by Daniel Gardner

The latest two planks in Mr. Obama's reelection platform include: Mitt Romney hasn't released his last ten years of tax returns, so he's obviously hiding what all dirty rich capitalists hide; and Mitt Romney is either a felon or a liar for his involvement, or not, at Bain Capital after he left in February 1999 to run the 2002 Olympics. A felon? Yes, that's what the Obama campaign is charging!

Remember, candidate Obama said in 2008, "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."

Candidate Obama also said during his 2008 run for the presidency, "[I]f you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. " Of all the slick Chicago politicians who have managed to stay out of jail so far, Mr. Obama is the last one voters might suspect of using "stale tactics to scare voters."

Mitt Romney surely feels he must answer these charges, which takes valuable time away from campaigning on things like 8+ percent unemployment for the past 40 months, GDP limping along under 2 percent, and mammoth tax increases coming not only with Obamacare, but also as the result of tax cuts expiring at the end of the year.

For the record Mitt Romney has already submitted all income tax filings required by the federal election commission, and the Obama campaign has gone over them with a fine toothcomb without finding anything amiss. The Obama camp is just saying they want to scour 8 or 10 more years of tax returns hoping to prove how successful business people…uh, I mean dirty rich capitalists make all their money by stealing it from ordinary Americans.

Secondly, the tempest in the teapot over Mr. Romney's involvement in day-to-day management of Bain Capital while he was investing 12 hours a day 6 days a week managing the 2002 Olympics revolves round whether Romney led Bain's businesses to outsource jobs internationally in 2001. After all, look at all the access he had to international resources while managing the Olympics during his waking hours!

Mr. Romney, Bain employees including at least one Democrat who has bundled contributions for the Obama campaign, and independent fact checkers including FactCheck.org, all say Romney had nothing to do with day-to-day management decisions at Bain after leaving the company in February 1999, debunking Mr. Obama's television campaign ads being run around the clock calling Romney a pioneer in outsourcing jobs.

On the other hand, with nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus funding for "shovel-ready" jobs in their pockets, the Obama administration shipped billions of dollars overseas creating millions of jobs that would have otherwise gone to Americans. According to figures showing how stimulus dollars were spent, the Obama administration sent tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars to Switzerland, China, Finland, Denmark, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Italy, Russia, Germany, Luxembourg, El Salvador, Great Britain, India, Spain, Indonesia, Japan, and France.

Meanwhile Americans are facing a huge tax bomb January 1, 2013, that will raise taxes oppressively on every American, and President Obama has not said a word about how or whether he plans to stop that bomb from critically affecting our economy or our pocketbooks. He's more focused on painting Mr. Romney as someone voters should run from.

.