(12-03-2012 06:53 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (12-03-2012 06:26 PM)dbackjon Wrote: (12-03-2012 04:14 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: What we ought to have is a basic set of required disclosures. We're hiring for the most powerful position in the world, I think we're entitled to more information than for any job that you could get hired for, Tom.
I've said 5 years of tax returns, all college records, all job/employment records, all military records, all passport and visa history, as a general idea. Others might have slightly different takes. Those are mostly things that I have had employers ask for. But make it a statutory requirement. And if anyone wants to claim privacy, well, nobody is forcing him or her to run for president.
And I do think it was particularly disingenuous for the democrats to be attacking Romney for not providing more years of tax returns while Obama is clearly stonewalling on information in his case that is useful.
How are 30-year old college transcripts useful, or the same as tax returns from 3 years ago?
And I tend to agree with blanket requirement - but there would have to be a constitutional amendment for that.
As a tax practitioner for 30+ years, I have looked at a lot of tax returns and I really don't see how you'd get much insight about an individual from his/her tax returns. They're pretty boring and without some explanation there's way more potential for misinformation. Reading a capstone writing assignment would almost certainly be far more insightful regarding a person's philosophy and character than any tax return. I don't know that raw transcripts would provide more insight than raw tax returns, but other parts of the academic paper trail would.
The average person's tax returns say little to nothing interesting about them. From what we knew of Mitt's 2010 returns, there was some pretty exotic stuff on there that wasn't in his FEC disclosures (wasn't required to be). Democrats wanted them released because they would produce opposition research that would feed an existing narrative of Romney as a plutocrat.
The thinking on the transcripts was probably similar. At the time Obama was pursuing a liberal arts degree at Occidental and Columbia, critical theory was very much en vogue in that discipline, in particular political theory and philosophy was moving away from the 'Western Cannon' of Plato and Locke and embracing Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, radical feminists, and others who might be considered radical by people who haven't been exposed to the questions these texts raise. Some of his classes would seem pretty exotic to the average non-liberal arts major -- I know, because I took many of them. Classes like gender and international politics; contemporary African American political thought; Power and Ethnicity in Latin American Politics, yada yada, etc.
I have very little doubt that the folks who started the "Release the transcripts" cry were never actually interested in his grades, but being able to do opposition research on the books on his syllabi, his professor's writings, and any term papers he may have on file -- with the goal of fitting this into the wider narrative of how he is "not one of us" at best and a "Kenyan anti-colonialist" at worst.
This shows a real misunderstanding of the way these courses work. They're meant to make sure students are asking key questions, not necessarily claiming to answer them. I'm not a Marxist, (in fact I have a Masters in economics and believe in capitalism with free markets and regulations to control externalities and market failure). But I consider it really valuable to have read books by Marxist political and economic thinkers. If someone looked at my college transcripts and writings with an eye towards interpreting my current world view -- even my worldview at the time -- they'd have come away with more signal than noise. I actually went through the most conservative phase of my life in college and right after, but my transcripts wouldn't give one that impression.
At this point, he's been elected twice. There are important questions facing the country. It's time to work together on solutions and stop trying to somehow invalidate the 2008 election.
