This blog has long chronicled one of the most notorious pathologies of billionaires — the compulsion to create perpetual construction noise. Infinite implosion, enlargement, elaboration, further enlargement, and finally reimplosion as the results fail to satisfy, or as the municipality makes the billionaire take it all down because he was too arrogant to get permits… Then the lengthy lawsuits resulting in further, somewhat amended, construction, deconstruction, reconstruction, deconstruction…
Imagine having spent a lot of money to live in a classy discreet Manhattan co-op only to discover that the hedgie next door is deep into a lifelong wall-explosion frenzy. Imagine (see my headline) living on Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto street and trying to deal not only with endless thundering construction zones but daily traffic from his illegal personal Montessori school, as well as from his restlessly coming and going non-specific serf-army. “Frankly I’m not sure what’s going on,” one neighbor said…“Except for noise and construction debris.”
Building private institutions (schools, churches, synagogues, and health clinics are popular) is another billionaire pathology, part of the paranoid journey whereby withdrawal from the public world into a hypersecure fully equipped private world completes itself.
The incoming mayor of a metropolitan area rife with billionaires and close-to-billionaires won big in the last election in part because billionaires have made themselves detestable. If Andrew Cuomo thought he could turn things around by taking gobs of money from … billionaires, he was a real idiot for thinking so.
We could spend time, I guess, analyzing the root causes of the two behaviors that make everyone who shares their world hate billionaires – total withdrawal from the public realm without the decency to shut up about it. The rest of us must hear and witness the cacophony of their world-contempt, their mad, haughty, removal from humanity. Howard Hughes had nothing on these guys. But he in his day was a one-off. In places like NY and CA they constitute a society – a loud, rule-flouting, society, for whom what lies outside the wall implosions exists to be ignored or exploited.
For all its seeming withdrawal, the ethos is one, obviously, of naked aggression.
Federally allocated taxpayer money to feed hungry Missouri children! Twenty million dollars! So generous! SOOOO generous that the person allocating it figured she could take most of it herself – McMansions and a fluro yellow $200,000 Mercedes and lots more shit like that. She left a trickle for the kids.
Every day their beloved superintendent turns out to be guilty of yet another category of crime. Today: Drug trafficking! Stay tuned!
He was arrested by ICE with the help of the Iowa State Patrol on Sept. 26. ICE said Roberts attempted to flee arrest and was found hiding in the brush. The vehicle he was driving was found with $3,000 in cash, a fixed blade knife and a loaded Glock 9mm pistol, which led to additional criminal charges of being an illegal alien in possession of firearms.
A real gift to Trump. All tied up with a ribbon.
Iowa will never live it down. They actually paid money to a firm to vet the guy!
Yeah but meanwhile there’s an easy $150,000 to make by lying… er… testifying about a Tylenol/autism link. Headline, Harvard Crimson:
Harvard’s Public Health Dean Was Paid $150,000 to Testify Tylenol Causes Autism
Really disgusting. Surprising this behavior comes not only from Harvard, but Harvard’s dean of public health!
Greedy little dude refuses to talk to the Crimson about it, which is NOT surprising. If the Crimson keeps at the story, its reporters stand a chance of earning a journalism prize or two. And meanwhile, the greedy little dude gets to enjoy his time in the Trump sun.
Whaddya want me to say? Just tell me what to say in order for me to get paid or to save my ass:
In a statement on Monday night, Dr. Baccarelli slightly distanced himself from [the Trump administration’s claim of a causal relationship,] saying, “Further research is needed to confirm the association and determine causality, but based on existing evidence, I believe that caution about acetaminophen use during pregnancy — especially heavy or prolonged use — is warranted.”
In his 2023 expert report for the lawsuit, however, Dr. Baccarelli wrote that “substantial evidence supports a strong, positive, causal association between acetaminophen” and neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly autism and A.D.H.D.
Will he be fired? Stay tuned. Will a congressional inquiry happen? Stay tuned.
… when all the kids in your town died from viruses for which we now have vaccines.
For many ultraorthodox, the old unvaccinated ways remain the best, which is why a bunch of their kids are currently suffering and dying from the measles. Well done!
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Let’s hear from the rabbis.
[S]ome ultra-Orthodox believe that there is a connection between vaccines and autism, despite the fact that the CDC says there is none. A major Orthodox rabbi has called vaccines a “hoax.” He and two other rabbis who sit on the rabbinnical board that guides Agudath Israel of America, the leading Haredi umbrella group, have cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines.
On the efficacy of measles at killing children I assume these rabbis are in agreement.
In a different era, the yucky Yorks would long since have been shipped to Australia (or Bermuda), enabling the crown to survive and the Yorks to gorge and cavort along the Gold Coast.
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Five other charities have now done the same.
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Why doesn’t the crown toss these people? UD figures it’s because Andrew in particular simply knows too much dirt on the royal family, and is blackmailing them by threatening to reveal it.
