Corbett vs. a Rohrer write-in

I came across this question posed by Vonne Andring at Conservative Declaration:

Highly controversial has become the idea of a Sam Rohrer write-in this November. On one side are staunch party supporters that insist we must have a Republican in the Governor’s mansion–even if it’s Tom Corbett. They say, “vote for Corbett, the lesser of two evils” because a write-in campaign would split the Republican ticket potentially resulting in a win for the Democrats. They say a write-in for Rohrer does more harm than good.

On the other side of the issue, are loyal Sam Rohrer supporters who are invigorated and energized by the movement his message set into motion. These folks say they are done voting for the lesser of two evils, and that if they can write-in Rohrer, there exists no rationale for choosing between evils. They say they’re voting their conscience, and at the same time sending a powerful message to the Republican Party hi-jackers. This group feels they are taking a stand that is necessary and valuable even if the result is a win for the Democrats. This side feels a write-in for Rohrer will do more good than harm.

What’s your opinion?

I left the following reply as a comment over there, but I also thought it was good enough to share here.

Here's the cold hard fact that matters: Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato are the two major party nominees, and one of them is going to be the next governor of Pennsylvania.

Suppose, somehow, 1,000,000 PA conservatives are persuaded to turn out and write in Rohrer. What do you think the probability of that is?
Now guess what? You're still 600,000 votes shy of what Lynn Swann got in 2006, and he lost to Rendell big time.

And so voting for Rohrer out as a viable electoral strategy. So we're back to a choice between Corbett and Onorato as to who we realistically want to win.

If you're a South Park fan, you might recall this episode. And you might say at first that you're facing a similar choice in PA this year.

Stop and think about it, though. You really don't think Corbett is going to make "conservative" choices much more often than Onorato?

Yes, Corbett can be thin-skinned. Yes, he's made an idiotic comment or two about a living Constitution. Yes, Jim Cawley isn't any conservative's first choice as Lt. Governor.

None of that should sway your choice when you compare Corbett, who without prompting can name nearly a dozen taxes he'd like to reduce or repeal, with Onorato, who's never met a tax he didn't like.

Onorato, who's got all the principle and concern for the citizens of this fine Commonwealth that his patron Ed Rendell has.

Onorato, who's been actively evading the constitutional requirement of an Allegheny County property reassessment for the past 5 years.

Remember who your choices are.

It's great to see all the conservative energy behind Rohrer, and we can all wish that he'd won the primary, but that's over.

That energy needs to be channeled into things like getting the better nominees elected this fall, and rebuilding the local party organizations from within, via becoming precinct committeemen and other means. Let's not waste it on an effort that's going to fail.

Sam Rohrer's by all accounts a decent person and he's got a great future as a PA conservative leader. It's time for him to rest up for his next big fight, however.

PA-12: More on Critz' highly elastic claims

Continuing on this post, discussing the latest ad from the Critz campaign, and the very, very indirect attacks on Tim Burns. The claim:

Tim Burns laid off his own workers in PA, and got tax breaks for outsourcing

Critz's camp cites this article from the Pittsburgh Business Times to show Burns's "indifference" to the prospect of layoffs at the company he founded. The "incriminating" quote:

Tim Burns, TechRx co-founder and vice president of product innovation, said the transaction is good news for the company and its investors. He said there may be a few layoffs in Pittsburgh because of consolidation of like business units, but he doesn't expect a major staff reduction.

"NDC acquired the business because they like what we're doing, not to completely disrupt it," Mr. Burns said.

It's worth noting also that any layoffs would have been done by the buyer NDC, and not by Tim Burns himself.

This article in the Post-Gazette, also cited by the Critz campaign as "proof" of Tim Burns-related job losses in western PA, reads as follows:

According to 2003 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission -- first researched by the DCCC -- by NDC Health, the company that bought TechRx, the merger resulted in the elimination of 58 management jobs companywide. It's unclear how many of these jobs were in Western Pennsylvania, as the company had operations in Atlanta; Dallas; Birmingham, Ala.; Rockville, Md.; and Vancouver as well, Burns campaign spokesman Kent Gates said. But Gates, though he didn't have specific figures, said the operations in Moon near the Pittsburgh International Airport actually grew after the merger.(Emphasis added.)

The last claim, that Burns personally benefitted from outsourcing jobs, is supposedly shown by this article from The Hill:

Burns was an executive at NDCHealth Corp. from January to June 2003 after the company bought his start-up business, TechRx.

NDCHealth coordinates the flow of information between pharmacies, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals, according to a company release. It does business internationally and during the time Burns worked there the profit it made overseas was classifies as a "deferred tax liability."

In 2003, the company took in close to $407 million in revenue in the United States and $21 million abroad, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It paid a total of $1.55 million in taxes -- 40 percent of which was at the foreign tax rate of 1.2 percent as opposed to the 35 percent federal statutory rate.

Democrats argue that this means Burns was condoning the use of a tax "loophole."

This accusation is more plausible than the others at first glance, but like the claim that Tim Burns himself laid people off, it's faulty unless Tim Burns can be blamed for absolutely anything that NDC did. Two details worth noting here:

• There's no hint that what NDC did was illegal. Tax mitigation strategies do not constitute tax evasion, and in my opinion it's foolish to blame a corporation (or an individual, for that matter) for minimizing their tax burden. If it's in fact too easy to classify income as "foreign", then the burden is on Congress to fix that, as they've done before with other "loopholes".
• The Pittsburgh Business Times article linked above mentions this fact: "NDCHealth plans to acquire the remaining interest in TechRx in May 2003 if certain business objectives are met." Given that and the fact that Tim Burns left the company in June 2003, it seems far more likely that he was overseeing details related to the merger than planning tax mitigation.

The substance of these claims is further refuted by this letter from a former employee of TechRx, the company that Burns founded:

I don’t know where Mark Critz is getting his information about Tim Burns, but people need to know that a lot of it is just plain WRONG.

I worked for the company that Tim Burns started, and I never saw any form of outsourcing to foreign companies. In fact, when I started at TechRx, there were fewer than 30 employees; by the time I left in 2002, the company had grown to more than 400 employees. Tim sold the company to the larger corporation that helped fund that growth. And that “growth” meant jobs for Pittsburghers!

Eight years have passed since I left Tim’s company and I am still working on and supporting “his” software at another company (a mail service pharmacy that is a former client of Tim’s pharmacy software company). In fact, Tim’s statement that he created 400 jobs is actually an understatement because many more jobs resulted, both from the sale of the company and the sale of the source code to former clients.

Tim is a person of high integrity and knows what it takes to build businesses and create jobs. He is the kind of intelligent, non-career politician that we need in Washington to begin to change the irresponsible overspending and redistribution of wealth mentality that exists there now. If I lived in his district, I would, without a doubt, vote for him.

Dr. Diana L. Repack (and Dr. William F. Repack)

Former TechRx employee (1998-2002)

Moon Township, PA

Cross-posted to PAWatercooler.