. . . and it's about time, say you, being tired of all that failing health crap you've been reading on these pages. Actually, its about politics and money.
***
So, see, my mind was wandering around the other day and I noted that most if not all of the rabidly conservative billionaires started with inherited money, the Kochs (pronounce any way you like) and Richard Scaife among them. In other words, they didn't earn their original wealth at all, but garnered it simply by being separated from the placenta and drawing a breath. The rest was easy. That's how the Bushies got their money, too.
The three most famous wildly liberal billionaires, on the other hand worked for their money, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros among them.
Interesting, yes? Wish I could do some kind of survey and find out how many rich conservatives simply inherited (rich liberals, I've noticed feel a certain degree of noblesse oblige that most conservatives don't).
Anyway, I'll bet most of them. I've often said that the only way to riches is either through inheritance or theft. Simple thrift, competence, hard work, and morality will not get you there, yet skeendie seven million middle class and poor, brainwashed Republicans think that they, too, can become rich so they refuse to raise taxes on the rich, despite Warren Buffet's insistence on doing so ('Why should I be taxed at a lower rate than my secretary?')
One of the nice things about retirement is I don't have to withhold political opinions as I did while a professor. But even then, on a tour where to pass bus-time I allowed ten questions from the chorus, I was asked what my political party was and why. My response? Here:
'I'm a Democrat because I have observed that it is the party that truly cares about those of us who have to work for a living.'
That was in the early '80s, I think, during the reign of St. Ronnie (though his canonization by the Right Wing--for all the wrong reasons--came much later).
I was right then and I'm right now.
