Billionaire News Watch
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Stern Protests His Stern Rebuke
Potty mouth turned crybaby Howard Stern today alleged that Clear Channel Communications, owner of 1,200 radio stations nationwide, fined and fired him because he criticized President Bush's policies.
Of course, we don't dispute the substance of Stern's claim. Clear Channel executives, after all, have contributed over $42,000 to W.'s re-election as of March of this year, compared with a paltry $1,750 to Kerry. What's more, these execs, along with Clear Channel's PAC, gave 77 percent of their federal contributions to Republicans -- a bigger share for the GOP than any other entertainment company in the nation.
What's galling is Stern's naive assumption that he has the right to complain. George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of great Billionaire corporations like Clear Channel and Halliburton, and owes nothing to nouveau riche poseurs like Stern. If he's going to hijack our gigantic communications megalopoly to speak ill of our President, he shouldn't expect us to keep signing his paycheck.
Of course, he's more than welcome to exercise his right to "free" speech -- for free. Maybe in a nice city park somewhere.
Monday, June 28, 2004
En Ron Hubris: Lay, down, speaks up.
In lieu of rumors that formal charges are eminent, former CEO of Enron Corporation, Ken Lay, broke his silence after a long period of strategic 5th amendment quiet in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times.
Rightfully so, Lay is heaping all the blame on scapegoat, er, turncoat, Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former Chief Financial Officer. What is disheartening is that Lay is speaking at all. Mr. Lay, you are rich, once a celebrated CEO and one of President Bush’s best friends. Need we remind you? Aside from an exceptional fraction of prosecutions important to uphold the "intergrity of the markets," the rich and powerful in this country go free.
You will not be indicted nor charged. All of these rumors are mere formalities to quench the commoners’ blood-lust. It is heresy to think that those same commoners will be allowed to lay judgment upon you, a rare occurrence the statistical equivalent of lighting striking a gold coin twice in the same pocket.
Let your money do the speaking for you. As CEO of Enron, we celebrated your skills in perfecting complicated layers of foolproof PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. Those well placed cards are now playing out nicely in the Justice Department. So eat a little crow for public consumption if you must, but please don’t get any on the floor, these types of stains don’t come up and set a bad precedent for the rest of us.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Lee Iacocca: Billionaire Turncoat
Sad news, friends: Our onetime ally Lee Iacocca has endorsed John Kerry for President.
Among Iacocca's justifications for switching from Bush in 2000 to Kerry today is that Kerry supposedly supports "innovative new technologies." But don't be fooled: Chief among those innovative technologies is clean energy, which you and I know can only take the place of our own not-so-clean energy companies.
In the coming century, science will be one of the greatest threats to our right to choose profits over clean air, clean water, and the public health. Unlike Kerry, who pledges to "actually believe in science," and has the support of 48 unwealthy Nobel laureates, Bush has been consistently praised for ignoring or distorting science when it conflicts with Billionaire business interests.
Therefore, let us sadly relegate Lee Iacocca to the rank of BINO (Billionaire in Name Only). Perhaps he'd like a new job with an environmental research non-profit? We hear they pay in the five figures.
Dick Cheney: Pushed to the Limit
Hasn't all this sniping about Halliburton gone far enough? Our poor, beleaguered Billionaire Vice President is cracking so much under the pressure that he cursed out Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont during the Senate's formal photo shoot.
Leahy, as you know, has led the demand for a probe of Halliburton's access to fat, lucrative no-bid contracts. According to CNN, Leahy's harassment has left Cheney so emotionally distraught that he snarled the F-word at Leahy during what his spokesman tastefully describes as a "frank exchange of views."
Let that be a lesson to the anti-upper-class liberals: If you really want civility in government, stop asking so many questions!
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Cheney's Secret Energy Task Force Still a Secret
Our friends on the Supreme Court have come through for us again, fellow Billionaires: by a large margin, they've voted not to demand that Dick Cheney release the details of his secret energy task force meeting, which was attended by prominent energy magnates such as Ken Lay of Enron. The meeting resulted in many of Bush/Cheney's incredibly profitable, Billionaire-friendly environmental policies.
To be fair, most judges took a wishy-washy point of view and punted the issue back to a lower court. But pro-Billionaire justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas went the extra mile, writing that a federal court had "clearly exceeded" its authority by demanding the release of the task force records.
Scalia, as you remember, bravely refused to recuse himself from the case because he went on a duck-hunting trip with Cheney after the Court announced that it would hear Cheney's plea. At the time, Scalia wrote "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined."
Hear, hear, Mr. Scalia. Buying Supreme Court justices, Vice Presidents, and other government officials is extraordinarily expensive (but well worth it)! If anything can be said of the mega-upper-classes, we're not stingy.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Enron Billionaires Cheer as Lowly Millionaires Take Their Place in Prison
According to a report in the July 12, 2004 Sunday New York Times, former assistant treasurer of the Enron Corporation Lea Fastow will move into the Federal Detention Center, where she will serve a one-year sentence after pleading guilty to tax evasion. After reading the harrowing prison experience that awaits her, my fellow Elites should breathe a collective sigh of relief that we have such willing minions to take the fall for us when we need them.
After all, that’s what scapegoats are for. Thank our billions that it only costs millions to buy these corporate lackeys who are willing to put up with such dreadful conditions as windowless, “closet-sized cells,” and using the toilet “under the gaze of cellmates,” so that our brethren, the likes of Ken Lay & company, can go free without even having to face the common-folk hassle of being charged.
Being suspected is a heavy burden to bear, but at least it doesn’t change our magnificent lifestyle any. Could you imagine trading our gold plated abodes for a stainless steel hole under the auspices of a sweaty, bulging bunk mate named Lefty? No, No, No, we are Billionaires, and have invested many large fortunes in the George Bush White House to keep our names out of the legal system. All we have to do every now and then is throw in a few sacrificial legal lambs like this Fastow couple (yes, her husband, Andrew, is going away too,) and we keep the commoner’s thirst for justice quenched.
Yes, it’s a good day to be a Billionaire when the Millionaire under you takes your bullet.
We should send a fruit basket or something; I hear prison food is deplorable.
Monday, June 14, 2004
More Unsung Help for Halliburton
Every day we learn more about Dick Cheney's brilliant molding of Halliburton into an unelected branch of the government. According to a new Los Angeles Times article , Pentagon officials have admitted that Mr. Cheney's chief of staff helped the "Greatest Corporation" secure a $7 billion, no-bid, taxpayer-funded Iraq contract, skirting the law and overruling the recommendation of an army lawyer. Nicely done! Of course, we would have expected no less from our esteemed Vice President, for the love between a CEO and his conglomerate transcends all earthly (and legal) boundaries.
The article also states that Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, bane of our corporate brethren, is now "demanding full disclosure of the top-secret process that led to awarding the contract to the Houston-based oil services company."
Henry, Henry, you silly Democrat: Whoever said it was secret?
Sharpen Up those Oil Drills!
This week, the House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 4529, our GOP allies' latest proposal to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.
Of course, the business-impaired tree-huggers at the National Resources Defense Council say the bill is a bad idea: that it will wreck the environment only to create a 180-day supply of oil that won't materialize for ten years.
In a suggested letter to your Congressperson (how quaint!), the NRDC goons argue that "This pro-polluter legislation would enrich oil, gas, coal and nuclear companies with billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies."
Well, duh! What is government for, if not to make Billionaires richer at the expense of the taxpayers?
As for the environmental hysteria, we must simply ask: how much have moose, bald eagles, and seals contributed to the GDP this year?
If you're in Washington this week, fellow Billionaires, salute your Congresspersons (whoever among them you happen to own) with the following cheer: "4-5-2-9! Drilling in the Arctic's Fine!"
Keep those fat contributions coming, and it won't be long before Alaska's coast is bubbling over with Texas tea...
Pensions Aren't For Everyone: Neither is Wealth
Yes, Billionaires, we have yet another reason to celebrate at the expense of the middle class. According to a June 13, 2004 New York Times report, the demise of middle class pensions in favor of “self-directed retirement plans,” or, as we like to call them, “re-directed retirement plans,” has led to an overall net loss for middle income retirees and a boom for the already wealthy.
New research by Edward N. Wolff, a New York University economist who “analyzed 18 years of household financial data collected by the Federal Reserve” suggests that, though it seems counterintuitive “for a generation to emerge from two bullish decades with less wealth than its parents,” it has by -2.2% since 1983 (for median income households).
Do not fret, Billionaires! Current trends that favor 401Ks instead of pensions have led to the rise of “an elite minority who are well-prepared for retirement, and a majority who are falling behind.”
While we agree with Mr. Wolff when he adds that "The people at the top did better than they ever would have under the old system," we take rightful issue with his conclusion that "Basically, they made out like bandits," and suggest a more polite reality:
There are two kinds of people in this world,
Those who work for their money and
Those who let those who work for their money work for them.
Combine this with G.W. Bush's strong commitment to privatize Social Security, and the next two decades will be even more profitable for Billionaires than the last. The next time you are at lunch with your congressman, don't forget to remind him we still have that part of our agenda to push through. After all, the President is waiting to sign.
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Oil Reserves, Profit From The Enigma
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Today the New York Times ran a front page story on the mysterious and inexplicable discrepancy between oil companies’ production and their proven reserves. In recent years, production has begun to fall even as "proven reserves" increase. While this may be puzzling to the New York Times and to middle class investors and consumers, to billionaires it’s as easy to read as a roadmap to MoneyTown.
There are two kinds of money to be made in the oil business, money from selling oil, and money from selling stock in the oil company. The price of oil is determined by supply and demand, and the price of the stock is determined by the company's proven reserves. So cutting production keeps gas prices high and overstating reserves keeps stock prices (and executives’ stock options) high. The beauty of our system is that it’s the oil companies themselves who are responsible for calculating and stating their proven reserves. It should be noted that although there is NO AUDITING OF THIS CALCULATION the SEC does have "rules" requiring these calculations to be "conservative." That’s the same SEC that oversaw the success of Enron and Worldcom.
In January, the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was caught overstating its proven reserves by 22 per cent. A scandal ensued surrounding its chairman Sir Phillip Watts, resulting in his disgraced removal from office. The exact same practice that resulted in a legal and economic firestorm in Europe has been reported as an "enigma" here in America.
Sure, high gas prices and inflated reserve estimates are great for shareholder value and the companies’ bottom lines. But these figures do much more than that. They help remind Americans that the earth has an inexhaustible supply of oil. They help keep SUV’s rolling, suburbs sprawling, and the American people from ever awakening from the American Dream.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Halliburton Savagely Attacked
I suppose our sunny report on Halliburton in Iraq has jinxed us, friends: the company is now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly bribing Nigerian officials to secure a $4 billion natural gas contract.
In its typically hurtful, anti-Billionaire rhetoric, the SEC calls the alleged $180 million bribe a potential violation of the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." $180 million in bribe money for a $4 billion contract? Sounds like smart business, not corrupt practice!
We can only hope the SEC will do the sensible, honorable thing, and take a fat check in return for dropping the investigation. Hopefully Billionaires across America will rise to the occasion.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Dick Cheney: Helping Halliburton Help the Rich
He's been shy about it, but we knew it all along: A recent report in TIME magazine suggests that Dick Cheney's office personally engineered a multibillion-dollar no-bid Iraq contract for his alma mater Halliburton. The new evidence comes from a leaked Pentagon memo.
Of course, we Billionaires already affectionately refer to the war in Iraq as "the Halliburton Project." Between illegal kickbacks, gross overcharges, juicy no-bid contracts, and cost-cutting measures like skimping on meal service sanitation, Halliburton has really made a killing in Iraq (no pun intended)!
As long as Bush and Cheney remain at the helm, we Billionaires look forward to more lucrative wars in the years ahead!
Bush Puts Power Plants First!
Good news for Billionaires in the power business (and aren't we all?): A new study, conducted by the EPA's air pollution consultants, has found that Bush’s cleverly named “Clear Skies Act” is really a sweetheart deal for power companies! The study found that Bush's policies protect our power plants' right to pollute better than existing clean air laws or two competing legislative proposals.
According to the report, simply enforcing the existing Clean Air Act (which our friend W. has graciously avoided doing) would save 4,000 lives every year compared with Bush’s environmental plan.
Some say you can’t put a price on a human life, but of course, we Billionaires say pshaw to that! Assuming most of the deceased are working class folk who can’t afford to move to a nicer neighborhood, each life lost to factory emissions is probably worth an annual salary of around $30,000. Multiply that by 4,000 and you get $120 million: a pittance compared to power company profits nationwide! While it's certainly a shame that so many able-bodied workers are facing an untimely demise, it's nice to have a president who puts simple economics over sentimentality.
Don’t even get us started on John Kerry, the Uncle Tom of billionaires, who co-sponsored a resolution that could save 100,000 lives by the year 2020. When is he going to learn that corporations, not people, elect the president in this country?
Victory in Iraq
The United Nations Security Council has signaled its unconditional surrender to the American and British authorities by unanimously adopting their plan to transfer sovereignty. The 15-0 vote in favor of the resolution has finally put to rest any doubts as to who signs the permission slips for our great nation’s military adventures.
It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago the UN had the audacity to question the legitimacy of the US invasion. With compelling evidence against the existence of WMD, and overwhelming public opinion opposing war, the UN withheld its support. The Security Council’s unanimous vote proves once again that mere facts, and the will of the majority are no match for our military strength and the will of our leader, and have no place in a democracy.
Today, even such vocal critics as France and Germany have fallen into line behind our president, proving that preemptive war can and does get results. The UN, once our enemy, has been defeated, and again become a rubber stamp of approval for America, and billionaires everywhere.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Federal Reserve Affirms Banks’ Rights
The Federal Reserve has finally spoken up in defense of banks’ rights, silencing a growing chorus of critics who objected to the now-widespread practice of offering "bounce protection" or "overdraft privilege" to low-income customers.
The way this "service" works is simple. Banks place ATMs in bodegas and supermarkets in impoverished areas. Customers can withdraw cash without the hassle of being informed that they are overdrawing their accounts, and the banks collect a hefty overdraft fee. It’s a win-win situation.
Despite the obvious advantages of this system, some have found reason to object. Critics claim that "overdraft privilege" is actually a credit line and therefore subject to those job-killing federal regulations known as usury laws. If the "service" were considered a loan, then a $100.00 overdraft, outstanding for two weeks and subject to a $20.00 fee, would be the equivalent of a loan at 520% annual interest. Talk about smart business!
Thankfully, the Federal Reserve has taken a principled stand to let banks call these loans "services," and continue reaping their juicy profits. Last year, a single bank, Washington Mutual, collected over a billion dollars in overdraft fees. We look forward to setting new records in the year ahead!
Blue Tuesdays
These are sad days, my friends. Not only is the air quality in New York making me wish for my hunting lodge, but Alan Greenspan is raising the interest rates. Bad for lenders, good for borrowers - and bad for us, as the jump in consumer prices means that we might have to start paying the peons more. Thank God the Gipper ain't here to see this. Trickle-down economics never work the way you'd think...
To cheer you up, here's some good ol' bubble-economy nostalgia. Enjoy this list of Forbes' Top 10 IPOs of the Decade!
Monday, June 07, 2004
More Room For Billionaires in Higher Education
Good news: New trends in college enrollment suggest there is more room at the nation’s finest universities – for the children of billionaires!
According to a recent report, minority enrollment is down at the University of California at Berkeley and elsewhere, due in part to the rising costs of education, along with changing admissions and recruitment policies.
Of course, we Billionaires cherish minorities, such as whale blubber magnates and non-indicted Enron executives, as much as the next fellow. But over the past half-century or so, cash-deficient families of all stripes have been flooding our elite educational institutions with their unwealthy scions. Without cranking out scads of billionaire trust-fund alumni, how will our most respected universities finance their exclusive social clubs, polo teams, and pricey guest lectures by fellow Billionaires?
Fortunately, third-generation Yalie George W. Bush shares our concern. Although college tuitions have risen 35 percent since he took office, Bush has frozen Pell Grant giveaways to non-billionaire students for the first three consecutive years of his tenure. Don’t be alarmed by his recently proposed "increases" – they affect less than 1 percent of all Pell Grant recipients. (Have your accountant do the math!) Bush has also proposed putting time limits on Pell Grants, ensuring that dilettantish working parents don’t waste public money inching through their educations.
Bush has also wisely encouraged our universities to eliminate preferential treatment in college admissions based on non-Billionaire criteria. As the president knows from personal experience, only the children of wealthy alumni deserve a leg up in the application process. Thanks to his visionary policies, America’s higher education system will soon be returned to the children of the upper classes, to whom it rightfully belongs. And for a Socialist breeding ground like Berkeley, that won’t come a moment too soon! (Do they even have a polo team?)
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Thawing Out Cold War Profits
In a boom to billionaires everywhere, all .0001% of Americans anyway, the Bush Administration has been spending as much on nuclear proliferation as the late Ronald Reagan did during the height of the Cold War. (In a related story, MGM Studios announced plans to remake their 1962 classic shorts, "Hurry Children, Get Under Your Desks!" and "That's Not Snow, it's Nuclear Winter!" slated for a 2005 release.)
At the annual “Support Your Local War Machine” Dinner held on May 27th in Washington D.C., billionaires gathered to celebrate the news that nuclear spending was again reaching all time highs.
As Fred Kaplan writes for Slate.com, according to a report quietly released in April by the Natural Resources Defense Council “the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years.” Or, as one billionaire who asked not to be identified said at the dinner, “So the Soviet Union is no longer a threat? Someone has to profit from all that enriched uranium lying around.”
A young man standing nearby, wearing what appeared to be a thrift store tuxedo and whose lapel was suspiciously void of the member’s only 'Billionaire’s World Dominion Pin,' stepped forward and asked the billionaire if it were wise to be spending so much money on weapons designed to fight a non-existent enemy. The billionaire huffed and hawed and replied, “Our strategy is long term, and we are always developing new markets for our products. In the 1990's, when Clinton's peace initiatives really hamstrung our profit margins, we learned that it's bad business to assume the U.S. can continually provide the kind of market growth needed to consistently raise our bottom line through 2015.”
The curious questioner countered that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on next-generation nuclear weapons when the old weapons were never and should never have been used didn’t seem like a good use of taxpayer dollars. Again the Billionaire scoffed,
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki unfairly stigmatized the old nukes. That’s why we are developing the RNEP’s, [Robust Nuclear Earth-Penetrator] bunker busting nukes that burrow deep into the earth before detonating. Don’t you worry about wasting taxpayer money, these nukes will be used.”
When asked if it were responsible to fuel another arms race when only a few years ago such an event seemed relegated to the dust bin of history , the billionaire countered, “In a marathon, Nike might sponsor the best runners in the field, but it makes good business sense to make running shoes available to everyone. Competition is the life blood of the free market. It paves the way for a very few of us to get very rich, and you’d have to be a communist if you didn’t approve of the very few getting very rich.”
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Billionaires Lose Eye: Tenet Resigns as CIA Director
-Washington DC, June 3, 2004
In an unexpected announcement Thursday, CIA Director George Tenet made public his resignation. Tenet has been subjected to draconian scrutiny by leftist elements since he assumed the directorship seven years ago, which reached an almost witch-hunt like crescendo after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Tenet took the bullet of blame unapologetically, protecting our beloved President and his cohorts as any true patriot would. Sadly, this entailed losing his job, but our sources assure us that he will seek a more personal sort of growth after his resignation takes effect in July, turning to other more artistic pursuits, such as insider trading, electoral fraud, and macrame.
He will be missed.
Robust Profits for Rice in Haiti
Today the New York Times featured a prominent story under the headline “The Price of Rice Soars, and Haiti’s Hunger Deepens.” As billionaires, we all know soaring prices mean soaring profits, and though the misleading headline suggests otherwise, we can all rest assured that the free market is now putting Haiti on the road to greater prosperity. Despite the good news, troubling questions remain. What caused Haiti’s rice prices to stay artificially low for so long? What force kept the invisible hand of the free market from correcting the problem earlier? For answers, we need to look further.
The Times quotes Haitian businessmen as saying “Mr. Aristide’s government kept the price of rice down through corruption.” The Times attributes the dangerously low prices to the practices of at least one Aristide “crony” and quotes the new minister of commerce, Danielle St.-Lot as saying “it was kind of a monopoly” under Aristide.
Clearly, the recently-ousted president of Haiti had acted improperly in keeping prices low. In addition, he compromised the very meaning of the words “corruption, cronyism, and monopoly.” While we are happy that Haiti’s markets are now free, we feel that Aristide should be held accountable for his misuse of corruption.
(Actually written by Skip S. Tate-Tax)
