Don't bet on it. He's their candidate and they will do everything they can to make any questions about his past, present and future go away. The Virginian Pilot and its billionaire owners embody the core beliefs of the Move-On group that told us that the Whitewater, Cattlegate and Lewinski scandals were irrelevant. OTOH, Romney's wealth was a scandal.
In short, based on the available evidence, Terry McAuliffe appears to have used Leaf Clean Energy as precisely the kind of perfectly legal tax shelter that he and his fellow Democrats routinely rail against as immoral and irresponsible. Until he releases his full tax returns, there is no way of knowing for sure.
McAuliffe is always promising the moon and delivering nada, nothing, zip. One example close to home is the Franklin pellet-manufacturing project in the abandoned International Paper factory. McAuliffe is using cut-outs on this project so that his name will not be associated with a project that's never gotten off the ground.
That project has engendered its own controversy in Isle of Wight County, as the pellet plant has failed to materialize more than three years after McAuliffe announced his bid for the site. I spoke this afternoon with Lisa Perry, director of the county’s Department of Economic Development, who assured me that the project is still active and answered “Yes” when asked whether McAuliffe was still personally involved (notwithstanding CMI’s removal of McAuliffe from its website). Perry also said, “This is a real project. We have approached it from the beginning as a real project. . . . I have complete confidence that it will continue.” Citing nondisclosure agreements, Perry could not furnish details about the current state of the undertaking; but she explained that “Being engaged with International Paper on this type of economic development project is overwhelmingly difficult,” and cited “just the fact that International Paper is engaged with this company at all” as evidence of seriousness on the part of McAuliffe and his consortium.
Oh, and the place where tax cheat McAuliffe has his headquarters? Ugland House. This is what McAuliffe's sponsor said about it. Is McAuliffe a tax cheat? You don't have to take my word for it; here's Barack Obama:
On the campaign, I used to talk about the outrage of a building in the Cayman Islands that had over 12,000 business — businesses claim this building as their headquarters. And I’ve said before, either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.
One more reason to make Ken Cuccinelli the next governor of Virginia.
No comments:
Post a Comment