Cheap Shot

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post took an unfair, or unbalanced shot at Teresa Heinz Kerry in Wednesday's Media Notes column. Kurtz reviewed a story on Heinz Kerry's taxes and said Fourteen point seven percent! Hey, I'd like to pay fourteen point seven percent. Where do I sign up?

Heinz Kerry paid a low rate of taxes because, as I understand it, much of her income came from in tax-exempt instruments, similar to Dick Cheney, which a co-worker acknowledged in the very last paragraph of his article.

Heinz Kerry's effective tax rate is similar to Vice President Cheney's. He and his wife, Lynne V. Cheney, reported an income of $1.9 million in taxable and nontaxable income for 2003 and paid $253,067 in taxes, an effective tax rate of 13.3%.

Hey, I make A LOT less than Cheney and I would love to pay only 13.3% in federal taxes. Both Heinz Kerry and Cheney use tax-exempt vehicles to lower their taxes. Is that right? I don’t know, but in a highly political season I do know it is unfair to take a shot at the wife of a candidate while not taking a shot at the candidate’s opponent (running mate) who is doing the same thing.

Granted this is a minor point but Kerry’s campaign seems to be defined by the media by these types of comments. Just look at the results of the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg recent election survey which showed that 56% believe Mr. Kerry "voted for higher taxes 350 times" and 46%, including a majority of independents, agree that "John Kerry wants to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon."

This leads to mischaracterization by people, as shown in In Ohio, Building a Political Echo by John Harris. Throwaway statements like Kurtz's can contribute to people’s views of Heinz Kerry without considering she is no different than Dick Cheney. The same thing happened on weapons systems as Kerry got criticized for having similar views as Cheney.

The release the White House used on Cheney’s returns got the press to compare his taxable income (instead of overall income) to taxes paid. Maybe that should have been the gist of his item, that the GOP, through a limited news release, was able to get the media to downplay Cheney’s low taxes while the Democrats, through a large release of information made Heinz Kerry look like she didn’t pay much taxes.

The 2004 election has become so heated as it is a continuation of the 2000 election and it’s long way to November but it’s unfair just to criticize one party and not the other for doing the same thing.