How about if we take all the billionaires’ money?

I think it’s a rule that all rich people have to have their “let them eat cake” moment before they’re trundled away to the guillotine. Here’s Bill Gates’ moment.

Speaking at a forum in New York with New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin, Microsoft founder Bill Gates came off as far from enthusiastic about Warren 2020. Speaking about the wealth tax, Gates said there’s a limit to what he would be willing to pay.

“If I had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine,” Gates said. “But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.”

Let’s do a little math — very little math. Bill Gates has money worth $107 billion. Take away $100 billion, that’s … $7 billion left over. Oh, how will he live on a mere $7 billion? If he were to live another 70 years, that would leave him with only $100 million dollars a year to live on! How could he possibly stretch his budget to survive on that pittance?

What he’d really lose his unwarranted clout. He loves having that power and influence, able to lecture people on education policy and economics, despite being a college dropout from a wealthy family who made his money by luck and ruthless capitalism.

Elizabeth Warren has already responded to reassure him that her wealth tax wouldn’t cost him anywhere near $100 billion. I’m disappointed in her. Why not? Go ahead, take 99% of the money Gates didn’t earn.

Gates isn’t done, though. He’s got another foot to stuff in his mouth.

Then, Sorkin posed a scenario which, for the moment, is a hypothetical — albeit one which appears to have more of a chance of happening by the day. The Times writer asked Gates who he would back in a general election: Warren or President Donald Trump.

And despite being a vocal Trump critic in the past, Gates would not commit to supporting Warren to defeat the president.

Good god. He’s so selfish about his absurd excess of wealth that he’d consider supporting an incompetent, treacherous buffoon for the presidency, rather than getting taxed 6%? I was considering wheeling the guillotine away and just confiscating his ill-gotten riches, but now, sorry, guillotine is back in play.

You want more fun? Here’s a billionaire hedge fund manager, the classic capitalist parasite, breaking down in tears at the thought of the government deciding how to distribute his money, skimmed off the labor of workers. He was planning to leave half of it to his kids, who had done even less to earn it.

That guy, Leon Cooperman, seriously believes he worked hard enough to earn $3 billion. Let’s disillusion him.

Seriously, billionaires weeping at the thought of a Warren presidency is the best advertisement for her ever. I think Sanders would make them cry just as hard. Let’s get one of those two into office!

By the way, did you know that after retiring, despite his carefully calibrated charitable donations, Bill Gates’ net worth has been going up? Somehow, he manages to dole out money to his own foundations in such a way that none of it actually costs him anything, while claiming to be a generous philanthropist.

Here’s some more fun with math.

Gates has to know this, or he’s even less deserving of his wealth than I thought.

There are no victories

There were elections yesterday, and the results were encouraging. Virginia flipped their state senate, and is now a Democratic majority state. Kentucky threw out their lickspittle Republican governor. This is all good news.

I’m seeing lots of happy liberals and leftists gleefully declaring that McConnell must be pissing his pants, Trump must be trembling in fear, Republicans must be dreading next year’s election. I just want to say…no, they’re not. We’re the ones who should be worried.

McConnell isn’t afraid. He’s scheming right now: what laws can he abuse, what palms can he grease, what arms can he twist, what rats need fucking, to make sure there is no November 2019 repeat in 2020. Trump is less subtle. He’s angry and is thinking about what minorities he can slander, what country he can attack, and who will be his scapegoat. He’s going to lash out and it’s going to get ugly.

Remember, when fighting sewer rats, backing them into a corner doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing to victory now.

Breaking news: pipelines leak!

Bet you didn’t know that, didja? There has been a totally unexpected, surprising oil spill in North Dakota.

The Keystone pipeline has spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into North Dakota this week, The New York Times reports.

The pipeline has leaked roughly 383,000 gallons of crude oil, impacting an estimated half-acre of wetland, according to state environmental regulators.

This one is poisoning a “mere” uninhabited wetland. Then people wonder why others protest when Big Oil builds pipelines over their drinking water supplies…

It’s strange how conservatives lack all humor

Case in point: this political cartoon.

Am I supposed to laugh at it? Find it appalling? I don’t know. It looks like a pretty sweet deal, this socialist state.

I took a look at some of his other cartoons. Mainly what I see is a bozo flying into fits of apoplexy at the idea of “free stuff”, where the underprivileged get anything that might make their lives better. He’s really committed to making sure everyone stays “in their place”.

But come on! A high-speed rail to Alaska and Hawai’i? Who could complain about that?

How not to train your graduate students

I guess I’ve been failing to keep up with the educational literature, because I haven’t seen any articles that recommend screaming at your students until they break down and obey your will. I think I might be reading the wrong journals — is there a “Journal of Pedagogical Bullying” that I’ve missed?

Somebody’s been reading it, anyway. Like a certain engineering professor at UW-Madison.

Graduate students described the work environment under engineering professor Akbar Sayeed as “toxic” and “abusive.” The professor called students “monkeys” and “chimpanzees.” One said he compared them to “slaves” who must learn to endure pain because it would last only four or five years.

Turnover seemed constant. Some students joined his lab only to leave within a few months, even though it meant losing their financial stipend.

The churn put more pressure on Brady, who came to UW-Madison in 2010 to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering and worked as a research assistant in Sayeed’s lab. Despite Brady and others’ attempts to address how Sayeed’s behavior drove students away, the tirades continued and Brady’s responsibilities mounted. He trained new student workers on top of his own research, pushing his degree further into the future.

“Exploitation may not be too strong a word to describe how (Sayeed’s) behavior impacted (Brady) in his position as grad coordinator,” a report on Sayeed’s conduct would later say.

How can such a situation arise? How can it persist? If I heard that kind of story from a student or witnessed a colleague doing such things, I’d be be bringing it up to the chair, or to an HR committee, or straight up to the chancellor. If this behavior were brought up in a tenure review meeting, Sayeed ought to have been out on his ass. But UW-Madison let this untenable situation fester for years, until something happened that required the university to sit up and pay attention.

In 2016, Brady’s seventh year on campus in a program that typically lasts five or six, he started secretly recording Sayeed screaming at students in the lab. He hammered out his thoughts in a Microsoft Word document, describing a siege mentality among students in the lab. He arranged a meeting with a trusted faculty member that fall, one he had turned to the year before with concerns about Sayeed.

Brady never made the meeting. In October 2016, at age 28, he killed himself.

Jesus. You’ve got a professor who is driving students to suicide. What do you do?

If you’re the University of Wisconsin, you put him on a two year leave, during which time he is snapped up by NSF to work there. They also declared that this death was an “extreme and isolated” case. It doesn’t sound isolated at all to me — this is a systemic problem where an abusive, bullying professor could function without oversight or correction for years and years, until he pushed it just a little too far. It shouldn’t take a student suicide to set off alarm bells.

Sayeed is returning in January, which I find unbelievable. This is the kind of outrageous failure and persistent ethical lapse that ought to end his career. He’s even confessed and admitted to serious anger management problems!

In response to the university’s investigation, Sayeed admitted and apologized for his unprofessional conduct but denied abusing his authority as professor, making threats or intentionally delaying Brady’s degree. He said that if the department had taken action in response to students’ complaints, it may have “altered some of the outcomes.”

If only the administration had prevented me from bullying, this wouldn’t have happened, says the bully, placing the blame elsewhere.

If you’re wondering how he had a job in the first place, all is explained.

Since he started working for UW-Madison in 1997, Sayeed said, he has done everything he can to advance his students’ careers and secured millions in research money.

I hope, since the university won’t take appropriate action, that the whisper network among students at UW-Madison guarantees that he never gets another graduate student, and that this disgraceful behavior means NSF never trusts him with another penny.

Did you know Ilhan Omar has a Republican challenger?

She might be facing a few challenges of her own, though.

Republican Danielle Stella’s campaign to take down Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has hit a bit of a snag. There is currently a warrant out for her arrest after she failed to appear for a court hearing on Tuesday morning.

She is accused of shoplifting a few thousand dollars worth of stuff from a Target in Edina, which is quite possibly the most Republican White Woman from Minnesota crime ever.

I wonder if being in jail would affect her electability in her district? Not with the Republicans, probably, they’re all thick as thieves, you know. The Muslim inhabitants might have higher standards.