Most presidents share their return

“But it is Mr. Trump’s own taxes that have provided the crucial leverage for his opponents. More than 100,000 of his critics took to the streets over the weekend in marches around the country, demanding that the president release his returns. Tax legislation, they say, could be a plot by Mr. Trump to get even richer.”

 

Trump’s Unreleased Taxes Threaten Yet Another Campaign Promise
The New York Times

 

Graphic by Rafael Barker


 


 

Most presidents share their return,
Reporting the income they earn,
But Donny cops out,
Because, without doubt,
He’s hiding some crimes we would learn.

© 2017 Colleen Anderson

 


The Donald’s a-frayed by the fuss

“Thousands of Americans turned out in cities across the country Saturday — April 15, the traditional deadline for filing federal tax returns, even though this year’s deadline is actually Tuesday, April 18 — calling on President Trump to do something every president has done going back to Gerald Ford: release his individual tax returns. As a candidate, Trump said he wouldn’t release his tax returns because he was being audited by the IRS. When pressed on the issue as president, he’s said he doesn’t think most Americans care.”

 

Protesters Use April 15 To Demand Trump’s Tax Returns
NPR

 


 

The Donald’s a-frayed by the fuss
from the voters, you know: most of us.
Alternative facts’s
no-see-um on taxes.
Let’s go for BLOTUS interruptus!

President Trump: Release Your Tax Returns

“Without his returns, Americans are in the dark about Trump’s conflicts of interest, his foreign entanglements, and whether he even pays any taxes at all.”

[…]

On April 15th, we’re marching on Washington, D.C., and in communities across the country to show that we do care. And that we’re not going away. Tens of thousands of Americans will send a clear message to Donald Trump: The president is accountable to the American people, and he must answer to us.”

 

taxmarch.org

 

President Trump: Release Your Tax Returns

Graphic by Rafael Barker


 

Oh, the golfing and banquets and flowers!
The resorts and the clubs and the towers!
The irony wracks us:
While hiding his taxes,
He’s living so richly on ours.

© 2017 Colleen Anderson


Wondering whence came the leak? Here’s a clue …

 

“Trump’s eldest son tweeted or retweeted 26 posts about the report by 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, thanking MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for revealing that Trump paid $38 million in federal taxes in 2005, slamming the media as ‘#fakenews’ and boasting about how his father’s tax rate compared to that of other prominent politicians.”

Donald Trump Jr. is really happy about his dad’s tax returns
Politico

 



While his daddy is screaming “No fair!”
Donnie Junior’s ecstatic that there
was a tax return leak
allowing a peek
at the one year he paid fair and square.

© Susan E. Eckenrode, 2017

Yeah the one year he paid fair and square
and it’s leaked– gee, I wonder from where?
Distraction’s the game,
no matter how lame.
Is there really no tack he won’t dare?

© Lily Beth Baker, 2017


 

Cough up those returns!

Signing an online petition can seem like a feeble substitute for actual IRL activism—that’s why critics call it “slacktivism.” But even though typing in your name and email is a pretty minimal show of effort, it might not be totally meaningless. Under the We the People system, any petition that reaches 100,000 signatures receives an official response, and that’s a potentially powerful thing, at least if Trump doesn’t discontinue the system. –A Petition Didn’t Make Trump Give Up His Tax Returns—But It Made Him Listen, Wired


 

No matter how high you are riding,
Our need to know isn’t subsiding.
Curiosity burns—
Cough up those returns!
Just what in the heck are you hiding?

© Colleen Anderson, 2017