This was somewhat disappointing. I didn't see some of the worst behaviour, like paying African guides to capture endangered animals like tigers, so that a rich person could shoot them in safety and claim them as trophies. Or the ones who travel to countries where they can use child prostitutes.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/154644/10_Most_Obscene_Lifestyles_Choices_of_America%27s_1%25_Elite/?page=entire
by David Sirota March 21, 2012
As the unemployment rate still sits above 8 percent, and one in three Americans struggles to afford medical bills, even the filthiest of filthy rich presidential candidates is at least pretending to empathize with the average American. Granted, they sometimes slip up and expose just how wealthy they are — but at least they are trying.
The same cannot be said of some of these candidates’ cronies in the 1 percent. Whether complaining about having to do their own dishes, or bragging about their car garages costing more than the average American makes in a lifetime, the 1 percenters are all but screaming “let them eat cake” from the ramparts. Here are 10 particularly egregious examples from the last few months.
1. Bankers Struggle at Washing Dishes
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In the Bloomberg piece, Andrew Schiff, who makes $350,000 a year, complains that after renting a second Connecticut vacation house for a full month every year and shelling out $32,000 a year on his child’s elite private school, he now “only” gets to “bring home less than $200,000 after taxes, health-insurance and 401(k) contributions.”
“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” he says. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”
2. Penthouse Parking
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In the apartment building the Times profiles, domiciles go for $7 million a year, including a 300-square-foot “en suite sky garage” that “would be valued at more than $800,000 if priced at the same rate per square foot as the rest of the apartment.
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5. The Oil Baron Who Hiked Tuition
Bruce Benson is a wealthy man. He currently serves as the president of Colorado’s university system. The state should have known better, however, than to put a former oilman and Republican Party chairman in charge of its students’ well-being. Recently, he tried to quietly pass a 15 percent tuition increase in expedited fashion so as to avoid media scrutiny. He was in a rush because he knew such attention would uncover his decision to use last year’s massive tuition hike to finance huge bonuses to CU administrators already making big money. He gave one administrator making $340,000 a year a one-year raise of $49,000. In all, Benson devoted a whopping 29 percent of the tuition increase to raises.
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8. The Sears CEO's New Versailles
While Sears downsizes and lays off employees, company chairman Edward Lampert is buying a sprawling estate on a semi-private island.
The billionaire hedge fund manager and chairman of Sears Holdings Corp. is reportedly set to close on a $40 million estate with seven bedrooms and Versailles-style reflection pools on Indian Creek Island, north of Miami. Meanwhile Sears is selling off 1,200 stores and closing 100 to 120 for good, with Florida seeing the most closings of any state.
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