Just sitting here with my morning coffee wondering what I would be focusing on with an extra
PER. YEAR. to spend. ( read that again I'll wait )
First would be a private ISLAND and a boat with crew:
Then, a private retreat up NORTH
Some nice transportation
Oh ya, and some body guards:
Ya, I know what you're saying, "that's rather immature and shallow Irish" but hey, I would still have upwards of 900,000,000 or so to spend in the first year alone.
My real lofty goal would be to fund ways to expose all the corruption in local govenments here
in New England. In parellel I would fund all good conservative politicians and conservative lawyers. ( ya we need them ) All in an effort to drive the liberals out of New England. All, legally of course. I would fund and or invest in the best private research for heart disease, cancer, alzheimers etc. All cause so much pain and suffering here on our planet.
We might get back to the moon and maybe someday to Mars but my shortsightedness tells me that amount of annual money would be best spent fixing where we are.
Especially when we only have 12 years left:
Research a cure for homosexuality and sexuality identity disorder while you're at it. Maybe buy a bunch of land along the US/Mexico border and build your own wall.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to agree with Bezos on one thing: getting cheap access to outer space means getting a ticket out of this madhouse. Getting to orbit for pennies per pound is just the first step. Then comes giant space habitats (~500km in diameter) and a new frontier. Every group that wants its own world can buy one and no one has to interact with any group he doesn't want to. Freedom!
Keep the toys, I'll take Girls of The IDF for a thousand Alex.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.getzone.com/news-florida-teachers-can-now-legally-carry-firearms-in-schools/?trk_msg=I5CJUJVJQJEK5DSGI8FDK983V4&trk_contact=AEUAVQ9J5B89OC1N74IPLAEAT0&trk_sid=QOBKKLTTT93HAHAHVAOEA18FQ0
ReplyDeleteNot bad choices Irish, however for your northers property I can fix you up with a grand bison ranch in my neighborhood for less than a million: https://www.landwatch.com/Yukon-Koyukuk-County-Alaska-Farms-and-Ranches-for-sale/pid/331342498
ReplyDeleteA couple of my favorite New England/Rhode Island corruption stories. The smaller the political entity the deeper the corruption.
ReplyDeleteWhen my family moved back to New England at the beginning of my senior year in highschool the Newport Bridge was in it's final stages of construction. (Yeah I'm that old!) The state of RI had specified that Bethlehem Steel use a locally manufactured paint that was purported to be the latest and greatest in corrosion resistance. This pair was of course produced by a company with connections in the corrupt State House. (More on that in a bit.) Well low and behold the steel began rusting, in some cases before it was erected into the bridge. The states reaction too was to file suit against Bethlehem alleging they had not used the specified paint (they had) and to withhold all payments on the teens of thousands of tons of steel used in the construction. This of course took years to resolve, in Bethlehem's favor, but it was of little good for the company as they had already been forced into chapter 11 bankruptcy in large part because of RI having withheld money owed them. In the end RI had to pay but at a reduced real rate due to the rampent inflation of the time and less the huge legal fees Bethlehem was forced to pay out, and Bethlehem went tits up.
As sick and twisted as this story is, it doesn't hold a candle to the story of one Joseph Bevalaqua. In the mid to late 1960s the FBI had a wire tap on Raymond Patriarca, the head of the Italian mob in SE New England. On that tap they caught him giving the orders to murder to brothers who were running a floating crap game on Federal Hill in Providence after they had been repeatedly warned to move the game off the Hill. Needless to say these to brothers were murdered. Raymond was then tried and convicted for conspiricy to murder and given a long sentence. After several years he of course came up for parole. Enter the aforementioned Mr. Bevalaqua who successfully argued (surprise, surprise) that the authorities could keep better track of Patriarca if he was on parole than they could in a jail cell! How does this tie into corruption at the State House? Simple. Bevalaqua was at the time not just a mob lawyer but also the Speaker Of The House! Worse yet some six months after Patriarca's release from prison Bevalaqua was nominated and confirmed as Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court! It took some tweaks years of agitation by outraged citizen groups to finally drive him off the bench. Today his son Joseph Jr. is speaker of the house and RI is the only state in the Union that has an allegedly independent commission charged with reviewing all legislative proposals to see if they provide benefit to members of the legislature rather than the citizens of the state.
You just can't make this shít up.
Bezos lunar plans reminds me of RA Heinlein's story, "The Man Who Sold The Moon".
ReplyDeleteToxic Deplorable B Woodman