And Dow 36,000 too, eh?

James K. Glassman is the guy who brought you the DOW 36,000 (now selling used for 78 cents!) and now he refers to HJ Heinz Co as "the Kerry family business."

In fact, Kerry appears (so far as I can interpret the tables at the Center for Public Integrity) to own no Heinz stock directly. His wife may own as little as $6 million or as much as $30 million in a company which has a market cap of $10 billion. Yes, she's a rich woman and we should be aware of any potential conflict-of-interest. But her inherited interest -- from her first husband and which I believe is her separate property -- hardly makes Heinz the "Kerry family business." She doesn't work there and isn't on the Board. (Nor of course is Kerry.) And owning $30 million of a $10 billion publicly-traded company probably gets you a box of ketchup and recognized at the annual meeting, but it hardly makes HJ Heinz Co. the "Kerry family business." Heinz is a complex Fortune 500 bureaucracy and tie Kerry to it -- for good or bad -- is naive. A guy like Glassman should know better, though of course he did predict Dow 36,000 so maybe his judgment is in need of a bit of exercise.

Such silly innacuracy -- probably not of importance by itself except that it is used to claim that Kerry is a hypocite on exporting American jobs, so it is pretty important -- are picked up and propagated as truth by such "reliable" guys as Glenn Reynolds (who then lamely tries to get out of his innacuracy by saying he likes Heinz Ketchup!) and Stephen Pollard.

Attack Kerry all you like but get your facts straight.

I have seen similar questionable procedure at Fresh Bilge where the usually-excellent Alan Sullivan relies on isolated quotes at (of all possible souces!) FrontPage to characterize Kerry's foreign policy.

If we weren't playing for such high stakes, and if it weren't so easy to check sources, these innacuracies and shortcuts would be funny.

Comments

[Kris Hasson-Jones]

That his wife's name is Heinz makes it a family business.

That his wife apparently directs at least some foundation monetary donations (and donates that money to far left organizations) makes it relevant to Kerry's political campaign.