Conversation 704-003

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You know, we come extremely close to Pennsylvania every time.

160,000 times a year.

It's been a 60,000.

You know, a damn state doesn't need to be lost.

That's right.

A couple of pops like this in Philadelphia could make a difference in Pennsylvania, too.

There's some veterans from GOP there.

given a great deal of support by Rizzo a damn little while ago.

He's opposed you a ton.

Wasn't he a big Rockefeller leader?

He turned out very well in that position.

He could do a little work on that hair very good, but I think that's an awfully fine picture.

The problem with the hair is a little bit of nutrition.

Julie and David, and they've got to fix that one.

They can fix Julie, too.

They can touch up that hair.

Well, there's a little bit they probably want to take out.

Although that's a, the hairstylists now have loose hair flying.

It's supposed to be that way.

I hope.

We'll just prove this damn thing.

I mean, I'm having a good time.

I'm going to sit the baby and talk to you about the gardener's book last night.

We do see that this gets over and I'm going to send it back.

I'm going to express it and send it to somebody.

I'm going to have somebody carry it over and be sure to treat it and usually give the address.

I put my name on it.

I'm going to have to see if it's back to me now.

It's already gone.

how pleased he was that you were going to this thing.

I was not at all concerned about your making any commitment.

There was no need to.

It was the fact of an appearance that was great.

He knows we can't do much, doesn't he?

He knows.

This just shows the personal interest in that.

That's more important than the commitment right now.

He said, no, you can't do that.

Colson did it.

Well, there's a reason to make a lot out of that one, I think, because it did jar things around a bit beyond what anybody knows a lot of figures.

It's interesting though.

They all seem like economic issues.

Well, how screwed up the analyses are, like, well, of course, Evans and Novak say, well, Kraft, Joe Kraft analyzes it and says the striking thing about the McGovern victory has been his tremendous ability to move into the blue-collar area and pick up blue-collar boats.

Evans and Novak say that the thing that remains to be seen is what McGovern is willing to do with blue-collars because he singularly failed to attract any of those guns.

Is there anything else?

They're both on the same page.

They're J.J. Collins.

Which shows you how brilliant the ambulance is.

I have no idea which is true.

I think from what I've seen so far that he did pick up a good chunk of the money.

He carried a whole share of it.

Well, we were talking about that this morning.

Property taxes should be our issue.

It isn't.

I know.

And that's not my point.

We spent

quite a long time on it.

It's like bussing, isn't it?

Well bussing, I think we've, now bussing has got turned around.

Property tax is worse than bussing in the sense that I know it's worse, I know it's worse, but I mean both cases.

I've, you know, I've always made the point that the domestic counsel thing, you know this, is considered, well, we've just got to get these programs ready for somebody else's job to sell them.

They've got the better attitude this year.

It's still not enough.

Yeah.

And they want to write the platform.

They want to, I mean, Mitchell did a damn hard job.

See, John sits in our staff meeting.

Yeah.

So I'm very good at property tax.

He said, no, he didn't say, he didn't, his point was politically, what is our position on the property tax and on tax reform generally?

That's the hot issue in Wisconsin.

Where are we?

And our problem is

What early was the general position, the philosophic position, that needs to be hardened, though, and everybody basically agrees with, is we've got to turn the focus to property tax, which is our issue, and go with that.

We've got to attack the other guys on the loophole business, which is the other one with some sex appeal, because we can't out-loophole close them.

But we can hit them on the fact that they're the ones that voted for the loopholes.

They're the ones that put them in.

that all this talk of closing the loopholes is a bunch of election year bullshit.

They've done more closing the loopholes in the future than they've done in the past, which is nothing.

They've created the loopholes.

You know, just because we don't have an answer either.

So without an answer, the best thing is to get rid of that.

Of course, where you get the money, you get rid of the property tax, and you get back to a new kind of new tax, and that's that money.

That's a con.

A con is just don't go over the tax.

A con is trying to get his mind put to this.

We've got to.

That's what I mean.

We've got to get Conley's position on the tax that developed it.

His whole problem is trying to get his people to work on the political thing rather than a technical tax bill.

We've got that, and then we've got funding people who are aware of it, trying to do something.

This Cobra withholding is an utter disaster.

I know we raised that with Comrade and everything.

Yeah, but we've got to keep pushing it harder and harder.

They aren't doing enough.

They say they're doing something.

I've made the case to him now, and I'm going to keep on making it, and I'll push Connolly up and hit Connolly.

Because everybody says, oh, that's all taken care of.

You can do it by handling a thing.

And I've asked, have any of you tried to do it?

Nobody has.

Well, I did.

I asked for the new form.

What you have to do is ask for a new form.

And the form is a full-length page printed on both sides that is absolutely unintelligible to me.

And I do my own tax returns and understand a fair amount about how to handle tax stuff.

I can't figure the goddamn thing out.

I can't figure it out.

I sit there and look at the goddamn thing.

I'm totally lost.

I have the foggiest notion of what I'm supposed to do or what the effect will be if I do it.

They should go on a blanket basis of saying to all employers, with a little simple thing,

We recommend that due to an error in the treasury calculation, in tax internal revenue service calculations, your tax is being over withheld.

Your paycheck can be increased by X a month by signing this form, which will add one more exemption, which is permitted you by the law.

All he has to do is initial.

He doesn't have to figure anything out.

It should tell him simply he's going to get more money in his paycheck by signing this.

It should have the government seal on it.

should go to every goddamn paycheck for the next six months.

And eventually everybody will sign the thing.

Then they'll stop withholding.

I thought we had a new IRS director.

You see, this is the IRS director.

It's a treasure there.

It goes beyond that.

They're afraid to admit they made a mistake.

What happened?

It's an absolute comedy of errors.

Some clown recalculated the withholding tables

to take into account the people who hold two jobs or the people whose wives work and are therefore under without.

But the problem is most people don't hold two jobs or have their wives work.

So now we're withholding as if you did, which takes too much money out of your paycheck.

And it takes a lot too much out of it.

I know.

I know the issue.

The point is it's just crazy to do that.

They've started a television spot cam.

They've done all that.

You see, you do all that, and then when the guy says, oh, okay, I'll do it, what he has to do is ask for a W-4.

When he gets a W-4, he's going to look at it and say, all right, we'll go on.

And we have to get our return this year, and we've got to do it fast, because Jesus, that's money that we're just taking out of the public sector.

When will they get it back next year?

They get it back in April.

When they file their return next year, they won't mind it.

They've overpaid their tax.

They won't get it until April of next year.

So this year, we underwithheld.

So this year, we've just come up here.

This year in April, right now, when they're filing their taxes, they're going to find they owe tax because they didn't withhold enough.

So we've done everything as wrong as we could from a timing viewpoint.

We're taking the money away this year.

Then we're taking more of it away the rest of this year in order to give it back next year.

So we're compressing the economy.

Now, you think it's psychological.

It's pretty diabolical, but I'd very well be.

If it was, we've got to find the guy because he's a hell of a lot smarter than anybody we've got.

Start using him.

Well, let's start.

Who can follow up on this?

We're pushing on it.

It's one that's just going to take a lot of pressure.

And you've got to dramatize it.

Nobody believes you.

All our guys said, oh, it's all taken care of.

And the only way you can sell them is to get them to look at that damn W-4 and say, you fill it out for yourself now and decide how much you want, how you want your checking to handle.

They don't know.

These are intelligent guys.

George Shultz was probably one of the tax guys, one of his tax experts.

God wanted to handle his own and he could figure it out.

He could figure out what to do himself.

No, they've just got to, the employer's got to make the, do it for them.

In terms of, there are a couple of things, they've just, it's capital loss carryover.

They've gotten it so tangled up now because they've changed the method on which you carry it over.

They've put out... What can we do about it?

It looks like a joke.

Yeah.

But on the property tax, Bob, the problem is we did grab the issue early.

The difficulty is with the way it is, however, that we pulled off of it because they began to hammer us on the, I didn't even evaluate it.

Now, but we can still report.

We did, I'm talking about it.

Let's, why, well, I would attack them, of course, but why don't we talk a little about the loopholes?

What the heck do we care?

Well, yeah, we lose some businessmen again, but you know, I can't say that our business venture has been one of the best ventures as far as I'm concerned.

We've got a story, incidentally, on the loophole.

The dramatic thing is these 200 people who earn over a quarter of a million dollars to pay no taxes.

We've got a great story on that.

We make them pay.

We eliminate them in the 69 law.

I thought it was a good rule, but the rules were created by a Democratic Congress under Democratic .

Well, the story says that in 69, a lot of the reformers said, everybody can pay something.

Of course, you can pay nothing.

And that part of our thing got through.

I know what happened.

But of course, a lot of the bad things got through.

But the difficulty is that the notorious leaders of the domestic council, they did not realize the necessity of PR.

It's funny because John does, and yet he just can't, he can't take it on and get his people to look that way.

You just gotta do the job and do it well, you know, fellas.

But John and other fields, you'll recommend doing the drug thing.

I'll do the drug thing, as I told you, I think that's a good one.

Go ahead, let's hit our issues.

Don't just fight in their ground.

to present general votes here.

It's all good day since you haven't come together.

You don't want to hate to see me in this?

No.

Give word to Henry that the vote's standing by.

Sure.

The vote is waiting.

He can wait to say it.

I'll tell Henry I'll have to be here by 930 because I've got to go.

I've got to leave because Henry can step out.

Well, apart from all that, the, uh, you have to realize, it's part of the campaign growth.

But that, the property tax has got to be falling, falling hard.

We've just got to be in a position to be for something like this thing here.

Yeah, I'm not saying a hell of a lot,

Why would the goddamn Democrats have the audience?

They would get some of them.

You see, here again, I know early on, and particularly Harper, feels so strongly, and I know very well that there are only two percent of the Catholics that care about private schools.

All right, let's suppose this.

I mean, let's suppose who that true person is.

It's this audience.

Catholics have an enormous influence by their priests and by their teachers.

A lot more than Protestants have.

This is worth doing if you do nothing to get Cardinal Cook and Cardinal Crowe standing here saying President Nixon is a hell of a good man.

That's right.

And Crowe's going to say that.

Because he's got the guts to stand up for us.

He's got the guts to come to our meeting.

Hubert Humphrey asked to address this meeting.

I heard that today and they turned him down.

Well, you can't do it.

One of the advantages of the incumbent seat

But coming back to Wisconsin now, though I still believe that from our side, it was a script that we could have written ourselves, the boys all realize that now.

Absolutely.

Well, they're all, the whole, now since the winter in Wisconsin, what's next?

Oh, the old life of finding

I think it's one that's going to take a couple weeks to build up.

It is one that you get out of the immediate reaction to the thing.

Kennedy coming out and kicking you around in Vietnam, I think it almost set posture.

Yes, yeah, that's why I said I was glad to see the pageant, but Kennedy should be knocked a little Jesus out of it for all his people got to sin.

And maybe you could put somebody on that.

I haven't marked it.

Still, you can start on that, but it's still going to be a kick one.

I would see.

This is why Bob was terribly...

You know, the idea that the peace talks have anything to do with you.

That's what Lord Craig said again.

And the place to do this is at a peace talk with Shep.

God Almighty.

You've been over there.

Believe.

The record of the peace talks for Henderson's got to be done, not again.

And maybe, since Rogers is so insanely jealous of Henry, he won't get out and brag about it.

Maybe Henry's got to do that.

You think so?

I guess not.

Not you, sir.

We really have a problem here.

Rogers is not going to do a damn thing until he sees how this is going to come out.

He's not going to say a word.

Justifies, of course, in its own way, the importance of the South and the South.

Very true.

But also do you realize how people think it comes out?

How do you think it comes out?

And also what you say is an effect on the South.

Laos and Cambodia came out basically the same way.

They did.

But we scored well on Cambodia because we... You scored bad in Laos.

We scored bad in Laos because we tried to stay away from Laos and we tried to stay on Cambodia.

At the time, we were criticized as being wrong in Cambodia for wrapping it around us and dragging right on Laos by laying low and letting it go around and being scarred with it.

Yet, we've gotten a lot worse scarred from Laos than from Cambodia.

And no plus, but the Laos provides two primarily.

I must say, very, very enthusiastically supported by Rogers, you know.

Yeah.

He was the one that said, well, you know, we're doing great.

We're getting away with it.

He went up to the committee and all the rest of it.

But we took on it too late, Bob.

We took it on too late.

Remember, I'm in the press conference.

Yeah.

In the office, which is also in the studio.

Yeah.

Because you can't quit on that.

I don't know.

It's your story in that.

The problem I have right now, and it is going to be a very serious one, and we're going to have to fight on Tuesday, actually, because I've decided to give you a hand up anyway, is whether to step into this thing at this point with the press conference.

Because I'm afraid it is probably going to be too risky to do so.

You know what I mean?

See, every nuance.

I mean, no question about my being able to justify what I'm getting at is

I can say why we are doing what we are doing.

I can say that the United States will, you know, continue to, you know, use our air force, our support to save American lives.

I have an enormous justification for that.

The critical question, though, is how does it come out?

That's what I'm going to answer.

Do you see my point?

Yeah.

You don't want to get out on a limb on that, because that's what you have to live with.

Agreed?

Yep, insured.

That's what we have to live with.

You can't run out of the city until it's done.

Well, we don't know.

Oh!

The weather's starting to break us today, they said.

We've got some shots up.

Well, they might have to get up in the news.

It's too late, isn't it, for the rest of it?

Well, Henry called me at 8 o'clock last night, and he hasn't done it.

But they may not get it yet.

It may take them a little while before they get it.

Here's a photo.

Henry's on a good-looking girl.

It's a cherry blossom.

I mean, it's just...

Is Trish out there with these people?

She is.

What?

They're out here in Congress.

I'm going to leave the office to Chief Trotter here on Thursday.

I want to come up and see you.