Tag Archives: Ron Wyden

national news, political news

Let ‘tradition’ stand regarding tax returns

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Call me a traditionalist.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wants Congress to enact legislation that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns for public inspection.

With all due respect to my home boy, I think the bill is an overreach.

Wyden is responding to presumptive Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his returns. Trump contends his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, to which the IRS has responded “so what?”; an audit doesn’t preclude the release of the returns.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/281194-dem-senator-offers-bill-to-require-candidates-to-release-tax-returns

The tradition has been for presidential candidates to release their returns. They’ve been doing it since 1976, the first election after the Watergate constitutional crisis that forced President Nixon to resign.

My own sense is that tradition ought to stand.

I believe candidates’ refusal to release those returns give voters a key gauge of their character. It gives voters a chance to determine a candidate’s trustworthiness. It enables voters to use such refusal as a measuring stick as to whether the candidate deserves their ballot-box endorsement.

To be sure, Wyden has a dog in this fight. He has endorsed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in turn has been blasting Trump to smithereens over his refusal to release his tax returns.

I get Sen. Wyden’s bias.

I also believe “tradition” ought to stand as a de facto rule. Let the presidential candidates decide whether to comply … and then let voters decide on the correctness of their refusal.

 

 

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Should U.S. let Americans know when attacks are due?

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wants the U.S. government to spell out the conditions that warrant fatal attacks on American citizens.

By itself, that’s not an unreasonable request.

Let’s put this request in some context, though.

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/06/ron_wyden_says_americans_deser.html#incart_m-rpt-1

Wyden sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is dismayed, I gather, about the drone attack in Yemen that killed American-born al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. He was blown away in a blast delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle. The Obama administration has made no apologies for striking him down … nor should it. The man had forsaken his country, taken up with an enemy fighting force and was plotting to inflict more damage on our national security.

Here’s how the Oregonian reported it: “The senior senator from Oregon, joined by fellow Democrats Mark Udall of Colorado and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, want to learn how and when Americans can be targeted outside of declared war zones.

“‘Specific details regarding lethal counterterrorism actions will sometimes need to be kept secret to ensure that the U.S. government can act effectively against very real threats to our country, but we firmly believe that the laws and rules that govern the executive branch’s actions should always be public,’ they wrote on Thursday. ‘We believe that every American has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them.'”

This war in which we are engaged seems to be one without “declared war zones.” Yemen has long been known to be a terrorist training ground. Al-Awlaki was in the midst of such activity. Thus, he became a target of U.S. military forces whose mission is to eliminate terror threats whenever — and wherever — they find them.

In this instance, the military acted as it should. If other Americans are foolish enough to take up arms against their country, then they will deserve the fate that befell Anwar al-Awlaki.