Liberal lamentation over the sailing yacht

by reporting the story incompletely, with the narrative that it was Kerry's decision to moor the boat in RI specifically to avoid taxes, and sensationally as a front page story they ran for four days, created a nationwide Breitbart-like environment when Kerry had to pay half a million so that the story would not damage his reputation and damage his prospects of being re-elected.

I'm not the biggest fan of John Kerry. I find him pompous and affected but I like the way he votes, mostly. That said, I don't think what the Herald did here was quality journalism. It was incomplete and irresponsible. If it wasn't a hit job, it might as well have been.

Is the irony of the something for nothing anti-tax crowd pressuring Kerry to pay taxes, huge taxes he may not owe, lost on the rest of us?

That was the home town of the Cartwright family wasn't it? lol

"Go back and do your reading. The Yacht is owned by a holding company that is majority owned by Teresa Heinz."

That's nice. Too bad it has nothing to do with the question. The question is whether Teresa lives in Rhode Island. Why am I asking that? Because YOU brought up the "if your wife lived there" argument. Go back and do YOUR reading where you used "if your wife lived there and owned it" as an example in your own response to okra, who posted the analogy to parking his/her car in NH while he/she lived in MA. Your post directly implied it'd be okay for someone living in MA to park their car in NH and avoid MA taxes, if their wife lived in NH. I took your example and applied it to John/Teresa with their residences which I thought were in PA/MA. By your own example from your reply to okra, Teresa would be living in Rhode Island, just as okra's wife would be living in New Hampshire. Hence my question of whether Teresa now lives in Rhode Island. Instead of answering the question, you respond with a rant deflecting the topic towards holding corporations. Whuh? Holding corporations had nothing to do with neither okra's post nor your reply to okra's post.

"It is moored in RI, but that's equivalent to when I've driven to Chicago in my private car to work for a week and parked it there."

Well maybe. I didn't realize that the boat was only moored there for a week. See, Kerry's spokesperson declared it was for "maintenance and repairs." I heard nothing about "it's only for a week" so either his spokesperson didn't know that either, and/or his publicists are doing a really, really crappy job. In a previous post I wondered why Kerry, Senator representing MA, can't have "maintenance and repairs" done in Massachusetts, giving business to locally established businesses. Support local jobs in his own state. That would have been the ideal thing for a politician to do.

"So, you are saying that a boat owned by Kerry's wife's holding company that is working in RI part of the year means he owes taxes to MA? I think you are rather confused and/or stubborn."

Yeah, I'm confused, that's it. Confused as to why Kerry's spokespeople and publicists can't get word out about that until today. Until today all I've heard is 'it's for maintenance'. Not a word about it's his wife's company's boat on official business for only one week. I suppose I could be stubborn too. My main issue, as I posted earlier, is that he missed out a golden opportunity to make a big show of supporting businesses in his own home state. Yes, that would mean he, or his wife, or his wife's company, would be paying more money in taxes. But that $500K in taxes would go a a lot further in goodwill than $500K of TV ads for his next election campaign. Plus he/his wife/his wife's company should have bought the boat in MA in the first place.

"As for the split official residences, you must not know of anybody who is deployed away from their home of record and married to somebody working a civilian job..."

Sure I do. I have several friends in the military. But I don't get the 'deployment' thing in this case. Because I'm confused.

"... or somebody who prefers to retain their different home of record. ..."

Oh yeah. I know of a great example of that. The Bush family. When they were in the white house they declared Texas as their official state as residence, so that they could duck local (to DC) taxes. That was bull shit. They lived in DC for a majority of the year, they should have paid DC taxes. It was bullshit for the Bushes, and it's bull shit for the Kerrys. I'm not saying either broke the law in this regard, but I am saying they both failed to do the right thing. They're both rich as hell, and they both use loopholes to get out of paying taxes. See how fair I am? I criticize both sides.

"....You can physically live together, but file separately for tax purposes. Most of the time this isn't a good idea. If you have enormous inherited holdings in a single state, as Ms. Heinz does, it is an important advantage to keep your residence there.

And it's a loophole that needs to be closed. We're in a fiscal crisis in this country, and we're trying to get rich people to pay more taxes, so how about rich people who are married to each other, especially who are part of this noble campaign to get rich people to pay more taxes, set a good example with themselves and file for residency in the state they live in...together? setting a good example goes a long way.