Senator Kerry, in an October speech to the Arab-American Institute in Michigan: “I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli government’s decision to build the barrier off the green line cutting deep into Palestinian areas. We don’t need more barriers to peace.” Senator Kerry in the Jerusalem Post this week: “Israel’s security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense. No nation can stand by while its children are blown up at pizza parlors and on buses.” WHAT?Now a Boston Globe story: “Senator Kerry, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls companies and chief executives ‘Benedict Arnolds’ if they move jobs and operations overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. But Kerry has accepted money and fund-raising assistance from top executives at companies that fit his description of Benedict Arnolds.”
On these two issues like so many others, John Kerry is on both sides telling whatever audience he’s speaking to exactly what they want to hear. Let’s not forget Jim Glassman’s report that Heinz ketchup has 22 American factories and over two-and-a-half times as many, 57, overseas! Heinz is a Benedict Arnold corporation by Kerry’s definition, and he’s married to it — with nary a word of criticism. So what’s all this razzmatazz about outsourcing?
The Globe: “On Monday, Kerry was asked why two of his biggest fund-raisers were involved with so-called Benedict Arnold companies. Kerry said it was done without his knowledge, then sought to “clarify his position” by saying he doesn’t think “that people don’t have the right to go overseas and form a company if they want to avoid the tax. ‘I don’t believe the American taxpayer ought to be giving them a benefit. That’s what I object to.'” I guess we can’t call him on any of these contradictions, folks, because that would be “questioning his patriotism.”