Lifestyles of the Rich and Contemptible

[kairos12]

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/the_obscene_lifestyles_of_the_global_super_rich_partner/

snip:
They want high-security buildings where their identities are protected, complete with panic rooms and stockpiles of food and water in case of emergency. In case there’s a Third World meltdown, they want a First World stronghold.

I used to think only rats, roaches and syphilis would survive a nuclear war. Unfortunately, I think have to update that list with these wretched sophists.

[Octafish]

1. Frank "Our Man in Congo" Carlucci, of MIC-Carlyle Group fame, has got a service...

The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.

AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.

SNIP...

Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.

SNIP...

While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles

PS: Do you think they know something we don't know, kairos12? Going by the record over the past 50 years, I know they think we are not authorized to know.

[scarletlib]

2. Gotta love those libertarian groups

I see a few issues here.
First where do these yahoos think they are going to get their food and alcohol and fine wines from? You can only just store so much food etc on a boat & growing enough to supply their fine palates and refined tastes. Their fancy clothes when the ones on board start to wear out? These massive behemoths have to dock sometimes. Or maybe they just have boats come to them with supplies. Either way they can't severe all ties with those left on land. And that leaves them vulnerable.

Those on land will still have jets & planes. Maybe we will just drop a few bombs on the suckers just for the hell of it. Oh yeah we will still have access to the oceans too. And submarines etc.

I like this plan. Nothing better than to get a bunch of them all in one place at one time.

Really no scheme they can devise can totally protect them if enough people finally say enough is enough.

[kairos12]

4. Poe's Masque of the Red Death would be a lesson in this. Maybe today it would be Masque of The Red

State Death.

[scarletlib]

7. Good point.

I remember reading that story. That is an excellent analogy.

[ck4829]

3. But... but... The American Enterprise Intstitute said economic inequality is a 'good thing'!

According to them, other right wing think tanks, trickle down economics, Fox News, the Republicans, and more; at this point, by their logic and 'studies', it should be raining manna from Heaven, the streets should be paved with gold, everyone's kitchens should be stocked with unlimited food, and we should all be flying to our cushy 100 dollar an hour jobs that feature having fun as a job requirement on our zero emission hover cars that are fueled by happy thoughts.

So, Why Isn't It Doing That Yet?

[Warpy]

5. Oh, they'd be a lot of fun to watch once the food ran out

and the generators broke down or ran out of fuel.

Hell, those people don't even know how to sew a button on.

They are utterly dependent on technology. Wide support for technology goes away, they're going to be in really tough shape. Their money will be worthless, too.

[kairos12]

6. There is a news story out there

about a ghost ship full of diseased cannibal rats floating adrift in the Atlantic. I think the outcome for the floating one percent would be similar.