Senate majority leader Harry Reid go the ball rolling by claiming that unnamed investors told him that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his taxes for 10 years.
The ensuing brouhaha created some unintended consequences for Harry Reid. One was that conservative activists managed to link his name in the Google search engine with the phrase, “Harry Reid is a pederast.”
A more serious consequence for the senator is that people are now asking him how he was able to amass a personal wealth of $10 million when he spent most of his adult life in public service. But what really surprises me is that nobody has pointed out that Harry Reid was a villain in a Martin Scorsese gangster movie.
Seriously!
The film is Casino, made in 1995 and starred Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci. The screenplay was written by crime writer Nicholas Pileggi from real-life events that occurred in Las Vegas in the late 1970’s. If you look at the Wikipedia page for the film, you will see that the character played by Dick Smothers, State Senator (and gaming commission chairman) Harrison Roberts, is based on real life character Harry Reid!
If you have seen the film, you will recall that the Dick Smother’s character was a pill popping, prostitute using, freebee grubbing, corrupt local politician and gaming commission chairman who was in bed with the mob. In real life, Harry Reid was the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1977 to 1981, around about the same time the real-life events depicted in the film occurred.
P.S. An interesting aside: the verisimilitude of the film was so good that the mob laywer who defended the Robert De Niro character played himself in the film. He is (in the film and real life) Oscar Goodman, the Democrat mayor of Las Vegas from 1999 to 2011 (in real life).
Now tell me the Republicans could get away with this stuff.
If Romney did or did not pay any taxes is beside the point. The question should be whether or not he broke any laws. If he did nothing illegal then it is the fault of the law and the previous administrations and Congress that are at fault. Like many people, I think there are far too many loopholes to allow the wealthy to evade taxes and, that being the case, the tax laws should be rewritten to close some of these loopholes. Simply heaping tax upon tax is not the answer.
Posted by: Powell Lucas | August 08, 2012 at 10:51 AM
Sounds a lot like election Canada and the liberal party.
http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/08/08/elections-canada-investigating-allegations-contributors-to-del-mastros-re-election-campaign-reimbursed
Posted by: Pissedoff | August 08, 2012 at 12:21 PM