Mnuchin rejects Congress request to hand over Trump tax returns

[Acer]

A birth certificate is private. Unless fraud is suspected. But that was 2008, things have changed.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

The thing is, the statute isn't worded to allow the IRS/Treasury to refuse the request. There is no qualification in it where a valid legislative purpose needs to be fulfilled.

[timg]

JoeH wrote:
[quote=timg]
Why is it disingenuous of me to bring up these rules? I am not repealing them or asking for them to be repealed. I am also not a member of the GOP.

Whether or not your are a member of the GOP, you sure do support them a bunch. As for the rules, are you insisting that your representatives reinstate meaningful laws and regulations? If not aware of the happenings in that area over the last couple decades, then at best you have been willfully ignorant given the amount of press about them.

In any case, you brought up enforcing existing laws. Given the weakened status of them, what is not being enforced?
How is it that I am supporting the GOP exactly? Obviously no one here can be an individual, they all must have labels. Guess that's the only way some of the more feeble minded here can keep up ...

Anyway, I am not naive enough to think that my representatives will enact any meaningful regulations on themselves. It's akin to asking the prisoners to write the rules for the prison. If you are that naive, I feel sorry for you.

[deckeda]

timg wrote:
How is it that I am supporting the GOP exactly?

JoeH wrote: ... you sure do support them a bunch. ...

Willfull obfuscation: It's not just for breakfast anymore. Extra helping of ad hominem attack and faux contempt available at no cost.

[max]

deckeda wrote:
[quote=timg]
How is it that I am supporting the GOP exactly?

JoeH wrote: ... you sure do support them a bunch. ...

Willfull obfuscation: It's not just for breakfast anymore. Extra helping of ad hominem attack and faux contempt available at no cost.
...and you did a great job on both counts....

[deckeda]

max wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
[quote=timg]
How is it that I am supporting the GOP exactly?

JoeH wrote: ... you sure do support them a bunch. ...

Willfull obfuscation: It's not just for breakfast anymore. Extra helping of ad hominem attack and faux contempt available at no cost.
...and you did a great job on both counts....
and that's when all of MRF read that and collectively thought, "WTF is max ellipsing about this time?"

[gabester]

timg wrote:
[quote=gabester]
[quote=timg]
Once you are elected, it should be a matter of public record, and this should apply to all elected officials, not just the president.

Why not apply it to candidates? It would be good to know who someone is getting funded by, and whether they are savvy enough to shield that information from these kinds of disclosures.
Because until they are elected, they are still private citizens. I don't have any more right to look at their tax return than I do your tax return.

There are already rules and oversight for political campaigns are there not? Maybe we should just be enforcing those?
Actually, we're all private citizens all the time. When you are a public servant then the public at large has a right to know some things about your service. Your compensation is one of those things. Similarly, publicly traded shareholders have a right to know - thanks to corporate disclosure laws! - how their CEOs and executives are compensated. The reason for this is to avoid harms to the public and/or investors by those who have conflicts of interest. It's very difficult in these kinds of positions to make decisions that are genuinely in the best interest of their employers (the public for officeholders and shareholders for CEOs) when the individual in the position is likely to profit.

While there are rules and oversight of political campaigns they have, time and again, failed to the letter much less the spirit of these laws. As examples see cases where a bribe could not be proven because the officeholder had a consulting business they ran and the money was for a legitimate business transaction, or most recently in McDonnell when the Supreme Court decided that corruption without explicitly documented quid pro quo was basically impossible to prove so why bother trying?