http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-finances-of-hypocrisy
Bill Gates is liquidating his billions to “do good” – “dedicated to improving lives here and around the world” – and also to avoid an annual tax bill that could match the GNP of Luxembourg or perhaps Switzerland. His foundation website boasts the egalitarian motto: “All Lives Have Equal Value.”
Do they? Doubtless, Bill Gates believes they do. But is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation merely a super-sized tax dodge? All tax dodges are altruist in nature. And hypocritical. Our tax code enforces altruism by granting deductions for charity and exempting nonprofit enterprises. It encourages dishonesty and – what is worse than tax evasion – moral evasion, and ultimately moral corruption.
Much has been written by critics since the beginning of 2009 and President Barack Obama’s reign about the hypocrisy of members of his allies in the Left/Liberal Establishment. Particular focus has been on wealthy politicians and the champions of left/liberal causes, such as movie stars and professional talking heads, who advocate financial discipline and lower expectations for Americans but who don’t themselves wish to practice what they preach.
This barrage of accusations has largely fallen on deaf ears. Virtually the only thing that will guarantee the permanent potting and retirement of a liberal is a sex scandal, à la former North Carolina Senator John Edwards or former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. A charge of criminal behavior and gross malfeasance of public funds and just plain blatant corruption sometimes works, but not always. New York congressman Charles Rangel is a case in point. He was “censured” by the House in 2010 but still maintains his corrupt ways and lifestyle, and grins at you from his House web page with the amiability of a card shark.
Hurling a charge of hypocrisy at a liberal hypocrite is about as effective as throwing a spitball at the back of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie sporting a flak jacket. It is a fruitless, impotent act because the target is by nature inured against charges of verisimilitude, dissimulation, venality, and double standards. Morality, honesty, integrity, and legally gained wealth – these virtues, the hypocrite avers, are for others, not for him. He is of the elite and must have some freedom of action and viable options and financial security and comfort so he has the leisure time to concoct his utopian fiscal and social plans for everyone else, and then propose them with the religious fervor of a ragged desert anchorite.
Charges of hypocrisy have never made hypocrites blush in embarrassment. When such charges are made public, a hypocrite’s first concern is his public image, not the falseness and fraudulence of his private and public character. Such charges only move his ilk to erect even higher opaque barriers to exposure and to dig deeper labyrinths of secrecy.
As a rule, liberals and advocates of confiscatory taxation seek to conserve and protect their nest eggs from the very tax and fiscal policies they propose for everyone else. They can afford the tax lawyers and CPA firms which most middle income individuals can only dream of employing. Liberals such as John Kerry and any random Kennedy patronize the services of law firms and CPA firms with a dozen names between them to fix their books. All others must patronize a strip mall’s Jackson Hewitt or H&R Block.
