I used to subscribe to Texas Monthly magazine, back in the days before Texas became the land of migrant haters and backward schools, and one day it shows up in the mail and who’s on the cover but the son of a president that I was happy was not the president any more.
The article said that this son of a Bush was going to be a presidential contender in 2000 because he had already been able to amass $100 million war chest, playing off his famous name. Not to mention his famous name would probably get him votes just because.
Well, he did end up the next president, for better or worse. I remember that $100 million because really, he didn’t really seem to have an aptitude for governing, so it must have been that. Up until then I thought that the requirements for running for president was intelligence and experience, plus an ability to pick and manage a cabinet of advisors.
But as the decades went by, I also got caught up in the connection between fundraising and winning elections. The last thing I wanted out of the most recent presidential election was for the orange haired guy, who I foolishly thought was discredited, to win. Every week I kept donating to Kamala Harris, as did lots of other people, and I remember that she raised and spent something like a billion dollars.
I was foolish again to think that all this money, including mine, would make her a shoe-in, but you know what happened.
But then we have this recent mayoral primary. I must admit that I was concentrating on City Council races, both here (I’m a Chris Marte fan), and in Brooklyn, where we publish another paper. And in all these cases, plus the mayor’s race, big big money was spent against the city council incumbents, and for Andrew Cuomo (who I actu-ally thought was also discredited).
It was real estate money against the City Council incumbents, with the goal of putting in candidates who cared less about the community and more about their real estate developers, as rezonings depend on the Council’s approval.
So I’m a little confused now about the money part, but actually the im-petus for this column was a state-ment made by the hedge funder Bill Ackman who, the day after the primary, was quoted in the papers as saying he’d spend any amount of money, maybe even a billion dollars, to support anybody who would run against Mamdani in the fall.
To me that’s disgusting, not so much because it’s Mamdani he seems to hate, but because of this same at-titude that elections can be bought and sold. He probably thinks that the $25 million that was given to Andrew Cuomo by the various PAC’s just wasn’t enough.
I happen to think that people are fi-nally getting that it’s time for the youth of America to take charge, and put old fogeys like me (and even our middle aged children who helped bring us Trump), out to pasture.
I was at an election night party for Park Slope’s Shahana Hanif, one of the incumbents who beat off a mon-eyed challenger, and was heartened at the lack of old people, and even middle aged people there. And the 20 somethings were so enthusiastic!
So I’m here looking up Bill Ackman on the computer and see that his net worth is $9.3 billion. That’s more than 9000 times a million dollars.
Does that make any sense to you? 9,300 times one million dollars.
On the same earth where people are still starving to death. More so now that this country has opted out of helping countries dealing with fam-ines. And what does this guy want to do with his billions? Elect somebody else so his taxes won’t go up?
There are things wrong with a society that wants to kick out people working and studying here, but for $5 million welcome anyone who wants to emi-grate here.
I happen to think that a great many problems we have here stem from the ever widening disparity of in-comes. I kind of think that an per-sonal income cap wouldn’t really be a bad idea. As one millionaire friend once said to me, “how many pairs of pants can I wear at one time?”
So I was amazed at the ridicule given to Mamdani when the other day he remarked that maybe there oughtn’t be billionaires.
Mamdani is not stupid, and he is not a communist. After all, he’s a Bronx Science grad, as am I, and we all know what we’re talking about.
