According to Forbes, there are a little over 400 billionaires in the U.S. Many (such as the Koch Brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, and George Soros) are actively using their money, influence, and power to promote more immigration. (And this is not to mention foreign billionaires, such as Carlos Slim, financial savior of the New York Times, who profits exorbitantly from phone calls between Mexican immigrants in America and their friends and family in his country.)
Here's a question -- in the latest round of controversy over immigration, has a single billionaire spoken up publicly against expanding immigration?
I'm aware of a tech billionaire who quietly gave some moderate support to immigration restriction a half dozen years ago, but I'm drawing blanks on any since 2010. Surely, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, there must be one lone billionaire who felt able to speak out against his class's self-interest. Right?
Were constantly reading in the mainstream media about how Michigan eye doctor John Tanton is this malign supervillain personally standing athwart immigration reform, shouting "Stop," but, come on ... an eye doctor in Michigan? That's it? If one billionaire spent as much on immigration restriction as several billionaires have spent on their favorite college football teams' weight rooms, we might have something not too far off from a level playing field in the debate.
Were constantly reading in the mainstream media about how Michigan eye doctor John Tanton is this malign supervillain personally standing athwart immigration reform, shouting "Stop," but, come on ... an eye doctor in Michigan? That's it? If one billionaire spent as much on immigration restriction as several billionaires have spent on their favorite college football teams' weight rooms, we might have something not too far off from a level playing field in the debate.
You might almost suspect that the billionaires are waging class war on the citizens of America.
As Swift would say if he were alive today, "When a true patriot appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the scoundrels are in a confederacy against him."
As Swift would say if he were alive today, "When a true patriot appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the scoundrels are in a confederacy against him."
Is Limbaugh pushing close to that mark yet? Obviously though he's not the kind of plutocrat you're talking about.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen Limbaugh's name on billionaire's list. It's hard to get there as a performer, even when you own yourself -- only Oprah's done it. Tiger hasn't. MJ hasn't. The singing and dancing MJ didn't make it either.
ReplyDeleteRush hinted today that he wanted to talk immigration when he was a guest on the Fox Noise Channel's morning show this morning, but the hosts and producers said no. Methinks Rupert Murdoch is putting the kibosh on talk of immigration patriotism over at FNC.
ReplyDeleteI highly doubt Rush is a billionaire or will ever get there. That's because radios have off buttons. Almost all American billionaires got that rich because of some combination of crony capitalism (i.e. not capitalism), or some kind of financial crimes or other form of moral turpitude, or in a few cases just pure blind luck. One can turn Rush off, but Carlos Salim ("Slim") gets wealthier if anyone in Mexico uses a phone.
Paul McCartney is on there. It's been well known that he's a billionaire for at least 20yrs. Media commented on it several times before.
ReplyDelete"That's because radios have off buttons."
ReplyDeleteThe way to really make money is to collect an automatic monthly payment from consumers that's slightly opaque about how to turn off. Everything that you sign up for with automatic payment should come with a big OFF button to click on its basic website page.
Okay, McCartney's on the global list. Good for him. It took him a long time to get out from under all the bad deals he signed when young and naive.
ReplyDeleteWhy take what Rush says about certain issues at face value? According to Peter Brimelow, Rush has NEVER really been an advocate regarding immigration restriction. Its simply not an issue he's much interested in or hasn't been ever before. And he's had several decades to discuss it on his show and he simply seldom to never ever has done so in any meaningful way.
ReplyDeleteBut get him all rilled up about raising the minimum wage, boy, and them's fighting words! He'll go on and on for days about the "evils" of raising the minimum wage.
Immigration? Fogedaboutit.
That's simply a PoS issue to him.
"I think the American people should express their preferences, and we'll accept their choices."
ReplyDeleteFormer KGB billionaire.
Mr. Sailer,
ReplyDeleteWay way wait. Hold it. McCartney's been on the list since middle 80s. He owned all his solo/Wings songs, he tours his...off nearly every year since the early 70's, about 12-15 yrs ago he got all the catalogue back (the holly grail, Beatles catalogue back to songs he co-wrote)
What bad deals did he make when young? He never wanted to sell the songs in the first place.
Now Brian Wilson and what his dad did to him when he wasn't looking...sold all his songs to Capitol Records for pennies. THAT is sad.
But Paul's been a bil. for decades. Not sure where he stands on immigration, though.
Not a fan, but consider
ReplyDelete"I think the American people should express their preferences, and we'll accept their choices."
Former KGB billionaire.
Not a fan, but consider
ReplyDelete"I think the American people should express their preferences, and we'll accept their choices."
Former KGB billionaire.
We know Ross Perot's views, but he hasn't said much about politics in a while.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Rush has grossed close to a billion (he is on an 8-year, $400m contract right now), but I suppose with conservative (no pun intended) investments having negligible returns and him paying the top marginal rate, he might still never get there.
ReplyDeleteI am not a fan of his neo-connery, but he has earned a lot of respect from me recently on his immigration stance.
Trump has on Twitter. Maybe not the bill specifically but Mexican immigration generally.
ReplyDeleteIs Limbaugh pushing close to that mark yet? Obviously though he's not the kind of plutocrat you're talking about
ReplyDeleteRush is not a billionaire but is wealthy, he makes 40 million a year and Hannity makes 20 million. There are a lot on the right that make that money and no wonder they are against tax increases.
the donald?
ReplyDeleteI don't know what Brimelow is referring to. Rush has been shooting holes in Gang of 8 with both barrels. And he opposed amnesty last time too.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I don't know if you ever check your @ mentions on Twitter (if not, you should), but someone there mentioned one anti-amnesty billionaire: Donald Trump.
If you're actively in business and making deals, aside from your own personal stake in cheaper labor, you sure as hell don't want to piss off the people you're cutting deals with - largely other billionaires and overpaid CEOs. Even billionaires have to kiss some ass from time-to-time. In fact they're probably a lot better at it than you or I.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, my suspicion is that an increasing share of the wealth increase of the rich is due to transfers of wealth from one segment of the population (the working/middle class) rather than improvements in productivity or outright creation of new wealth.
Just about every aspect of mass immigration favors the rich and hurts American or European poor. Billionaires are intensely selfish by nature, and didn't get rich by being selfless or indifferent to money.
McCartney, entertainer-billionaire - the exception that proves the rule:)
ReplyDelete"Everything that you sign up for with automatic payment should come with a big OFF button to click on its basic website page."
ReplyDeleteOr you can always report your credit card as lost or stolen, get a new CC number, and then they'll automatically cancel when the charge gets denied.
I believe dancing MJ left an estate worth over a billion (1.3 was the number, IIRC), which his entire odious clan was suing each other over before he was in the ground. The rumors about his being deeply in debt were apparently just that.
ReplyDeletePeter Thiel (presumably the one you reference in your post) did give $1 million to NumbersUSA back in '08.
Presumably there may be some organized crime figures worth over a billion who would not appreciate more competition from the cartels. I'm not really up to date on such happenings.
Anybody who's making money profits from the status quo. Multiculturalism, pc, immigratoon did not hurt them, so why vocally object? We only hear from billionaires who need immigration to keep their money.
ReplyDeleteI've met only one really rich guy and he wasn't political at all. It was his company's interest and not much more than that what he cared about.
Class war?
I think society's financial winners don't thinkabout the rest of us that much. They don't need to.
I've only read it hear, but supposedly Vinod Khosla (sp) attacked Zuckerberg for his pro-amnesty, pro-mass immigration stance (and action).
ReplyDeleteDoes that count?
I have a family member who is against amnesty and he makes an extremely good living as a professional wrestler for the WWE. However he is nowhere close to being a billionaire, but he is still part of the 1 percent.
ReplyDeleteboner, er, i mean, bono, is close to the 1 billion mark, if he's not there just yet. so that's one performer. he's not an american though.
ReplyDeletea couple bands are making 100 million a year. these bands would produce billionaires...if they weren't bands. dividing that money up 4 or 5 ways hurts. bon jovi, AC/DC, metallica, bruce springsteen and the E street band, these would all be billionaire machines if they were rappers instead of bands. of course that's kind of the catch. rappers don't have nearly an equally wide appeal or nearly that many buyers lining up year after year for decades.
mel gibson would be a billionaire if he wasn't nuts. he made the most money anybody has ever made on 1 movie, over 300 million for the passion of the christ. several guys in the movie business are self made billionaires, but they aren't actors. i'm not sure if any actors other than gibson are close. arnold was only worth half a billion at last count. he has at least spoken out against amnesty, and anti-assimilation politics.
i'm not sure if these people count as performers:
gabe newell
joanne rowling
but they're self made billionaires in entertainment and they sure as heck delivered the goods in their medium. rowling is of course not american.
Jack Swagger? Just kidding.
ReplyDeleteWell Steve, you have to get over the idea that money equals power. It does not. In any encounter with say, a Black "youth" from the vibrant part of town, and Bill Gates, who has the more power? Hint: its not Gates, because people only care about his money. The Black "youth" could destroy Gates with denunciations as a "witch" aka "racist" and Gates knows it.
Impoverished aristocrats demanding deference and obeisance from wealthy merchants is as old as Egypt and Sumeria. Real power, actual power, is held by those who can do what they want without much consequence.
That is first and foremost, the permanent ruling class, such as Hillary, or her and Bill's cronies, and secondly the Black/Hispanic urban underclass.
jackson's estate was definitely under 1 billion, and he definitely had whopping debts into the hundreds of billions. otherwise why did he never, in his entire life, appear on a billionaires list?
ReplyDeletethe whole point of booking him on that grueling, he'll-never-make-them-all, 50 shows in london contract, was to get out of some debt and get him making some money again at the end of his career before he died. and it didn't even do that, since he of course, died, before doing even 1 of those dates.
how much is caeser's paying celine dion? when she finishes up her 2019 (!) contract, there's little doubt she'll have earned a billion in her 2 runs in vegas. i'm under the impression she pocketed 400 million for the first, shorter, 4 year run.
jody-
ReplyDeleteThe Forbes list is quite incomplete because it relies entirely on self-reported numbers, and therefore leaves out several billionaires who strongly value their privacy (for example, no members of the Rothschild family are listed, despite including several billionaires, because they do not wish to share that information with Forbes).
Jackson's estate is indeed worth well over a billion (it made that much just in the few months after his death, and the value of licensing his name and likeness, the Beatles catalogue, etc. are worth hundreds of millions in their own right): http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1641946/michael-jacksons-estate-has-generated-1-billion-since-his-death.jhtml
Dying was a good career move for Michael Jackson, like it was for Elvis.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are discreet billionaires who have avoided the Forbes list, but I doubt if there are all that many, at least not in the U.S. There are some tell-tale signs of vast wealth, such as personal golf courses, which are visible from the air. I can think of six personal golf courses in Southern California. There's one out by Zuma Beach that I don't know who owns, but I can identify the builders of five others and they are all fairly famous: e.g., Walter Annenberg, Bob Hope, Jerry Perrenchio, Will Smith, etc.
ReplyDeletePresumably there may be some organized crime figures worth over a billion who would not appreciate more competition from the cartels. I'm not really up to date on such happenings.
ReplyDeleteThe mafia in the US was pretty decimated in the 80s and 90s.
One of the major Sicilian mafias, the 'Ndrangheta, is heavily involved in the global drug trade and works closely with major cartels like the Los Zetas.
There was Steve Poizner, the Jewish Silicon Valley billionaire who ran for California governor in the primary race a few years back. Seemed like he was just using the issue to gain votes, because I've never heard of him using any of his vast wealth for restrictionist purposes.
ReplyDeleteIn defence of the billionaires, why would they? What would they gain by opposing it? They get maligned enough as it is (some deserve it but most do not). If they oppose it, on top of everything they also get called (gasp!) "racist".
ReplyDeleteThe divergence between billionaire and citizen interests is also occuring in Israel where the populace were complaining bitterly about their richest man moving to London to avoid paying Israeli taxes.
Actually one very prominent hedge fund manager that has alluded to the US adopting the "citizenism" approach is Kyle Bass (he may already be a billionaire but we don't know). In one presentation he even suggests that the US needs to put "walls up". He is not very vocal about it, though.
ReplyDeleteEither they are extremely confident that they will always control the government, or they are extremely stupid in not expecting the new america they are bringing in to go after them for their cash.
ReplyDeleteOr both, I suppose.
Doesn't Richard Mellon Scaife fund the Centre for immigration studies?
ReplyDelete" a couple bands are making 100 million a year. these bands would produce billionaires...if they weren't bands. dividing that money up 4 or 5 ways hurts. bon jovi, AC/DC, metallica, bruce springsteen and the E street band, these would all be billionaire machines if they were rappers instead of bands. of course that's kind of the catch. rappers don't have nearly an equally wide appeal or nearly that many buyers lining up year after year for decades"
ReplyDeleteMost of those bands don't divide the money equally. On the royalty side, only those band members with songwriting credits get a cut of the record and song sales. The others just get a flat fee for performing on the album. This is why Paul McCartney is a lot wealthier than Ringo Starr. On the concert revenue side, the split is usually more equitable, although I'm pretty sure high profile performers like Bruce Springsteen only pay their band members a flat salary on tour, while they keep the lion's share of the gate revenue.
I believe the Scaife family are the primary financial backers of John Tanton's assorted immigration restrictionist organizations and NumbersUSA. Richard Mellon Scaife is currently #347 on the Forbes 400 with a total net worth of $1.4 billion.
ReplyDeleteB.B.
Either they are extremely confident that they will always control the government, or they are extremely stupid in not expecting the new america they are bringing in to go after them for their cash.
ReplyDeleteExcept for Cuba and, possibly, Venezuela, the squillionaires in Latin America have managed to hang on to their wealth. Why shouldn't that be the case in an America in which corruption reaches similar levels?
How about Ron Howard? Y'all watched the fourth season of Arrested (I hope) and tyhe few mocking references to "the border ribbon" and how Mexicans "fill our day with their culture" didn't seem to indicate an overabundance of liberal dogma on Mitchy's part.
ReplyDeleteWhy take what Rush says about certain issues at face value? According to Peter Brimelow, Rush has NEVER really been an advocate regarding immigration restriction. Its simply not an issue he's much interested in or hasn't been ever before.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that he could learn, and come to realize how important it is?
I know people who have wised up on immigration. I myself used to buy the theoretical libertarian argument that open borders would be fine as long as we got rid of the welfare and other market-distorting influences. I didn't understand the importance of cultural homogeneity, or a host of economic complications that make it not nearly that simple.
Rush isn't like a Republican politician running for office (at least I assume he's not), who can get tough on borders long enough to win, and then go back to pandering to the cheap labor lobbies. If he starts talking immigration control to boost his ratings, he'll have to stick with it to keep those new listeners.
I haven't listened to Rush since about halfway through the Clinton presidency, but if he takes the lead on fighting this immigration treason, I will again.
Jody,
ReplyDeleteThe beatles catalogue reverted back to the original memebers, e.g. McCartney. MJ's estate doesnt have them anymore. They were sold long ago, that's why I said McCartney is a billionaire, he's gotten back the rights to his songs!
How about conservative benefactor Richard Mellon Scaife?
There are ways thanks in part to 'net to find out if someone would be on the billionaire's list or not. Privacy isnt exactly as easy as it once was regarding that kind of info. There are ways to find it out, but it takes research and time.
Of course at times the media can be lazy and if they merely report what they're told then...
It's this new crop of Baby Boomer billionaires. Like so much else that's wrong with the US, it the effing Boomers. Ross Perot would be against it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder which way Santorum supporter Conor Freiss would vote?
ReplyDeleteAlso is there any change the chik fil a guy gets to a billion?
Believe it or not, there are many under the radar billionaires who would rather not be known to the public.
ReplyDeleteAnd yep, they control the real power.
Occasionally, you hear of them, in articles like this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/hidden-reimann-billionaire-found-as-coty-has-new-york-ipo.html
To be rich and obscure is the way to go. Fame is for idiots.
"Whiskey said...
ReplyDeleteWell Steve, you have to get over the idea that money equals power. It does not."
Ridiculous. Notoriety does not equal power. Money, at least over a certain threshold, most certainly does. So Bill Gates cannot cane a shoe-shine boy in the street without impunity? That hardly makes him LESS powerful than the hypothetical shoe-shine boy. Why would he want to such a thing? Bill Gates can consciously influence the course of History. The influence of a ghetto "youth" on history is no different than the effect of natural disasters, mold, or crop blight - a steady, thoughtless running down of things.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
"In defence of the billionaires, why would they? What would they gain by opposing [amnesty]?"
That's what you call "defending" billionaires? You're not exactly a PR ace, are you?
Steve, I am not sure what Zuma golf course you are talking about. There is one public course up Encinal Canyon between Mullholland, and there is a tiny 2-3 hole course in The Colony by Surfrider - Perenchio Golf Course.
ReplyDeleteBut Paul's been a bil. for decades. Not sure where he stands on immigration, though.
ReplyDeleteThe following is from the wiki writeup on the song Get Back, whose refrain is "Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged":
"Around the time he was developing the lyrics to "Get Back", McCartney satirised the "Rivers of Blood speech" by former British Cabinet minister Enoch Powell in a brief jam that has become known as the "Commonwealth Song". The lyrics included a line "You'd better get back to your Commonwealth homes". The group improvised various temporary lyrics for "Get Back" leading to what has become known in Beatles' folklore as the "No Pakistanis" version.[10] This version is more racially charged, and addresses attitudes toward immigrants in America and Britain: "...don't need no Puerto Ricans living in the USA"; and "don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs".[11] In an interview in Playboy magazine in 1980, Lennon described it as "...a better version of 'Lady Madonna'. You know, a potboiler rewrite."[12] On 23 January, the group (now in Apple Studios)[13] tried to record the song properly; bootleg recordings preserve a conversation between McCartney and Harrison between takes discussing the song, and McCartney explaining the original "protest song" concept.
The recording captures the group deciding to drop the third verse largely because McCartney does not feel the verse is of high
enough quality, although he likes the scanning of the word "Pakistani". Here the song solidifies in its two-verse, three-solo format."
Did McCartney really mean it as satire, or did he mean it seriously, but then realized that it wasn't publishable in that form? Was the it-was-satire idea an after-the-fact cover? That I don't know. His friend Eric Clapton really is, completely seriously, an Enoch Powell fan.
"You might almost suspect that the billionaires are waging class war on the citizens of America."
ReplyDeleteQuite.
Why can't the tech billionaires have foreign workers in their employ without bringing them to America? The whole information revolution was supposed to be about people being able to work from anywhere. If the knuckle-dragging nativists won't let Muhammad come to the mountain, the mountain can be brought to Muhammad (or Rajit, or Wei) via intercontinental high-speed cable.
ReplyDeleteI've searched for the original Get Back lyrics. I'm not finding the whole thing, but this is said to have been a part of it:
ReplyDelete"Meanwhile back at home there's nineteen Pakistanis,
Living in a council flat
Candidate for Labour tells them what the plan is,
Then he tells them where it's at
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged."
Malibu-area golf courses: In a canyon between Malibu and Zuma, between Pacific Coast Highway and the beach there are a couple of par 3 holes visible that cross the canyon. It's out beyond Perenchio's course in the middle of Malibu. Don't know if there are more than two holes.
ReplyDeleteOverall, there aren't a lot of personal golf courses in Southern California.
"How about Ron Howard?"
ReplyDeleteHow about Phil Jackson, 11-time NBA champion coach? He defended Arizona for passing 1070.
When have billionaires opposed liberalism on any subject that isn't directly related to money? You can't include donors to the Republican Party because that's about money. Why do billionaires and millionaires always donate the big bucks to politically correct or neutral groups and causes?
ReplyDeleteRobert Bork gives part of the answer in his review of Christopher Lasch's "The Revolt of the Elites":
"By defining the elites primarily as money-makers, moreover, Lasch avoids the real problem our elites pose: their cultural and political values. "Efforts to define a 'new class' composed of public administrators and policy makers, relentlessly pushing a program of liberal reforms, ignore the range of political opinions among the professional and managerial elites." But this misses the point. The "new class" does not include, as Lasch contends it does, "brokers,
bankers, realestate promoters and developers, engineers, consultants of all kinds, systems analysts, scientists, doctors," but rather is made up of those in the second half of his list: "publicists, publishers, editors, advertising executives, art directors, moviemakers, entertainers, journalists, television producers and directors, artists, writers, university professors." Only by lumping the two groups together can he claim that there is no common political outlook. What is distinctive about the latter group is that they influence cultural and political attitudes, as the former group does not. One Oliver Stone
motion picture has far more impact on the way Americans see their country than all the pronouncements of the chairmen of the boards of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Microsoft, and IBM combined. The group to which Mr. Stone belongs is
overwhelmingly of leftist disposition. That is the "new class."
"In defence of the billionaires, why would they? What would they gain by opposing [amnesty]?"
ReplyDeleteYou might think they'd gain a better, healthier nation for their grandchildren to grow up in. But I guess when you're a billionaire, crime and societal collapse don't affect you much in your gated estates. And you can always move to the next nice country or buy your own island nation if it comes to that.
You might think they'd gain a better, healthier nation for their grandchildren to grow up in. But I guess when you're a billionaire, crime and societal collapse don't affect you much in your gated estates. And you can always move to the next nice country or buy your own island nation if it comes to that.
ReplyDeleteStatus is a zero-sum game, and I imagine most billionaires have zero-sum mentalities already.
Why can't the tech billionaires have foreign workers in their employ without bringing them to America? The whole information revolution was supposed to be about people being able to work from anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of that going on, but there are problems with it.
First, the quality is abysmal. They're paying just enough to pull in (at best) the equivalent of an American high-school graduate who took a summer IT course so they have fast-food levels of turnover. Techs are routinely thrown into projects for which they don't even know the language (go to any programming forum's help section to see them lining up to ask for help with Programming 101 questions, because they lied to their employer, or the employer lied to the client (or both) and told the client they had the skills).
If you're an American IT company that's outsourcing, you don't really know what's going on with your work over there except that the quality isn't good. Your top coders who can tell good coding from bad don't want to go live in the third world to keep an eye on things, and online communications make it hard to tell that the guy editing your code is actually the third one this week.
So the foreign outsourcing thing just doesn't work very well for anything but the lowest-level grunt work, like taking customer service calls and asking people if they've tried rebooting. Since the bigwigs like living and working in the West, moving the whole operation to where the cheap labor is isn't an option, so the other choice is to bring the cheap labor here where it can be better controlled. In the process, you filter out the less ambitious ones who might have quit in a week anyway, and you lock them into indentured servitude as guest workers, so they can't go down the street for an extra dime per hour after you spend a few weeks getting them trained (the ingrates!), the way they're free to do back home.
They'll be a bit more expensive than they were at home, but you'll have much better control over quality and turnover, and they're still much cheaper than Americans.
Now, any quality IT people and shops that arise in other countries -- and there certainly are some -- will be able to get plenty of work online, as you suggest. But they don't have the size or the bottom-rupee prices to contract with our tech billionaires.
Yesterday's Rush Limbaugh show dedicated a significant amount of time to immigration. He even took on callers who said conservatives should not abandon Rubio in 2016 because of his involvement in drafting the Amnesty bill. He criticised Republicans for refusing to fight democrats on Obamacare and immigration.
ReplyDeleteI was never a Limbaugh fan as I considered him too rah-rah Republican, defending even the odious George W. Bush. However, I have been listening to him fairly regularly for the past two months because he now seems less prone to defend the GOP and strongly against immigration.
ReplyDeleteLimbaugh hits all the important points about the downsides of immigration, but makes additional points I don't hear from any other mainstream commentator. For example:
Many Republican senators and representatives hate the Republican base. They have utter contempt for them and would just as soon have them go away.
Most of the Republicans who support the immigration bill are not so ignorant as to think it's good for the country. They have been bought off by their big-money donors.
The political consultants that advise Republican politicians to support amnesty are primarily concerned with keeping the money flow coming from the pro-open-borders big contributors. The consultants are not greatly concerned with whether or not their candidates win. Their paycheck comes out of the contributions. (Peter Brimelow has made the same observation.)
Limbaugh cites the same figures Steve has provided about the less than eight percent of the vote that is Hispanic versus the nearly 70 percent of the vote that comes from whites.
I know Lennon's Imagine is a lefty hymn, but the Beatles' Revolution was very skeptical of extreme leftism.
ReplyDeleteYou might think they'd gain a better, healthier nation for their grandchildren to grow up in. But I guess when you're a billionaire, crime and societal collapse don't affect you much in your gated estates. And you can always move to the next nice country or buy your own island nation if it comes to that.
ReplyDeleteThe prejudices of the billionaires are no different from the rest of the educated population which has been fed leftist drivel for 70 years since WWII. Why should they think that when none of the so-called "enlightened ones" think that way?
"In defence of the billionaires, why would they? What would they gain by opposing [amnesty]?"
ReplyDeleteWell if deliberately seeking to impoverish your fellow citizens by waging economic warfare on them counted as treason - which it should - then they'd gain not being arrested for a capital offence.
"Harry Baldwin said...
ReplyDeleteThe political consultants that advise Republican politicians to support amnesty are primarily concerned with keeping the money flow coming from the pro-open-borders big contributors. The consultants are not greatly concerned with whether or not their candidates win. Their paycheck comes out of the contributions. (Peter Brimelow has made the same observation.)"
This is a very good and important point. Political consultants get paid whether their candidate wins or not. But the larger are the contributions that the candidate can haul in, the more money the consultant can make off of him.
Is there a form of parasite lower than the campaign consultant? I would think that pimps, pornographers, and telemarketers would rate higher in the heirarchy of bottom-feeders.