Category: Tax the Rich

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So a Florida Millionaire was trying to kill his wife. After numerous failed attempts, he only managed to scare the shit out of his wife and his children. He upped the game a bit by paying a hit men $150,00 to kill wife with an additional $150,000 if the hitman could complete the task before their court date.

The man had hundreds of millions of dollars but he would rather kill his wife than give her a divorce settlement. I don’t know about you but I can’t understand such foolishness. He would still have a fortune if he had to give her 50%. But no, he would rather risk killing her than give her a penny. His wife, however, got the better end of the bargain as the cops found out about it. He was forced to commit suicide before they arrested him. I also am assuming that she might get a portion of his estate, so win win for her.

This man clearly had way too much money. Better that it went to taxes to buy solar panels in Seattle.

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Here is the thing If rich people put money back into their business and their employees, I can see giving them some kind of tax break. But a lot of their money is spent on bull shit. If they can afford the bull shit, they can also afford the additional taxes. It isn’t taking money away from investing in their business either. It is taking money from them spending it on bullshit. There is this notion out there that we can’t afford to help the poor with government programs that bring more equity to the society. The money is there it is just misallocated.

Here is another glaring example of this misallocation.

Andrew Garfield’s new girlfriend is apparently a witch. She charges $1,000 for a Tarot reading. I would rather it went to a street person buying cheap wine than it went for this bullshit. At least the homeless person would get drunk for a number of days which is certainly a much more tangible result than telling the fortunes of rich people and bilking them out of a few dollars.

Every time someone claims we just don’t have enough money, I hope you keep these waste’s of money in mind.

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Elon Musk announced his intentions to give $45 million a month to a pro-Trump Super Pac. If he is true to his word, he will, at least, contribute $180 million to the Trump campaign before the election.

Think about it. He has an extra $180 million free dollars to contribute to an election campaign. This is a fairly large sum of money in anyone’s books. Unlike most people, his donation will not be missed in the least bit. He has billions so it doesn’t matter to him if he loses $180 million dollars.

If Trump wins, there is no way that Trump could pay off Musk other than through favors. Even the best person would have difficultly saying no to a man who gave you $180 million and Trump is far from being the best person. To be fair to Trump, in his crooked understanding of wealth, he probably thinks there is nothing wrong with billionaires draining the public trough any way but this makes it ridiculously easy for him to say yes.

More importantly, if Musk has this amount of money, why not divide it among his own employees instead of investing in a political campaign. $180 million divided among the employees of Tesla and Instagram would bring real benefits to his own employees, encourage other rich people to do the same and it spreads the wealth around a bit to people who can then make campaign contributions of their own.

Musk is free to use this money in any way he wanted yet he choose to use this money to support a political action committee. With all his billions, he would rather gamble with a political candidate that may lose than giving more money to his own employees. Spreading the wealth this way would also give some political power to his employees. Now, because he is such a generous leader, these employees might follow his lead and contribute to the pro-Trump Pac or they may choose to give to the Democrats but it wouldn’t be one man using this money to gain more political leverage.

But Musk would much rather spin the wheel with Trump. To get what exactly? More billions? This disproves this oft repeated notion that billionaires will do the right thing with their money if only left alone. Musk would much rather keep the money which also keeps the political power this money can provide strictly within his hands.

If the government took only half of the $180 million, Musk would still have $90 million to contribute to Trump. Wouldn’t it be good for Musk to help pay off the national debt the Republicans are so worried about and it wouldn’t be a bit of a problem for Musk because he wasn’t planning to put the money back into his business and creating in the first place. Win Win, I say.

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Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers batting star, was hoodwinked out of about 16 million dollars by his Japanese interpreter. I don’t blame him for being in this mess. His interpreter is a thief and should be punished accordingly.

What also is clear is that until someone brought this to Ohtani’s attention, he was unaware that the 16 million dollars had gone missing.

The whole proposition of this type of capitalism is that the individual is a better steward of the money than the government. But time and again, we see rich people getting ripped off by scoundrels, covering up their crimes, using it on profligate expenditures that help no one including the indulgent individual or, in the best case scenario, putting it away in the bank and collecting interest. We are told that the best way to enrich everyone else is to let the rich spend their money as they wish and a rising tide will lift all boats.

The problem here is that the rich too often are spending money on things that benefit no one other than themselves. Personally, I don’t mind giving a tax break to businesses that reinvest their profits back into the business. There is some hope that this reinvested money will get into the hands of the employees of the company. But, seriously, 16 million gone without noticing it means that the Feds could have taken it in taxation and Ohtani wouldn’t have missed it either. His rich happy life would have continued to be quite happy and still rich.

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Texas A and M is buying out their head football coach for 75 million. Talk about your golden parachute. The amount is staggering because Texas A and M is a public institution. How does this amount of money go to one individual working at a public university. And this isn’t even a successful coach, the university wants to fire because him for his poor performance and because the coach has such a favorable contract, this unwanted employee has to be paid off to the tune of $75 million. The school helpfully reported that no public funds were used to pay him off.

Well, that certainly makes me feel better nonetheless it is still an irritating waste of money through the auspices of a public institution. Why is there private financing for a football team at a public university? Because it matters so much to the alumni to have a good football team?

This is a bad investment of money. But it is private money. Well, yes it is. These people, who have too much money and not enough sense, are willing to spend outrageous sums of money to get a winning football coach and when he fails to win, they are also willing to pay him off to get rid of him. Keep in mind, they still have to hire a new winning football coach so probably another $75 million will be spent on him because why would a coach come in for anything less that what the previous coach got. This is after all how capitalism works.

It wouldn’t sting so much if the rich weren’t so damn hypocritical about wanting people to work for their money. This coach, that they don’t want to coach, is getting paid to walk away from work and do nothing. He could, at the very least, be a towel boy or a concession stand hawker to earn back some of the money he is taking with him. Every time you hear complaints about how we can’t afford higher wages for average people, remember that they can pay $75 million to pay a football coach to do nothing.

It gets more irritating. Anyone who contributes to this Texas A&M fund gets a tax deduction. You see Texas A&M is a public institution. So it looks like a charitable donations to cover improvements in the sports program. Unfortunately, they are also paying for the exorbitant wages to a man who is, in their eyes, failing at his job.

The tax deduction needs to end. The Texas A&M football team is a business separated from the state university. This is another shameful example of the rich wasting money. They are all for the best football teams while balking at paying workers better wages. Perhaps, if they had less money and needed to watch where their money went, they would make better choices. Taxing them more is a way to encourage the discipline that they so badly need.

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I have to admit this one brought a little tear to my eye.

Poor little rich people can’t guarantee that their children will get into Harvard so they are forced to game the system by moving their families to Southern states and rural communities. You see people from Southern states and rural communities are underrepresented at Ivy League schools so when the schools get applications from these areas it increases the child’s chances of getting into the Ivy League.

Imagine that. Having the money to spend on a new house, the movers, the flights back and forth and the consultant fee to figure out how to do it all just to get Junior into Harvard. How horrible that rich people have to spend all that extra money to get their kid into the Ivy League. Excuse me for a moment while I clutch my hanky.

This is disgraceful. I would rather pay for a student smoking lounge at the toughest public school in American than allow parents to game the system to increase their kid’s chances of attending Harvard. Besides, they can easily send their children to a perfectly good community college or a state university. Or is that not good enough for them?

This may also explain why rich people think poor people are always gaming the system. I mean if I, a God-fearing good upper middle-class person like myself is forced to do this, imagine what those awful poor people must being doing. It has to be much worse. Right?

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The good friends of Clarence Thomas paid for 38 of his vacations. Of course, these gifts in no way influence Thomas when he makes any decision that might affect his good friends. I mean it could be true. On the other hand, it could be false. Thomas is asking us to take his word on it.

Somehow I am unconvinced. I need a little more here. If it were 1 or 2 trips, I would be more willing to see his point. But 38 is an awful lot of good friends and free vacations. It looks fishy and that becomes the problem. So now, because Justice Thomas was oblivious to what this looked like, some Democrats rightfully are demanding an investigation.

You might be saying that shouldn’t friends be able to give lavish gifts to other friends? No. Absolutely not. Businesses today are constantly reminding their employees about ethical perceptions. The best way to avoid getting in trouble is to refuse any high price gifts from customers. This way the company and the employee stay out of trouble. The very trouble that Thomas finds himself.

This is a standard business behavior and is well known in both business and government. I am surprised that Thomas isn’t aware of it. If nothing else happens from this tawdry investigation, the Supreme Court’s HR department needs to give Thomas a quick refresher on the perception of ethical behavior. It sounds like he may have missed his training.

More importantly, his good friends seem to have a lot of extra cash laying around and that cash is up to no good. Particularly when I am fairly certain Justice Thomas can readily pay for his own damn vacations. When rich people have so much discretionary income that they can bribe Supreme Court judges with vacations, they simply have too much money. It’s not doing anyone any good any more. Better it went to taxes.

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So, apparently there are billionaires who will pay $250,000 to see the wreckage of the Titanic. I suppose if you have an extra $250,000 to burn through gawking at a sunken luxury liner might be a way to do it.

I don’t wish anyone ill. It is sad that people died in this tragedy nonetheless I find the whole past week more than a little irritating. First, how much government time and money was used to find these billionaires. I agree you have to look for them. It is the humane thing to do when people are trouble. Let me rephrase that when rich people are in trouble. When poor people are in trouble due to their bad decisions, the answer is to leave them on the streets because they will never learn their lesson from their mistakes unless they suffer. But OK, I understand the need to search for missing rich people despite the less than gracious response to other people in trouble.

I feel the same way about rescuing untrained people from Mount Everest. People want to climb Mount fucking Everest because they have the $65,000. They are untrained mountain climbers and they are, just for the thrill of saying they climbed Mount Everest, endangering the lives of the sherpas and the other trained mountaineers on the climb. Climbing Mount Everest should be something you work your way up. It certainly isn’t a starter mountain. Of course, the wealthy person’s story is all that is really important. The poor people that have to rescue the stupid mother fuckers are just a footnote.

And what a story it is. Billionaires in a missing submersible. The press went crazy over this one. There were countdown clocks of when exactly the oxygen would run out for the people trapped. Stories from previous submersible passengers dredging up their horror stories and how they knew some disaster like this was imminent. There were engineers discussing the poor quality of the materials used in the building of the submersible. 24/7 reporting on the fates of these 5 people while, at the same time, the Greek Navy was trying to save hundreds of desperate refugees floundering in the Mediterranean. You will be excused if you didn’t know about this particular disaster as the coverage wasn’t quite the same for the poor immigrants. Funny how the drowning billionaires trump the drowning immigrants but not particularly surprising.

Then there is the money. $250,000 to see the wreck of a ship on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. $65,000 to climb Everest. That’s a lot of money and these people can afford it. Which is incredibly disappointing if not anticipated behavior. I thought one of the benefits of low taxation for the wealthy is that they would use their excess cash to invest in their businesses thus helping everyone. That they are spending their money on these expensive thrills is unsurprising evidence that they are not good stewards of their own money.

And this is not an isolated incident. They spend billions on space travel and losing law suits, on giving money to other wealthy people, on hush money to cover up their crimes and on buying fake vintage wine. Just like the poor, they waste their money on crime, sex, thrills and drinking. The price tag they are paying is just a bit more. This is the problem. To be told that we can’t afford to help the poor is a lie, the world is afloat with extra money. It is, however, being used at the whim of people who have too much money and not enough sense. The outrageous sums these people have paid for their fun would be better spent on giving every poor person in America some housing which included a life time supply of cigarettes and alcohol.

In any case, spare me the lecture on the rich being good stewards of money. I don’t believe it.

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So Elon Musk has lost between 180 billion and 200 billion dollars. That is a lot of money. I thought the assumption regarding billionaires is that they are good with money and will spend it wisely so that their money will trickle down to the rest of us. Musk bought Twitter and exploding rockets. The Twitter sale is particularly interesting because almost as soon as he bought it, he decided he didn’t want it and did everything he could to undermine the deal. Unfortunately for Musk, he screwed up and is now stuck with Twitter. Then there is the exploding rocket, another good investment although we are told by Musk supporters that an exploding rocket is actually a good investment because we learned something about what we can and can not do. Maybe but I think NASA has been sending rockets into space for some time without mishaps, so perhaps a little consultation with them NASA before the next experiment is in order.

Given all of these expensive mishaps with their money, you think that I would be used to feckless billionaires by now but Rupert Murdoch’s pay out to Dominion of 787.5 million is another shocking example. Dominion was rightly irritated with Fox News for suggesting their voting machines were fraudulent. Fox News had ample evidence that this was incorrect however management decided that their audience didn’t want to hear the truth and that if they were told the truth they would get so upset that they would stop watching Fox News, so they decided to continue spreading the false news or, as we used to call it back in the good old days, lying. Dominion, especially after proving that Fox News was spreading a lie and knowingly continued to spread the lie, filed suit.

After a brutal onslaught of evidence proved all this malfeasance, Fox decided to settle with Dominion for nearly a cool 800 million dollars. Money, I would say, that was ill spent but OK anybody can make mistakes even a man who was born into a newspaper family and worked in publishing since the 1950’s, I don’t know, I suppose he could be unfamiliar with the idea that you can’t knowingly lie in your publications. Definitely an easy mistake for such a seasoned professional. Completely understandable.

Except this isn’t a one time error, there are future law suits. Murdoch even recently paid off Prince William. The idea, as I understood penalties and pay offs, is that the guilty party pays stiff penalties in order to teach them a lesson. But Murdoch apparently has so much money that he doesn’t have to worry about shelling out all of this money and, so as an extra added bonus, he doesn’t have to learn a lesson either. To make matters worse, these settlements are tax deductible as a business expense so speculation is that after Murdoch takes these deductions, he will recoup some of the 787.5 million. Imagine that, the American tax payer is actually paying part of Murdoch’s settlement.

It irritates me that billionaires get off the hook this way. The conservative press is always quick to point out welfare fraud when some poor wretch buys cigarettes and alcohol instead of using his welfare money on broccoli and carrots. You see, they say, the poor can’t be trusted with more money but nobody raises much of a fuss when a billionaire gets caught rigging the system. Murdoch needs to stop lying. How will he ever learn his lesson if we keep letting get away with it. Personally, I would much rather give 787.5 million to the worst welfare frauds in the country, the most unworthy gin drinking, cigarette smoking, Cadillac driving bums than for Murdoch to go unpunished. At least the poor frauds will pump money into the economy by spreading the money around to local businesses instead of paying off princes, ex-wives and coverup legal settlements.

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Apparently Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars to burn through and is looking for people to help him. He just donated a $100 million to Dolly Parton. It is presumed that Parton will help Bezos distribute his extra money to worthy charities. Given her history, I believe that she will. Parton has proven herself a generous woman as she is credited with giving Vanderbilt Medical Center money in order to help find the COVID vaccine.

But, with absolutely no animus towards Parton, why give her even more money to give away. She has so much of her own money that she is already giving it away. So Bezos gives her even more to give away? Whenever I hear about money transfers like this I have to ask, why not take this money out in taxes and let our legislatures determine where it goes. The money is there. The rich are giving it away. They clearly don’t need it for their business. Why let billionaires decide where the money goes?

I can hear people say the Government will only waste it. Perhaps. But there is a fundamental difference here. A Republican led government could put the money to tax breaks, bringing down the national debt, or helping energy companies find oil. Democrats can use it on providing better social services. The key here is that in both cases a number of people are looking at the public good and making a decision that they think is best for the country. I might disagree with the decision but I feel better about a legislative body looking into it than having a single billionaire deciding on a whim.

I mean what if Dolly wants to talk to the animals? Based on her desire, she drops the $100 million into charities that work with humans trying to talk to animals. A noble enterprise I am sure, but is it really the best use of money when we have so many other pressing needs? And, more importantly, why leave this decision to one citizen. And really why does any citizen have so much money that they are giving away $100 million to another wealthy person.

Since Bezos has $100 million to give to Dolly Parton, it mean he can pay more in taxes without a detrimental effect on his life or his business. He is giving it away already. I say if you are giving away $100 million you are begging to be taxed more. Let’s do it.