"This weekend, yet another story about Hillary Clinton's outsize wealth ricocheted through the blogosphere, this one publicizing her contract for a $225,000 speech at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Foundation. Among her requests: travel on a $39 million Gulfstream jet, round-trip business class tickets for her advance team, a $500 cash stipend, lodging in a presidential suite plus five more rooms, and coverage for all meals and incidentals. The story, based on a public-records request, has the same sneering, how-dare-she quality that much of the coverage of Clinton’s money has taken on ...Wait, Hillary Clinton – the woman likely to be the next leader of the free world, a person as in-demand as Lady Gaga, Oprah and the Pope – doesn’t charge a modest speaking fee, make her own way and fade into the background? Cue the outrage! ... But what the pundit class sees as the real issue for Clinton is not the money so much as it is her awkward embrace of it – her Romney-like inability to take it as a given that she is very rich, and to stress that she empathizes with middle-class Americans rather than living their same struggles. She infamously described her family as 'dead broke' when leaving the White House. 'We struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education,' she added. 'You know, it was not easy.' Then she ham-handedly tried to explain that they are ordinary-rich, not rich-rich. 'We pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names,' she said. 'And we've done it through dint of hard work.' It's been enough to cement a narrative about Clinton being out of touch. What has been strange about Clinton’s responses to the questions about the many tens of millions she and her husband have pulled in of late is that there is an elegant and obvious rich-Democrat way to answer them. She simply has to say, 'Yes, we’re really lucky. And I know first-hand that we don’t need a tax break for our millions in earnings or our private jet.' It’s a well-worn response, too, given by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton among many others.But it is a response that Mitt Romney, whose economic policies would probably have slashed his own taxes while raising them for lower-income Americans, could never give." (NYMag)
"Ousted 'Meet the Press' anchor David Gregory was paid $4 million to leave NBC and signed a contract not to speak out against the network, sources told Page Six. Gregory, 43, who moderated the show for six years, was unceremoniously dumped from the political program on Thursday after dismal ratings and months of speculation about his departure. He has been replaced by NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd. A source said Gregory’s contract extended into next year, so NBC had to pay him for the rest of the term, plus an extra fee to ensure his silence. In return, he was asked to sign a nondisparagement clause, which explains — despite the drama behind the scenes — his saccharine message on Twitter to announce his departure." (P6)
"Everyone knows the US imprisons more people than any other country in the world. What they might not know is that, as an American citizen, you’re more likely to be jailed than if you were Chinese, Russian or North Korean; that, with 2.3 million inmates, there are currently the same amount of people imprisoned in the States as the combined populations of Estonia and Cyprus; and that once Americans are sent to jail, they tend to keep going back. According to a recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics—a US Department of Justice agency—within six months of release 28 percent of inmates get rearrested for a new crime. After three years, the figure rises to 68 percent. By the end of five years, it’s an alarming 77 percent. But terrible recidivism rates have been a constant in the Land of the Free. The Pew Research Center issued its own report on the problem in 2011; the conclusion was bleak. Too many criminal offenders emerge from prison ready to offend again, and more than four out of 10 adult offenders in America return to prison within three years of their release. For too many Americans, the prison door keeps revolving. How do we try to change whatever it was that brought someone into trouble with the law? And if that proves impossible, what is the best way that society can protect itself? I wanted to find out. I also wanted to see how much of what I knew—or thought I knew—about jail turned out to be true. So I wrote to corrections departments worldwide asking for access. Russia, China, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Jamaica, Sweden, Norway, France, the UK and Britain’s own off-shore tax haven, the Isle of Man all refused because my personal safety 'could not be guaranteed.' The Zimbabwean prison service said that 'the request was considered,' but they turned me down eventually. I even sent an email to Guantanamo Bay but got no reply. Just as I was about to give up, I discovered that I could go to jail in America as an 'undercover voluntary detainee.' With the right procedure I could gain admittance to 'holding facilities' in Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska and North Dakota. My contacts in law enforcement helped cook up a plausible cover story: I was arrested for driving a stolen car on the wrong side of the road and found in possession of methamphetamine. The cover was funny because a) I cannot drive, and b) I had absolutely no idea what methamphetamine was." (Vice)
"1000 years ago as I was sorting through my first divorce, (second happiest day of my life), I had a rental house full of furniture and objects. It was easy enough to get rid of the rental, especially as it belonged to the ex-husband’s mother, and then I shoved all those ridiculous objects into storage and forgot about them. It had all seemed quite inexpensive at $100 month. A decade and $12,000 later and still all those objects were moldering in the storage unit. So when friends of mine decided to get married I figured what better present than the key to my storage unit. I told them everything in this unit is yours. All you have to do is clear it out so that I don’t have to keep paying for it. He took it very well and said thank you while she decided I must be making preparations to kill myself. She got quite concerned, she said it looked like I was getting all my affairs in order. I said fat chance, I said take this key and save me please from this financial hemorrhaging. So they did and they filled up their new house with all of my possessions and occasionally through the years I’ve been to visit and it’s always a bit of a shock to pick up a fork I bought or to sleep in a bed I picked out, or to look at the paintings on the walls, all mine! For one thing that first husband was a painter so I had a lot of his paintings, I was even in some of them. I heard of an excellent moment when my ex-husband visited that house and after a few beats realized he knew everything around him and got quite a surprise. Although this is not nearly as funny as the time the gun-toting guerrillas marched him off our hill in beautiful Colombia but that’s another story." (Christina Oxenberg)
 |
| Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway a year before her death in 1975. |
"Warm and beautiful Summer weekend in East Hampton and Watch Hill where the NYSD staff members were taking a weekend away. JH and his wife went to stay in Rhode Island, and DPC went to East Hampton to attend the 40th Anniversary celebration and benefit for ARF (Animal Rescue Fund) in the Hamptons. (More about that on tomorrow’s NYSD) In the name of a summer break, we’re taking a Sort of few days away from our keyboards and professional obligations. So this week and next we are mainly re-running in chronological order, the Photo Archives of Ellen Glendinning Fraser Ordway — the Philadelphia-Palm Beach-Northeast Harbor socialite who was born at the beginning of the last century — began taking photos in the 19-teens and methodically posting them in her private photo albums through the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Ellen Ordway, as she was known for a good part of her adult life, was a serious amateur photographer. It was not a career she pursued professionally but the tens of thousands of photos she took of her world and its denizens over almost seven decades are tribute to her commitment that rivals any professional. Mrs. Ordway was born in 1901 and died in 1976. Beginning in the twenties, she photographed her life and those who were part of it. It is a unique document of American society in the American 20th century by a woman who was at the center of it. All of work is presented as extemporaneously as the modern digital images captured through Instagram and Twitter. Her objective was simple: to photograph what and who she saw and socialized with. We see fascinating travels, great friendships, marriages, divorced and real people relaxing among the international leisure class with emphasis on Americans." (NYSD)
No comments:
Post a Comment