__
Via LGF, another reminder that “Mitt” Romney is a mean prick, even to his own “beloved” property family. Pro tip, Willard: If you’ve finished puberty and people are still calling you a “prankster”, it’s time to re-examine your life, because what they’re really saying is you’re a bully who lacks the balls to own up to his desire to hurt people.
Also, if I am not careful, what David Brookes is to DougJ or Megan McArdle to Tom Levenson, Kathleen “Silk Magnolia” Parker will be to me:
… Ann Romney, wife of the presumptive Republican nominee, recently became a target of ridicule when it was revealed that she co-owns an Olympian horse that will compete in dressage, a sport she apparently enjoys… Dressage and horseback riding in general offer other rewards, including therapy for people who suffer maladies from physical disabilities to emotional imbalances….
For Ann Romney, riding has been helpful in dealing with her multiple sclerosis. Indeed, horseback riding is a commonly recommended activity for MS sufferers…
Why, then, have some seen fit to ridicule Ann Romney’s choice of activities? Leading the charge on the political side has been MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who, while insisting that he wasn’t commenting on Romney’s MS, pointed out that the Romneys treat the horse as a business rather than a health expense…
Because, Ms. Parker, if my doctor tells me to spend some time on a stationary bike to combact obesity-related health issues, I don’t get to claim money sent to Lance Armstrong (or his alleged blood-doping suppliers) as a medical expense or a business loss on my tax forms. I have every sympathy for Mrs. Romney — who, apart from her physical issues, has been living in the Romney compound since she was in high school — but even the Roman emperors knew that buying an Olympic athlete is not the same as being an Olympic athlete. Although Caligula might’ve approved of Mrs. Romney’s pet Olympian:
For example, did you know that the average family spends a little over $16,000 on housing per year, and Rafalca’s housing costs nearly $29,000? That Rafalca’s clothing costs $10,000 per year? That the Romneys shell out $15,420 carting that four legged Fauntleroy from place to place?
Hat tip to Paul Constant (“The punchline to all this is that Mitt Romney can’t go a full day without referring to Barack Obama as out of touch with the average American.”) for word of Rafalca Romney on Twitter… sister site to Dogs Against Romney?
Interrobang
I honestly don’t get this. She’s married to a zillionaire, so she can afford a fancy horse, so fucking what?
Fuck, I did hippotherapy myself for 15 years, and if I had that kind of money, I’d buy a horse like that myself. You don’t have to be an Olympic-quality rider to have a horse like that make you look good, either.
But somehow this is like the Worst Thing Evar, or something. As to the tax break thing, are you seriously telling me you can’t write off prescribed medical appliances? I mean, sure, the Rmoneys have got a fancy accountant who gets them things above and beyond, but of all the asshole things they’ve ever done, this is about the least assholish of them. At least she actually rides, and doesn’t just keep Rafalca around like he’s a horsehair ficus tree…
eldorado
if the dems can’t manage a victory when the gop is literally running thurston howell iii as their candidate, there is no hope for this country
freelancer
Fucker probably wears a monocle in private. Dude is a fucking royal asshole.
Yutsano
@Interrobang:
The horse wasn’t claimed as a medical deduction. It was claimed as a business loss. In IRS terms that’s a huge distinction.
freelancer
Is that anything like Death Therapy? I hear the hippos can be quite dangerous.
piratedan
dunno if anyone else has seen this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/us/philadelphias-msgr-william-j-lynn-is-convicted-of-allowing-abuse.html?_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=edit_au_20120622
so that is a +1 for justice and a -1 for the red beanie brigade
Hill Dweller
@Interrobang: As was pointed out on here yesterday, Ann Romney was sued for selling an injured horse that she had pumped full of drugs to mask said injury. She settled out of court.
She is just as dishonest as her husband.
PurpleGirl
@Interrobang: Medical expenses have to exceed 7.5% of your income over and above any insurance you have, I believe. At his “income” he couldn’t deduct the horse as a medical expense. He can claim the expenses as a “business”, though.
Mnemosyne
@Interrobang:
Actually, she doesn’t ride Rafalca. She pays someone else to ride him, as will happen in the Olympics.
I’m still not sure how the horse counts as part of her therapy if someone else is riding it on her behalf. Does the rider, like, psychically transmit the health benefits of the ride to her?
Lojasmo
@Interrobang: Hippo therapy is one thing. A jockey, feed, drugs for the horse, and Attemcant expenses to the tune of an annual household salary? Give me a fucking break.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
Never have I had such an overwhelming disgust for a politician as I do with Mitt. I want to punch that motherfucker in the face a million times.
Steeplejack
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I find this hard to believe, or at least I have never heard it at all before. Anybody who knows anything about MS care to comment?
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: It actually is indicated for MS. But the dressage movements have little to do with actual hippotherapy, which is guided and monitored by a professional.
Hunter Gathers
@robertdsc-iPhone 4: He’d fall to floor crying for his mommy after a single punch. Mittens is the biggest pansy ass who ever lived.
Joseph Nobles
@Mnemosyne: homeopathic dressage is all the rage this season.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I haven’t specifically heard of it, but it makes sense — it’s a relatively low-impact activity that doesn’t require you to have great balance. Horseback riding can accommodate a wide range of physical disabilities — they have equestrian events as part of the Paralympics.
I’m sure that the horses that Ann Romney rides personally are helpful for her therapy. I’m not so sure that the horses that she pays someone else to ride are quite as helpful.
Cacti
@Interrobang:
How dare we criticize our betters.
If Lady Romney wants to build an olympic sized track in her back yard, hire Usain Bolt to run sprints on it, and call it her “exercise regimen” who are we mere mortals to question it?
PurpleGirl
@Steeplejack: If you go the National MS Society web site you will find lots of listings by state for horse riding programs. Note: Programs are for riding horses not for dressage routines.
Joey Maloney
@freelancer:
In more ways than one.
Cacti
@PurpleGirl:
Does the therapy include paying someone to ride the horse for you?
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
I am assuming that Ann Romney does ride a horse and the Rafalca/dressage thing is separate.
ETA: And I think it is slightly unfair to argue that Ann Romney claims that Rafalca and the dressage are part of her MS therapy. I have seen nothing in any of the news stories that supports that. There is enough to criticize without bending things.
Mnemosyne
@Interrobang:
And if you rode that horse yourself, that automatically puts you a step above Ann Romney, who pays someone else to ride it for her.
I’m not sure what part of “she doesn’t actually ride the horse being criticized” is confusing.
hhex65
@Hill Dweller: C’mon, any corrupt misdeeds from Mrs. Romney’s past are off-limits to the likes of us.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Something I have wondered about: why do you keep putting “Mitt” in quotes? It’s not like it’s a nickname, it’s his middle name. People go by their middle name all the time.
PurpleGirl
@Cacti: LOL. No, the person with MS is supposed to do the horse riding for the benefit.
(I’ve been getting the MS Society newsletter in e-mail since I supported JC’s sister in one of her runs. I’ve looked around their web site for general interest.)
Steeplejack
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I think she thinks it’s “funny.” I asked the same thing once before and got no response.
jl
The scary kid in the dark basement grabbing Mitt and resulting wrasslin’ sounds OK.
Food face smashing? That sounds like a weird family ritual. Since they all know its coming. Or Romnholm syndrome?
Until I hear something that sounds so bad that we might have to worry about a Senator Rafalca under a Mittadministration, I would rather focus on the awful policies, not speculate on family stuff.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Seems fairly straightforward.
Ann Romney does not ride Rafalca for therapy, or personal recreation. Rafalca is Ann’s rich arsehole hobby.
Ann has hubby spend more than the median household income on having various individuals stable, feed, groom, massage, and play with her horsey.
Hubby says the President is out of touch with the lives of ordinary Americans.
Tehanu
It’s not owning the horse and paying more than most people make in a year for it that bothers me. If she has the money, fine. What pisses me off is her going around prating about how she and her whole entitled plastic family are just regular folks.
Cacti
I encourage Kathleen Parker to spend as much time as possible talking about the Romney’s horses.
I’m sure the more people hear about it, the more they will realize how normal it is to drop 80-grand a year on a dancing horse.
Wouldn’t we all do the same thing if we had the extra money?
Culture of Truth
Clearly Obama is out of touch with dressage-Americans.
Dee Loralei
@Interrobang: No one begrudges her hippotherapy, she’s dealing with a horrible, crippling disease. Where-ever and however she finds solace and comfort and a pain free minute, I’m for it, absolutely. Whatever she finds that can make her feel in control of her illness, I am for. I have been there.
I was so there, in her very painful shoes that I came to understand why Jack Kervorkian did what he did. And yes, I rode a horse to build up my own strength. And I received great succor from riding.
But Rafalca is not her horse, in the usual sense. She is co-owned by 2 other couples and she is ridden only for show in Dressage events. If Ann Romney rode her for that, no one would say a word.
We’re pissed because for X number of years the Romney’s have owned Rafalca and have written her off in their taxes as a business expense and not as a medical expense. We are also quite ticked off that the Romney’s and some partners tried to foist off an injured horse as being sound and before the sale was final, pumped the horse up with a huge amount of painkillers. These are not nice people.
And someone will have to explain to me why a one third share of a horse who has never made money, is worth a 77,000+ tax write-off. That means all 3 owners declared something like $230,000+ as tax expenses. And I thought at some point, a business has to make money, or it becomes a hobby according to the IRS. When many people can’t even get the EIC on their taxes, if they live with their folks. Because the tax code as written by Republicans punishes as many low income people as it can.
So, as far as I see it, the horse Ann Romney owns and stables and rides should be a tax write-off under medical expenditures. But Rafalca and the taxes the Romney’s have written off for her, need to be looked at and heavily perused.I think Yutsano can explain how the laws in re the IRS demand that they look more at low income filers than at the very rich.
And GodDamn her for trying to sell an injured horse and pumping him full of drugs! Just God Damn her to hell for that!
cat48
These “business losses for a Horse” just tick me off. There’s also a Kentucky Racehorse Tax Loophole that Bitch McConnell wrote for his state.
Think about it in relation to the “Obama is Going to Cut Your Social Security & Medicare Thread” where lots of folks pitched a bitch. We subsidize rich people’s hobbies thru tax loophole expenditures that lobbyists have written; they have Grover to make sure no one makes them pay their fair share; and you blame the man who just got to Washington in 2005.
The tax code has screwed ordinary people for years. We have to demand the tax code be cleaned up before any cuts are made. We need a Lobbyist.
Cacti
@Tehanu:
I can’t even go that far. Ann’s horsey money is part of fortune built on human misery. And what is her hubby-wubby’s solution for the suffering of working people? Give people like the Romneys a whopping tax cut, so they can piss it away on more dancing horses.
jl
Horse, shmorse. So what? Rich people do rich things.
FDR bought a whole damn resort in the 1920s.
Was he out of touch?
I think best to keep the richy rich talk focused on Romney’s bad policies and the bad attitudes revealed by what Mitt says.
Like, quit whining and borrow $50k* from your folks and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
You can’t go wrong with that. Any hypocrisy is fair game. But making too much of the mere fact that Mitt is rich, just opens up problems.
*real value of Mitt’s $20K example.
jl
@Cacti:
” I encourage Kathleen Parker to spend as much time as possible talking about the Romney’s horses. ”
I do agree with that statement.
Cacti
@jl:
FDR never pretended he was a jeans-wearing, grits-eatin’, everyman.
jl
@Cacti: but don’t agree with that. Better to focus on the crummy leverage buyout (not private equity, since that term includes legit lines of business) scams and the bad policies. And the hypocrisy of what Mitt says. Just the hypocrisy of what Mitt says is a gold mine, a gift that just keeps giving. Need to mine that ore for all its worth, and develop new and innovative entrepreneurial (Edit and high ROI) approaches to exploiting that resource.
Hill Dweller
Selling an injured horse, and masking said injury with copious amounts of drugs, is pretty f’n shady.
Narcissus
Wait, Romney owns a horse the upkeep of which costs more money than most people make in a year, and that’s not fair game?
Anne Laurie
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I cherish my Masshole grievances. Whilst Romney was in possession of the governor’s office — not ‘acting as governor’, since he had no interest in performing so menial a job — his hand-chosen minion (probably Erick ‘Etch-A-Sktech’ Fehrnstrom) sent out a memo informing lesser Commonwealth employees that the name Willard was never to be used in conjunction with Lord Romney of Bain. Ergo, some of us will always refer to Willard by the name on his long-form birth certificate.
For comparison purposes, Repub-Gov (Argeo) Paul Cellucci just signed official documents “A. Paul Celucci” and nobody gave him grief about it. It’s just one more of a million indicators that Romney is Not Like The Rest of Us.
Cacti
@jl:
Or shilling for the for-profit colleges, which provide education at about triple the cost, for a degree that opens no doors for you.
Cacti
@Narcissus:
And he writes it off as a business loss, because horsey is owned as an LLC.
Yutsano
@Dee Loralei:
Rich people hire lobbyists. Tax laws are written by Congress. It’s easier to fuck the poor. That about covers it.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anne Laurie: So, it’s just stupid, gotcha.
karen marie
@Steeplejack: Romneys have continually pointed to Ann Romney’s MS as justification for her involvement in dressage. That involvement includes Rafalca. A horse that she doesn’t ride is not relevant to her MS, so why do they claim it is?
amk
Bang, the thread opens with a rw troll. Do these morons wait for such threads? Pathetic pos.
Rock
The issue is that the Romneys paid less tax because they co-own a damn horse and wrote it off as a business expense. In a sane world, such tax-dodging would be front-page news like every larger-than-it-should-be public pension. Maybe it’s just me.
Narcissus
“Mitt Romney is a zillionaire, so he can afford a Piss-Boy, so what?”
karen marie
@jl:
Problems for whom?
M. Bouffant
I have every sympathy for Mrs. Romney — who, apart from her physical issues, has been living in the Romney compound since she was in high school
About like Elvis capturing his teen-age bride. No wonder her idea of a vacation is more time w/ the five lads & their offspring; she’s been institutionalized for over 40 yrs. Deep inside is there still a part that asks “What if I hadn’t …?”
Thor Heyerdahl
@karen marie:
It’s good to be the king
Steeplejack
@karen marie:
Are they claiming that? Rafalca is being claimed as a business expense, not a medical one. I think the business deduction is sketchy as hell, but I don’t see where “Ann Romney does dressage as MS therapy” and “Ann Romney is a partner in the ownership of an Olympic-class dressage horse” automatically means that she is claiming Rafalca is part of her MS therapy.
Culture of Truth
@Steeplejack: In his interview with Bob Schieffer he certainly implied it. For obvious reasons, they want us, thru Fox news, to think the deduction was medical, but if it was an alleged business, it certainly is fair game.
freelancer
@Culture of Truth:
But what then, when there is the not so subtle implication that the new stair/car/horse escalator lift is also crucial to Ann’s health and can be written off as a medical expense? Lee Atwater died of a horrendous body-morphing brain tumor, but he still remained a soulless fucking asshole in the end. Ann Romney’s 3rd of a horse ownership, paid to make a guy teach a horse to dance, if she claimed ANY of it as medical, makes her a fraud, and fair game.
I realize there are those on the right that might make hay with this tactic and twist into attacking a vulnerable woman, but I make 34k a year. I do okay, but she gets a bigger tax write off for Rafalca Romney than I make twice in the same time. And what I earn? I earned honest, through hard work any my own ambition, and I didn’t shit on anyone to do it. Ann can’t claim that for herself or her husband. She is among the least vulnerable women that have ever existed. She will never have to want, not for a minute.
And her husband is poised to make many more women, and many more Americans face the threat of unimaginable poverty and vulnerability to the worst experiences of life if he wins. And she supports and benefits from him. I think the medical issue, if even tenuous, becomes moot. We know enough facts as it is about this severely over-monied couple.
Fuck Mitt, and Fuck Anne.
NotMax
Open thread, so gonna sneak this in as no one seems to have mentioned it:
Darkrose
The people I know with MS struggle to pay for their meds. Good for Anne Romney that her husband is rich and she will never have to worry about getting dropped from her insurance. Fuck Anne Romney for expressing zero empathy for people who have the same debilitating illness but can’t afford pain medication, let alone horse therapy.
karen marie
@Steeplejack: Are you deliberately obtuse or are you really that thick?
No one is making fun of or criticizing Ann Romney because she has MS or because she rides a horse for therapy. It’s the outrageous use of the tax code to deduct the cost of her hobby — not her therapy, her hobby.
amk
@freelancer:
This.
And this
= This
freelancer
@amk:
Thank you for excerpting my larger point and ignoring my linguistic errors, grammatical and otherwise.
Anne Romney is a woman with a debilitating illness. There is nothing that is currently possible or available that is out of her reach. But most of what we have seen from her is the pleasantry that her husband is a prankster and her hobby enables her to a tax break worth more than most Americans take home in a year, possibly every two years.
THAT IS FUCKING INSANE!
Think about every time you stretched a buck. You bought that movie on Blu-ray that you like, or you went out for an expensive meal with your SO, and the bill was $70. It was great, or you felt the satisfaction of an enjoyable experience. That trip back home, for Christmas, the time you saved as part of your job, and the cash you scraped to feel dignified in front of your hosts? Ann Romney, as part of her household, just blew more than your entire income on a goddamned equine nightmare that she may have only brushed up against in passing. There is very little that is not fucked up about that.
Kane
Team Romney surely understood that the dressage issue could be a political liability as it easily fits into the public perception that Mitt Romney is an out of touch elitist. Thus, they wrap Ann’s medical condition around dressage, then cry victim when anyone mentions their involvement in dressage.
Svensker
A friend of mine’s daughter participates in her Special Olympics on horseback and has for years. My friend is what the Romneys would consider dirt poor, but between special programs and scraping together what she can for her daughter, my friend manages to allow her daughter to ride regularly.
I don’t begrudge Ann her riding. But why the Romneys should be able to deduct in “business expenses” more for caring for their horse than my friend’s entire yearly salary I don’t understand, tho.
WereBear
Not to mention he bought the resort to treat his own polio… and offered free care to those who couldn’t afford it.
JGabriel
__
__
Paul Constant:
“Wow, that’s a class act. Whaddaya call it?”
“The Aristocrats!”
.
Brachiator
@Hill Dweller:
I certainly will not vote for her, then.
Wait a minute. She’s not running for anything.
I agree with the poster who noted that in an interview Mitt pulled a weasel on whether his wife’s horsey activities were more medical or shady business, but apart from that I don’t give a rat’s ass about what she does with her time or money. She could spend her loot on gold vibrators or snort coke off a pool boy’s ass and I still would not care.
Rich people do crazy shit with their money. The head of Oracle is buying an island for $500 million bucks, taking a Dr Evil villain’s lair off the market.
Yeah, every freaking word that Romney says about Obama being out of touch with people is bullshit. And I want to see him defeated big time.
But I don’t care what Romney’s wife thinks about anything, and care less about what she does with her money. The GOP tried to smear John Kerry’s wife because she was wealthy. I still don’t know whether she donates time or money to worthy causes. Because I just don’t give a damn, and don’t see why anyone should.
Linda Featheringill
@Kane:
You could have a point in that it might be Team Romney that is indicating that all the horses are a part of Anne’s therapy. This idea may not have come from her at all.
However, the idea is still stupid.
Linda Featheringill
I disagree that the Romneys are aristocrats. They are quite wealthy and would probably like to be nobility. But they’re just wannabes.
Rubio, on the other hand, is an aristocrat. To the core. And I mean that as an insult.
[Resentful grumbling and cussing about the Middle Ages.]
Ash Can
@amk: Interrobang is hardly a right-wing troll, and there most certainly is an undercurrent of “I hate her simply because she’s rich” in some of the Ann-Romney-horse-riding bashing here. Money, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with whether a person is good or bad, or reliably does good or bad things. As other, more focused commenters here have said, it’s not the wealth in and of itself that’s objectionable, it’s the hypocritical, unethical, and all-around trashy behavior of the Romneys, including with respect to the horse ownership, as well as the questionable source of at least some of that wealth.
SRW1
” … but even the Roman emperors knew that buying an Olympic athlete is not the same as being an Olympic athlete.”
Actually, that is likely not absolutely true. According to Suetonius, Nero participated in the Olympic Games in 67 AD and was awarded a laurel wreath.
/end of otherwise useless pedantry
More to the point:
If riding helps Ann Romney with her MS, good for her to practice riding. But the horse needing to be an Olympic class dressage horse? How often does she get to ride that horse?
Ash Can
Furthermore, I don’t like to see the discussion of this video get off track, because I think there are several points highlighted in the video that are very telling. First, there’s the point that comes out about how, with regard to pranks, Mitt loves to dish it out but can’t handle it when anyone pranks him back. We all know people like that, and they’re jerks. Second, there’s the childishness and meanness of his pranks. Pushing your kids’ faces into food? And now they’re doing that to their own kids? Folks, this is how bullies are made — although there’s no way a family as ethically bankrupt as the Romneys will recognize this. And finally, really now — “We fall for it every time; I don’t know why we do.” Proof positive that the Romneys have raised a group of boys who are none too bright. Please, America, haven’t we had more than enough idiocy associated with the presidency?
freelancer
@Brachiator:
Because some of these people aim to govern the rest of us, private islands be damned. No one cares anymore what Theresa Heinz-Kerry thinks in the political world, because her husband, much as I voted for him 8 years ago and couldn’t believe his loss against all odds, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this world anymore (at least politically speaking).
Even then, the ultra 1% must garner at least a modicum of consent of the 99. Romney is failing on multiple dimensions at that.
Kane
And the dressage horses they pranced in on.
AxelFoley
Would it be mean of me to say fuck her and the horse she (didn’t) ride in on?
harlana
@Kane: very good!
harlana
“and now we do it to our kids, too” – that is so fucked up. I’ll bet David Letterman wouldn’t have tried to normalize that shit like Conan.
harlana
um, and as far as hurt fee-fees regarding Ann’s dressage excesses, i have but 2 words:
Michelle Obama
Ash Can
@harlana: I agree that Conan didn’t really push back — of course, as an interviewer, he’s going to keep asking questions until his time between commercials runs out, rather than stopping to pontificate. But I did get a “WTF” vibe from him.
And yes, as I said above, the “now we do it to our kids” really got me. Way to teach respect and self-esteem, you guys.
ETA: And by “you guys,” I mean both generations of Romneys.
harlana
@WereBear: no, no, no. FDR is not FDR and never has been! blah blah blah
harlana
and yes, Michelle Obama, even with a debilitating illness, would be ripped apart. first off, she would be accused of malingering anyway, just as Rush accused Micheal J. Fox of overplaying his illness.
harlana
NO one need feel guilty about talking about the dressage business and the ridiculous tax breaks. NO one has to apologize. If anyone tries to back you into a corner on this, again.
How would they react if it were Michelle?
amk
@Ash Can: duck, quack and all that. AL didn’t make any of the points that it raised.
Marc
@harlana: Oh god, yes. Everything about that video is so creepy.
“I remember a story from when he was in high school”–yeah, we all heard stories from when he was in high school.
grandpa john
@Brachiator: Is the head of oracle claiming a tax deduction for the island as being a business expense? oranges and apples
harlana
everyone can just stop with the “oh talking about it means you hate rich people”
Please
As I have noted before, I worked for rich people most of my adult life. I was grateful for the fact they treated me with respect, for the most part, and rewarded my hard work.
I NEVER thought about what they had which, of course, was not a piss drop compared to Romney’s money. I was just content knowing I had a relatively comfortable existence with health insurance and so forth until I lost it all.
It’s when I discovered that the superrich were actively trying to destroy us that i have just been stunned by the excess and greed.
I think about how I could not even afford meds that would make me tolerable to be around and allow me to continue to do interviews. I think about people with MS who can’t afford treatment much less a horse to ride.
It is just not the same thing, at all. And I still don’t hate them so much as FEAR them. They frighten me for what they intend to do to the nation. Their psychopathy scares the hell out of me because it is combined with power, influence and money.
They want to destroy us. That is cause for concern and scrutiny. And there is no need to apologize for that.
harlana
and yes, perhaps with MS you can claim disability and live hand to mouth because you can’t work and you’d have to be on Medicaid. so perhaps one would have access to some treatment that would not however, involve dressage horses, but still be forced to live like a pauper for the rest of your days.
Maude
@harlana:
This.
harlana
@Maude: thanks, Maude
harlana
@Marc: every single time someone tries to portray Mitt as an average, ordinary guy, you just come away with that same thought, “man, that guy is fucked up!” the kids honestly don’t know any better and they don’t realize how bad it sounds because that is all they’ve ever known.
harlana
ok gonna stop hogging the thread now, i just get this way after a few cups of coffee. morning is my manic time and then it’s all downhill from there and by 6:00 pm I am half-dead :)
Weaselone
@Interrobang:
1. Apparently, she can’t afford a fancy horse, because the government is helping pay for its upkeep via tax write offs.
2. I don’t believe I have ever heard any of the Romney’s directly say that these expenses are related to Ann Romney’s MS therapy. Rather, they tend to mention Rafalca and the hippotherapy in close proximity and then depend on the media and political allies to argue that connection for them. Rafalca is treated as a business expense, not medical. If you can’t see why people have a problem with some accounting magic turning an expensive hobby into a $77,000 write off for business expenses, I would suggest the problem lies more on your end than the people criticizing it.
Ash Can
@harlana:
No one here is saying that. And, in fact, you go on to make the same point I was making very well. Wealth is like an axe. It’s a powerful tool that can do much good in the hands of the right people and much damage in the hands of the wrong people. It’s not the wealth per se, it’s the wielder. That’s why focusing on the wealth itself is petty and small, but focusing on the context, i.e. the person and his/her behavior vis-a-vis that wealth, is justified.
PurpleGirl
@harlana: A friend’s brother developed the more severe form of MS. He had to quit his job, lost his health insurance and, no, Medicaid came no where close to providing the consistent care he needed as the MS and the complications got worse. He died in his mid-40s.
FlipYrWhig
If your favorite pastime is, to borrow a phrase from Colbert, “competitive horse prancing,” I don’t think an elaborate justification is required for other people to laugh at you. It’s inherently funny.
kay
I don’t like it when adults play humiliating jokes on kids. I hardly ever think physical “humor” is funny, even between adults, so I know it’s partly differences in sense of humor, but if my husband were pushing our kids faces into food I think I would say “stop that”.
I was at a wedding once where the groom went sort of nuts with the bizarre “pushing wedding cake into each others faces” ritual and actually knocked the bride over. I was thinking “get out now, brand new bride. He’s mean”.
MosesZD
@Interrobang:
You can’t write a horse off as a business expense unless it is a business. It’s called fraud.
Guide Dog or Other Service Animal
You can include in medical expenses the costs of buying, training, and maintaining a guide dog or other service animal to assist a visually impaired or hearing-impaired person, or a person with other physical disabilities. In general, this includes any costs, such as food, grooming, and veterinary care, incurred in maintaining the health and vitality of the service animal so that it may perform its duties.
Is the horse a service animal? No. Horses are not service animals like trained monkeys, seeing eye dogs, etc.
You can’t deduct non-medical, but recommended (or even prescribed), normal consumer goods and services. This includes, but is not limited to, swimming lessons, dancing lessons, pools, whole-house HEPA filters, non-prescription drugs, maternity clothes , health club dues, etc.
Even worse, if the horse did qualify as a service animal, they couldn’t deduct it. Romney makes too much money and would need over $1.5 million a year medical expenses before he could satisfy the 7.5% disallowance threshold and deduct the first dollar…
This is a hobby. They’re writing it off as a business expense. It’s a clear case (and typical case) of a rich man playing audit roulette while hiding behind an accountant so he can commit petty fraud.
And it’s petty. That’s the sad part. It’s just sad and petty that a man who makes $20+ million a year has to cheat so he can save 20K in taxes.
WereBear
It’s the power imbalance that makes it not funny.
kay
@WereBear:
I don’t mind at all that men can be more physical with kids, or my husband was, but his stuff was clearly games, they were in it and part of it, and he would sometimes “lose”, for example, and they would laugh at him. He wasn’t doing something to them.
I just think kids have a certain dignity or something that makes me not want to see them sort of man-handled. I love that age around two years old where they realize they have physical autonomy and agency: “put me DOWN!”, all outraged :)
They’re so small yet so mad!
Brachiator
@freelancer:
You miss my point. I never gave a rat’s ass about what THK thought about anything back when Kerry was running. But I also detested the vile insinuation that she and Kerry were somehow inauthentic because of her background and wealth.
Mitt himself, without reference to his wife is, as you note, doing a good job of coming across as phony to many voters. Let’s hope that a majority of the people kick his butt to the curb come election day.
rikyrah
said it before, will say it again: nobody says anything good about Willard unless they’re getting a check from him.
kay
@WereBear:
Romney tells the nail polish story on the stump (or used to, he did in Ohio) and it’s slightly different. When Romney tells it, the would-be bride is someone he dated, and Romney’s now-wife was a bridesmaid.
I know I’m probably in a minority, but (again) I think it’s weird. I think it’s weird to sneak into the dressing room and play a “prank” on your ex-girlfriend’s new husband, a prank that will be revealed at the actual wedding. I just think it’s like he’s inserting himself into the wedding. Maybe most people think this stuff is hysterical, who knows. A lot of people laugh at movies where people fall down and things, so I recognize that “pranks” are loads of fun.
I also think it’s so 1950’s, that a man getting married is secretly screaming “HELP!”, because women are such temptresses, we all KNOW that, and they’re spinning a web that men unwittingly fall into because men are such stupid oafs.
Mnemosyne
@Kane:
This. It’s not that the Romneys have an expensive hobby. It’s that they go, “Oh, no, it’s not a hobby, we have to do it for Ann’s medical care!”
Mnemosyne
@kay:
We went to G’s cousin’s wedding (I had never met either her or her new husband) and the DJ tried to goad them into smashing cake into each other’s faces. I immediately liked her husband because he very firmly put his foot down and said they would NOT do it.
Brachiator
@grandpa john:
The faux outrage here and in other threads is more about the fact that Mrs Romney spent a boatload of money on an exotic hobby than it is about any tax break that she got from her little hobby. And so you see the posts about how she spent more than the average worker makes in a year, etc.
Again, it’s about the funny shit that rich people spend their money on.
And here’s the funny thing. As far as I can see, looking at pages 19 and 151 of the Romney 2010 tax return, they were only allowed a $49 loss on the $77,000 of expenses from their supposed investment in the horse. The rest is disallowed currently under the passive activity rules.
So Ann Romney spent 77 grand and got to deduct $49 of it. Like I said, rich people do funny shit with their money.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
She really fell over, and she wasn’t laughing, she looked pissed, which he thought was hysterical. I can’t help it. I’m the person sitting there thinking, “God, what an asshole you are”.
I was at a seminar once, for work, and it was in a tiered lecture hall. This woman came in late, tripped over someone’s power cord, and really fell down the stairs, like, spectacularly. Her skirt rode up, she hit on her face, it looked like it HURT. About a quarter of the room were laughing, and, again, I was thinking “I hate all of you so much”. I’m a klutz, so my heart just went out to her. I, too, cannot walk and look around, both at the same time, and I stupidly walk really quickly
mellowjohn
to say nothing of catherine the great!
Mnemosyne
@kay:
I probably would have been one of the laughers, but at least I know it’s a bad habit. It’s easy to surprise me into laughing at something inappropriate.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
“I believe it’s Mitt’s time, it’s our turn now.”
-Ann Romney
Naw, Ann doesn’t think she’s running for anything.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
RE: Wait a minute. She’s not running for anything
Are you suggesting that political rhetoric trumps constitutional reality?
cckids
@harlana:
This, so much. I know I’m late to the thread, but this subject bothers me. My son has been on Medicaid most of his life, since the bastard insurance company threw him out when he was diagnosed at 4 months old. And Medicaid has kept him alive & I am thankful for it.
But with so many state cutbacks, especially since, here in NV they’ve turned Medicaid over to a private company to run (into the ground), it won’t even pay for basic physical therapy, for anyone. The rationale given is that it won’t make him better. The fact that it keeps him from getting worse doesn’t count. And the Romneys can deduct expenses for their horse as a business. I’m sure they have more than one horse, and could probably deduct the ones Anne actually rides as medical deductions as well.
With us, even though we spend a lot of money on medical stuff, it isn’t enough to deduct, though it surely takes a more noticeable bite out of our bottom line than the $77 grand does the Romneys.
It is the in-your-face ethical wrongness of it all that drives the story. We all know that yes, yes, it is legal. But just . . . wrong.
cckids
@Mnemosyne:
My dad, with his 6 daughters, took each of our husbands-to-be aside before the wedding & politely but firmly said that the cake-smashing was NOT going to be happening. And it didn’t. Now, THAT’S what a Dad is supposed to be like.
Brachiator
@cckids:
This stuff is going to be the myth that doesn’t die, and maybe Romney deserves it, but looking at Romney’s tax return does not show any medical deductions for horse riding. In fact, their income is too high for them to have any allowable medical deductions.
And the deduction they get for the Olympian horse is limited to a whopping $49.
On the other hand, we desperately need programs like Medicaid and enhancements to health care reform. And this, not horse crap, is why Romney needs to be defeated.
Best wishes to you and your son.
Jebediah
@cckids:
Hear, hear!
bemused
@kay:
I agree. I think shoving people’s faces into food or anything else isn’t funny and can be a sign of a sadistic mean streak.
I and others who attended a couple’s 25th anniversary party still remember when the wife made a point of smearing anniversary cake into her husband’s face. She thought she was very funny, laughing and laughing, while the husband didn’t look thrilled whatsoever. Five years later they were divorced after the dipshit husband fell for a 19 year old whom he later married. The first wife was and still is a nasty, vindictive person.
Jebediah
@WereBear:
That’s the problem with a lot of conservative “humor” – they get that exactly backwards and don’t understand why everyone else doesn’t find it hilarious. (“argh, you’re so PC it’s destroyed your sense of humor” etc.)
Forum Transmitted Disease
“Mitt Romney uses his show horse as a tax write-off”
God, if you can’t win with that alone, you don’t deserve to.
Mike S.
LOL, Anne Laurie has never heard of Ken Kesey.
Anne Laurie
@Mike S.: No, I think Ken Kesey was a chickenshit bully, just like Romney, but with more charisma and less money.