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Politics : The TRUTH About John Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DizzyG who wrote (1258)	5/5/2004 2:03:03 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 1483

Kerry's Fuzzy Economics Ryan Walsh, 05/05/04 Last week’s economic news deflated Kerry’s angry "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" mantra. The Bureau for Labor Statistics (BLS) not only reported that an inconceivable 308,000 jobs were created in March but also revised the last two months’ reports. It turns out they had underreported job gains in January and February. Until Friday, Democrats had been arguing that the economy wasn’t creating jobs. They relied exclusively on data from one of the two BLS surveys used to gauge national employment: the establishment or "payroll" survey, which counts workers only on payrolls. The more comprehensive household survey, from which the government procures the official unemployment rate, counts payroll workers and independent contractors, the self-employed, and those running subchapter businesses. The household survey has reported over a half a million jobs created since Bush took office; thus, it is largely discredited on the left. It seems Kerry and the Democrats have been stripped of their last economic talking point. The job report for March, which exceeded even economists’ predictions, relied entirely on data from the payroll survey. Ouch. This is no surprise to some. Economist Jerry Bower pointed out that, historically, the household survey and the payroll survey follow the same trend; if one goes up, so does the other. Since the household survey is more comprehensive, it only makes sense that it detects job growth before the payroll survey. It is also funny that the biggest job report in four years came out the same week the Kerry campaign revealed its economic plan -- call it bad luck, or maybe divine justice. As for the actual details of Kerry’s "plan," economist Larry Kudlow summed it up like this: "Politically, not bad. Economically, it hardly offsets his tax hikes." Like Kerry himself, the plan is "multifaceted." First, he would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 33.25. While this may sound like something a Ronald Reagan or a Jack Kemp would have proposed, it is misleading at best and disingenuous at worst. The slight lowering of the corporate tax rate would hardly counterbalance Kerry’s plan to raise the dividend, capital gain, and marginal tax rates to pre-Bush levels. Kerry would also eliminate any tax credits for U.S.-based multinational corporations that run operations overseas. Our country is one of the few industrialized nations that taxes a corporation’s domestic and foreign profits. For example, a corporation based in Chicago sets up a location in Dublin, Ireland. That subsidiary generates profit. Thus, the profit is subjected to both a U.S. tax and an Irish tax. If the company had its headquarters in another country, it would most likely pay only the Irish tax. Under Kerry’s plan, no multinational corporation would receive any tax credit for its foreign earnings. A likely consequence of this policy is corporations packing their briefcases and relocating to more tax-friendly countries, depriving America of jobs, capital, and tax revenue. Kerry is in a fiscal conundrum. On one hand, he says he wants to reduce the size of the federal government. On the other hand, he has proposed about $2.76 trillion in new federal spending. On another (third?) hand, he has claimed that he won’t "raise taxes," he will only dismantle the Bush tax cuts -- i.e., raise taxes. One thing is for certain: the more people realize the healthy and vibrant state of the economy, the faster John Kerry will become "John who?" americandaily.com

To: DizzyG who wrote (1258)	5/5/2004 2:17:11 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 1483

That's O'Neill's BS cover-up smoke screen story. The real story is that he's a longtime rightwing political operative with strong ties to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Smear Boat Veterans for Bush The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Joe Conason May 4, 2004 \| The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about their military service. These "swift boat vets" claim still to be furious about Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony against the war in which he spoke about atrocities in Indochina's "free fire zones." More than three decades later, facing the complicated truth about Vietnam remains difficult. But this group's political connections make clear that its agenda is to target the election of 2004. Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed." Spaeth told Salon that O'Neill first approached her last winter to discuss his "concerns about Sen. Kerry." O'Neill has been assailing Kerry since 1971, when the former Navy officer was selected for the role by Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's dirty-tricks aide. Spaeth heard O'Neill out, but told him, she says, that he "sounded like a crazed extremist" and should "button his lip" and avoid speaking with the press. But since Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination, Spaeth has changed her mind and decided to donate her public relations services on a "pro bono" basis to O'Neill's latest anti-Kerry effort. "About three weeks ago, four weeks ago," she said, the group's leaders "met in my office for about 12 hours" to prepare for their Washington debut. Although not as well known as Karen Hughes, Spaeth is among the most experienced and best connected Republican communications executives. During the Reagan administration she served as director of the White House Office of Media Liaison, where she specialized in promoting "news" items that boosted President Reagan to TV stations around the country. While living in Washington she met and married Lezar, a Reagan Justice Department lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1994 with George W. Bush, then the party's candidate for governor. (Lezar lost; Bush won.) Through Lezar, who died of a heart attack last January, she met O'Neill, his law partner in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson, a Dallas firm. (It also includes Margaret Wilson, the former counsel to Gov. Bush who followed him to Washington, where she served for a time as a deputy counsel in the Department of Commerce.) * In other words, O'Neill is totally lying about no connections to Bush-Cheney. Maybe he did pay his expenses, but so what, as a lawyer doing business with the Bushies he makes plenty more than that. His hotel bills are a small item.