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PostPosted: 12/29/14 10:45 am • # 1 
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Since the author refers to this being a "... weekly roundup ...', I'll go in search of more commentaries by her and will add anything I find to this thread ~ I'm somewhat surprised that the author could limit this commentary to just 5 examples ~ :ey ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

AlterNet / By Natalie Shure
5 Worst Things Rich People Did This Week
’Tis the season for the very wealthy to be just as miserly as usual.

December 27, 2014 | The scroogiest among us don’t hold anything back just because of some holiday. ’Tis the season to be just as miserly as usual. Here’s our weekly roundup of some of the worst infractions committed by one-percenters.

1. It makes me feel sad when you assert your humanity. Including Glenn Beck on roundups like this can feel futile, since there’s a good chance he’ll outdo himself between the time the story is filed and when it actually runs. Still, he’s distinguished himself this week so far by claiming on his radio show that men like him are the true victims of discrimination in America. "You want to talk about racism? You want to talk about bigotry?" Beck asked on-air. "Let me ask you, have you tried being me? Have you tried being a conservative? Have you tried being a Tea Party member?” Beck, whose net worth is reportedly near $100 million, alleges he is the victim of centuries of systemic oppression because right-wingers in Hollywood are unpopular. It should be noted that Beck is right about one thing: I haven’t tried to be a conservative, or a Tea Party member. I really can’t understand the pain of American institutions conforming to my every need like memory foam.

2. Uber: This one is really on you for believing us. If you think a company named after the German superlative for supreme would stop at run-of-the-mill crappy behavior, think again. After Uber caught flack for casually suggesting weaponizing a journalist’s personal life to silence her, and upcharging users escaping from a terrorist attack, Uber’s latest sociopathic party foul is straight-up lying to its drivers about how to protect themselves with insurance. BuzzFeed News reported that Uber is pushing its contract drivers to stick with personal insurance instead of commercial insurance, even though the California DMV and insurance companies both say an individual policy wouldn’t cover an incident incurred during the “trolling period” before an Uber transaction. And not only does it lie about insurance, it also lies about pizza! At a recent UberX driver meeting, Uber failed to provide the free pizza it promised attendees.

3. In our defense, French words are confusing. As more and more Americans oppose the mass slaying of furry animals to make a fashion statement, top fashion labels have devised strategies to make faux fur look and feel like the real deal. Their go-to trick? Just lie about it! According to a Today Show segment, "faux" fur used by Michael Kors, Jacardi and Nordstrom all turned out in lab tests to be the real thing. A majority of the "faux" fur-trimmed jackets tested by the Humane Society of the United States turned out to be from raccoon dogs raised in horrific conditions in China. As you may guess, the brands blamed a tedious chain of events and suppliers for the error. Quartz reports that high-end fake fur is generally more expensive than the real stuff, which appears to be the motive. Nonetheless, the companies say they are very, very sorry that anyone found out about this and they vow to alter their policies of fleecing consumers.

4. You hippies can’t obscure the truth about fiction. The Sony leaks revelation that Idris Elba may be the next James Bond has made one sack of flour’s face even angrier than usual. “James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming,” Rush Limbaugh fumed on his radio show. “He was white and Scottish, period. That’s who James Bond is.” It is no surprise that he should be so defensive of source material generated a half-century ago, at a time in which Limbaugh’s favored ethos of whiteness-as-irrefutable-default reigned supreme. First they came for the passe fictional characters, and I did not speak out—because I was not a dingbat. Make no mistake, letting a black guy play 007 may well send society cascading down a slippery slope toward being expected to acknowledge marginalized people’s existence ALL THE TIME. The “PC Police” won’t even let you shoot citizens with impunity anymore.

5. Giuliani has some interesting ideas about cause and effect. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Rudy Giuliani—the guy who exploited 9/11 to craft a personal political identity—would cram a national tragedy into his partisan narrative. But you’ve got to admire the mental focus it must have taken to blame the murder of two NYPD officers on President Obama. “We’ve had four months of propaganda, starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani blubbered on Fox News. “The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged,” he lamented. “Even the peaceful protests lead to a conclusion: The police are bad, the police are racist.” It is unclear how Obama coordinated a massive months-long protest movement across multiple cities. Still, it seems obvious that Obama is culpable. Republicans welcome any executive order he makes. Couldn’t he have used one to shut down peaceful protest, a central democratic process protected by the First Amendment? Couldn’t Obama have traveled across the country with a Sharpie and edited all the protest signs to include slogans about black-on-black crime???

http://www.alternet.org/5-worst-things-rich-people-did-week?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


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