BCT Editorial – 11/6/06

This page was last updated on November 6, 2006.

Fantasy land; Editorial; Beaver County Times; November 6, 2006.

This editorial goes all the way to New York to provide an example of what it calls a “dishonest ad.” You won’t be surprised to learn the target is a Democrat and the National Republican Campaign Committee allegedly produced the ad.

I wonder why the Times had to go to New York. This morning I saw an anti-Hart commercial run by MoveOn.org claiming she and other Republicans had been caught “red-handed” “accepting contributions from defense contractors who profited from the war in Iraq.” Ms. Hart and the other Republicans are shown with red hands. The clear implication is Ms. Hart did something illegal, or at least unethical. It was so bad, WTAE-TV refused to run the ad. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “WTAE General Manager Rick Henry said the commercial implied some criminal activity on Ms. Hart’s part ‘with no disclaimer, no source, no substantiation given.’”¹ Even if Ms. Hart accepted “contributions from defense contractors who profited from the war in Iraq,” there’s nothing illegal or unethical with that as long as there was no quid pro quo arrangement or understanding. The only way to avoid an ad making the MoveOn.org implication would be to accept no campaign contributions from anyone.

Another ad – this one personally approved by Jason Altmire – I heard accuses Rep. Hart of “raiding the Social Security trust fund.” The ad makes no attempt to say what that means so I have no clue what it’s talking about. Of course, there is no Socialist Security “trust fund” and there never has been. Though records were kept to track how much Socialist Security taxes were collected, those taxes always went into the “general fund” just as all other federal taxes. President Lyndon Johnson blew away all pretenses of a “trust fund” in the late 1960s when he implemented what’s referred to as “unified budget reporting.” I covered this in detail in early 2005 in a critique of a letter to the editor entitled “Surplus is borrowed.”

1. Early Returns; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; November 3, 2006.