NEW YORK—“The City of London Is Hiding the World’s Stolen Money,” screams a Bagel Times headline, as bogus a message as that caricature of a newspaper’s other captions of an antiwhite, anti-cop, anti-male, and anti-Conservative platform. (“Bid the binary goodbye,” is another pearl.) Not that anyone takes the Bagel Times seriously any longer since it decided that whites are very bad people, and that it will cover only Blacks (capitals for them, lowercase for us). Still, I found it amusing that London is responsible for the shame of the Pandora Papers, when most of the miscreants involved are third-world dictators and Eastern oligarchs.
Never mind. A newspaper that consistently shades the facts to suit its agenda—even book reviews are assigned to well-known haters of the subject reviewed—is not to be taken seriously, and it’s not, but as I’m traveling and feeling good, I will for the second week running defend the very rich. For starters, it’s only the very rich who are clobbered when investing in Silicon Valley start-ups that go belly-up. Those below a certain net worth are not allowed by law to invest. Mark one for the common man and woman. When a start-up implodes, as most of them do, the very rich take it with their chin up, while the media laugh like hyenas. But the working stiffs are safe by having been excluded from the start.
I am too bored to read the Pandora or Panama disclosures; suffice it to say when a nation like the Central African Republic’s leader and his sons, the notorious Teodoro Obiang clan, lord it over one of the world’s poorest nations but own yachts, private jets, and tens of houses in Paris and Beverly Hills, something’s very wrong. The same applies to President Kenyatta, whose name appears in many a list but is seen as a good guy by the West. Whereas I find nothing wrong when those who worked and took chances to make their money legally minimize their taxes and obscure their assets. Let the hacks make up stories about “global anger” over the rich-poor divide. Globally, the poor are too busy trying to make a living to be angry at the divide.
If the envious ones really wished to stop the rich hiding their money, they should go after the source. Places like Dubai, Monaco, the Cayman Islands, and good old Panama, among other playgrounds less known to the poor little Greek boy. What I would like to know, however, is what is wrong with trying to shield one’s children and grandchildren from unscrupulous extortionist politicians who live off the taxes paid by the rich? I understand emotional resentment by those with less toward those with much, but it’s the latter who keep things really going, and that’s the awful truth, like it or not. Here in the Bagel, the New York Post revealed that 65% of Bagelites pay no taxes at all, the billions dished out each year by the state to the less fortunate coming from the less than one percent of the very rich. No one seems to be complaining about this the last time I read about Pandora and Panama.
