As Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” In that spirit, I give up resisting the urge to shout “HYPOCRITE.”
Not once, but a thousand times.
Start with Al Gore, the low-hanging fruit in the “say one thing, do another” culture. With his sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera, the almost-president instantly doubled his charlatan quotient.
The blowhard who often proclaims the end of the world is nigh because of fossil fuels sold his TV business to the emir of Qatar, king of the oil patch. But Gore’s scheming didn’t stop there. He also reportedly wanted to finalize the deal before the end of the year so his $100 million windfall wouldn’t be subject to new higher tax rates he zealously supported.
He’s not alone in urging tax hikes he tried to avoid. From the Washington Post to Costco to Warren Buffett to Hollywood, the woods are full of devotees to that Sage of Selfishness, Leona Helmsley. The Queen of Mean insisted that “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes,” just before she was marched off to prison for tax evasion.
Her acolytes are hypocrites, but not felonious. President Obama’s Tinseltown pals got lucrative tax breaks and, after declaring themselves eager to pay their fair share, the Post and Costco pushed 2013 dividends into 2012 so higher taxes this year wouldn’t hit their wallets. Sharpies for sure, especially Buffett, who is on the Post board and is a big stockholder. He made himself the poster boy for soaking the rich, though “Taxes for thee, but not for me” is his real creed.
There’s no telling how many wealthy Obama supporters helped fuel the surge of apartment sales in deep-blue Manhattan, but brokers say the coming hikes played a role. With capital-gains taxes going from 15 percent to 23.8 percent, including an ObamaCare hit, sellers took the money and ran. A friend tells of a rich liberal who did exactly that — sold before the ball dropped and moved to Connecticut to avoid New York City and state taxes as well.
Liberals, of course, don’t have a monopoly on failing to practice what they preach. Republican Gov. Chris Christie is famous for insisting that New Jersey live within its means, and good for him for showing it can be done. But when he gets to the federal trough, he eats with both hands.
Christie, along with Long Island Republican Congressman Pete King, leveled savage attacks on House Speaker John Boehner. Boehner’s “crime” was not instantly approving every penny of the $60 billion of aid New York, New Jersey and Connecticut demanded after Hurricane Sandy.
“Shame on you,” said Christie, with King saying his GOP colleagues “put a knife in the back” of New York and New Jersey. The outrage of these supposed fiscal conservatives was all the more breathtaking for its apparent sincerity.
The bill they loved was stuffed with pork that had nothing to do with Sandy, including $150 million for Alaska fisheries and $17 billion for groups The Wall Street Journal called “liberal activists,” with the money disguised as community-development and social-service grants.
Equally important, the $60 billion figure itself was little more than a edited version of the $80 billion back-of-the-envelope target agreed to by Christie, Gov. Cuomo and Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut. There was no pretense that it was an actual accounting of damage or promise that the money would be spent wisely and efficiently. They were simply trying to get the most they could.
That’s how the game is played. The entitlement culture means windstorms and floods now automatically trigger a claim on federal taxpayers to cover all costs, instantly and without scrutiny.
Recall how Mayor Bloomberg, who routinely sermonizes on economic reality to city taxpayers, defended paying $300 a night for hundreds of unused hotel rooms because the city might need them later. It turns out he expects the feds to write the check.
No doubt they will, until other people’s money runs out. At this rate, that will be soon.
Candidates take a sound bite out of crime
Something very good is happening in New York: The campaign for mayor is taking a sharp turn toward common sense.
The Post report that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn promises to keep top cop Ray Kelly on the job if she is elected reflects a new understanding about crime: It can be kept in check, and New Yorkers won’t tolerate a mayor who fails to do that.
Quinn is not the first Democratic candidate to realize the changing dynamic, though she is the first to embrace Kelly. Bill Thompson, the former comptroller, told me six months ago that he thought the police force was too small and called for hiring about 2,000 more cops, to bring the total to 37,000.
“I want to be mayor, and I want to make sure this city is safe,” Thompson said then.
“The thing that has helped to transform the city the most in my lifetime is the reduction of crime. It is important that we stay vigilant.”
Likely GOP candidates John Catsimatidis and Joe Lhota both praise Kelly and suggest they would like him to stay.
For her part, Quinn has tried to walk a fine line between the liberal catechism that says cops are the problem and ordinary New Yorkers who see them as saviors. It’s not incidental that The New York Times editorial page will probably endorse the Dem who parrots its anti-police views.
That makes Quinn’s fondness for Kelly a risk. Yet she didn’t hesitate to restate it, saying through an aide that “the next mayor would be lucky to have Kelly stay on as police commissioner.”
Maybe she believes the dramatic reduction in crime makes the Times less relevant. Or maybe she realizes that keeping New York safe is a mayor’s most important job, no matter what the Times says.
Detouring around the Hillary truth
Any fawning story about Hillary Rodham Clinton is obliged to declare her the “most widely traveled secretary of state in American history.”
A gusher yesterday in The Times did just that, but quietly inserted the facts later. Near the end, it mentioned that, while Clinton visited the most countries, 112, Condoleezza Rice actually logged more than 1 million miles on the job, 50,000 more than Saint Hillary.
That makes Rice the champ because “most traveled” should mean most miles. But apparently facts don’t count if the winner is a black conservative.
O takes off & we poi the bill
It’s good to be king, er, president. The Web site whitehousedossier.com notes that “Michelle Obama recently revealed she and President Obama don’t give Christmas gifts to each other. They merely say, ‘We’re in Hawaii,’ and that’s gift enough.
“But actually the present is from taxpayers, and it’s an expensive one,” the site reports. It calculates that the four Obama family vacations to Hawaii cost taxpayers at least $20 million.