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I recently received an email forward that ranted about John Kerry's position on jobs going overseas and complained that his wife, Teresa Heinz-Kerry, owns a company that has a majority of its production plants overseas (the H.J. Heinz Company). Nothing could be further from the truth and so I did some research.

I normally ignore this kind of email urban legend, but it is especially offensive in an election year when the purpose of such fiction is an attempt to smear a perfectly respectable candidate for U.S. President.

When you receive emails spouting supposed "truths" about anyone you should visit the urban legends reference pages at www.snopes.com. Here is the particular entry debunking this email.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/heinz.asp

The truth is that Teresa Heinz Kerry has no ownership of the H.J. Heinz Company. She does hold a professional management position with some of the Heinz family foundations, which are philanthropic organizations. The Heinz family overall sold most of its stock in the Heinz company many years ago to diversify its portfolio. A company statement back in 1995 divulged the family holdings at under 4 percent of the company.

This woman was born to a Portugese doctor and his wife in Mozambique. She married moderate Republican John Heinz in 1966 who introduced her to Senator John Kerry at an Earth Day celebration in 1990. In 1991 Sen. Heinz died in a plane crash. She took over his role as head of the Heinz family's philanthropic organizations and brought a new tough, practical approach to its dealings (she told the Pittsburgh Philharmonic they'd have to implement modern business practices before she'd let the foundation bail them out of their sinking finances).

In 1992 she ran across Sen. Kerry again at another Earth Day celebration and they began dating the following year.

Although she did inherit more money than most of us will see in a lifetime she is limited to her $2,000 contribution to John Kerry's candidacy just like everybody else. This isn't conjecture but demonstrated in reports of campaign contributions. You can look this up at www.opensecrets.org, on of several groups making election records available to online search. You have to search on Heinz as a last name and Pennsylvania as a state to find her, or click this search link to got directly to the article.

The bottom line is that no matter who you choose to support in this election, you should be skeptical of personal attacks of this nature and always follow up. The irony of this email is that the kind of global operations used by Heinz aren't examples of the off-shore outsourcing that some of our corporations are using in a race to the bottom, to the sleaziest regions of free market economies. Heinz is a global company that experiences over half of its sales to non-U.S. markets. The nature of their product demands fresh fruits and vegetables and it would be impractical for them to use one big processing plant in the U.S.

This isn't what offends so many people in America. Indeed, what offends isn't so much that companies take advantage of low wages overseas but that American policies actually encourage and reward companies for sending jobs overseas. This kind of corporate takeover of our highest political offices is what so many moderate conservatives and moderate liberals are crying foul over. Americans should be proud of our victories in decent wages, safety laws and health standards. We should provide incentives for other countries to join our high standards of living rather than promote situations that drag our victories into defeat.

The current administration has rolled back enforcement of U.S. laws, rolled back laws and administrative rules that keep U.S. companies from hiding revenue in ways to avoid paying taxes to support the very services these corporate decision makers enjoy everyday (defense of our country, the best highway system in the world, access to education, consumer and health protections that were once the best in the world but have recently been starved into a fraction of what they were). To accomodate this kind of illegal action you and I are experiencing some of the highest tax increases ever through the resulting increases in local property taxes, user fees and skyrocketing costs of commodities such as energy.

Being conservative was an honorable position several years ago. Even when there was disagreement in the details, both conservatives and progressives knew that they had the best interests of the country at heart. They simply disagreed on the process. Today the conservative movement has been taken over by such radicalism that many conservatives are talking about switching sides for this election while beginning work to reclaim their organizations, initiatives and the party that use to wave the conservative standard.

I believe we will see John Kerry benefiting from that movement this November, whether we like it or not. What happens in 2008 is dependent on just how good a President Kerry makes and how successful conservatives are at reclaiming their base issues of fiscal and individual responsibility.

posted by Unknown at 11:28 AM