Senator Liveshot: I Always Intended to Pay the Taxes I was Avoiding Paying

So nice to see the Boston Globe getting around to reporting on this story after a week of avoiding it. Just imagine the saturation coverage Scott Brown would receive from them if he skipped paying half a million dollars in taxes.

Senator John F. Kerry yesterday acknowledged for the first time that he mishandled the political fallout from questions about taxes on his new $7 million yacht berthed in Rhode Island, but insisted that he always intended to make the $500,000 payment once he had registered the boat in Massachusetts.

“Our fault,’’ the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview. “I don’t think I dealt with it fast enough, effectively enough. There’s nobody to blame but myself for that.’’

This is a watershed event in America: A Democrat taking responsibility for his actions. Of course this never would be happening if the Boston Herald didn't expose this fraud.

Last Friday, Kerry issued a less-than-definitive statement about the matter, saying, “If I owe taxes, I will pay promptly.’’ That was followed over the next few days by a series of similar comments, fueling a stream of media reports about whether the senator was trying to dodge Massachusetts taxes.

Then, on Tuesday, Kerry said he would deliver a check for roughly $500,000 — “whether owed or not’’ — to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue to quell the controversy.

Kerry, during a 45-minute session with Globe reporters, repeatedly insisted that he never had any intention of permanently docking the yacht in Rhode Island to avoid paying taxes in Massachusetts.

Asked why he had not paid taxes earlier, he said he has not taken final ownership of the yacht because there were several changes still being made by a designer, whose team is based in Rhode Island. Thus, he said, he was not in a position to pay taxes in Massachusetts.

He said, however, that he could now take possession within days — possibly soon enough to go sailing this weekend. He insisted he always intended on paying taxes after taking possession, notwithstanding the conditionality of his earlier statements.

“If you guys think that John Kerry doesn’t have enough sense of either propriety or common sense, that I’m going to be sailing my boat around Massachusetts where I’m highly recognizable but it’s going to somehow stay in Rhode Island and I’m going to avoid a tax . . . I’d be crazy to think that I’m going to be doing that, and that was never our long-term intention here.’’

He characterized his initial response as definitive. “I said to people, on day one, ‘We will pay all taxes, all taxes, there’s no issue here,’ ’’ he said. But he acknowledged he did not get that message across.

Sure. That's why he was on seen on camera fleeing reporters earlier this week.

Kerry sounded drained at times from dealing with the controversy, explaining how he tried to keep up with the details as he was going “100,000 miles an hour’’ on Senate business. He spoke in his ornate Senate office, which is filled with photos of boating races and a model of the swift boat that he commanded in Vietnam.

He served in Vietnam? Wow, I never heard that one before.

Over recent days, as questions mounted, Kerry’s frustration showed; at one point he slammed a car door in front of a pack of reporters as he asked, “Can I get out of here, please?’’

Yesterday, even as he faulted himself for his handling of the controversy, he was defensive over the brouhaha.

He insisted that, while he was caught off guard on how the controversy appeared, he did nothing legally wrong in not initially paying the tax.

“Legally, I’m not compelled,’’ he said. “But politically, and in terms of the perception, that is something that came at us unexpectedly, before I had gotten to the point of doing what we needed to do. That’s the way it is, that’s the way life is sometimes. . . . I should have paid more attention and done it faster or whatever. I just didn’t think we had to.’’

Those taxes are for the little people, not the pampered, spoiled elitists like Liveshot.