Mother Jones magazine released a secret tape recording of Romney speaking at a private fundraiser. We are told the event occurred after Romney “clinched the Republican nomination,” but the magazine has not revealed the place or date of the event, and it blurred the periphery of the video images. In the center of the frame, we can clearly see Mitt Romney behind a podium. He is speaking to an audience seated at tablecloth-covered tables in what appears to be a hotel dining room, but the blurred periphery does not allow us to identify the people in the audience or a waiter serving one of the tables. The magazine says it did this to protect the confidentiality of its source. I assume the concern was that without the blurring people at the event would have been able to figure out – based on who was, for example, slightly in front or to the right of the camera – where the person with the secret camera was sitting. The Mother Jones video and accompanying story are available here.

At this event, Mitt Romney says that 47 percent of Americans do not pay taxes. He describes these as people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Romney also said: ""[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.""

Is it accurate to suggest that nearly half of Americans are loafers and deadbeats who take without contributing – who want free food, free housing, free health care, and “you-name-it,” without paying any taxes?

Here are a few key facts from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

* Since the economic meltdown in 2008, roughly half of Americans have owed no federal income tax. Prior to that time, about 40 percent of American households did not owe any federal income taxes.

* It should be stressed that refers to federal income taxes. Most of those households do, in fact, pay taxes, including federal payroll taxes and state and local taxes.

* According to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities: “When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average. The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent.” (original emphasis)

* It is estimated that 61 percent of households that owe no federal income taxes in a given year are working households. Most of the rest of those who owed no federal income taxes were the elderly, the disabled, and students.

A great deal of further information is available from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities here.

UPDATE (7:25 AM, 18 SEPTEMBER 2012): David Corn of Mother Jones has now revealed that the secret video was filmed on May 17 at a $50,000-a-person fundraiser in the home of financier Marc Leder in Boca Raton, Florida. 

What did one of Mitt Romney's dogs say to his other dog en route to the family vacation?

""He won't let us down.""

I've often said – that when done right – law school makes students smarter. I've even speculated that if researchers gave IQ tests to students before entering and after graduating from law school, they'd find a rise in IQ scores. That, I suspect, would especially be the case for students who took as many courses as possible from teachers who stressed critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and persuasive argument rather than memorization. Now there's intriguing support for that proposition from researchers who have discovered that just studying for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which is designed to test reasoning ability, increases connections between portions of the brain associated with reasoning and thinking. Here’s a link to a short article about the study.