"Taxes are for the Little People" - Yachting and Vacation Edition

From the Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe:

From Newport, R.I., where Kerry’s ‘Isabel’ was berthed before heading to Nantucket, to Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton was married in a mansion modeled after Versailles, today’s Democrats are looking more like Louis XVI than Tip O’Neill. Kick in the First Family’s vacation plans for Martha’s Vineyard, and there’s a real air of Marie Antoinette & Co. retreating to idyllic gardens, while Fox News whips up revolutionary flames. The ethics charges against Representative Charles Rangel of New York are added foie gras.

The author goes on to make a case that the image is only superficial, because:

While Republicans drape themselves in middle class values, they are sticking it to the middle class. It’s all in the effort to deny Obama and the Democrats any positive political message.


Last week, Senate Republicans rejected a bill to aid small business with expanded loan programs and tax breaks.

BUT she leaves out some details about the bills they voted against:

First, the tax provisions to which she refers are a provision of Obamacare which requires the issuance of a 1099 for anything purchased over $600. Insofar as every Republican in the house and senate voted against Obamacare, they already voted against this nonsense. Secondly, in an effort to repeal the mistake which nearly every Democrat in the house and senate voted for, they proposed a bill repealing the provision, but enacting a large tax increase as well. It was for this reason that Republicans voted against the bill; because it was a tax increase.

So which is Joan Vennochi? Is she a liar or an ignoramus?

She also mentions Scott Brown's vote against a bill to extend unemployment benefits. What doesn't make it into the news, because of people like Joan Vennochi, is that the Republicans explained that they were voting against the bill BECAUSE IT WAS 'FUNDED' BY ADDING IT TO THE DEFICIT. They proposed funding extended unemployment benefits with unspent "stimulus" money. It is true that they were trying to hold the Democrats' to their "pay as you go" pledge, so their opposition was partly political. But they were also voting in favor of the interests of FUTURE middle-class Americans. And probably in the interests of middle-class Americans not too far into the future. Not that they didn't lose their way in the past with their own deficit spending. But deficit spending during this administration is WAY out of control and truly threatens rising generations.

Roger L. Simon on the Party of the Rich and the Press:

But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.

This all occurs during the administration of a president who once trumpeted “transparency” and “change,” pronouncements that seem to have been made so long ago now you can’t remember if it happened before or after the fall of the Roman Empire. This same Democratic president, however, continues to collect big royalties from books he may or may not have written. He’s certainly not the first.

Furthermore, in recent days, some Grub Street drones have been revealed to be enablers, or perhaps cheerleaders, of all the above. Particularly clueless, this crowd does the low-paying grunt work for their truly plutocratic Democrat employers from Huffington to Sulzberger. At least the Dems’ Hollywood supporters are making some decent money off their useful idiocy.

Talk about a confederacy of dunces. . . .

I used to think, as I wrote in my book on Hollywood of a couple of years ago, that these limousine liberals created “mini-me” clones out of the Austin Powers flicks to proclaim publicly their undying support for the common man; so that, in their private lives, these same “progressive plutocrats” could go on raping and pillaging as before. Barbra Streisand is a typical example, but George Soros, more than any movie star, is the poster boy for that kind of behavior.


But these days, it seems, even the “mini-me” is being abandoned. The pretenses are gone. No more Mr. Good Guy, phony as he was. No more obeisance to Mother Teresa (she’s dead anyway) or special concerts for African AIDS. It has evolved to another stage. Chelsea Clinton gets her multi-million dollar wedding no matter how it looks to the rest of us. John Kerry acts as if having tax issues for your yacht is just another average problem for Joe Normal, and Al Gore … well, the less said about him the better.


When I say it has evolved to another stage, I also mean that our political leaders now behave more or less like members of competing Mafia families. The Clintons do not invite the Obamas — or the Gores, for that matter – to their wedding. That Jenna Bush’s wedding cost a paltry one hundred grand is forgotten, a thing of the past barely commented upon. Chelsea marries into a family whose connections are no more savory than the Corleones, as Ron Radosh reminds us.


Meanwhile, the tea partiers are accused of racism that no one can prove. The illusion that the Democrats are the party of the people continues. And the beat goes on.