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In 1997, Congress cracked down on a popular tax shelter that allowed rich people to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money.
Individuals who had already set up these vehicles were allowed to keep them. That included Mitt Romney, then the chief executive officer of Bain Capital, who had just established such an arrangement in June 1996.
In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity -- the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing -- to defer taxes for more than 15 years. At the same time he is benefiting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires, according to tax returns obtained by Bloomberg this month through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In general, charities don’t owe capital gains taxes when they sell assets for a profit. Trusts like Romney’s permit funders to benefit from that tax-free treatment, said Jonathan Blattmachr, a trusts and estates lawyer who set up hundreds of such vehicles in the 1990s.
Funds held by Romney’s trust are scheduled to be distributed after the death of Romney and his wife to “a charitable organization to be designated by Romney,” according to the 2007 filing, disclosing assets he held while governor of Massachusetts. “In the absence of such a designation the funds will go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
If you hadn't heard of Western Tradition Partnership before, that may be a measure of the group's success. While publicly billing itself as "Colorado's largest and fastest-growing advocate of grassroots rational, pro-jobs environmental policies," the conservative Denver-based organization promises its corporate and private donors the ability to influence elections with absolute anonymity.
Two weeks ago, top Obama campaign advisers Jim Messina and David Axelrod announced a $25 million national television buy, a figure rightfully acknowledged with a sense of wonder, given that there were still six months to go before Election Day. But anyone waiting for coast-to-coast shock-and awe must be disappointed. The ads have rolled out at a desultory trickle: a nine-state buy for a 60-second overview of Obama’s first-term successes; a Spanish-language health-care ad running in Florida and another in English about higher-education costs appearing there and in Nevada; and a long ad about Bain Capital that reportedly cost less than $100,000 to place in markets across five states. In other words, the Obama team has broken nearly every piece of received wisdom that media consultants like to offer about the intensity and duration necessary for television ads to be successful in the modern era.
But scattered, unsustained messaging has become the unlikely hallmark of the well-funded Chicago campaign. The strategy was put into play even before Romney emerged as the Republican nominee. There was the late-November advertising run on satellite systems that the campaign called “tiny,” and then silence until a brief January broadcast-buy across six states focusing on energy, ethics, and the Koch brothers. An isolated flight of brochures about health-care legislation hit mailboxes in March, timed to Supreme Court arguments on the subject. In voluminous (if not easily audited by outsiders) online ads and targeted email blasts, the campaign has addressed seemingly every topic or theme imaginable: taxes paid by oil companies, the “war on women,” and a variety of local issues of interest in battleground states.
To identify religious voters most likely to vote Republican, the group used 171 data points. It acquired megachurch membership lists. It mined public records for holders of hunting or boating licenses, and warranty surveys for people who answered yes to the question “Do you read the Bible?” … It drilled down further, looking for married voters with children, preferably owners of homes worth more than $100,000. Finally, names that overlapped at least a dozen or so data points were overlaid with voting records to yield a database with the addresses and, in many cases, e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers of the more than 17 million faith-centric registered voters—not just evangelical Protestants but also Mass-attending Catholics.
Some say that campaign ads are getting just ridiculous. But now it’s taken a turn to the truly bizarre. An Indiana man has auctioned off space on the side of his head, where he tattooed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign “R” logo in a 5-by-2-inch spot for a bid of $15, 000.
Eric Hartsburg posted the eBay listing in August, and told ABC News that he was paid $15,000 by a Republican eBay user, who preferred to remain anonymous, to get the Romney logo permanently inked on the side of his head. Hartsburg, who is an Indiana native, told ABC News that he agreed because the tattoo was something that he could live with.
Originally posted by cartenz
Originally posted by pngxp
people spending their time and money trying to protect their interest??? NO WAY!!!
Sacrasm aside, there are some who can put political and personal interests aside to work toward a greater good, Im saddened that you are blind to this.
Originally posted by NoRegretsEver
But NRE, people really arent that stupid... are they?
Hmmm ATS let me see if I can check on that... OH WAIT!!
How about this? Do you think that the people aren't controlled ( or persuaded) by "anonymous" donations??
Some say that campaign ads are getting just ridiculous. But now it’s taken a turn to the truly bizarre. An Indiana man has auctioned off space on the side of his head, where he tattooed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign “R” logo in a 5-by-2-inch spot for a bid of $15, 000.
Eric Hartsburg posted the eBay listing in August, and told ABC News that he was paid $15,000 by a Republican eBay user, who preferred to remain anonymous, to get the Romney logo permanently inked on the side of his head. Hartsburg, who is an Indiana native, told ABC News that he agreed because the tattoo was something that he could live with.
abcnews.go.com...
Peace, NRE.