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.