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pnicholson
08-01-2010, 09:47 AM
“Let Them Eat Cake”: A handful of oligarchs are becoming billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain (https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/let-them-eat-cake-a-handful-of-oligarchs-are-becoming-billionaires-while-the-rest-of-the-country-goes-down-the-drain/)

Posted on August 1, 2010 by willyloman
by Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research (https://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20389)


It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers.


When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.
The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.


Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.


Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.


Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.


Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?


How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office?


Who was Blair really serving?


These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.


While Chelsea’s wedding guests eat a $11,000 wedding cake and admire $250,000 floral displays, Lisa Roberts in Ohio is struggling to raise contributions for her food pantry in order to feed 3,000 local people, whose financial independence was destroyed by investment bankers, job offshoring, and unaffordable wars. The Americans dependent on Lisa Roberts’ food pantry are living out of vans and cars. Those with a house roof still over their heads are packed in as many as 14 per household according to the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio.


The Chilicothe Gazette reports that Lisa Roberts’ food pantry has “had to cut back to half rations per person in order to have something for everyone who needed it.”


Theresa DePugh stepped up to the challenge and had the starving Ohioans write messages on their food pantry paper plates to President Obama, who has just obtained another $33 billion to squander on a pointless war in Afghanistan that serves no purpose whatsoever except the enrichment of the military/security complex and its shareholders.


The Guardian (UK) reports that according to US government reports, one million American children go to bed hungry, while the Obama regime squanders hundreds of billions of dollars killing women and children in Afghanistan and elsewhere.


The Guardian’s reporting relies on a US government report from the US Department of Agriculture, which concludes that 50 million people in the US–one in six of the population–were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy in 2008.


US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he expected the number of hungry Americans to worsen when the survey for 2010 is released.


Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps.


The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive.


The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.


And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.


“Let Them Eat Cake”: A handful of oligarchs are becoming billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain American Everyman (https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/let-them-eat-cake-a-handful-of-oligarchs-are-becoming-billionaires-while-the-rest-of-the-country-goes-down-the-drain/)

podfish
08-02-2010, 01:58 PM
“Let Them Eat Cake”: A handful of oligarchs are becoming billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain (https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/let-them-eat-cake-a-handful-of-oligarchs-are-becoming-billionaires-while-the-rest-of-the-country-goes-down-the-drain/).... A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.


And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.


“Let Them Eat Cake”: A handful of oligarchs are becoming billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain American Everyman (https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/let-them-eat-cake-a-handful-of-oligarchs-are-becoming-billionaires-while-the-rest-of-the-country-goes-down-the-drain/)

and why the Clintons are poster children for this I have no idea. Politicians are getting a small cut of what the -real- oligarchs are raking in - for you right-wing bible thumpers, remember the phrase "though shalt not bind the mouths of the kine..." ??? that's why the politicians are getting their pittance.
I've never understood why people are so distracted by the failures of the politicians, who at least make some pretense of serving those who are being exploited by those who are happily cementing their power. I don't expect them to ignore the interests of the rich and powerful, though I wish they would. I just want them to work harder for those who have no other means to compete.
I don't think most people have any idea of the disparity between 'real' money and what they have a chance to see. Someone who could never afford a $400 a night hotel can't really imagine the life of those who would no more stay at that $400 a night hotel than at a cabin at KOA.

pnicholson
08-02-2010, 04:09 PM
thanks for commenting, podfish.


and why the Clintons are poster children for this I have no idea. Politicians are getting a small cut of what the -real- oligarchs are raking in - ... I don't think most people have any idea of the disparity between 'real' money and what they have a chance to see. Someone who could never afford a $400 a night hotel can't really imagine the life of those who would no more stay at that $400 a night hotel than at a cabin at KOA.