Saturday, April 14, 2012

The President and Transparency

This evening, I was watching the news when the anchorman mentioned President Obama releasing his tax returns and calling on Mitt Romney to do the same. Said Mr. President, “Every candidate should be as transparent as possible.”  Ha! “Do as I say and not as I do,” would be more accurate with the Nontransparent-one-in-Chief.

Dear Mr Obama, if you want us to take you seriously, you need to follow your own advice and be transparent about a few things. Like:

  • Your actual, hard copy birth certificate;
  • The Indonesian passport you had as a child;
  • Your academic records, including the ones from Occidental College with the name you used there, which was not Barack Obama, if I recall;
  • And don’t forget the application to Occidental for a scholarship for International students;
  • Your records form Harvard;
  • Your association with a known home terrorist, in whose house you began your political career.
And the list goes on.  While your at it, have your Treasury Secretary come clean on why he didn’t file his taxes for several years. He says he forgot. Yeah, right. I wish I could get by with that excuse.

Are you ever going to admit that you were not raised in the typical fashion of African Americans of your generation? That you never lived in a real ghetto or government projects, or that you never faced Jim Crow laws, so you cannot really say you know what most blacks go through.

I realize much of this is hearsay, but if you are going to be “as transparent as possible” then you should set the example and prove your critics wrong.

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