No, Harry Reid did not get caught in a lie

It never ceases to amaze how those on the political right can so arrogantly and self-righteously proclaim that our president and the Democratic members of Congress are “liars” when there is absolutely no proof supporting those assertions.

Case-in-point: The April 14, 2015, letter to the editor from Mr. P. David Myerowitz.

Mr. Myerowitz claimed in that letter that Sen. Harry Reid “deliberately lied” to the Senate in 2012, by stating, “... Gov. Romney hadn’t paid HIS taxes for 10 years” (emphasis added).

First, that statement is false on its face, and must be corrected. As reported on August 1, 2012, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and other news sources, Sen. Reid stated, on the Senate floor, that a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and reported that Romney “didn’t pay ANY taxes for 10 years” (emphasis added).

Therefore, nothing Sen. Reid said can be construed to mean that Mitt failed to pay taxes he justly owed, contrary to what Mr. Myerowitz, and his sources, would have everyone believe.

Sen. Reid, on that same occasion, further qualified his perception of what his office had been told by adding, “Now, do I know that’s true?  Well, I’m not certain.” Consequently, it cannot even be honestly claimed that Sen. Reid definitively asserted that Mitt paid NO taxes for 10 years, even if under prevailing tax laws and regulations there was nothing legally wrong with him owing no taxes.  

It is clear that Mr. Myerowitz’s accusation that Sen. Reid “lied” about Mitt’s taxes is untrue on two counts: 1) Sen. Reid never said that anyone told him Mitt didn’t pay taxes he legitimately owed; and 2) Sen. Reid further stated that he didn’t know whether the Bain Capital investor had his facts right.  

Therefore, the only basis for Mr. Myerowitz’s accusation could be that he took the word of Faux News commentators, or other right-wing hatemongers, at face value, without any independent verification of its accuracy.

Of course Mr. Myerowitz, and others of his persuasion would like to forget the context of the comment reported in August 2012, as cited above. The phone call from the Bain Capital investor apparently came after Mitt refused to release his tax returns for the previous 10 years.  If the statement made by that investor was not true, it could easily, even to this very day, be proven to be a “lie,” by Mitt himself. Yet, he refused/refuses to release those returns, or otherwise disprove the accuracy of his investor’s allegation. Accordingly, Myerowitz’s statement, in his pretend speech to the Senate, that, “Of course we all knew it was a lie,” is an untruth in itself, since the premise upon which it is based is false.

It seems there could be only 3 reasons for Mitt’s refusal to release those returns in the face of his former investor’s allegations: 1) Mitt, in fact, neither owed, nor paid taxes during the periods alleged; 2) Mitt owed and paid only nominal taxes for those periods; or 3) There are other issues with his tax returns that are questionable, or potentially embarrassing, such as Cayman Island accounts. In any event, Mitt’s tax returns are not forthcoming.

Since the favorite stratagem of the radical right is quoting out-of-context comments of Democrats, with the intent to mischaracterize those comments to sound anti-American, or unpatriotic, it comes as no surprise that the same deceptive practice is employed by Myerowitz in his misrepresentation of Sen. Reid’s actual statements.  

Ironically, Myerowitz commences a letter published in the April 19, edition of the Inter Lake by stating, “Many of my letters serve the purpose of correcting misinformation from other contributors.” Given the misinformation Mr. Myerowitz disseminated in just the one letter of April 14, one can only respond by saying, “Physician, heal thyself.”

Weed is a resident of Kalispell.