booo...
Yooo Hooo... I'm over HERE!!!
Posted on 08/05/2010 11:54:41 PM PDT by Rummyfan
By now, almost everything imaginable has been said about Senator Kerry’s docking of his new $7 million yacht in Rhode Island instead of Massachusetts, thus avoiding/postponing some $500,000 in state taxes. Here is some postmortem analysis:
1. Once again, a liberal proponent of higher and more redistributive taxes (e.g., Daschle, Geithner, Rangel) has acted antithetically to what he professes. In his 2004 campaign, Kerry alleged near-treasonous behavior (“Benedict Arnold”) on the part of companies that relocated out of the country to seek lower taxes. The psychology of this hypocrisy is hard to figure: Does the technocratic guardian class believe that, as an overseeing nomenklatura, the laws should not apply to thems? Does loud support for taxes in the abstract serve as some sort of surrogate ethical compensation for avoiding them in the concrete? Or is there an assumption that such elites won’t get caught (remember, Geithner and Kerry only paid up when public attention turned to their avoidance)?
2. Economics 101 suggests that, had Massachusetts either no or very low taxes regarding yachts, it might have recaptured some of the revenue that is now Rhode Island’s.
3. Is the liberal wing of the Democratic party now the choice of the very rich who see no dichotomy between their own enjoyment of the highest life and public remonstration against the wealthy? A pattern has certainly emerged: Yachtgate, the populist Clintons’ multi-million-dollar wedding extravaganza, John “Two Americas” Edwards’s mansion, green/live-within-our-limited-means Al Gore at home in Montecito and various other digs, and our “spread the wealth” and “redistributive change” president’s fondness for celebrity-studded banquets, golf, and exclusive vacation hideaways.
4. At some point, all the soak/attack-the-rich talk from the Obama administration (e.g., the lectures about going to the Super Bowl, the caricatures of Las Vegas, the attacks on executives and surgeons) begins to clash with all this conspicuous consumption, especially given that Obama has made a trope of “at some point you’ve made enough money” (a point that someone capable of buying a $7 million accessory has reached, perhaps). What Kerry calls a family “investment” would, in intrusive liberal orthodoxy, appear to others as an indulgence at a time when unemployment lingers near 10 percent and we are struggling to get out of recession.
5. Note how all this wealth was made: John Edwards made it summarizing personal-injury cases against doctors; Al Gore by hyping a global-warming Armageddon and then offering psychological and concrete ameliorations for it; John Kerry by marrying someone who had married someone who had inherited it. This suggests that some of the most influential of the rich Democratic elite don’t have much experience with the role of low taxes or less regulation in fostering profitable, capital-creating enterprises.
Senator Kerry is of significance to the dimmest of minds. IMHO
If he keeps getting re-elected, then those voters deserve what he delivers. Too bad I and my family are in the same boat he is so busy sinking for his own personal profit.
Terrific piece.
As someone who lives and works in Boston/Cambridge I can tell you, the libs simply DO NOT CARE about this stuff.
The moderates and independents, on the other hand, well, their mileage varies, but I don’t know if they can unseat him. People who bitch about Scott Brown have to understand we’re never going to go from Kerry to Reagan, we have to have someone who’s a centrist-right-leaner first. If we run some guns-a-balzin’ conservative, as much as I’d like that, he ain’t gonna win, and we’ll be stuck with this doofus again.
I missed the 1960’s. I had other priorities.
But if Kerry’s yacht is a teachable moment, I say we take over the dean’s office.
That was an excellent article.
How often should I check my mailbox?
bump
Through the years I have worked for three companies headquartered there. One was founded and run by Harvard MBAs and ex state politicians, including Dukakis, and another by MIT professors. I was continuously amazed at what nice and very smart people they were but who seemed completely out to lunch politically. They seemed to always vote against their own best interest. They seemed to have an unspoken understanding about how to be "good people" and that governed how they voted.
It gave me new insight into the "inside the Beltway cocktail circuit" and how that often sets the tone for legislation rather than any true deliberation.
Those people, and I am talking specifically about the Democrat elite, think they know what is best for "the people" and they vote in a way to care for them and to control them, as "the people" obviously aren't capable of doing that for themselves.
They would also consider it absurd that the same rules should apply to them. They specifically exempt themselves from most of the laws they pass. What is a good idea for others simply does not apply in their haughty atmosphere. While claiming to tax the rich, as a way to tax the middle class, they set up myriad loopholes to exclude themselves from those taxes. There is a wide variety of trusts, foundations, etc., through which they shield their money from taxes.
Kerry bemoans companies sending manufacturing overseas while he buys a yacht from New Zealand, ignoring ship builders near him, and parks it next door to avoid the taxes on it. It is not that he can't pay the taxes, he easily can, it is that he thinks the taxes were never intended for people like him.
Those people, and I am talking specifically about the Democrat elite, think they know what is best for "the people" and they vote in a way to care for them and to control them, as "the people" obviously aren't capable of doing that for themselves.
My beliefs about liberals and conservatives can be summed up simply:
Conservatives think they know what's best for themselves.
Liberals think they know what's best for everyone else.
They would also consider it absurd that the same rules should apply to them. They specifically exempt themselves from most of the laws they pass. What is a good idea for others simply does not apply in their haughty atmosphere.
That's because they KNOW that they're not BAD people. If they avoid taxes, it doesn't even get a second's thought, because those taxes are there for those "enedict Arnolds" that they don't socialize with, those caricatures of eeeeevil Industrialists, the robber-barons of early 20th century American literature ala Babbit and Grapes of Wrath. The laws are put in place for the BAD rich, the ones who are grubby and love money.
Kerry is Good Rich. He doesn't lust after money, because he's always HAD it. So of course he's not one of those eeeeevil types. Money simple APPEARS in his world, and he is Good, so whatever he DOES is by definition Good. That's why so often you hear people like him prattling on about "the appearance of wrongdoing," and that nauseating "We'll pay taxes whether owed or not" because all that matters is how it LOOKS, not the truth of the matter.
Kerry and his type find it distasteful to talk about money in public, because he comes from a world where money doesn't ever HAVE to be talked about. So the noblest thing he can do is pay out money he doesn't owe--not because it's the law, but because he is one of The Good, and if they don't pay taxes, well, there's nothing REALLY wrong with that because, well....because.
Seriously, so much of what these sorts talk about are lofty ideals because the real world stuff that makes up so much of what the rest of us are concerned with day to day never, ever impinges on their lives.
Sort of like that summer in 1968 in Cambodia that is seared in his memory. :-)
I will now finish your sentence because it is excellent.
Seriously, so much of what these sorts talk about are lofty ideals because the real world stuff that makes up so much of what the rest of us are concerned with day to day never, ever impinges on their lives.
I think Kerry has reshaped his Vietnam memories into a fiction that he really believes. Saying he was over there because of Nixon is the best example—being sent there by that evil Republican Nixon is so much more appealing than being sent by Johnson, the hero of civil rights according to dem mythology.
Just as Kennedy always went back to the assassinations of his brothers as his go-to street cred, Kerry has Vietnam—without it he has nothing in his resume. So of course he has used a kernel of truth and popped it up into this saga of heroism, bravery and Purple heart-earning blood and guts.
Liberals think they know what's best for everyone else.
Well, I am not so unusual that what is best for me would not be best for most other people, as well.
Thinking again about the comments on rich liberals not being concerned with money, that fits perfectly with the rest of the scenario. Calvin Coolidge once said that it was easy to see how politicians spend so much money. There seems to be plenty of it laying around and it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone.
That could explain some attitudes but not the ones of this administration. This administration is bent on the destruction of this country for the supposed purpose of building a Marxist Workers Utopia in its place. Are people like Kerry, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Fords, etc., blind to that? Do they really think that they personally will be better off in a Marxist society?
The point is, that's not for you to decide. You have no idea what's best for me, in terms of how I run my life.
Something those sorts have in common with the youth of today--since the US and its benefits have "always" been here (that is, as long as they've been around), it'll all just somehow work out and "always" be here, no matter what happens.
Children and the pampered rich have never had to go without some version of Daddy being there to rescue them. They operate with a net at all times, so they don't even know that positive fear that comes from knowing your every action has consequences you may have to pay for.
And my point was that if I make decisions that are best for me, I am unlikely to harm others.
Uh, okay... Not sure how we got here from where we started, but, okay...
booo...I guess it goes back to where we started - the liberal elites walk around in a fog of mutual understanding and admiration while never bothering with the real world.
I am reminded of a video I saw of Saddam Hussein when he first took power in Iraq. He had brought the State Assembly together and stood in front of them and announced that he had learned that some of them were his enemies. He then read out a list of 50 randomly chosen names from the group of 250, some of them his strong supporters, As each name was called they were taken outside and shot, some with their families. Saddam laughed as each one protested on their way out.
That was his way of instilling fear to assure he would have no enemies, at least none with any power because they would be afraid to identify themselves to others.
That is also the history of Marxists. Some of these liberal elites may get a terrible surprise some day.
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