Am I talking about Leona Helmsley leaving $12,000,000 to her dog a few months ago (this is not a joke)? No. I'm talking about Richard Scaife. On to today's Washington Post:
Low Road to Splitsville: Right-Wing Publisher's Breakup Is Super-Rich in Tawdry Details., The Washington Post, C1.
Head west on Route 30 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and follow the signs to Pittsburgh. Once in the city, notice that "Mellon" is slapped on just about everything -- buildings, libraries, banks, streets, and on and on. That would be Andrew Mellon, the uncle of Richard Scaife's mother, a financial wiz who built a Gilded Age fortune through banking and oil. Income from the trusts of that estate yields roughly $45 million a year for Scaife, according to a filing by his wife. That's a gross disposable income of nearly $4 million a month, apparently just for having been born. As the lawyer of his soon-to-be-ex-wife noted, "These massive streams of income are attributable to no employment, business enterprise or other effort -- intellectual, physical, creative or ministerial -- past or present.....We learned, too, that the Tribune-Review has been a gurgling sinkhole from Day One; Scaife's lawyers say their client has pumped as much as $312 million into it over the years. And he's going to have to keep on pumping. The Tribune-Review's CEO has predicted an annual shortfall of $20 million for years to come.
These figures matter in the divorce because Scaife is arguing that the funds he forwards to the Tribune-Review should be deducted from his aggregate income, putting his annual haul closer to $17 million a year, a long way from the $45 million a year cited by Ritchie's lawyers. If true, that would of course reduce the monthly alimony check he could owe his wife once there's a permanent settlement.
Not surprisingly, Ritchie Scaife's attorneys have a different view. They say that Richard Scaife operates the Tribune-Review with so little concern for profit and loss that it's more a hobby than a business.... (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE)
I wish I had a $20,000,000/yr. hobby.....
And Sen. Devolites-Davis - your argument as to why these vast sums of money should not be taxed on these people's death's are what? Billionaires should know that they'll be able to endow their dogs after their dead? We need more paranoid conservatives to fund investigations of sitting presidents?
We don't need a nation run by lazy do nothing trustifarians who never worked a day in their lives. Time to reinstate the estate tax.
So Scaife and his buddies have been going after other mainstream denominations.
I'm so glad Scaife did not sign a prenup. His current wife actually has a streak of charity in her.
It's interesting also that the Post says Scaife was openly dating the woman who would be his second wife while still married to the first one.
And his big anti-gay crusade has preservation of marriage as its bedrock theme? LOLOLOL
What a crew. The Post mentions that Scaife went to the American Spectator and gave them $2.3 million to go after the Clintons. The Spectator was, and is run by Al Regnery, who has a sordid past of his own. http://corrente.blog... If anyone wonders, the material on the corrente blog checks out. I went so far as to communicate with a reporter in Wisconsin about Regnery's evil doings, and got some old articles from their library. Regnery was a big player behind the Swiftboating of John Kerry.
So, will there be a third Mrs. Scaife? Lots of Republicans are in the three-marriages column. The girlfriend's name is Tammy Sue -- it just would go so well with "Mellon Scaife."
As for the Scaife article, was that not a delicious schadefreude feast? Could NOT happen to a worthier guy. I hope she takes him for every thing he's got.