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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (52483)	7/2/2004 2:00:07 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794475

Kerry and Disclosure His divorce records are his own business. His wife's tax returns aren't. WSJ.com The press pack is insisting that as a candidate for the Presidency, John Kerry has a responsibility to come clean with his family records. We agree with the Senator, who says that "it's none of anybody's business, period." On the other hand, he should follow time-honored practice and be as transparent as possible with the American public. Contradictory? Not really. The problem is that the media are preoccupied with the wrong papers. The public's right to know does not include the titillating details of a candidate's divorce. But it properly does include his tax returns, as well as those of his family if they have a major impact on his finances. That means Senator Kerry is in the right to keep records of his 1982 divorce private. But it's past time for his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, to release her full filings with the IRS. Last week, Republican Jack Ryan withdrew from the Illinois Senate race after a judge, ruling on a lawsuit filed by the Chicago Tribune and WLS-TV, unsealed the records of his custody fight. That brought Senator Kerry's split from Julia Thorne back under the media spotlight. Unless there's reason to suspect some deeply aberrant behavior or character flaw, we think any candidate is justified in resisting such media pressure on the grounds that married couples should be allowed to agree to keep private the details of their intimate affairs, even a divorce. All the more so because the messy nature of divorce means those details could give a false or misleading picture of a candidate. That is precisely what seemed to happen in the Ryan case, which shouldn't set a precedent for Mr. Kerry. However, Mrs. Heinz Kerry is on very shaky ground with her insistence on financial privacy. There is a long tradition of candidates for high office and their spouses releasing their tax returns, even though the law does not require it. The press usually plays enforcer, for instance in 1992 by beating up Dan Quayle until he gave in. The presumption is that if a politician refuses, he probably has something to hide. As a Gubernatorial and then Presidential candidate Bill Clinton withheld his 1978-79 tax records. Only later did we find out why--they contained his wife's 10,000% profit from trading cattle futures. Given Mrs. Heinz Kerry's fortune, estimated by the Los Angeles Times at between $900 million and $3.2 billion, it's unlikely she is doing anything unethical to raise the money for a mortgage, like the Clintons. But the Heinz fortune has already played a key role in financing Senator Kerry's political ambitions. When his primary campaign was running out of cash last year, Mr. Kerry mortgaged his half of the couple's Beacon Hill house for $6.4 million. His wife's wealth gave him an advantage over his rivals because he declined public money and so did not have to observe spending limits. Had his candidacy fizzled, his entire Senate salary wouldn't have been enough to cover the mortgage payments. The transaction also raised eyebrows because the home had been valued earlier in the year at $6.6 million. But Mellon Bank, which manages Mrs. Heinz Kerry's assets, valued it at $12.8 million and made the loan. Since the Senator has put his own money into the campaign, it's also worth mentioning that his Senate disclosures suggest that his marriage significantly increased his net worth. For instance, he made a $175,000 capital gain on a Dutch master painting sold last year, after his wife transferred half of her share to him. Mrs. Heinz Kerry is also a generous philanthropist, often to highly political outfits. Both personally and through control of the $1.2 billion Heinz Foundations, she has given large sums to the Tides Foundation, an organization that allows donors to camouflage their support for far-left causes. She has also given to the League of Conservation Voters and other organizations whose leaders sit on its board; the left-wing group gave her husband early financial and advertising support. It would be interesting to know whether she has given money to the Democratic 527 groups that pioneered a way around the campaign-finance laws to support Mr. Kerry's campaign. The Kerrys would be the richest couple ever to live in the White House, and with wealth comes responsibility. Their assets should be disclosed to the voters so that they can assess whether there are any potential conflicts of interest. Since the Kerry campaign is proposing to raise tax rates on the upper middle class, most people would probably like to know whether the Kerry household uses tax-avoidance techniques to avoid paying its "fair share." So far the Kerrys have balked at full disclosure on the grounds that Mrs. Heinz Kerry's sons' assets are mixed in and so would have to be revealed. But that is true in many political households. We hardly think that would be taken as a valid excuse if Laura Bush shared a billion-dollar family trust with her daughters. Mrs. Heinz Kerry has already reported her 2003 income as $5.1 million and pledged to release the first few pages of her tax return, but only in October when there may not be time in the campaign for journalists to investigate what it contains. She should release the complete records for earlier years now, and the whole 2003 return in early October. Choosing to lead a public life means accepting the need for financial transparency. 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