The Ruling Class Tosses Americans
Overboard
By Geoffrey P. Hunt
AmericanThinker.com
The saga of Senator John Kerry's $ 7 million sailing yacht tied up on the
Newport waterfront in the tax haven of Rhode Island proved again how adept
Democrats are at spending other people's money. This time the $7 million was
presumably spent from his wife's inherited fortune.
But the
larger story here isn't about tax havens. And it isn't about hypocrisy. And
it's far less about trophy wives with trust funds. It's not even about
being a lifelong leech working in government jobs sucking the blood out of
beleaguered taxpayers. It's about the increasing distance and disconnects
between the governing class and everybody else. It's about abandoning
American workers and deliberately staying out of touch with and out of reach
from everyday people.
$7
million is a lot of dough. Easily more than twice what the vast majority of
Americans will earn over their entire lifetimes. And those modest earning
prospects are slipping away as two out of ten Americans of working age are
now either unemployed or underemployed.
Pay no
attention to Sen Kerry's hollow support of US job creation. I wonder why in
May he co-sponsored the vacuous
Senate bill
"Honoring the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Small Business": . Maybe he was
feeling guilty for having completely dismissed American boatyards and
instead taken delivery three months earlier of the 72 foot Isabel, built in
New Zealand.
I also
wonder how his aiding and abetting outsourcing, shamelessly steering clear
of American labor, is going down with his pals at the AFL-CIO who endorsed
him for president in 2004. No doubt at least half of Isabel's $7 million
price tag was labor requiring some 70,000 hours of mostly highly skilled
work.. That translates into 35 to 50 boat builders, carpenters, mechanics,
machinists, sailmakers, technicians, varnishers and riggers. Couldn't this
work have been done at a premier custom boat builder in Maine, say
Hinckley's in Southwest Harbor or Brooklin Boatyard?
Or if he
was stuck on something more upscale, why not Hodgdon's Yachts in East
Boothbay? Five generations of Hodgdons have built the finest luxury sailing
yachts in the world as the cold molded 124 foot Antonisa and 98 foot
Windcrest can attest. Hodgdon's has at least 35 of the finest boatbuilders
to be found anywhere on the globe. But not good enough for John Kerry.
How about
Goetz Boats in Bristol, Rhode Island, a mere 20 minute Cadillac Escalade SUV
ride from Newport? Goetz has built nine Americas Cup boats. Goetz's most
recent construction is the 83 foot Highland Fling a carbon fiber luxury
racing jewel. Not good enough for John Kerry.
All
too pedestrian for John Kerry. Anyone can get a boat built in Maine or Rhode
Island. But none of that would have the glitter and cachet of built-in-New
Zealand.
Look,
John Kerry and his wife can spend their tax-free municipal bond income
anywhere they please. But the prospect of a US Senator splurging on a $7
million personal pleasure craft built halfway around the globe while
Americans suffer through the worst economic catastrophe since the 1930s is
not just unseemly -- it's nauseating. Displays of this kind of elitist
condescension and disdain for the everyday people were once upon a time
reserved for the likes of the French aristocracy before 1789.
Equally
obscene is the reported millions being spent on the Chelsea Clinton wedding.
At least the Clintons had the good sense to have Chelsea tie the knot in the
US. And caterers, wedding planners, dress makers, florists, chefs, wait
staff and dishwashers, landscape workers and porta-potty contractors all
along the NY State Hudson River estates will enjoy good fortune at least
for a couple of days. Unlike the hopelessly out-of-work boat builders
further Downeast who are now resorting to raking blueberries and taking
short term stints as deckhands on clean-up barges in the Gulf of Mexico.
Of
course it is entirely possible that Kerry had nothing to do with the yacht
Isabel, except measuring chocks on the foredeck to store his windsurfing
board.
And while
the governing class arrogance and alienation from everyday Americans is
worsening, the bastions of big government keep ever expanding. The Capitol
district in Washington DC is a concrete berm and steel barrier enclave with
few hotel vacancies and virtually full employment. Unsupervised staffers
and unbridled regulators daily impose thousands of pages of rules on us.
Even presumably free market stalwarts inside American companies are
convinced that Washington is the center of the universe.
The
American electorate has always been wary of decision makers beyond their
existential line of sight. So were the founders declaring in the last
amendment in the Bill of Rights, "The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people."
If the
courts today won't reaffirm the Tenth Amendment, the voters will. And sooner
or later, the John Kerrys of the governing class will be the ones cast
adrift.
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