When Rich Become Poor; When Poor Become Rich

[From article]
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are worth between $10 and $50 million, according to their financial disclosure forms – but taxpayers will still pony up nearly $1 million this year to fund their post-White House lifestyle.
Like the three other living former presidents, Jimmy Carter and the two George Bushes, Clinton receives a $201,000 annual pension. But that just scratches the surface of the government benefits he shares with his wife Hillary.
The total for 2014 also includes $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills.
In all, The Washington Post first reported, taxpayers are providing Clinton with $944,000 in post-presidential pay and benefits.
That tab was $1.28 million in 2002, the year after he left office, according to a Congressional Research Service report cited by the Post and the Washington Free Beacon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2667949/Taxpayers-spend-944-000-support-multimillionaire-Bill-Clintons-post-presidential-lifestyle-2014.html

Taxpayers will spend $944,000 to support Bill Clinton's lifestyle in 2014 as he claims he and Hillary are not 'out of touch' because they 'talk to people in our town'
Bill Clinton said Tuesday his wife's claim that they were 'dead broke' after his presidency was 'factually true'
He and Hillary are not 'out of touch,' he insisted, because they go to the grocery store and 'talk to people in our town'
An April Congressional Research Service report found that the federal government has spent $15.9 million on Bill Clinton's retirement since 2001
He got $1.28 million in benefits the year after he left office
Clinton said Tuesday that attacking his wife as a wealthy elite in the run-up to the 2016 election is 'the wrong debate'
This year Clinton's costs include a $201,000 pension, $157,000 for staff salaries and benefits, $414,000 for office space and $9,000 for phone bills
Former president George W. Bush spends even more, costing taxpayers $1.28 million this year and averaging 4 per cent more per year than Clinton
The government inexplicably budgeted $102,000 for Bush's telephone expenses in 2014, and planned to spend $135,000 more on furniture, computers, office supplies and other miscellany
By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 16:08 EST, 24 June 2014 | UPDATED: 17:00 EST, 24 June 2014

* * *

[From article]
There are two sorts of stock human dramas that play out in every age of history. The first concerns people who were once rich but are now discovering they are poor. The second is their opposite; people who were once poor who suddenly realize they are rich.
[. . .]
The problem of course is what happens when the long-rich go broke. The once-rich-now-bankrupt become worse than bust, they become ridiculous. A modern example is John Kerry who is making a beggar’s tour of the Middle East.
[. . .]
Kerry is almost a central-casting perfect picture of a degenerate aristocrat. Just as Chelsea doesn’t do money, neither does Kerry do Foreign Policy. He at least does artistic gestures. Only the other day Kerry made an important announcement. Speaking at a the Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies Pride event at the State Department, he declared “I’m working hard to ensure that by the end of my tenure, we will have lesbian, bisexual and transgender ambassadors in our ranks as well.”
[. . .]
What Old Money and Power finds hardest to accept is that perhaps their scruffy, uncredentialed and coarse opponents might not only be their equals, but their superiors. One is beginning to suspect that the terror masters are better men — not better or more capable men than normal Americans — but better men than the aristocrats.
[. . .]
The men in the White House are like grifters who inherited a great fortune and have unexpectedly come into clothes, cars, houses and jets without the slightest clue how they were earned.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/06/24/our-ruling-class/

Our Ruling Class
June 24th, 2014 - 4:39 pm
By Richard Fernandez

Poor Little Rich People

Margery Eagan forgot the Kennedy family which suffered so much tragedy. Once saw the new red car in 2010, of a Harvard architecture student with the license "EX SLAVE." Hello? I knew a man in college who explained the first time he met another, "My parents survived the holocaust." He thought he deserved pity and sympathy, more than the children of those who did not survive? Huh? If they did not survive they had no children. Duh! Then there are the paranoid Black Americans who when reminded that the German government murdered en mass, Jews, delivered the typical reply. "It was worse for Blacks in America." Oh yea. People who really grew up in a poor dysfunctional family are not proud of it. They are ashamed of where they came from. It is nothing to be proud of; except when media spin doctors are making a myth of how a man achieved greatness coming from a poor background. Otherwise it is not a great accomplishment? As when children of wealthy and powerful men and women achieve greatness. In Boston it is especially common to worship children of celebrities. The daughter of Edward Bernays lives in Cambridge on that for many years. And she is only one of many in the Boston area. The children of celebrities whine about how hard it is to grow up in the shadow of a great person. Poor little rich girl? One attractive woman obtained sympathy because she was "cursed with beauty." Minds have a terrible ability to rationalize any misguided beliefs which make the mind holder look good. Children of wealthy and powerful Black Americans and Africans are expert at getting sympathy from Whites. Recipients of Affirmative Action are seldom grateful for the special privileges and benefits they get due to skin color.

http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/20220909the_pols_cry_we_had_it_worse_than_you/

The pols cry: We had it worse than you!
Boston Herald
By Margery Eagan
Sunday, September 9, 2012

Trusts For Digital Content

[From article]
Most digital content exists in a legal black hole. “The law is light years away from catching up with the types of assets we have in the 21st Century,” says Wheatley-Liss. In recent years, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Indiana, Oklahoma and Idaho passed laws to allow executors and relatives access to email and social networking accounts of those who’ve died, but the regulations don’t cover digital files purchased.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-inherits-your-itunes-library-2012-08-23

Aug. 23, 2012, 4:57 p.m. EDT
Who inherits your iTunes library?
Why your digital books and music may go to the grave
By Quentin Fottrell

Misguided Media Standards

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=49401

Plutocrat Dems attack Romney as 'Richie Rich'
by Ann Coulter
Human Events
02/08/2012

He Earned It?

He Earned It?

Joan Vennochi said of Chris Gabrieli, "it's not like someone handed him
millions at birth or through marriage." (Joan Vennochi, "Passing the competence
test," Boston Globe, September 8, 2006) At the panel discussion (some call
it a debate) at Harvard Gabrieli lamented that he had to drop out of medical
school to save the family business, "my family was on the brink of
financial ruin."
In Lisa Wangsness, "Perseverance drives a political ambition," Boston
Globe, May 22, 2006, she states "His aging parents, Hungarian immigrants who
had invested their life's savings in his father's scientific research, were
edging closer to bankruptcy. [...] some financiers agreed to put up some money
-- as long as the young Gabrieli quit medical school and started what became a
medical software business."
Not to negate what he did. But he did not start from nothing. He was
"given" money by backers. He was "given" a business. That is something that
Harvard people must learn early, i.e. how to use other people's money. It is a
matter of degree, but I think that Vennochi uses skewed standards.

--
Roy Bercaw, Editor
ENOUGH ROOM
Cambridge MA USA


Passing the competence test
Boston Globe
By Joan Vennochi
September 8, 2006

CHRIS GABRIELI looked and sounded like he could be the next governor of
Massachusetts.

He was calm, collected, and competent. Indeed, competence, not ideology, was the
heart of Gabrieli's presentation during last night's debate.

That did not work for Michael Dukakis when he was running for president in 1988;
but in 2006 it could be the antidote to 16 years of Republican governors in
Massachusetts.

Deval Patrick is the candidate who would most shake up the Bay State political
establishment; he is a true outsider, and quite obviously not the face of your
father's Democratic Party. Patrick had some fine moments during the debate,
showing flashes of character, grace, and eloquence -- even to the point of
helping his opponent when Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly targeted Gabrieli
for attack. But the question posed by WBUR's Bob Oakes underscores a legitimate,
post-primary concern: Is Patrick too far to the left, too liberal, to win a
general election?

Patrick gave a strong response. ``I'm not running as a label," he said. He
talked about his broad experience in the public and private and non profit
sectors and said the key question should be, ``Can we change the culture on
Beacon Hill?" But fairly or unfairly, this newcomer to the Massachusetts
political scene has less than two weeks to fight the label of tax-and-spend
liberal. And every time he backs away from the positions that won him an adoring
voter base over the past year -- for example, his initial refusal to jump on the
income tax rollback bandwagon -- he jeopardizes that base on primary day.

Responding to the same question, Gabrieli said voters do not care about
Democrats or Republicans, left wing or right wing. What matters, he said, ``is
if someone can do the job . . . if they can ``build a tunnel that doesn't fall
on people's heads."

Mitt Romney promised a version of non ideological competence in 2002, and it
worked well against Democrat Shannon O'Brien. Then Governor Romney got Potomac
Fever, and in his effort to woo Republican primary voters, veered right -- past
the ideological comfort zone of many Massachusetts voters.

But the idea of a competent, non ideological businessman who will make sure the
Big Dig stops falling on our heads still has its appeal.

Reilly, who wasted much too time on attacks, has been trying to turn Gabrieli's
personal fortune into a political albatross. The problem: Gabrieli does not look
or sound like your stereotypical fat-cat millionaire politician. He is a more
than a little geeky and actually appears most human when someone attacks his
hefty bank account. Asked by WCVB's Janet Wu whether he is trying to buy his way
into the governor's office, he listened to the roll out of money he has put
behind various electoral bids and quipped ``sorry" to his wife, who was in the
audience.

Yes, Gabrieli is ``buying" exposure via an onslaught of paid political
advertising. But it's not like someone handed him millions at birth or through
marriage. It turns out he is a smart man who built a wildly successful business.
That is hardly a crime; indeed it is the American dream.

The AG had one good moment. That was when he stood up for the University of
Massachusetts and the notion of investing in the state university system to
promote stem cell research. But Gabrieli had a good rejoinder: investment, he
said, should be based on merit, not politics.

Merit, not politics. Competence, not ideology. That sounds like the language of
electability.

Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.