The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

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Unrestrained corporatists are an interesting breed. To them, government is inherently evil. CEOs see the government as a bunch of anti-corporate lunatics that would take away their God-given right to turn a buck. They resist even the smallest threat of limp-wristed regulation on the grounds that the “free” market is the only way to run the nation’s economic show.No doubt there’s value in a free market approach, but the world has never seen a truly free market. It’s only seen markets that are more or less “free” relatively to other more or less “free” markets. And the markets aren’t truly free because corporatists want them that way. It’s much easier to con a Congressman into voting for some corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks or incentives to do something they should be doing anyway - for example, to stop spewing contaminants into the air and water - than it is to truly compete. If that wasn’t true, K St. would be lined with trendy condos instead of lobbyist offices.

Corporatists argue that deregulation creates beneficial competition, so they resist efforts to regulate as though they were being thrown to the lions. Deregulation is far from some holy grail. Airlines used to be regulated. It was a wonderful era, one in which people actually boarded airplanes with the unreasonably high expectation of getting where they wanted to go. Today you’re lucky to end your flight in the correct hemisphere, much less the Guantanamo-like conditions of the major airport of your choosing. Today, there are fewer airlines, they are considerably less safe, they treat customers like turds on their neighbor’s lawn, and I defy anyone to say how much a ticket costs since rates are made up on the spot by computers randomly selecting prime numbers filtered through Madame Desiree’s crystal ball.

Yep, that whole deregulation thing was a panacea for the consumer and investors, wasn’t it?

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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.

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I’ve recited the Pledge of Allegiance more times than I can count. When I joined the military, I took an oath not unlike those taken by the President. The oaths don’t prevent anyone from dishonoring them, but they do remind those swearing them that more is at stake than simply winning an election or enlisting for military job training.

Our current President is a case in point. He swore oaths as a member of the Texas National Guard and as President and one could argue that he hasn’t exactly vigorously protected the Constitution or battled against all enemies foreign and domestic. However, every job doesn’t require a loyalty oath. We don’t require them of trash collectors or computer programmers, but some states require them of state employees.

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