Tag: inequality

Not Enough Bullets

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At Davos, Jamie Dimon, the famously humorless head of JP Morgan Chase, shouted, “Make Elites Great Again!”:

Why did that avalanche hit that hotel in Italy, rather than those rat-f%$#s:

The most telling exchange at the World Economic Forum in Davos came on Thursday afternoon during a closed-door lunch hosted by the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Slate.

A couple hundred people were gathered at the Hotel Seehof, an expansive five-star hotel on the Davos promenade, to discuss the state of the world on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump. There were heads of state, both current and former, and captains of industry and finance.

The hostess, Lally Graham Weymouth, a senior associate editor at the Washington Post and daughter of the late Katharine Graham, was calling on people around the room to share their thoughts when she hit upon David Rubinstein, the jovial co-founder of the Carlyle Group. His remarks were different — and, people in attendance said, made as a joke. Rubenstein, three people in attendance told BuzzFeed News, pleaded to those gathered that elites were people too. With feelings! And they deserved to be listened to.

And then Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, replied in his own way, letting out an expressive: “Make elites great again!” The banker, who was compensated $28 million last year, is not known for his sense of humor.

Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesperson for JPMorgan, told BuzzFeed News: “It was tongue-in-cheek.” Those who heard Dimon’s private riposte weren’t so sure.

Amazingly enough, it gets worse from there.

I have a request for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever: How about hitting Davos next year?

With careful planning you might get some Saudi princes as well.

Not Enough Bullets

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Amazingly enough, the story shows the subjects of the story even more self-absorbed and clueless than the headline dows:

Davos Elite Fret About Inequality Over Vintage Wine and Canapés

You morons broke the world.

You were born on 3rd base and though that you hit a triple.

You are not deserving, you are lucky.

  • You won the parent lottery.
  • You won the nationality lottery.
  • You won the social class lottery.

Now try and do something to make the world a better place for the rest of us.

    Peter Thiel Has Officially Become Too Cartoonishly Evil to Be a Bond Villain

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    I don’t mean for his support of Donald Trump, or for his literal exploration of Vampirism to extend his own life, or for his gay baiting in college.

    That’s evil, but I think that this is not excessive by the standards of Bond villains.

    Give him a white Persian cat, and he would fit in just fine.

    But he gave a speech at the National Press Club, he complained that, “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system.”

    PayPal co-founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel on Monday offered a jaw-dropping defense of his decision to bankroll wrestling icon Hulk Hogan’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker for publishing a sex tape featuring him.

    “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system,” he said. “It costs too much. This was the modus operandi of Gawker in large part it was to go after people who had no chance of fighting back.”

    The declaration came as Thiel was speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to tout the presidential bid of GOP candidate Donald Trump.

    Thiel spent at least $10 million supporting Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Thiel had been engaged in a personal feud with the website for years. As a result of the lawsuit, Gawker was driven out of business.

    Fordham Law School professor and criminal justice expert John Pfaff was quick to note that in 2007, many states’ entire budgets for indigent defense — money allotted to provide legal counsel to those who cannot afford it — is in the single-digit millions.

    I hope that his fellow PayPal founder Elon Musk sends him into space, and leaves him there.