with some cash payments. Could it be that Trump is like one-time baseball manager Billy Martin, who assumed the whole world was out to get him and concocted strategies based off what he thought everyone else was doing to him?

IF TRUE, IT is sad. It is sorry. It is lame.

It is truly evidence of someone who needs to get a life, particularly since as he himself put it, he “won” the 2016 presidential election, and ought to enjoy the position’s perks – rather than concocting conspiracies against himself.

  -30-

Politicos try to score points off tax returns; even the president in his refusal

We’re coming up on Tax Day and I expect we’re going to hear our share of political rhetoric lambasting and praising President Donald Trump for continuing to tell the American people to “stuff it” if they want to see his tax returns.
 

TRUMP: Still thinks taxes are 'nunaya' business

Personally, I’m not going to get so worked up – I realize we have a president who’s not interested in making the usual gestures of openness to the public and probably doesn’t want us knowing exactly how much more wealthy he is than the bulk of us.

BECAUSE THAT MIGHT be the final straw that would make many of the so-called working people who voted for him realize how ridiculous their presumptions about him were.

Besides, I also have to admit that even when government officials do release their returns, it’s usually because there are circumstances that they wish to exploit.

They’re doing so for their own political gain. Not because of any sense that they’re exposing themselves to the sunshine of truth and honesty and all that other good-government rhetoric.

If anything, Trump’s telling of the American people to “drop dead” on this issue might well be the most honest thing a government official can say. It shows us his arrogance, rather than us having to make us all dizzy with his political “spin.”

I CAME TO that realization on Friday when I learned how state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, who also is one of the people seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor.

BISS: Poor little legislator

He released the return he filed for 2016 to show just how far his income as a state senator had declined – an adjusted gross income of just over $32,500 even though in past years he had income in the range of $55,000.

But let’s not forget this past year was one in which state legislators had their own paychecks delayed because of the lack of a state government budget to authorize such payments.

Now, we can see for ourselves just what a financial blow the politicking over our state budget has had on the poor individual lawmakers. How sad!

I DO HAVE to admit that if I had to take a $20,000 shortfall in my income, it would be a financial blow. It would hurt. My guess is that Biss wants us all to feel similar sentiment.

Picasso to be surrounded by Trump tax rally

I’m also guessing that gubernatorial candidates J.B. Pritzker, Chris Kennedy and Ameya Pawar (all of whom have told the Capitol Fax newsletter they will be releasing their tax returns in coming days) will find similar ways to make political statements placing themselves in the most favorable light.

Even Gov. Bruce Rauner is most likely to find a way to make himself look good and somehow bear a resemblance to the masses of Illinois on whose behalf he wishes to govern for four more years.

It’s just the kind of cheap rhetoric that can make this time of year most annoying for a political reporter-type person. All the self-serving talk being spewed about!

WHICH KIND OF makes me wonder if we should be thankful that Trump, in his eternal sense of arrogance, isn’t giving us a load of political B.S. to contemplate. There really are limits to how much we, the people, should have to put up with. Which is why some of us will gather Saturday at rallies across the country, including in Chicago's Daley Plaza, along with suburban Naperville and in Chesterton, Ind.

Even though we can wonder how Trump is clueless enough to realize he’s missing a significant chance to humanize himself – and possibly detract from the reports coming out trashing himself and first lady Melania for the lack of activity to prepare for the White House Lawn Easter Egg hunt that has been a D.C. tradition for generations.

Image remains relevant all these yrs later

Although humanizing Trump could just be an impossible task, because the man gives us so many other examples of his unfitness for the office to which 46 percent of the electorate was able to anoint him to last year.

And now, I must turn my attention to my own tax returns – which I must admit that I haven’t even started as of the point in time I’m writing this commentary. It’s a good thing the Easter holiday weekend gives us a few extra days until Tuesday’s Tax Day deadline!

  -30-

Playing politics with the tax man; is the voting public just like Rhett Butler?

Yes, it’s just a politically partisan stunt, bordering on trivial, for a group calling itself the Democratic Coalition Against Trump to try to use the Freedom of Information Act to get the Internal Revenue Service to release information concerning the income tax returns of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

 

TRUMP: He's rich, but how much?

I write that because I don’t expect the IRS to take seriously a request by a group that specifically has created itself in recent months to oppose Trump’s fantasies of running roughshod over the Republic by becoming its president.

BUT THAT DOESN’T mean the issue of Trump and his income tax returns isn’t something of significance – although I don’t regard it as the be-all-and-end-all issue that some would have us believe it means.

It is a practice going back to the days of Richard M. Nixon, who wanted to respond to the allegations of illegal activity and the fact that only the most hard-core of political partisans believed him when he said “I am not a crook” by letting us know the personal information about his finances.

It is a practice that presidential candidates have carried on since then, along with many other government officials at varying levels. It is supposed to let us see for ourselves that these government officials are really just regular folks like you and me.

Of course, they’re not in so many ways. But they’d like us to think so.

BUT THIS PRACTICE is being altered in this election cycle. For Democrat Hillary Clinton came forth with her tax return, which shows that she and husband Bill Clinton are doing well financially.

An income of just over $10 million – largely because the former president is involved with his foundation that raises funds for supposedly good causes, and Hillary has been active on the speaker circuit and can command ridiculously high rates for her appearances.

So yes, we can see for ourselves where Hillary is coming from – although I found it interesting to read the recent New York Times story about the two-year time period after Bill Clinton lost an Arkansas governor election and she had to work her butt off to support him financially while his ego recovered from political rejection.

 

CLINTON: Her wealth mere pennies by comparison

This may actually be of importance to some people who don’t have a knee-jerk hatred of a candidate and don’t know who they’re voting for yet.

BUT WHAT DO we have of comparable value about Trump? Nothing!!!!!!!!!

He has refused to make anything known of his finances. What do we really know of the Trump Organization and its CEO? Not a thing!

There has been some speculation that what Trump doesn’t want known is his actual financial worth – which may not be as high as he likes to give the impression of in public. His ego would take a blow, and yes Trump is nothing else if not an egomaniac!

Although his attitude also reminds me of the never-quite-came-to-fruition New York gubernatorial campaign of radio talk show host Howard Stern. He talked a lot of trash about public policy, but wound up dropping out when he learned there were legal requirements concerning personal financial disclosure.

HE DENOUNCED THE system that would make him reveal his wealth, which with all the different mediums in which he has his finger dipped into is quite sufficient.

Trump, who at one time was a regular guest on Stern’s radio program because he was entertaining with the garishness of his lifestyle, is giving us that same “It’s nobody’s business” approach. Which is why this election cycle will likely come and go without anything resembling a financial disclosure.

Besides, I suspect that the whole purpose of a tax return disclosure is to create the appearance of ordinariness. And the last thing Trump would ever want to appear to be is ordinary.

We’re supposed to think he’s better than us, which is why we’re supposed to place blind faith in him that all his goofy rhetoric won’t lead us (with apologies to that 2002 Tom Hanks film) down a road to perdition. Because some of us are likely just like the Rhett Butler character of "Gone With The Wind" and just "don't give a damn."

  -30-

EXTRA: Help! We need another holiday to further delay Tax Day

Let’s hear it for Emancipation Day – meant to pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Within the District of Columbia with its significant African-American population, that’s a full-fledged holiday with workers getting the day off. And because of the quirks of federal holidays, those D.C.-based workers for the U.S. government have Friday off.

WHICH ALSO IS Tax Day – the deadline for filing our income tax returns for 2015.

So the end result is that the whole country gets a three-day extension, until Monday, to file those returns and pay what is owed (or seek an extension until mid-October, if necessary).

Unless you happen to live in Massachusetts, where it is Patriot’s Day on Monday (celebrating the beginning of what is now known as the American Revolution).

Those people get until Tuesday.

I’LL BE THE first to admit that as I write this, I haven’t even started calculating my return. As a freelance writer, nobody is withholding taxes on my behalf. So I have to figure out this weekend how much I owe, then determine where I get the money from to pay up my share of supporting the federal and Illinois state governments.

In the latter case, it will be my share of the funds that cannot legally be spent until Illinois officials get off their high horses and come up with a budget proposal for the fiscal year that is nearly over – along with the year that will begin in another couple of months.

But all of this has me wondering whether we should try to concoct yet another holiday – one that could push off the Tax Day deadline for a few more days. I’m sure some people could use all the time they are given to adequately prepare a return.

Although I suspect such a holiday, regardless of what we’d call it, would amount to little more than Procrastinators Day – for all those people who honestly believe you should never put off until tomorrow what can easily be done the day after that!

  -30-

Somebody somewhere REALLY doesn’t think much of Mel Reynolds

The Mel Reynolds saga has reached new levels of pathos, what with the way he’s now desperately scouring for a place to live that doesn’t offend the sensibilities of the U.S. District Court in Chicago.

REYNOLDS: 'Big Brother' watching him?

Reynolds is the one-time Congressman (and Rhodes scholar who also attended Harvard University which makes him a highly-educated Chicago politico) who has done time in both state and federal prisons, and nearly got himself incarcerated in Africa.

HE HAD TO “settle” for deportation instead.

He has a new round of legal issues to deal with – federal prosecutors are seeking conviction and prison time on charges that he did not file income tax returns during a four-year period.

Those charges are now pending, and Reynolds had been reduced to living with a friend in Chicago while also this is going on.

But it seems that is a problem, because of that state conviction from two decades ago that is the reason most people remember Reynolds at all – where he was found guilty of having sexual relations with a teenage girl. Remember the gags about “peach panties” and “win(ning) the Lotto?”

BECAUSE OF THAT conviction, he remains a sex offender. He’s required to notify authorities of where he lives. And there are restrictions on where he can live – theoretically to reduce the amount of exposure he has to children.

Sure enough, his residence falls within the range of a school. He has to move.

But he was reduced to scrambling on Thursday to find someone to stay with who is far away enough from children to not offend the court’s sensibilities. One place in suburban Bartlett was too close to a child care facility, while Reynolds’ plans to check into a motel just across the state line in Indiana bothered the judge.

They could easily sic’ the U.S. Marshalls based in Hammond, Ind., on Reynolds, but the judge didn’t like the idea of Mel having to cross state lines quite so often. Even if anyone who is realistic knows full well that the Chicago metro area stretches into the Hoosier state.

AS ONE WHO was born in the part of Chicago that borders Indiana and raised in suburban municipalities right on State Line Road, I’d be inclined to think that making Mel Reynolds live in Indiana ought to constitute part of his punishment.

It certainly would put him out of our political hair, while also keeping him close enough for law enforcement types to keep an eye on him.

But that’s not going to happen. Supposedly, Reynolds found someone to stay with for Thursday night, and is expected to return to court on Friday with a long-range plan for where he will stay while he is free on bond for the tax evasion charges he currently faces.

We’ll find out later Friday if the judge is satisfied with his living arrangements, or if the threat is followed through on that Reynolds would have to be detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (the South Loop building with the narrow, rectangular windows) while his criminal case is pending.

PERHAPS IT ONLY is appropriate that Reynolds is being overly-scrutinized (or “scrootened” as former Mayor Richard M. Daley would have said).

Because after facing the sex charges, then federal charges related to campaign contributions, and now the tax evasion charges, it seems that Reynolds is going to be watched for the rest of his life.

It’s just too bad that Reynolds didn’t catch on to that fact in recent years in handling his tax returns – which he insists are totally proper. Although I found it humorous to read in the Chicago Sun-Times how his attorney said that perhaps his poverty these days is his defense.

Maybe if he doesn’t have any money, it means he had miniscule income to report. We’ll have to see if the judge buys that legal argument.

  -30-

How many will miss Monday deadline?

Monday is the deadline by which those of us who haven’t been able to afford adequate health insurance were supposed to use the benefits of a new federal law and sign up for coverage.

Some will get hit w/ penalties for lack of coverage

Of course, there are many of us (myself included) who have failed to meet the deadline – people must have signed up for a plan and made the initial payment by Monday – in order to have coverage come Jan. 1 AND avoid a potential penalty from the Internal Revenue Service when we fill out our income tax returns for 2013.

NOT THAT WE’VE failed to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which allows people to keep using either the federal website or the websites created by various states through March 31 in order to sign up with an insurance company for coverage.

In all likelihood, I will deal with this issue for myself (as a freelance writer, I don’t have anybody offering me an insurance policy as a benefit – even though the entities I do work for expect me at times to perform labor similar to that done by a full-time employee) in coming weeks.

As I suspect many others will do.

President Barack Obama said last week that in California alone, some 15,000 people per day are signing up for insurance coverage. And that some 2 million people will have health insurance Jan. 1 that would not have had it otherwise.

OF COURSE, THE fact that there were glitches in the process for signing up when it began Nov. 1 (and that political people with ideological hang-ups about the idea that all people ought to have some health care coverage were more than willing to enhance the confusion) means that many people still have not been able to get around to dealing with the issue.

Actually, I wonder how much of a rush there will be come Monday from people who hope to avoid those IRS penalties (I’m not sure exactly what they will be) by signing up AND making the initial payment.

Which will all have to be done by the end of business Monday. It could mean a rush of people similar to the mess we get every April 15 for people determined to get their tax returns filed on time to avoid penalties.

OBAMA: Easing 'frustration" in Hawaii

It also makes me think that many people will get frustrated because they will fall short and miss the Monday deadline.

IF I WERE a conspiracy-theorist type of person, I’d wonder if the IRS was determined to have people fail to meet the deadline. Because then there are penalties that will be charged to people that I’m sure some officials already are counting as revenue for the federal government.

As much as I hate the thought of having to pay the penalty, I’m accepting the fact that it will be much less stressful for me now to just deal with it come April.

Which is why I’m not going anywhere near the Illinois website for signing up for health coverage on Monday.

Obama last week said health care website problems were “a source of great frustration.” Of course, he made this comment just before he and the first family took off for their annual Hawaii holiday vacation.

WHILE THOSE OF us remaining in Chicago cope with the wet and snowy weather conditions that hit much of the nation this weekend and threaten to give us not so much a “white” Christmas as a wet-and-sloppy one!

Hoping and wishing that I can resolve my insurance situation sometime during the week between Christmas and the New Year holidays is my goal – one boosted in particular by the fact that for a freelance writer, this is usually the dead week where I struggle to cough up copy that someone will actually pay money for.

  -30-

How ‘nothing’ would this be now, if only Mitt’d given info up previously?

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had an income of $13.69 million for last year -- of which assorted governments snatched up $1.9 million of it as his share of income taxes.

ROMNEY: Not like you or me, financially



No big deal, when you think about it. Many government officials try to make themselves seem “human” around Tax Day by making their tax returns public. They want us to know that they, too, had to make good with the Tax Man on April 15 – just like the rest of us.

IF ROMNEY HAD been like these other officials and made all this information publicly known some five months ago like everybody else, it wouldn’t have been an issue.

If anything, we might have said “Wow!” to the “$13.69 million” figure for a couple of seconds, would have laughed at the concept that Romney makes far less than a top-notch pro athlete, and would have moved on.

It certainly wouldn’t be any kind of issue now. We probably would have long forgotten the figure. We certainly wouldn’t care some six weeks prior to Election Day (even less time, if your plans are to use an early voting center to cast your ballot).

But it is an issue – because Romney made it one.

FOLLOWING MONTHS OF trying to claim that his personal privacy was being invaded by this now-standard political maneuver, Romney gave in on Friday. He made his financial information publicly known for 2011 – while also providing a summary of his effective tax rates (the percentage of his income that went toward taxes) for every year back to 1990.

Which means all this information has the potential to be fresh as we move into the intense portion of the campaign cycle.

When combined with the “47 percent” comments that make Romney sound like a pompous rich guy, this information makes him look like the ultimate pompous rich guy.

Does Mitt Romney think his tax returns now will get him a chance to work in this office for the next four year? Photograph provided by the White House.

Even the fact that (according to the Washington Post) Romney and potential first lady Ann donated just over $4 million to assorted charitable causes comes across as suspect.

FOR THE NEWSPAPER reported that the Romneys only claimed tax deductions for $2.25 million of their contributions. It seems that the Romneys wanted to ensure they paid a tax rate of at least 13 percent of their income during each year of the past decade.

Which makes us wonder if the Romneys have concocted a financial image for themselves – rather than handled Tax Day like the rest of us and given an honest accounting of how much money we took in for the previous year.

In all, this information and the way in which it was made public creates potential for so many questions that will linger in the minds of potential voters.

None of which would have cropped up if only Romney hadn’t taken the pompous route and tried to keep it all private. It really would have been a non-issue by now.

IN FACT, THIS disclosure may be even more ridiculous than when President Barack Obama tried to put a rest to all the “birther” nonsense by coughing up documentation to indicate he really was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.



After all the years of not providing information, what made him think that his disclosure was going to silence anyone? Obama just drew more attention to a stupid, non-issue. He may have given it credibility it didn't deserve.

OBAMA: Believe what we beleive

If anything, it would merely convince the conspiracy-theorists of our society that this was somehow the ultimate conspiracy. They don’t want to see anything that would disprove what they want to believe. That disclosure didn’t change the perspective of anybody.

Just like Mitt Romney didn’t do a thing on Friday that would convince anybody that he’s anything other than a rich guy who doesn’t have a clue about what kind of daily lives the rest of us live.

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