From the official Kerry blog: "Math is hard work too"

[tomfodw]

http://blog.johnkerry.com/blog/archives/003051.html#more

ANOTHER FALSE ATTACK AD: Bush can’t create any manufacturing jobs, but he sure can manufacture false attacks. If the buzz is right, the Bushies are putting out a new attack ad on Monday that goes after Kerry on taxes. In terms of accuracy, this one sounds like it was made by P.T. Barnum, asserting that Kerry voted to raise taxes 350 times. Factcheck.org points out that “Kerry has not voted 350 times for tax increases.” In fact, 69 of the votes cited by Bush were actually for LOWERING taxes. Interestingly, the Bush campaign has alternated between two different numbers when accusing Kerry of raising taxes. Sometimes they use 350 and others they use 98. Math is hard work too.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. awesome!

Gotta hit em where it hurts. Humor resonates these days more than anything.

[indef]

2. especially if it's fuzzy math coming from Bush - nt

[cheshire]

5. That's what I thought right off two, It is coming back on him. 4-5billion=

0 as in no more, out of here, get lost, Cheney off. Point made I'll stop.

[jmowreader]

3. They're trying THIS SHIT again?

Okay, guys, this has gone on long enough. It's time to go on the fucking OFFENSIVE regarding Bush and "tax increases."

All we gotta do to kill Bush's "Kerry is a tax raiser" meme is to go through the tax bills Bush signed both as governor of Texas and in his current position, find the tax increases that are in them--a tax cut must be paid for by raising taxes elsewhere to compensate--that is federal law and it's the law of every state in the union--and publicize them.

"The Bush campaign claims Senator Kerry voted to raise your taxes 350 times. What they're not telling you is that 69 of those votes were for tax cuts. Calling a tax cut a "tax increase" is a lie.

"In his career, George Bush has raised taxes 454 times. He raised Texans' taxes 135 times and all Americans' taxes 319 times. And none of those 454 times was really a tax cut.

"454 versus 281. Who's the tax raiser, George?"

[highplainsdem]

4. Bush cut taxes, but unfairly, in Texas,

in ways favoring business and the rich (sound familiar from his federal policies?). He got away with it longer than he should have because he'd inherited a budget surplus from Ann Richards, economic times were good, and the tobacco settlement helped offset his disastrous tax cuts.

These will provide some background on the havoc he wreaked in Texas:

A Molly Ivins column from July 2000:
http://www.freepress.org/columns.php?strFunc=display&strID=167&strYear=2000&strAuthor=1

A James Hall column from 2001:
http://www.american-partisan.com/cols/2001/hall/qtr1/print/0313.htm

And this, the Citizens for Tax Justice page on Bush's tax policies in Texas, an "information page" for the 2000 campaign:
http://www.ctj.org/html/bush.htm

He promised to do for America what he did for Texas, and sadly for our country, he's doing it.

I vaguely recall him making some joke back in 2000, too, about being glad be'd be out of Texas before he had to deal with the budget there again...