Kerry demands a retraction from Sweitzer

[karynnj]

Here is the Boston Herald article - that positions Brown as presenting legislation to outlaw it, and Kerry demanding a retraction.

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1381618&format=comments&cnum=2

It seems highly likely that Sweitzer's book is the SBVT book in the 2012 race to win the Senate. There are far more Democratic incumbents up and this is clearly designed to lower the already historically low approval of Congress - and Pelosi and Kerry appear to be big targets.

I looked at many articles late yesterday and the attacks against Kerry are asinine, but like the SBVT, they list several instances - none of which are compelling - and know that simply the fact that there are many charges convinces some.

The three I saw for Kerry were:
1) Selling stock in a drug a few weeks before Medicaid and Medicare opted not to cover them. It is not clear how a Democratic Senator, on the Finance committee, has inside information here. This is something done by the Bush HHS department with no consultation with Congress. (Not to mention, even if they needed to inform Congress, it would be the HELP committee.)

2) He states that in 2003, Kerry chaired the Health subcommittee of the Finance committee which wrote the drug benefit law. The fact is the Republicans controlled Congress and Kerry spoke against the bill and voted against it. (Not to mention it passed in June 2003.) From another time when Kerry stocks were questioned, one thing I remember is that THK had a lot of J&J stock. It is not unexpected that their would be some healthcare stocks in her huge pportfolio - and they - like most of the market - increased in 2004.

3)He speaks of the Kerrys dumping health insurance companies and buying drug companies in 2009, making capital gains in 2010. There is no insider information here. Any broker in the country knew the Democrats were striving to pass a healthcare reform bill - and in fact - even at the end of 2009, it was not a sure thing. In fact, even someone like Rahm Emmanuel was pushing in early 2010 to go with something smaller because he didn't think it could pass. Not to mention, almost EVERYTHING in the market was moving up from 2009 to 2010. (Note from this chart that had the Kerry's instead bought United Healthcare sometime in 2009, they would have had a big capital gain in 2010 - http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=UNH+Interactive#chart1:symbol=unh;range=5y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined;

The Dow Jones increased over 57% from its low in 2009 (below 7000) to April 2010 (above 11000). The fact is the ONLY way the Kerrys would not have made capital gains in that period is to either have taken their money out of the market at the bottom or to have picked only a few companies that failed - something neither they or their money managers would have been dumb enough to do.

Incidentially, from the comments, Sweitzer et al anticipated the truthful and reasonable responses and said that this is what people would say.