The American Spectator

Isn’t it about time to ask the multi-billion dollar question, “If Kerry is elected, will John and Teresa put their holdings into a blind trust? If not, why not? And how would we know, since Teresa has refused to release any details of her holdings and tax records?”

p>The use of a blind trust is designed to deter any abuse of power and appearances of impropriety, so Teresa should be asked directly if she would comply. br> — Rich Hudson /p>

John Tabin makes a hash of the issue of Bush’s “ownership” of a timber company by flaunting details that are true but irrelevant as a lead-in to snarky remarks about John Kerry. Tabin is obtuse or dishonest to say that Kerry “seemed to say” that “the tax code is so broad that Bush himself, a man worth $18 million …’counted as a small business.’”

When Kerry said that “President Bush himself would have qualified as a ‘small business owner’ under the Republican definition,” he was not talking about the tax code’s definition, but the Republican definition, which tries to pass off the number of people reporting income from small businesses as the number of small-business owners, and further incorrectly equates that number with the number of small businesses, thereby exaggerating the number of small businesses by about 100% and misstating the effects of Kerry’s tax plan.

p>I loathe Kerry, like Bush, and plan to vote for the latter. I would have liked to see a realistic, candid analysis of how Kerry’s tax plans would affect small businesses that actually have employees. That is a small portion of the total number of Subchapter S corporations or limited partnerships, but as the larger small businesses, the ones with employees must be concentrated in the brackets affected by Kerry’s tax plan. Some solid numbers, including employment projections, would have been useful, but Tabin just served up the kind of sleazy misdirected propaganda that should be left to the Democrats, since they seem to enjoy it so much. br> — Seán Fitzpatrick br> Upper Darby, Pennsylvania /p> p> John Tabin replies: br> Obtuse or dishonest? I’ll take obtuse, thank you. Let’s be clear, though: The dispute over the number of small businesses traces back to a FactCheck.org