A Dollar, a Dream, and a Hedge Fund

Time for another episode in the continuing series known as The Audacity of Oligarchy.....




"You gotta be in it to win it!" goes the TV commercial urging people to run out and buy lottery tickets.  Another one gushes: "All You Need is a Dollar and a Dream!" 


And needy people listen to this stuff.  According to one study, the indigent spend a whopping nine percent of their incomes on lottery tickets -- in effect, making this form of gambling a perfect addition to Herman Cain's 9-9-9 regressive tax plan to soak the poor.


So it was a real bummer to read that three millionaire asset managers, hailing from one of the most exclusive and expensive enclaves in the country, have won the $254 million Powerball jackpot in Connecticut. They spent one lousy dollar - or a portion of their income the size of a subatomic particle -- on one measly ticket. There hasn't been this much outrage since millionaire Jim Sensenbrenner, congressman and heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune, won the lottery for a third straight time.


Well, harrumph!  According to a Connecticut state lottery official, rich people can dream too, dammit!  Rich people are everyday people, just like us. And of course, we are much consoled that the lawyer for the trio says they plan to give a "substantial" portion of their after-tax, hundred million dollar-plus haul to charity. Presumably to a charity designed by the rich, for the rich -- to avoid further taxes. I know, I know -- I am probably being totally unfair. I promise to issue a retraction once they donate the whole shebang to Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross, or the free clinic movement, or food banks, or any worthy cause that doesn't take a substantial cut for its CEO.


One thing that really struck me about the coverage of this moment of oligarchic irony: the nouveau-nouveau riche asset managers just don't look all that happy in the photos. Maybe they feel bad about winning and snatching the food out of the mouth of the unemployed single mom in front of them in line that day, who'd just spent her last dollar on a ticket. (doubtful) Or, they are miffed that the government is taking a whole half of their haul in taxes (they're used to the effective 15-18% rate reserved for the .01%). Or, they are simply annoyed that they had to take time from their busy day of making money to pose in the traditional lottery photo-op.






Ho Hum.... Another Day, Another Quarter-Billion (AP Photo)

Update:  A fourth reason for their apparent discomfort: an acquaintance is telling the press that the bankers may not have actually bought the ticket after all, that they are just "fronting for the real winner." 

 Money does not buy happiness, people. (Actually, that's a lie. It really really really helps when you don't have much of it.)  But the uber-wealthy of the Forbes 400 are not joyful humans, for the most part. (I have absolutely no proof to back me up on this, but writing it makes me feel better.) They worry too much about how they can keep what they have, and fret about how they can get more.  The poster-child for unhappy billionaires has to be Walmart heiress Alice Walton:

Like the Greenwich Powerball Trio, this 62-year-old was also a wealth manager before her own $20 billion jackpot from Daddy Sam made her America's 10th richest person. She now spends her time spending her billions on art and charity to avoid taxes, as well as on lawyers to avoid prosecution. In April 1989, while speeding in her Porsche, she struck and killed a friend of hers. She was never charged, nor did she offer any compensation to the victim's family. Nine years later, she was arrested after hitting a gas meter. Her words to the arresting officer will go down in the annals of plutocratic chutzpah: "I'm Alice Walton, bitch!"


She pled guilty, though, and paid a paltry $925 fine: a speck of molecular dust in the infinity of the universe. Her most recent arrest came this past October. (mug shot above.) This time, she sent her regrets.  Mea minima culpa.


More from the Gallery of Peevish Plutocrats:

Zombie Turkey, Reanimated

Holiday weekend news dump/controlled leak, While-you-were-cooking/eating/shopping/traveling edition: The respected, pro-single payer chief of Medicare and Medicaid Services suddenly tenders his resignation. At the same time, some "anonymous" Democrats let it be known that they are becoming fond of the previously-hated Paul Ryan turkey of a plan for privatizing Medicare after all. What a coincidence!

In a story buried in The New York Times on Thanksgiving Day, reporter Robert Pear revealed that:

"Though it reached no agreement, the special Congressional committee on deficit reduction built a case for major structural changes in Medicare that would limit the government’s open-ended financial commitment to the program, lawmakers and health policy experts say.
Members of both parties told the panel that Medicare should offer a fixed amount of money to each beneficiary to buy coverage from competing private plans, whose costs and benefits would be tightly regulated by the government."

Pear never does reveal the identities of the Secretive Democrats who claim that their plan is a kinder gentler version of Ryancare, which would ultimately have phased out Medicare entirely with prepaid vouchers for beneficiaries to obtain private health coverage. But one of them is Catfood Commission I member Alice Rivlin, whom Pear says is for transforming Medicare from straight single payer to a plan with a "public option."  In other words, the same plan for universal coverage that Candidate Obama pretended to espouse back in the day.  In other words, instead of forging ahead with Medicare for All as the majority of Americans prefer, these "unnamed Democrats" are forging ahead with at least the "semi-privatization" of the only single payer system we've ever had.  And you just know that once the parasitic insurers get their claws into these "Medicare improvements", it will only be a lobbyist's hop, skip and jump to full privatization. This leaked agenda should  probably be named the conserva-dems' "Stealth Health Plus."

I am surprised that we haven't heard more outrage from "progressive" Democratic lawmakers on this horror show of a zombie turkey carcass reanimation plan. Oh yeah.... they probably haven't heard about it yet.  They are still deep in their tryptophan comas. 

Meanwhile, also in keeping with the spirit of holiday news dumps, Dr. Donald Berwick is out of a job, without so much as a "heckuva job, Don" sendoff from President Obama.  Recess-appointed last year, Berwick evoked the wrath of Republicans, livid that this respected physician had publicly praised the (single payer) British Health Service. The resignation appears to be the final chapter in the latest installment of what "Confidence Men" author Ron Suskind credits former Economic Advisor Larry Summers with saying: that the White House policy is to be seen as "caught trying" -- in other words, the president states a policy, or names a progressive appointee, only to sit back and passive-aggressively watch as the rabid nihilistic Republicans conveniently eviscerate it/him/her. (The poster child for this de facto policy is, of course, Elizabeth Warren.) From another Times article by the ubiquitous Mr. Pear: 

"Mr. Obama said he would nominate Dr. Berwick’s principal deputy, Marilyn B. Tavenner, to succeed him as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Ms. Tavenner, the secretary of the Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources when Tim Kaine was governor, is more of a manager and less of a visionary than Dr. Berwick, who has been working for more than two decades to transform the health care system and raise the quality of care....

Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group, said that with Dr. Berwick’s resignation, the government was losing “a visionary leader, a champion for patients,” who knew how to improve care while reducing costs."

Oh well.... Obama atoned for abandoning yet another person who made the mistake of actually working for the public good. He pardoned not one, but two, turkeys this Thanksgiving. Why double the fun?  I have a few theories. One: the poultry duo symbolizes the bipartishit of the Oligarchy. Plus, like the prosecution-immune Wall Street bankers, turkeys are mean and somewhat stupid creatures. And even if you kill a mother turkey before her eggs are hatched, the chicks ("poults") won't care. They will mindlessly follow the first fat hen they see.

Poulitics as Usual

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Black Friday was barely underway when the first-ever (they think) incident of shoppers being pepper-sprayed was reported this morning.

No, it was not Lt. Pike. A woman desperate to get her hands on some cheap Chinese electronics in a California Walmart (where else) blasted fellow alleged humanoids in the annual consumer stampede that makes America so.... exceptional.  According to police, 20 people were injured, and the unidentified woman was still at large. From the LA Times:

Alejandra Seminario, 24, said she was waiting in line to grab some toys at the store around 9:55 p.m. when people the next aisle over started shouting and ripping at the plastic wrap encasing gaming consoles, which was supposed to be opened at 10 p.m.

"People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray," the Sylmar resident said. "I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes."

Although "part of the store" was evacuated, the store itself remained open for business.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that 9,000 shoppers were lined up in front of the Macy's flagship store on Herald Square overnight in hopes of snagging a bargain.... or because they get a rush in a crush...  or just to be able, someday, to tell the grandkids that they were there.



Anti-Wall Street Day of Rage, NYC, March 2011 (Pre-Occupy; not covered by MSM)




Tahrir Square, Cairo, November 2011




Best Buy, USA, Nov. 25, 2011



Happy Thanksgiving

Some coping mechanisms:

Sarah Vowell thinks we should fuggedabout the "Mayflower-cruising Jesus freaks" but instead commemorate the deaths of 11,000 Revolutionary War patriots in a British prison ship on the East River in NYC. Daily Show clip here (I have no control over the introductory K-Mart Doorbusters commercial -- sorry!)

Wednesday Addams explains the meaning of Thanksgiving, with Danish subtitles over which I also have no control.  This beautifully horrid little girl grew up to play a 60s Pan Am stewardess on TV.  Sometimes these precocious types burn out. 

If you're still wondering about the true meaning of Thanksgiving.... don't ask me.  But for those of you in a curmudgeonly mood, here is a festive holiday read called "Why I Hate Thanksgiving".

From Reader Will comes Jon Stewart giving the cop who started the whole pepper spray craze his very own show!
And last penultimate but not least, listen to the 2003 Thanksgiving radio interview  that the late historian Howard Zinn gave to Tavis Smiley. (Some readers were having trouble linking to the NPR site, so thanks to Jay - Ottawa for sharing this Zinn page.)

Last but not least, DreamsAmelia sends this link to Greg Brown singing "I Don't Want to Have a Nice Day." 

Have a Nice Day!

Buy Nothing Day

This holiday season, if you're too embarrassed to tell your friends and family that you are now so broke that you can no longer afford to buy crap they don't want anyway, just tell them you are Occupying Christmas. This tactic will work even if you are not part of the bona fide 33 Percent Poverty Passel: it is now chic to be anti-consumerist.  For the first time in my memory, there is a widespread backlash against Black Friday. Yes! Bust the door-busters! Boycott Best Buy!

And this year, it's even worse, because Black Friday is morphing into Tawdry Thursday: stores are opening on Thanksgiving night in order to beat out the competition. It's the apogee of the insidious Christmas creep that now starts before Halloween.  Shopaholics are justifying cutting the sacred family mealtime short by characterizing the early retail feeding frenzy as the beginning of a new all-American tradition. Instead of schmoozing over the pumpkin pie, suggests retail analyst Olivier Rubel, park yourselves in the Walmart parking lot for some real family together time. The big box stores are counting on you.

 "People like to shop," he told The Sacramento Bee. "When stores are open longer, more people can come to find deals or discounts. Stores are just lengthening the time of a promotion, which will increase the volume of sales."

(Rubel is also a professor at the UC-Davis Graduate School of Management. So double-kudos to the student protestors on that campus!)

And now for the remedy. From AdBusters, the same fine publication that spread the word about the Original #OWS, comes your guide to Buy Nothing Day, the official start of OccupyXmas:

You've been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper-sprayed and your head's knocked in, another group of people is preparing to camp out. Only these people aren't here to occupy Wall Street, they're here to secure their spot in line for a Black Friday bargain at Super Target and Macy's.

Occupy gave the world a new way of thinking about the fat cats and financial pirates on Wall Street. Now lets give them a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Let's use the coming 20th annual Buy Nothing Day to launch an all-out offensive to unseat the corporate kings on the holiday throne.
This year’s Black Friday will be the first campaign of the holiday season where we set the tone for a new type of holiday culminating with #OCCUPYXMAS. As the global protests of the 99% against corporate greed and casino capitalism continues, lets take the opportunity to hit the empire where it really hurts…the wallet.
On Nov 25/26th we escape the mayhem and unease of the biggest shopping day in North America and put the breaks on rabid consumerism for 24 hours. Flash mobs, consumer fasts, mall sit-ins, community events, credit card-ups, whirly-marts and jams, jams, jams! We don’t camp on the sidewalk for a reduced price tag on a flat screen TV or psycho-killer video game. Instead, we occupy the very paradigm that is fueling our eco, social and political decline.
Historically, Buy Nothing Day has been about fasting from hyper consumerism – a break from the cash register and reflecting on how dependent we really are on conspicuous consumption. On this 20th anniversary of Buy Nothing Day, we take it to the next level, marrying it with the message of #occupy…
We #OCCUPYXMAS.
Shenanigans begin November 25!

(Poster Courtesy of Adbusters)

Shop locally this year even if it means buying less stuff. Support Main Street and screw Wall Street.

Bloomer Rumor

He is not, he nasally drawls, running for president. He is devoted to the third term he paid millions of dollars of his own good earned money for, and he's going to abide. He owes it to the financiers of New York. He's not a quitter.That's why Mayor Mike Bloomberg is on the road telling everybody who will listen that Barack Obama is a gigantic disgrace of a failure over the collapse of the Supercommittee --but that he, the Duke of Omnium, is not not I repeat not interested in mounting a third party challenge.

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell just coyly asked (sorry, no clip available yet) if he is running, and he did the mildly affronted act as only a muted shrillionaire can. No, he (paraphrasingly) said with a moue: I am only making the rounds of the national teevee talk shows to bitch about what a mealy-mouthed weakling Obama has turned out to be. We need my a balanced approach, the midpoint of sanity between crazy liberalism and crazy Tea Partyism.  I am the dream come true of the David Brooks/Tom Friedman school of mythical centrist punditry. I am the genteel sloppy seconds of Chris Christie. I am the CEO king of Third Way. I scoff at the notion that the banks had anything at all to do with the financial collapse.  That was Congress, forcing the banks to lend money to the lesser people to buy homes that were not entitled to. I am the great elite hope of Wall Street. I vanquished Zuccotti Park, did I not?

The corporate media are in awe of the Audacity of Oligarchy. They are marching in lockstep and breathlessly calling the Bloomberg Media Tour a "rare public rebuke"  of a sitting president.

Not to be outdone by Obama's famous Sunday night announcement of the death of Osama, Bloomer even staged his own Sunday night presser with his sidekick Ray Kelly to announce the existence of his very own terrorist, who was about to blow up all kinds of stuff with Christmas tree lights and matches. Bloomer outfitted himself in a casual orange sweater for the affair to show what a relaxed informal Bob Newharty rich guy he is.  He even played a video produced just for the special occasion. It showed a car getting blown up by New York's finest. Mayor Shrillionaire did not say if he paid for the stunt out of his own good money, or if the taxpayers will foot the bill. He did insinuate, however, that the Obama Justice Dept./FBI fell down on the job and that it was only through the dedication of his private NYPD security force that he kept New Yorkers safe from a mentally challenged, informant-groomed, "lone wolf" threat.  

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll shows that Bloomer would get 13 percent of the vote in the general election and that Ron Paul would garner 18 percent. Foursome, anyone?  Actually, a sextet would do nicely. I nominate Bernie and Ralph.

Bloomer in His Lone Wolf Hunting Sweater

Obama, Occupied

Mic Check!  Head Honcho heckled this afternoon at New Hampshire high school.  See the clip here. 

The full text of the protesters' prepared statement: 

"Mr. President, over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested while bankers continue to destroy the American economy.You must stop the assault on our 1st Amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out." 

Although it wasn't clear whether the hecklers were an Occupy group from outside the school, or if the protesters were part of the student body itself, or a mix, their chanting began when the president gave a shout-out to the senior class. He seemed to take the interruption with equaminity, and even addressed the protesters during prepared remarks:

"A lot of the folks who've been down in New York and all across the country in the 'Occupy' movement, there is a profound sense of frustration, there's a profound sense of frustration about the fact that the essence of the American dream, which is that if you work hard, if you stick to it that you can make it, feels like that's slipping away. And that's not the way things are supposed to be, not here, not in America. This is a place where your hard work and your responsibility's supposed to pay off, it's supposed to be a big, compassionate country where everybody who works hard should have a chance to get ahead, not just the person who owns the factory, but then men and women who work on the factory floor."

At least he didn't admonish them as Newt Gingrich did, to take a bath and get a job.... or as Karl Rove did, to shut up and stop occupying his American space.  It was a pretty typical "I feel your pain" political campaign speech, and it contained so many usages of the word "folks" I lost count of them all.

"When a politician uses the word 'folks' " writes Noam Chomsky in Hopes and Prospects, "we should brace ourselves for the deceit or worse that is coming." 

All braced up and ready to go.