inherit trust fund baby

===

oops see similar node

see nepotism see oligarchy kaki-

aha omg: koch, mercer, kushner, trump all inherited money!

ellison skydance, murdoch musk? tucker

quite belated, sparked by

===

AN 12 25

One of the most notable characteristics of 2025 has been the shamelessness of the billionaire class and the conspicuousness of its corruption.

For many years, whenever I’ve warned that an increasing portion of the nation’s wealth is falling into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people, the moneyed interests have responded: “But that’s just the free market,” or “the free market has decided they deserve it.”

Rubbish. There’s no such thing as a “free market” to begin with. Today’s so-called “free market” is the outcome of political decisions over monopolization, labor organization, private property, finance, trade, taxes, and much more.

Who’s behind these political decisions? Increasingly, the same small number of ultra-rich who have gained disproportionate influence over our politics. They’ve created five ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more.

1. First, exploit a monopoly.

Does Jeff Bezos deserve his billions because he founded and built Amazon?

No. Amazon is a monopolist with nearly 40 percent of all e-commerce retail sales in America. In addition, Amazon is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. government.

In 2023, the U.S. government — through the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states— charged Amazon with illegally maintaining a monopoly by crushing competition, inflating prices, and harming consumers through anticompetitive practices like punishing sellers who offer lower prices elsewhere. (The trial is currently scheduled to begin in 2027.)

If the government fully enforced anti-monopoly (antitrust) laws and didn’t give Amazon such broad patents, Bezos would be worth far less.

If anti-monopoly laws were enforced, other titans of high tech would be worth far less, too — among them, Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

2. A second way to make more than a billion is to get insider information that’s unavailable to other investors.

Billionaire Steven A. Cohen headed up a hedge fund firm in which, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading was “substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” Nine of Cohen’s present or former employees pleaded guilty or were convicted. Cohen got off with a fine, changed the name of his firm, and apparently is back at the game.

Former billionaire investor Bill Hwang was convicted in late 2024 and sentenced to 18 years for fraud related to the collapse of his Archegos Capital Management. The charges focused on his trading on insider information, market manipulation, and fraud.

The crypto market often experiences sharp volatility linked to policy announcements by the Trump regime. Moments after Trump announced new tariffs on China, one inside trader became $150 million richer from a leveraged short position.

Insider trading is endemic in C-suites. SEC researchers have found that corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their stock on the days following their own stock buyback announcements, when their stock prices soar, as they are in the days leading up to the announcements.

If government cracked down on insider trading, hedge fund mavens and top corporate executives wouldn’t be raking in nearly as much money.

3. A third way to make more than a billion is to buy off politicians who will change the rules of the “free market” in your favor.

The first Trump tax cut has saved Charles Koch and Koch Industries an estimated $1 to $1.4 billion a year, not even counting tax savings on profits stored offshore and a shrunken estate tax. The second Trump tax cut saved the Kochs even more. They and their affiliated groups spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax cut and $550 million seeking to get Trump elected in 2024. Not a bad return on investment.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected in 2024 and is on the way to spending as much if not more trying to keep the House and Senate under Republican control. What does Musk get out of it? Lower taxes on himself and his businesses, rollbacks of regulations that limit his profits, and federal contracts that make him even richer.

Trump and his own family have also reaped big rewards by changing the economy’s rules in their favor. By the end of 2025, they had cleared at least $1.2 billion through their crypto investments — whose value has ballooned in large part because of Trump’s decisions to deregulate crypto and encourage its use.

The value of their crypto investments also rose with Trump’s pardon of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao — the billionaire co-founder of the Binance crypto exchange who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Binance was closely tied to World Liberty Financial, actively managed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Earlier this year, a state-controlled United Arab Emirates firm bought $100 million of cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial — essentially a huge deposit for World Liberty, which could then generate returns in the tens of millions of dollars each year.

Trump’s wealth soared again in mid-December on news that Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded company whose biggest shareholder is Trump, is merging with TAE Technologies, a privately held fusion technology company. The additional wealth was the consequence of more self-dealing by Trump: His Department of Energy had created an Office of Fusion to support the commercialization of fusion.

The family company of billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also been making a bundle off political influence. Lutnick’s company helped raise capital for Toby Neugebauer, a billionaire who’s building one of the giant data centers that will power the next generation of AI, banking millions in fees in the process. Lutnick has also been twisting the arms of American allies and dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects that have given his family’s clients access to foreign capital.

If we had tough anti-corruption laws preventing such political payoffs and self-dealing, the Kochs, Musks, Trumps, Lutnicks, and other high-rollers wouldn’t get the spoils of their political influence: tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and government subsidies that have enlarged their fortunes.

4. The fourth way to make more than a billion is to extort big investors.

Adam Neumann conned J.P.Morgan, SoftBank, and other investors to sink hundreds of millions into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used some of the money to buy buildings he leased back to WeWork and to enjoy a lifestyle that included a $60 million private jet. WeWork never made a nickel of profit.

After Neumann was forced to disclose his personal conflicts of interest, WeWork’s initial public offering fell apart, and the company’s estimated value plummeted. To salvage what they could, investors paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and give up his voting rights. Most other WeWork employees were left holding near-worthless stock options. Thousands were set to be laid off.

A few wealthy fraudsters have been found guilty and forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains (in 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, whose net worth reached an estimated $26 billion, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors of nearly $10 billion).

But many have not. If we had tougher anti-fraud laws and better enforcement, Neumann and others like him wouldn’t be billionaires.

5. The fifth way to make more than a billion is to get the money from rich parents or relatives.

A new UBS report finds that a record number — 91 people — became billionaires in 2025 through inheritance. Their total bounty was almost $300 billion.

It’s the beginning of what’s expected to be the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history, during which heirs will inherit at least $5.9 trillion over the next 15 years.

An estimated 45 percent of all wealth in America is inherited. That’s because, under U.S. tax law — which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the wealthy — the capital gains of one generation are wiped out when those assets are transferred to the next.

As Mitt Romney (remember him?) recently pointed out, had Elon Musk purchased his Tesla stock for, say, $1 billion and held it until his death, and if it were then worth $500 billion, he would never pay the 24 percent federal capital gains tax on the $499 billion profit. Under the current tax code, when Musk’s heirs inherit his stock, the assets will be treated as if the heirs purchased it for $500 billion. So no one will ever pay taxes on the $499 billion capital gain.

If unearned income were treated the same as earned income under the tax code, America’s non-working rich wouldn’t be billionaires. And if capital gains weren’t eliminated at death, many heirs wouldn’t be, either.

The good news is that Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed about the harms billionaires are inflicting on our system. A Harris poll released last month finds that over half of Americans (53 percent) believe that billionaires are threatening democracy.

In addition, a significant 71 percent of Americans believe there should be a wealth tax. And a majority believe there should be a cap on how much wealth a person can accumulate.

These schemes also threaten capitalism itself. The system doesn’t work when monopolies, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth are rigging it. As the system loses public trust, it begins to unravel.

When and if sane and honest people ever again control the U.S. government, one of the first things they should do is enact a tax on large accumulations of wealth.

Also an end to the current rule that allows all capital gains to be erased when the owners of the capital die, thereby enabling heirs to inherit all the accumulated wealth tax-free.

Not the least, we must get big money out of politics — to end the bribes and corruption that have distorted capitalism for the benefit of a handful of people at the top. (Here’s a way to do it.)

*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.*

REF NOV

Several of you responded to my “Sunday thought” yesterday by saying that the first step out of the mess we’re in is to get rid of the Supreme Court’s bonkers Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissiondecision of 2010, which held that corporations are people — entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the rest of us.

Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.

Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.

Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United(we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).

But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.

It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. Maybe you can get it on the ballot in your state, too.

Here’s the thing: Individual states — either through their legislators or their citizens wielding ballot initiatives — have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because they determine what powers corporations have.

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In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.

In fact, corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward,Chief Justice John Marshall established that:

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence….The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”

States don’thaveto grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decidenotto give corporations that power.

This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.

When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.

Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.

Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.

All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:

“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously,exceptthat nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”

Sound farfetched? Not at all.

In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.

Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturn Citizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)

The argument is laid out in a paper that the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)

Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens United irrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.

Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way.

---

an 9 25

While President Donald Trump just “had the most lucrative year of his life,” his immediate family, saysForbes, made even more money.

“Percentage-wise, members of his immediate family, including sons Eric, Don Jr. and Barron, did even better,” Forbes says.

And while “It’s not that the Trumps are the first to leverage the presidency for profit, Forbes says, pointing to Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy andHunter Biden, “no first family has used the office to make as much money as Donald Trump’s.”

This fortune, Forbesexplains, runs in the hundreds of millions of dollars and comes primarily from crypto.

“Family members who never had significant fortunes of their own — Eric, Don Jr., Barron and Melania — have accumulated tens, then hundreds of millions of dollars,” Forbessays.

IFrame Content

“All told, the family (including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner) is now worth an estimated $10 billion, having nearly doubled its net worth since last year’s election."

As for the president himself, Forbes reports, "Trump’s fortune jumped $3 billion in one year," with "His move into crypto account[ing] for $2 billion of that." His total networth is now $7.3 billion. His wife Melania, they say, is now worth over $20 million.

Eric Trump has "made more money on crypto than any of his siblings," with a net worth of $750 million, up from $40 million last year, while brother Donald Jr., " a big player in the anti-woke economy," has seen his fortune rise from an estimated $50 million last year to $500 million today, according to Forbes.

Trump's youngest son, Barron, a 19 year-old college sophomore, is now worth $150 million and, says Forbes, and "has pocketed an estimated $80 million from token sales and still holds an estimated 2.3 billion locked-up tokens, which Forbesheavily discounts because they can’t yet be traded."

But it's Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have profited the most next to the president, worth $100 million and $1 billion respectively.

"Thanks in part to Affinity’s war chest, plus his 20 percent stake (worth $560 million) in his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, Kushner is now a billionaire," Forbes says.

As for the legality or lack thereof, The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick told NPR in August, "In general, the remedy that our political system requires of elected officials is that they disclose their outside businesses. And in Trump's defense, he certainly discloses it."

---

an 9 25

While President Donald Trump just “had the most lucrative year of his life,” his immediate family, saysForbes, made even more money.

“Percentage-wise, members of his immediate family, including sons Eric, Don Jr. and Barron, did even better,” Forbes says.

This fortune, Forbesexplains, runs in the hundreds of millions of dollars and comes primarily from crypto.

“Family members who never had significant fortunes of their own — Eric, Don Jr., Barron and Melania — have accumulated tens, then hundreds of millions of dollars,” Forbessays.

IFrame Content

“All told, the family (including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner) is now worth an estimated $10 billion, having nearly doubled its net worth since last year’s election."

But it's Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have profited the most next to the president, worth $100 million and $1 billion respectively.

"Thanks in part to Affinity’s war chest, plus his 20 percent stake (worth $560 million) in his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, Kushner is now a billionaire," Forbes says.

---

===

an 12 24

The children of the richest families in the U.S. are well-known for spending their vast wealth on frivolous luxuries—constructing a replica of a medieval church on their acres of property, in the case of banking heir Timothy Mellon, or starting a brand of T-shirts describedby one critic as "terrible beyond your wildest imagination," as Wyatt Koch, nephew of Republican megadonors Charles and David, did.

But a reportreleased by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) on Thursday shows how "billionaire nepo babies" don't just waste their families' fortunes. They also benefit from "a rigged system" that allows them to "pass that wealth down over generations without being properly taxed–often without being taxed at all."

In addition, the heirs of the country's biggest fortunes spend vast sums "to elect politicians who protect their unearned wealth and manipulate the country's economy in their favor," said ATF.

Along with Mellon and Koch, the report profiles Samuel Logan of the Scripps media dynasty; Nicola Peltz-Beckham, daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz; Gabrielle Rubenstein, whose family has made its fortune in private equity; and President-elect Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump.

The nepo babies are part of a small group of billionaire families in the U.S. who benefit from tax loopholes that ensure little of their immense wealth ever goes to benefit the public good.

At least 90 billionaires have passed away over the last decade, leaving their beneficiaries $455 billion in collective wealth.

But according to ATF, "$255 billion (56%) of that amount was likely entirely exempt from the capital gains tax because of a special break called 'stepped up basis.'"

"Trump and his allies in Congress are doing their donors' bidding by rigging the system in their favor and pushing a $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites and giant corporations."

Without loopholes included the stepped up basis tax cut, the current estate tax on billionaires and centimillionaires would yield enough revenue to fund universal childcare, preschool, and paid family leave for U.S. workers, with hundreds of billions of dollars left over, according to ATF's report.

The wealthy heirs profiled in the report and their families are some of the Republican Party's top donors—contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to candidates including Trump in the hopes of securing even more tax cuts.

Mellon, for example, is Trump's "biggest supporter, giving $140 million to a pro-Trump PAC in 2024 alone," reads the report.

A previous analysis by ATF found that as of late October, just 150 billionaire families had spent $1.9 billion on the 2024 elections.

As the Center for American Progress found earlier this year, Trump's plan to extend the tax cuts that he pushed through in 2017 would cost $4 trillion over the next decade.

"The vast wealth inherited by centuries-old billionaire families is staggering. While these heirs and their billions go undertaxed, enormous sums are squandered on lavish mansions, private jets, and vanity projects instead of funding crucial public investments," said ATF executive director David Kass. "In 2024, these billionaire families used their enormous wealth to make record-breaking political contributions to secure a GOP trifecta. Now, Trump and his allies in Congress are doing their donors' bidding by rigging the system in their favor and pushing a $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites and giant corporations—all while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on."

The report calls for Congress to pass "proven, pragmatic proposals to unrig the tax system that enjoy high levels of popular support," such as the Ultra Millionaire Tax Actthat was proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) this year. The bill would tax fortunes between $50 million and $1 billion at 2% and wealth above $1 billion at $1 billion.

The small tax on enormous wealth would generate "a whopping $3 trillion over 10 years," said ATF.

The estate tax could also be "restored so that it can play a meaningful role in promoting fairness and equal opportunities" through the passage of theFor the 99.5% Act, which was introduced in 2023 by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.).

Under the bill, the estate tax exemption would be lowered to $7 million per couple and the current 40% flat rate would be replaced with a sliding scale that would charge higher rates as a family's wealth grows.

"None of these tax reforms would impoverish the ultra wealthy, nor even inconvenience them in any meaningful way–but they would reduce the concentration of wealth that is so corrosive to society," reads the report. "At the same time, they would raise trillions of dollars that could be used to reduce inequality and improve the lives of families that can only dream of the kind of security and opportunity enjoyed by the nation’s richest clans."

"And if rich families ever did need to tighten their belts a bit to pay their taxes," the report continues, "the economizing might begin by reducing the flow of money funding the extravagant lifestyles of America's Billionaire Nepo Babies."

===

12 23 gaetz mullin beef

dad fla hmo

trust fund baby?

Ricketts is also the father of former Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who was appointed by his successor to the U.S. Senate on his way out the door due to the early resignation of Sen. Ben Sasse to take a position as president of the University of Florida.

===

no lnx

https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/nepo-babies-right-wing-media

nepo babies” — short for nepotism babies — are the children of high-profile people who likely benefited from their parents’ connections, fame, and insider industry knowledge to catapult their own careers. From blog contributors to Fox Corp. executives, nepo babies are a staple of the right-wing media universe.

Nepo babies are common across all sectors of business and society, including Hollywood, academia, and politics. The children of nepotists can seemingly rely on their trickle-down clout for a foot in the door, surpassing those who must find their industry footing on their own.

The exploration of nepo babies came to prominence recently after TikTokers began drawing connections between young stars and their parents. A New York magazine story dubbed “How a Nepo Baby Is Born” expanded the analysis of nepotism in American media and spurred content examining nepotism across various sectors.

Nepotism among right-wing media figures informs aspects of the media beyond the echo chamber of conservative platforms. There are nepotistic right-wing media and political connections across the American media landscape, from the mainstream media to the far-right. It also exemplifies the revolving door between the media and the Republican Party, a longtime pattern.

In right-wing media, some cases of nepotism are overt and celebrated, like the father-son duo of Steve and Peter Doocy of Fox News, while others are more clandestine (see: Tucker Carlson). However, it is important to note that not all nepotistic relationships come down to sharing the same job field or title, as prominence and influence don’t necessarily come down to a job title. Sometimes, having a notable last name or the right leverage in one field can bolster the opportunities for younger generations.

Thus it’s not surprising nepo babies run amok in the right-wing media ecosystem -- drawing their influence from parents either in the media business or politics -- considering it’s an industry steeped in lies, conspiracy theories, and questionable hires. Here is a noncomprehensive list of nepo babies in right-wing media:

Rupert Murdoch

Australian conservative media mogul and Fox Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch is the son of journalist and publisher Keith Murdoch.

Lachlan, James, and Elisabeth Murdoch

Lachlan, James, and Elisabeth Murdoch are Rupert Murdoch’s children. All three have benefitted professionally and personally from their father’s right-wing media empire.

Murdochs nepos chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Tucker Carlson

Fox News’ white nationalist host Tucker Carlson is son of Richard “Dick” Carlson, former CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and director of Voice of America.

Buckley Carlson

Tucker Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, is the communications director for Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN).

According to journalist Judd Legum, Buckley Carlson has received an unusually large series of raises during his employment with Banks.

Carlson nepo chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Greg Kelly

Newsmax and right-wing radio host Greg Kelly is the son of former New York City police department Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Raymond Kelly has appeared on numerous right-wing news shows as a commentator.

Donald Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of former President Donald Trump, is a right-wing podcaster.

Lara Trump

Former Fox News contributor and podcaster Lara Trump is Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.

Peter Doocy

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy is the son of Fox News host Steve Doocy.

Doocy nepos chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Chris Wallace

Former Fox News host and current CNN anchor Chris Wallace is the son of former 60 Minutes reporter and media personality Mike Wallace.

Wallace nepo baby chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Ben Shapiro

Right-wing pundit and editor-in-chief of the The Daily Wire Ben Shapiro is the son of composer David Shapiro. David Shapiro reportedly wrote for Breitbart under the pseudonym William Bigelow.

Additionally, Shapiro’s mother worked as a television executive.

Andrew Giuliani

Right-wing radio host Andrew Giuliani is the son of former New York City mayor, podcaster, and FOX entertainment reality television contestant Rudy Giuliani.

Alyssa Farah Griffin

Alyssa Farah Griffin is a CNN political commentator, a co-host of ABC’s The View, and a former Trump administration spokesperson. Her father, Joseph Farah, served as the executive news editor at the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner and is the founder of the right-wing conspiracy theory website WorldNetDaily.

Farah nepo chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Lisa Boothe

Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe is the daughter of lawyer Jeffrey Ferris Boothe, a former staff member of the Senate Appropriations Committee in the 1980s and a legislative assistant to former Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR).

Ben Domenech

Editor-at-Large at The Spectator and Fox News contributor Ben Domenech is the son of Douglas Domenech, a former official in both the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations.

Meghan McCain

Former co-host of The View and current DailyMail columnist Meghan McCain is the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

McCain nepo chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Harold Ford Jr.

Fox News contributor and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) is the son of former Rep. Harold Ford Sr. (D-TN).

Danielle D’Souza Gill

Danielle D’Souza Gill, the daughter of right-wing pundit and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, hosts a show on the Falun Gong operated outlet The Epoch Times.

Charles Hurt

Fox News contributor and The Washington Times writer Charles Hurt is son of author and former Reader’s Digest Editor-at-Large Henry Hurt.

Mark Levin

Mark Levin, a Fox News and right-wing radio host, is the son of the late author and illustrator Jack E. Levin.

Claudia Cowan

Fox News correspondent Claudia Cowan is a daughter of actor Barbara Rush and the late Hollywood press agent Warren Cowan.

Cowan nepo chart

CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

Jessica Tarlov

Fox News resident liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov is a daughter of the late film producer Mark Tarlov.

Byron York

Fox News contributor Byron York is the son of the late WBRC television personality Tom York.

Jonah Goldberg

Conservative columnist and Editor-in-Chief of The Dispatch Jonah Goldberg is the son of right-wing literary agent and author Lucianne Goldberg.

Daphne Oz

Celebrity chef and FOX entertainment television personality Daphne Oz is a daughter of television host and failed Republican nominee for Pennsylvania Senate Dr. Mehmet Oz.

L. Brent Bozell III

L. Brent Bozell III is a right-wing writer and founder of the Media Research Center. He is a son of the late Catholic writer Patricia Buckley Bozell and right-wing activist L. Brent Bozell Jr.

Bill Kristol

Neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol is the son of the late journalist Irving Kristol and conservative historian Gertrude Himmelfarb.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Governor of Arkansas and former Fox News contributor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the daughter of former governor of Arkansas and right-wing media host Mike Huckabee.

Rebekah Mercer

Heiress and Republican media investor Rebekah Mercer is a daughter of hedge fund billionaire and GOP mega donor Robert Mercer.

Jay McGraw

Jay McGraw is the co-founder and CEO of Stage 29 Productions, which produced a show for the right-leaning British outlet Daily Mail. He is a son of television host Dr. Phil McGraw.

Hannah Claire Brimelow

Hannah Claire Brimelow is the daughter of white nationalist writer Peter Brimelow. She is a contributor to YouTuber Tim Pool’s right-wing outlet, Timcast, and was reportedly recruited by Timcast Editor-in-Chief Cassandra Fairbanks (who is linked to white nationalists).

Rex Jones

Rex Jones, the son of conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones, has appeared on his father’s outlet to attack left-wing activists.

Bristol Palin

Reality television star Bristol Palin is a daughter of former Alaska governor and reality television personality Sarah Palin.

Kingsley Cortes

Gettr director of operations and right-wing writer Kingsley Cortes is a daughter of former right-wing radio host and former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes.

Charlotte Pence Bond

Right-wing writer Charlotte Pence Bond is a daughter of former Vice President Mike Pence.

Maureen Bannon

Maureen Bannon is a daughter of right-wing host, January 6 coup plotter, and former Trump aide Steve Bannon. On Twitter, she describes herself as “CEO of WarRoom,” her father’s podcast.

Latest updated date (2/13/23): This piece will be continually updated with more examples as they are discovered.

===

fox stepford mat'l

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-keeps-booking-pharmaceutical-heir-whose-mom-paid-specialist-deprogram-her-wokism

no lnx vid

Fox News keeps booking a pharmaceutical heir whose mom paid a specialist to “deprogram” her from “wokeism”

Mount Holyoke alum Annabella Rockwell works for conservative edutainment organization PragerU, which she credits with freeing her from liberal indoctrination

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 11/29/22

A spectre is haunting college campuses — the spectre of wokeism. It is an ideology and a cult that separates children from parents, rendering each unknowable to the other. Misery and alienation: This is the goal of these indoctrination centers. But all is not lost. A small band of rebels stand in their way. They are the ragtag freedom fighters at PragerU.

That, at least, is the story the producers and talent at Fox News are telling their viewers.

Leading the charge for liberation is pharmaceutical heir and PragerU director of development for Palm Beach Annabella Rockwell, who can trace her lineage back to the Mayflower, thank you very much. Rockwell fell victim to the siren song of wokeism her first year at Mount Holyoke, a historically women’s college in Massachusetts.

“I studied history and politics at Mount Holyoke,” Rockwell said in a November 15 interview with her boss, Dennis Prager. “Every class was, you know, history, but history with race, history with gender.”

By the time Rockwell graduated in 2015, she was “totally indoctrinated,” she said in a recent interview with the New York Post. Her mom, Melinda, “enlisted the help of a deprogrammer who charged $300 a day as well as Annabella’s old tennis coach, Scott Williams,” to overcome her daughter’s “brainwashing.”

Rockwell had the support of her family’s personal fortune, but she needed something else: a light in the darkness. As she told Fox News’ top star and white nationalist Tucker Carlson on Monday evening, her salvation came at the hands of PragerU, where she now works, when one of its videos came up on a social media feed. This heartwarming story shows how PragerU funnels young people into reactionary politics – and just so happens to be a great branding opportunity to further spread that organization’s propaganda.

“I had to unlearn my four years of wokeism by watching five-minute PragerU videos online for free,” she said.

“Amazing,” Carlson responded. “It is a cult. Its aim is to separate you from the people who love you most.”

Video CitationFrom the November 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

Teaching history without race or gender is obviously better, which is exactly the type of top-notch scholarship you can get from Prager and his absolutely real university.

Fox News’ Outnumbered analyzed Rockwell's hero’s journey on Monday afternoon, prior to her debut on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Co-host Emily Compagno, a paragon of intellectual rigor — who also knows more than a little about learning history without regard to race or gender — weighed in with the insight and precision that’s become her trademark.

College students are “being taught to hate their country; they’re also being taught to hate their families,” Compagno argued. “And that is step one of true indoctrination.”

Video CitationFrom the November 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered

But, like the totalitarian cult of wokeness itself, Rockwell wasn’t yet satisfied with her conquest. She pushed forward, appearing Tuesday morning on Fox & Friendsto share her tale of woe and redemption, explaining how she finally broke free of her ideological prison.

In 2020, at the height of what has been referred to as the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, Rockwell saw the light.

VideoCitationFrom the November 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

“It wasn't until seeing the riots happening that I realized, OK, this is so hypocritical. Like, why are we fighting for equality and empowerment by burning down people's [PVT PROPERTY = > HU RIGHTS] businesses?” Rockwell explained. “It just doesn't make sense to me.” (One way to make sense of the George Floyd uprisings is to study “history with race.”)

Rockwell closed out the interview with another plug for PragerU. Whatever else the organization’s shortcomings, it appears that marketing is not one of them.

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breakthrough Institute has been a leading "think tank" getting around being called science deniers by claiming concern while delaying actions on climate.

Armed with a degree in Latin American studies andconfidence borne of inherited family wealth, the Breakthrough Institute’s Rachel Pritzker takes to the Ted Talk stage to promote ... nuclear energy

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strict fr again?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/to-us-oligarchs-majority-views-on-taxing-the-rich-count-for-little/

noah b

With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.

That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth.

Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a global corporate minimum tax of 15 percent.

At some point, corruption stops being a bug in democracy and starts becoming a feature of oligarchy.

Has the US passed that threshold?

Based on the sweeping and effective resistance to commonsense solutions to reign in wealthy tax scofflaws, the answer is not encouraging.

Since the 1970s, the United States has become steadily and inexorably more economically unequal. According to Pew, upper income families have brought in a larger and larger share of total income.

US income inequality is the highest of all G7 nations. Its Gini coefficient is .434, well above second highest UK at .392.

In 1968, the top 20 percent of households earned 43 percent of national income. By 2018, the top 20 percent of households earned 52 percent.

In 1989, the richest 5 percent of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second poorest income tier. In 2016, they had 248times as much wealth.

In 2020, the 50 richest Americans had almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the US population.

This massive concentration of wealth is also a massive concentration of power. The wealthiest people have access to the best lawyers, the best tax attorneys and the most powerful politicians.

That means that it is very difficult for the government to restrain them, or to create a more equitable economy and society against their wishes.

That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth. [amp fdbk]

An example of oligarchical power is billionaire tax evasion. A recent IRS study found that wealthy Americans conceal more than 20 percent of their earnings. They are able to do this because of complex accounting scams involving offshore tax shelters.

The lost tax costs the government at least $175 billion a year in revenue. The top 1 percent of earners are responsible for a third of unpaid federal taxes.

In addition to these straightforwardly illegal accounting tricks, the very wealthy also benefit from at least nominally legal loopholes.

For instance, wealthy people have many assets that increase in value over time, but they do not pay taxes on those assets until they sell them.

They can borrow against those assets without paying taxes, since again the assets aren’t considered income. Then, if they die before selling the assets, they can pass them on to their heirs using trusts and other accounting shenanigans to avoid the estate tax.

ProPublica called this strategy Buy, Borrow, Die. It’s a key method for hoarding generational wealth, and entrenching oligarchy.

The Biden administration, led by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, have proposed strong measures to rein in billionaire corruption. In part, they want to restrain inequality. In part, they hope to fund other priorities like climate mitigation and anti-poverty measures in the administration’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan.

To address billionaire tax evasion, BBB included $80 billion to boost capacity and staff at the IRS. That would help make up for the steady budget-cuts under Republican administrations. Those have led to a 60 percent decrease in audits of taxpayers who earn more than $1 million. Biden said the investment would allow the IRS to collect $400 billion in taxes.

Biden, Yellen and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden have also been pushing for a billionaire tax to force the very wealthy to pay taxes on the increased value of their assets.

This would strike at the heart of the oligarchic “Buy, Borrow, Die” lifestyle. It would force the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share, like everyone else, every year, year after year.

Policies that prevent the rich from escaping a tax burden everyone has to pay should be easy to pass in a democracy. You’d think preventing billionaires from cheating on their taxes would be a popular policy.

And you’d be correct.

A 2019 poll, for example, showed that 76 percent of Americans agreed that the wealthiest should pay more in taxes. Proposals to tax income over $10 million at 70 percent — a huge increase over current rates — obtained more than 50 percent support.

In an oligarchy, though, public support doesn’t necessarily count for all that much.

A notorious 2015 study found that politicians were much more likely to listen to and follow the political preferences of economic elites than those of the less affluent.

You can see that playing out in the politics of billionaire taxation.

Build Back Better, which included the beefed-up IRS funding, was scuttled by millionaire West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, in large part, reportedly, because he was worried that poor parents would spend money on drugs.

A wealthy politician refused to enforce the law against billionaires because he was worried that poor people are natural criminals.

That is what you call class consciousness.

Wyden’s proposal to end “Buy, Borrow, Die” also failed after opposition from Manchin.It was of course opposed by Senate Republicans, whose main goal is to shovel as much money as possible to the rich in as short a time as possible.

Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a global corporate minimum tax of 15 percent. This would make it harder for businesses to escape tax burdens by moving their corporate offices. Congress still has to pass the treaty, but Yellen said she was confident they would do so.

The corporate minimum tax is a substantial achievement. But it’s also a small dam erected against the tsunami of inequality in the US.

With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.

The wealthy have been expanding their power and influence for decades in the US. The result is that the US regularly chooses to make the rich richer rather than helping the poorest feed their children.

The outlook for change is likely to be even bleaker if Republicans recapture one or both legislative chambers in November.

Yellen and Biden are to be commended for fighting an ongoing rearguard action against corruption. But if government inability to restrain corruption is a feature of oligarchy, then the US is already well down a path that it is very difficult to retrace.

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aha? // Mars ~ inheritance tax, but mebbe have to shill for cap'lism to justify status?

trust fund baby?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/tucker-carlson-2653560927/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/south-dakota/

no lnx twt

How 'insanely corrupt' South Dakota became a magnet for the wealth-hoarding megarich

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams October 06, 2021

Experts on the wealth-hoarding strategies and subterfuges of the world's superrich are weighing in this week on why "billionaires love South Dakota" after a bombshell report revealed that the Republican-led state is a leading global destination for plutocratic tax cheats.

One of the biggest revelations in the Pandora Papers—a gargantuan cache of nearly 12 million documents revealing the hidden wealth and secret dealings of hundreds of the world's wealthiest people, published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)—is just how much of a fortune-magnet South Dakota has become.

Drawn by low taxes and some of the nation's most generous trust laws, "shady billionaires from around the world are going to South Dakota," said Chuck Collins, author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, and co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

As a result, the Mount Rushmore State "now rivals Switzerland, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and other famous tax havens as a premier venue for the international rich seeking to protect their assets from local taxes or the authorities," The Guardian reports.

Writing for Common Dreams Monday, Collins further explained:

Findings suggest that South Dakota has sheltered billions in wealth linked to wealthy individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes and labor violations. Two examples: Brazilian orange juice baron Horst Happel was fined $88 million in 2016 for underpaying his workers. In 2017, he moved substantial wealth to a trust in South Dakota. Carlos Morales Troncoso was the former vice president of the Dominican Republic. He ran a sugar company called Central Romana... that was accused of human rights violations. He set up trusts for his daughters in the Bahamas that were moved, after his death, to South Dakota.

Vehicles including granter-attained annuity trusts (GRATs) and so-called "dynasty trusts"—through which wealth can be sequestered for generations, even centuries—attract the über-rich to South Dakota by design.

Suzanne Garment, author of Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics, wrote for NBC News Tuesday that "spurred by economic need," South Dakota has become "a leader in abolishing the rule against perpetuities—the old doctrine that limits the lifespan of a trust. One version of the rule says a trust must vest—that is, it must distribute its assets—within a stated amount of time."

"But not in South Dakota," she continued. "In South Dakota today, a trust can last, well, forever. The state couples this permissive regime with strict secrecy. As opposed to records in states like New York, court documents relating to South Dakota trusts are permanently private: Even the existence of such a trust is not public."

"As a result, it is virtually impossible to discover who has established a South Dakota trust, who benefits from it, or whether legal challenges to it have been filed," Garment added.

Collins is calling on Congress to address the issue.

"Lawmakers should act at the federal level to shut down or discourage the formation of dynasty trusts and GRATs for the purposes of tax avoidance and dynastic succession," he said. "Actions could include the passage of a federal 'rule against perpetuities,' banning certain trust arrangements, and taxing income and wealth in trusts."

South Dakota isn't the only place in the United States where the rich are hiding their treasures. Other U.S. states named in the Pandora Papers include Delaware, Florida, Nevada, and Texas.

"The world is going to be looking at us differently after the Pandora Papers," said Collins. "They're going to see that the United States is the weak link now in the system of global financial transparency."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/scientists-explain-why-the-wealthy-struggle-with-empathy/

matt r salon

a new study reveals that people from higher income backgrounds struggle with certain aspects of empathy when compared to individuals who have lower incomes, who are better at reading people’s emotions.

The research paper, which was published in the “Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,” asked individuals from different class backgrounds to infer others’ emotional states by looking at images of their eyes and to attempt to assume the visual perspective of other people.

The findings suggest that our socioeconomic status may affect the way we see and interact with other people.

Researchers know that there are many things can make it difficult for one person to effectively empathize with another, including neurological conditions like autism and psychological illnesses like schizophrenia. In their study, researchers Pia Dietze of the University of California, Irvine and Eric D. Knowles of New York University attempted to better understand how social class specifically influences Theory of Mind.

"[Theory of Mind] encompasses a range of competencies that together enable people to solve problems in a world full of other minds,” the authors explain. “Examples of ToM include our ability to infer people’s emotions, understand others’ visual perspectives, trace behavior to actors’ underlying intentions and desires, and grasp the fact that others’ beliefs might misportray reality. We focus on two facets of [Theory of Mind] in this work: emotion perception and visual perspective taking.”

The authors concluded, both from their research and by analyzing previous research (some of which they felt was unreliable), that “higher social class is associated with attenuated [theory of mind] performance,” with individuals from higher income backgrounds struggling more to ascertain the emotions and empathize with the visual points of view of other people. One possible explanation for this is that “lower-class individuals—owing to their greater levels of cultural interdependence—may appraise other human beings as more relevant to their goals and well-being than do higher-class individuals.”This would also help people from lower classes to “spontaneously calculate other people’s perspectives.”

Dietze and Knowles also point out that their conclusion “stands in clear contrast to the common discourse concerning neurocognitive deficits among the lower classes.” They also note that “decades of research documents that lower-class individuals are more likely to exhibit attentional deficits and display impaired working-memory performance. The evidence provided here suggests that these deficits may be domain-specific. Indeed, we show that lower-class performance outcomes are reversed in the social realm.” The term “domain-specific” refers to the theory of learning which holds that there are multiple forms of intelligence rather than a single way to assess where one has cognitive strengths and/or weaknesses.

This is not the only new research which sheds light on how being wealthy can lead to harmful psychological behaviors and personal habits. In July a different study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that individuals from affluent backgrounds would often deny their class privilege by “increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work, to cover [their] privilege in a veneer of meritocracy.”

“Flying in the face of meritocratic prescriptions, evidence of privilege threatens recipients’ self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes,” the authors wrote in their study. “Evidence of class privilege demonstrates that many life outcomes are determined by factors not attributable to individuals’ efforts alone, but are caused in part by systemic inequities that privilege some over others.”

Another study, this one published in June in the journal Nature Communications, argued that the consumption patterns of the affluent are so egregiously unsustainable from an ecological standpoint that only a concerted effort by the wealthy to consume less can prevent catastrophes like global warming, pollution and biodiversity loss.

“The affluent citizens of the world are responsible for most environmental impacts and are central to any future prospect of retreating to safer environmental conditions,” the authors wrote, adding that “existing societies, economies and cultures incite consumption expansion and the structural imperative for growth in competitive market economies inhibits necessary societal change.” They advocated “a global and rapid decoupling of detrimental impacts from economic activity,” pointing out that “theworld’s top 10% of income earners are responsible for between 25 and 43% of environmental impact” while “the world’s bottom 10% income earners exert only around 3–5% of environmental impact.”

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520

aha: see zinn on sacrifice, //austerity (= tough, discipline, rational, male)

free mkt FUNDAMENTALISM: = METAPHOR // STORY WORLDVIEW

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/

david m

The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do. What nearly everyone understands, except Republican officials and economists on television, is that there is no singular, shared experience within one large-scale economic system. Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old woman with a developmental disability, who worked as a grocery clerk at a satellite store of Giant Food — a chain throughout three states — died from the coronavirus infection she contracted when earning her final paycheck. That check was for $20.64. She worked without a facial mask, and lived in an entirely different universe than Nick Bertram, Giant’s CEO, who collects a salary in the high six figures.

The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm.

Americans as disparate as Trey Hollingsworth and Leilani Jordan, whose death the congressman would presumably regard as collateral damage, might not share an economy in any substantive sense, but they do share a society.

The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a formerreporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”

Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.

Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace. Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — causes tens of thousands of deaths a year.

The fatalities caused by environmental injustice, denial of health care and outright deprivation never provoke widespread scrutiny because, unlike the daily stock market report or reports of marginal GDP growth rates, they are largely out of sight and out of mind.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology. Americans now must consider whether their country is anything more than an engine of commerce, and whether human life has value separate from a financial calculus. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, the question of priorities is direct and implicates almost everyone....

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