The Man Who Made His Accountant Cry March 27
What has 23 acres, an 8000 sq. ft. house with two wings, a guest home, three cottages, a gym, a 5-acre lake, two waterfalls, two bridges, and hundreds of mature cherry and maple trees planted among 1000 redwoods pines and oaks?
The $200 million estate of Larry Ellison, the $25 billion, 12th-ranking member on the Fortune 500 list of world’s richest asswipes. The one that had his aptly-named Octopus Holding company buy it from him in 1995 for a deflated $12 million. The one that just “earned” him a $3 million property tax cut based on a professed 60% decline in the home’s value vs. the 6.3% for an average home. An average home - the ones not being foreclosed on anyway - that is being over-assessed because the neighbors can’t pay their mortgages down at Loan Shark Larry’s Savings and Loan.
And the rationale for the cut? It’s even richer than Larry (and apparently God) himself.
According to his tax appeal, the behemoth bungalow in his private redwood grove suffers from “significant functional obsolescence” because there apparently isn’t much of a market for $200 million pimp cribs. He also says the 16th century Japanese architecture, “over improvements”, and “excessive landscaping” are too costly for mere millionaire to maintains, so gee he’d appreciate it if just give him a break willya?
The Woodside White Elephant
In other words, Larry builds a Japanese-bred white elephant that no one can afford to buy, maintain, or want to live in so the taxpayers now owe him $3 million for his foresight in building such an opulent slum. Or as a consumer watchdog group puts into perspective, “Three million dollars to Larry Ellison is the equivalent of $300 to the average home owner.” Oh, and just so you know we aren’t picking on poor beleaguered Larry, Bill Gates did the same thing several years ago with his Redmond, WA-based monument to ostentation, avarice, and greed.
It makes you really admire modest billionaires like Warren Buffett, who actually pay taxes.
But Woodside, CA town manager Susan George says the deal is on the up and up. “It shouldn’t make any difference how much money he has if the process is fair. We’ll miss the money. We always have good things to do with it.”
True enough, but that’s relatively easy for George to say. Cash-flush Woodside is usually the top or near-top median income ZIP code in the country. The rest of relatively affluent - but still within human understandingly affluent - San Mateo County isn’t so lucky. They have people who can’t afford to claim their E. Palo Alto, cockroach-infested apartment is worthless because it’s “significantly functionally obsolete” with a leaking roof and broken plumbing. BTW, East Palo Alto is the other Palo Alto, the one that’s not home to multiple multi-millionaires and Stanford University. The folks in E. Palo Alto suffer from a crippling crime rate and crumbling housing over there on the wrong side of the freeway - the side that isn’t protected by sound fencing like the gracious folks across the road.
Rich Shouldn’t Matter
In principle I agree with the town manager. It shouldn’t matter how much money you have. So I suppose Larry wouldn’t mind if his revaluation was the going 6.3% - just to be fair and all. I’m sure he won’t mind, because he could just recoup the money by delaying the painting of his yacht, the world’s largest. Or perhaps he could stop routinely violating nighttime noise restrictions at San Jose International for landing after hours in his private Gulfstream jet. He was exempted from the noise restrictions too.
Larry is well-known as the infant-terrible of Silicon Valley. He runs his company Oracle based on the principles of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
He regularly buys out any competitors, frequently in hostile takeovers - and grinds their successful products under his heel in order to buy new sails for his America’s Cup yacht or gas for his aerobatic team. At each hostile takeover, employees lose jobs to feed Larry’s Giant Maw of GreedTM. And it’s a hungry maw indeed. So hungry, that Larry’s accountants warned him several years ago to cut his fantastic spending lest he bankrupt himself.
It’s Tough Out There for a Billionaire Pimp
I guess $12 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to.
I’m a firm believer in capitalism, although I recognize its limitations if left totally unrestricted. I have nothing against people earning money. In fact, I don’t care if a person makes billions - more power to them. But if you make billions you also inherit some responsibilities.
One of those responsibilities is paying your taxes like any other good citizen of modest means without a buttload of full-time shysters to find boondoggle tax breaks. It also comes with a moral responsibility to not deprive others to feed your own hubris and greed. Don’t take money away from schools and hospitals simply because you can. It’s not a frickin’ game to see who dies with the most toys. Don’t lay off employees to get that quarterly bonus that’s just about equal to the money you “saved” by laying them off. I don’t require you to find the light and abandon your Marley-like stinginess like Bill Gates turned away from his once well-known anti-philanthropic ways. Hell, you can even illegally fly your jet late at night provided you pay buy soundproofing for the more modest home owners who will go to work exhausted tomorrow from a lost night of sleep courtesy of your (literally) money-burning flying hard on. In short, all I ask you to do is act like a normal human being instead of a shit stain in the crotch of humanity’s Jockey shorts.
In short Larry, stop being such an asshole.
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Hiromi Mar 27
Ya know, the Vatican recently declared seven new Deadly Sins: #5 is “Contributing between a widening divide between rich and poor” and #6 is “Excessive wealth.”
Somebody sic the Pope on him!
But seriously, in this day and age, it never ceases to amaze me how a hyper-Darwinian, winner takes all kind of approach to capitalism has somehow become not only acceptable, but somehow moral as well. Many people seem to automatically assume that if you’ve got money, it’s because you’ve earned it. And those who have acquired their wealth through less than honest and fair means are the quickest to trumpet the virtues of self-help and “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” and the American fucking dream. This kind of sick myth-making is spurred on by the dogma that government regulation = godless Communism and Market Forces are seen almost as equivalent to neutral and fair forces of nature.
Gah, this makes me SICK.
Dusty Mar 27
Reminds me of the asshole that owned CountryWide..he got a huge ass check even though the company was in the shitter and had to be bought by BofA in order to remain solvent.
His name escapes me, probably because I think of him as the ultimate crapweazel.
Dusty Mar 27
Here it is:
chief Angelo Mozilo was quietly cashing out a $118.2 million options windfall ahead of its new troubles.Filings showed that he typically netted about $4 million a week on his options sales since December. In the two weeks ahead of yesterday’s earnings news, Mozilo had cashed in 442,000 options for a profit of $11.09 million, including a $1.7 million gain on 70,000 options he redeemed on the eve of the earnings release.
His windfall exceeds the $72.2 million gain he made on options in the entire year of 2006. The latest proxy in June said Mozilo held about 8.2 million options that he could redeem for as little as $9.60 a share.
Janice Mar 28
Oh great one… seems that alot of people want to Tell Him Off
Omnipotent Poobah Mar 28
Hiromi,
I agree, although I suppose you could make an arguement that market forces are like nature…cheetah is hungry…cheetah chases down gazzelle…cheetah eats gazelle…chettah = free market capitalist.
Good for the cheetah, but not so much for the gazzelle.
Dusty,
No doubt there are many CEOs ingeneral (abnd that one in particular) are big dicks with ears. Get a load of this CEO though. He’s a REALLY class act:
http://consumerist.com/370052/htfc-mortgage-company-ceo-has-a-potty-mouth
Janice,
Very true. The SF Chron got over 400 letters to the editor about it. Mostly against, but a large handful for him.
The pro-Larry’s argue everyone is just jealous and Larry didn’t break the law. Me? I could do without the $12 billion, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. As for the law, I agree he didn’t do anything illegal, but isn’t the whole point of the law to impose some sense of order on society? If not, then what the hell good are they?
distributorcap Mar 29
and these people are treated like rock stars by the media…..
and us descamisados……..
Omnipotent Poobah Mar 29
DC,
Actually, Larry might actually be the exception. I’d say the vast majority of his press is negative. Even the financial press berates him and when they do cover something successful, they almost always through in some background that iintimates to what an asshole he is.
I guess that just goes to show you that most people do indeed have a price and the price for kicking Larry’s spoiled ass is pretty low.
Blu Man Chu Mar 29
you could have picked a number of people beyond just bill and ellison. this group is a sad bunch of humans. they make the robber barons look like little old cookie baking grannies. but they are also a mirror of who the rest of us have become. just a much larger mirror today.
fairlane Mar 30
Does he have a Foundation where I can send my donations?
Poor chap, this is a complete, and utter Travesty!
God Bless the Corporation, and when are you Proletariat finally going to get the message, and DIE?!!!
Omnipotent Poobah Mar 31
Fairlane,
My heart bleeds for him too. It’s astonishing that such things could happen to people like Larry in this country of ours.