J.D. Prose – 8/11/12

This page was last updated on August 16, 2012.

GOP’s bad week of bad press, bad polls and bad jokes; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; August 11, 2012.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

Mr. Prose wrote, “We’d also like to point out that Rothfus isn’t exactly a pro-labor, progressive caught in a hypocritical net. He’s a free-market Teapublican cutting expenses and burdening his workers, um, ‘contractors’ with the tax obligation. Isn’t that the conservative American way?”

Taking a leap of faith in assuming what Mr. Prose wrote is correct, all Mr. Rothfus is allegedly doing is pushing the administrative chore of mailing in the Socialist Security and Medicare payments to his campaign staff. As someone who makes his own quarterly estimated income tax payments, I can attest it’s no big deal. I suspect, though, Mr. Prose wants us to think this procedure allows the campaign to duck payment of Medicare & SS taxes. There is no reason it should because, mythology aside, the employee always pays these taxes regardless of who sends in the payments. I wrote the following for a more typical business, but it should also apply to the business of running an election campaign.

Before a business (in this case an election campaign) offers a job, the business determines the economic value of the potential job to the business. The economic value of the job determines the total compensation the business can offer an employee/contractor. Once things like overhead, Medicare (2.9%) & SS (12.4%) taxes, et cetera are subtracted from the job’s economic value, the business can determine the salary/wage offered. Total compensation includes wages/salary, the cost of benefits (if any), and the mythical “employer’s contribution” (50% of 15.3%) to Medicare and SS taxes. Though you never see it because it doesn’t appear on your paycheck stub (like healthcare insurance when applicable), you pay the mythical “employer’s contribution” to Medicare and SS taxes, not the employer; it is part of your compensation, just like the FICA (Medicare and SS taxes) line item you do see on your paycheck stub. The employer simply acts as the government’s tax collector.

As other “surly progressives,” Mr. Prose wants us to believe in the fairytale of “employer contribution” to Medicare and SS taxes. The “employer match” is accounting sleight of hand required by the feds to hide the full magnitude of Medicare (2.9%) and SS (12.4%) taxes from the individual taxpayer. We scream about having the 7.65% of our wages we can see confiscated for these programs. Politicians were and are scared to death about our reaction to the full 15.3% if it appeared on our paycheck stubs. Allowing/forcing employers to be the government’s income, Medicare, and SS tax collector for its employees should be illegal because its sole intent is to mask how much employees pay. (That’s also why you never see taxes itemized when you buy gasoline.) If we had to write monthly tax-payment checks, I can guarantee we would have lower tax rates.