Beacon Street Journal

Senator John Kerry, yachtsman extraordinaire, will shortly be making a charitable donation to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the amount of $500,000. That sum represents the amount of sales tax that would be due had Kerry decided to berth his $7 million yacht in his home state of Massachusetts instead of in neighboring Rhode Island. When it was disclosed recently that Kerry docks his boat in Rhode Island to escape paying the Massachusetts sales tax, he became engulfed in a public relations firestorm that could have irreparably harmed his political career.

Since Kerry has a summer home in Nantucket and most likely would have used the yacht in the waters off Nantucket Sound, his decision to dock the yacht in Rhode Island nonetheless, would have likely prompted an investigation by the Massachusetts’ Department of Revenue to determine if he was trying to evade sales taxes.

A clueless Kerry poured gasoline on the flames by proclaiming that he didn’t know what all the fuss was about.

Whether the sales taxes were owed or not, Kerry’s plight was that the controversy would have dogged him for the rest of his political career. It would have been simply too hard to overcome the image of this purported champion of the people robbing the treasury of the Commonwealth in order to save a half a million dollars in sales taxes. Kerry richly deserves this humbling. As one of the most liberal members of the Senate, Kerry is heard constantly proclaiming how justice requires that the “rich” pay their fair share in taxes. Since he is a ardent proponent of tax and spend liberalism, it simply wouldn’t do to be seen engaging in a tax evasion scheme to save himself money while preaching to the rest of us the virtues of paying higher taxes.

But isn’t Kerry’s tax-avoidance behavior an indictment of the onerous taxes of the very state that he represents in Washington? Kerry is no different than the thousands of people from Massachusetts who cross the border every day to shop in tax-free New Hampshire.

Kerry’s plight is instructive, for it undermines the presuppositions of tax and spend liberalism. What makes Kerry and his fellow leftists think that small businesses won’t react exactly as he did in an environment of increasingly oppressive taxation? Why would a small business hire additional employees if more of its hard earned profits will be confiscated by an ever expanding leviathan federal government?  If billionaire Kerry decided to dock his boat in a nearby state in order to save half a million dollars, what makes liberals think that small business will not be similarly motivated to behave in ways that will minimize their overall tax burden?

The imperious Kerry is a caricature of the limousine liberal: given his astronomical wealth, Kerry, like the late Senator Ted Kennedy, is effectively shielded from the consequences of his legislative actions and as such, can afford to be a liberal. Kerry’s actions also demonstrate the glaring hypocrisy of the liberal elite ruling class in seeking to exempt themselves from the oppressive policies they would foist upon the rest of us: do as we say, not as we do.

The recent political maelstrom caused by the discovery of docking his yacht in Rhode Island makes the following question, especially in light of Scott Brown’s victory, all the more intriguing: why do the voters of Massachusetts keep sending the insufferable John Kerry back to Washington?