The Amazing Lindsey

This is all about the amazing Lindsey Pratt. She is really something, although - until I did a little research - I had no idea just what that something was.

I first met her a couple of weeks ago. She came to my house for just a minute, but she really impressed me with her common sense, her love of family, her middle class roots and her knowledge of the tax code.

Well, she wasn’t really in my house. She was on television. In a commercial.

There she was, with a man who was obviously her husband - he didn’t really say much - just pushing a child on her backyard swing. Or, maybe it was her neighbor’s swing or her daughter’s swing. It doesn’t matter.

She was dressed in a way that said “solid middle class.” Her accent was neutral, couldn’t tell if she was a city mouse or a country mouse. Didn’t look rich. Didn’t look poor. Just one of us.

Except for just one thing. She had read the tax code and the changes that Congress is planning to make in the tax code.

Well, that was amazing enough, because - when the commercials started - almost no one in Congress had even seen the tax code changes. Certainly none of the Democrats, and certainly not most of the Republicans. No committee hearings on the changes. No testimony by experts. No nothing.

But, there she was. “I read it,” she told me. And, she said an independent study - it was a short commercial, so she didn’t have time to name it - said that it would save the average family (people like her and me, I guess) more than $1,200 a year. Good deal.

Then she told me that my Congressman, Lee Zeldin, was a big supporter of the tax cut plan and that I had to support him in the upcoming election. Well, that’s fair. After all, he is putting more than $1,200 a year into my pocket. And his fellow Republicans say this will create more jobs and improve the economy. Good deal all around.

At the very end, there was some white lettering at the bottom of the last frame of her commercial. It told me that the ad was paid for by the American Action Network. How patriotic is that!

Like I said, amazing.

                                                       But, It Is All A Lie

I don’t know where to begin counting the lies in this little commercial. I don’t know where to start exploring the enormity of its deceptions. Or its hyperbole.

But, we could start with the obvious. There is no Republican tax plan yet. It is still being written. My independent analysis says that it will cost me somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a year - that’s because all my state taxes, school taxes, medical expenses and other deductions like interest on student loans will no longer be deductible - and will create real, unspoken hardships down the road when the state and the town and the schools and all the other places that now tax me lose their federal aid and have to charge me even more. Heck, even if I did get Lindsey’s $1,200, it would go away in a heartbeat when my town or my school district sees its state aid cut because the money is no longer coming to the state from the federal government.

Oh, yes, federal aid really does come down to the state. Ever notice those signs along the big roads being repaired or widened that tells you who is really paying for the work?

And, another thing. The Amazing Lindsey didn’t just come into my living room. She’s gone into a lot of living rooms. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions? Who knows. How many living rooms are there in more than 30 Congressional districts across the nation that are being targeted?

There was Lee Zeldin in New York, of course. Also Martha McSally in Arizona, Mike Coffman in Colorado, Brian Mast in Florida, Mark Meadows in North Carolina, Rodney Frelinghuysen in New Jersey, Jim Jordan in Ohio...33 in all. It is costing the American Action Network $2 million for its targeted media blitz furthering the tax reform movement.

How do I know? It’s posted on the American Action Network website.

                                      So, Just Who is Lindsey?

Now all of this made me wonder just who Lindsey Pratt is. Maybe an actress, or maybe a model. Maybe some kind of authority on tax reform. So, I tried to look her up. And, I failed.

Now there are lots of people named Lindsey Pratt listed when you Google the name. Too many to look at. But none of the first hundred or so seemed to match the person in the ad. So, I tried looking at images. It was a real experience.

There are hundreds of pictures of Lindsey Pratt. The college student. The businessman. The kid on the basketball team. One rather risque image of an attractive young woman. Young, elderly, old, young, black, white. But none of them seemed to match the Lindsey Pratt who has been coming into my living room, making the outrageous claim that she has read a tax bill that hasn’t been written yet.

And who, you ask, is behind the American Action Network? Good luck finding out.

The American Action Network is a private, not-for-profit 501(c)4, which means it does not have to file a lot of public disclosure documents. It was created in 2010, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that private organizations can spend unlimited money on political campaigning. And, amazingly, the new group managed to spend $26 million that year on federal elections, money that - if individual donors had spent it - would have to be reported. Now the Koch brothers were among the early founders, which could have helped with the funds. Or, maybe, it managed to save some rent money by sharing office space with Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC.

Oh, yes, one other thing. Lee Zeldin says that he can not vote for the Republican tax bill in its current form. Seems like too many of the people who live in his district will be losing a lot of money when they can no longer deduct their state taxes or school taxes or medical expenses. Little things like that.