To the Editor:
For several months I’ve watched as Erik Paulsen’s campaign, PACs, shadow groups, and even the Congressman himself resort to lie after lie about Dean Phillips and wonder why he resorts to such dishonest attack ads to win reelection.
After all, the facts are clear and verifiable:
- Phillips has always provided health insurance to his full-time workers. And he pays a $15 minimum wage to help part-timers buy their own coverage.
- As Allina Board Chairman, he was never involved in either negotiations or strategies for dealing with the nurses’ union. That’s not a board chair’s role or responsibility.
- The Paulsen ads try to tie him to sexual-harassment complaints filed against Talenti Gelato, a company he once owned. Those complaints were from July 2015, more than a year after he’d sold the company.
- Phillips was gone two years from Phillips Distillery when someone filed complaint about a marketing strategy that seemed to target youth, a campaign the company ended shortly after the complaint.
- The Phillips Family Foundation, which Paulsen says “stashes money in offshore accounts” is a charitable organization that doesn’t pay taxes other than small federal excise taxes, so it has no reason to “stash” anything offshore.
- The taxes they allege he avoided paying was actually an $89 fee assessed against and paid by his former company (Talenti Gelato) for filing a tax form late in 2013.
Continue reading “Have dishonest political ads become the norm?”