Understanding the Supreme Court Vacancy as it Relates to Citizens United

It would be difficult to find a Supreme Court case more loved by the corporate-political alliance than Citizens United. This 5-4 decision is loathed by nearly 80% of Americans, so it is not at all inconceivable that it could be reversed with a liberal replacing the undeniably conservative Scalia. But what has been overlooked in the extensive speculation over potential replacements is the fact that Scalia was one of two Justices with extensive corporate backgrounds. Antonin Scalia worked for Jones Day, the largest law firm in America, and John Roberts worked for Hogan Hartson, one of the largest law firms and lobbying firms in America. So Scalia’s death under a Democratic President has got to be a major concern for benefactors of Citizen United.
Whether it ultimately be Obama or Clinton, or dare we say Sanders, the next Supreme Court Justice is likely to be nominated by a Democrat. The Republican wing of the Court has been predictably cozy with big business, while the Democratic faction has been somewhat less so. The aristocratic elite, however, long ago realized that the key to staying in power was controlling both sides of the aisle.
Citizens United is far too important to Corporate influence to be left to the fate of a potential power shift in the makeup of the Court.
Given the extreme animosity between parties, President Obama would be smart to nominate a circuit court candidate who has recently enjoyed a bipartisan appointment.
Irrespective of who nominates them, the next confirmed Supreme Court Justice will most likely be an Ivy League alumni with a stellar Wall Street, K Street, or corporate background. With this in mind, here is a true power ranking of Obama’s shortlist:

1. Merrick Garland-Harvard. Worked for D.C. Law firm Arnold & Porter, one of the largest law firms in the country. Older than the other candidates, which might make him more palatable to Republicans.
2. Robert L. Wilkins-Harvard. Worked for Venable, LLC, a major D.C. corporate law firm. It’s tough to imagine Obama not liking the idea of getting another African American on the Court
3. Loretta Lynch-Harvard. Worked for Hogan Hartson (as did Chief Justice John Roberts) and would be the first African American woman on the Court. Would add a fourth woman to the court, which would be a great counter point to the right’s continued denigration of women, although this might be too much for the largely misogynistic aristocratic elite
4. Patricia Ann Millet-Harvard. Worked for 2 high profile D.C. Law firms. See #3.

Sri Srinivasan and Paul Watford might very well get nominated, but stand precious little chance of actually being confirmed due to their lack of an Ivy League education, a risk Citizen United champions can ill afford to take.

SEC about to become 80% Ivy League

Late last month, President Obama nominated Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce to fill two positions on the Securities and Exchange Commission to fill the seats vacated by the departing Daniel Gallagher and Luis Aguilar. Fairfax in particular has been championed by little guy advocate Elizabeth Warren. But the nominations are making media headlines more for the seemingly historic opportunity Obama has created. Four out of the five SEC Commissioners will now be women. And while that is indeed historic, especially given the familial ties between the SEC and Wall Street, which is overwhelmingly dominated by men.

What I find much more fascinating, and not a little bit terrifying, is that not only are the two departing non-Ivy League commissioners being replaced by Ivy Leaguers, but 4 out of the 5 SEC Commissioners will now be both women and Ivy Leaguers. In other words, the SEC is going from 40% Ivy League to 80% Ivy League. We have to hope that Michael Piwowar can stand up to chair Mary Jo White (Columbia, -5), Kara Stein (Yale, -4), Lisa Fairfax (Harvard, -4) and Hester Peirce (Yale, -2).  Adios meaningful reform.

John B. King, Jr. is named as new Secretary of Education

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Harvard, -2) has decided to resign, effective in December. President Obama has named a whopper as his replacement. Obama (Harvard, Columbia,-6) has selected John B. King, Jr. (Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Jr., -4) to serve as Acting Education Secretary through the end of his Presidency. While King doesn’t have a whole lot of private or corporate experience, his Education is as Ivy League as it gets. Harvard Undergrad. Masters from Columbia. Yale Law. PhD in Educational Administrative Practice from Columbia. It’s difficult to see how having an Education Secretary that is both an elitist and a professional bureaucrat will help move education forward in any kind of meaningful way.

The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones

This is a problem that extends to far more Ivy Leaguers than just the Skull and Bonesers. Ivy Leaguers have convinced themselves that their success is due to raw talent alone, wen in fact the entire system is designed to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us.

 

The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones.

2016 Presidential Tournament Pre-Season Bracket

With the first Republican Presidential Debate in the history books, the 2016 Presidential Tournament has officially begun. And while most Americans are increasingly viewing the upcoming elections as a red state versus blue state head on tractor-trailer collision, I view it just a little bit differently. I see it as a full blown collision for sure, but between new school Ivy League Aristocrats and everybody else. As of today, the polls are showing that the front runner of the Democratic Party and the top three candidates of the Republican Party are all Ivy League alums.

In the spirit of March Madness, which will no doubt apply both to the annual basketball right of passage as well as next spring’s political season, I have created my own 2016 Presidential Tournament Bracket. Now it’s not exactly like a traditional playoff format, since the candidates are not faring off in head to head, tournament style eliminations. Rather, what I have proposed is Ivy League candidates on one side and non-Ivy League candidates on the other. It is also not an even tournament, as there are 8 Ivy Leaguers on one side and 15 on the other. Neither will there necessarily be one finalist from each side. I believe there is a very strong chance the finals will be played between two Ivy Leaguers.

We are probably only a couple of weeks away from seeing the first casualties of this tournament, and we still could see some late entrants. And with only one Democrat on the Ivy League side, blue state elitists have to be mulling a plan B should Clinton implode early.

The New England Patriots’ Culture of Cheating Comes Straight From The Top

As we head into the 2015 football season, and as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has upheld Tom Brady’s 4 game suspension for his role in Deflategate, I thought it might be interesting to go back and revisit January of this year. In late January news broke that the New England Patriots and Tom Brady had been improperly deflating game balls ostensibly to give themselves an unfair advantage. (Full disclosure-I am a raging Denver Broncos fan). But something equally mischievous was unfolding just down the street, something that would be curiously significant for football fans. The Harvard Business Review’s January issue was hitting the newsstands, and it’s cover story was not only shocking, but also revealing of the New England Patriots over all strategy:

“The Problem With Authenticity: When its OK to fake it till you make it,” by Herminia Ibarra was an incredible insight into America’s most reviled business school. Despite it’s continued top ranking, Harvard Business School has a dirty little secret: it produces ruthless elitists who know no shame when it comes to winning. That they would acknowledge this, even if overtly, is a display of arrogance that is nearly incomprehensible, until you realize that this is, after all, Harvard we are talking about.

In an article that advocates for leaders to embrace a sanitized and selected version of potential truths, we learn that Harvard Business School advocates the following:

-It’s okay not to be true to yourself
-‘Do as I say not as I do’ is acceptable leadership
-Values can be a hindrance
-Your work doesn’t need to stand on its own merits

Keep in mind that if this is the sanitized version of what they teach, as the article endorses, then the reality is that deceit it is a key component of their program. And when you take in to account that nearly every rotten apple in the financial crisis of 2007-2008 was a Harvard Business alum, you start to see that deceit is a hallmark of the Harvard MBA.

Which brings us back to the New England Patriots. Patriots owner Robert Kraft (Columbia, Harvard -6) is a graduate of Harvard Business School, and got his undergraduate degree at Ivy League rival Columbia. If you add this to the fact that the Patriots have been involved in at least two high-profile cheating scandals, the picture that emerges is one where dishonesty is both a top down management directive and an acceptable winning method.

And winning is something Ivy Leaguers do very, very well. It seems the only place the Ivy League loses is in collegiate athletics. For everything else, they are ruthlessly dominant. And they don’t just get mad they get even. And then some. Which is why I think Roger Goodell is toast. Roger Goodell did not attend an Ivy League School. Tom Brady’s lawyer attended Columbia Law. Jeff Pash, the NFL’s Executive Vice President and Counsel and #2 man attended Harvard. This is starting to look like a classic Ivy League squeeze play.

Jeff Pash, in his role as NFL Counsel, is definitely getting splattered with some of Roger Goodell’s mud. But a typical Ivy League quid pro quo would be for Kraft to force Goodell out and advocate for Pash’s promotion in exchange for Pash agreeing to turn a blind eye to the Patriots’ winning at all costs strategy. In any case, the Goodell era is over.

Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Taxpayers Screwed by Ivy Leaguers

Last week, the Chicago Public Schools proposed the selling of up to 1.16 billion dollars in bonds to potentially fill what is estimated as a 1.1 billion dollar hole in their budget. Part of the 1.16 billion dollars, perhaps as much as $300 million, will be used to buy the district out of risky derivative products it purchased from 2003-2007. CPS alone purchased more auction rate bonds than the entire state of California for the same period. This of course, was the same time frame when Wall Street financial firms were selling crappy derivatives to anyone whose eyes they could pull the wool over.

The entire financial system nearly imploded when Goldman Sachs started marking down derivatives in 2007. These were the same products that they themselves had aggressively marketed as superior investments. Goldman Sachs sold these risky products to CPS, and promised substantial capital to back them up. In 2007, Goldman Sachs was the first bank to pull investment support for auction rate bonds, causing CPS interest payments to skyrocket.. In other words, Goldman Sachs once again was at the center of web of deceit.

But perhaps even more interesting is who was responsible for purchasing these insanely risky products in the first place.  David Vitale (Harvard, -3), Chief Administration Officer of CPS during the time the derivatives were purchased was the former vice chairman and director of Bank One. When Goldman’s Harvard investment managers came looking for taxpayers to screw, Vitale was happy to help out fellow Crimson. But none of this could have been possible without the sign off of the Chicago Public Schools CEO. And who might this either extremely gullible or extremely deceitful leader be? Well, none other than current Secretary of Education and Harvard alum Arne Duncan (Harvard, -2).

If Chicagoans want to stop getting screwed, they need to get rid of David Vitale, and any other Poison Ivy elitists as fast as possible.

NSA Appoints Poison Ivy As New Top Lawyer

The Daily Beast is out with a story that the NSA has appointed one of President Obama’s top fundraising bundlers to the top post of the nation’s largest intelligence service. Should we be concerned that such an obvious partisan is getting this senior post? Absolutely. But even more concerning is that our nation’s senior intelligence leaders are being methodically replaced with Poison Ivies.

Last week Glenn Gerstell (Coumbia, -5) was appointed general counsel for the National Security Agency. Gerstell possesses the powerful 1-2 punch of Ivy League graduate degree and membership in the Council on Foreign Relations. These two attributes almost always indicate membership in the Aristocratically Exempt.

Earlier this year, President Obama appointed David S. Cohen (Cornell, Yale, -5) Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Cohen was previously with the Treasury Department’s Office of General Councel during the Financial Crisis of 2007-8. This should alarm all of us because as we have seen, the Aristocratically Exempt has a strong sense that they are the ‘chosen ones’ and therefore are exempt from the rules and regulations that may interfere with their winner take all attitudes, and above all else they swear allegiance to their Aristocratic brethren.

The financial crisis of 2007-8 taught us that these Aristocratically Exempt will ignore any law or rule that stands in their way, and they absolutely collude with each other to advance their agendas. Having these people in senior leadership positions in our intelligence agencies is an ominous development.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/nsa-appoints-obama-bundler-as-new-top-lawyer.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2015/01/09/david-cohen-cia-nomination-obama/21520985/

 

 

 

Poison Ivies

When you realize the extent of the corruption, deceit, fraud, and lies that permeated the financial crisis of 2007-2008, and when you realize that the responsible individuals were all Ivy League educated, you have to wonder to yourself what exactly it is that these schools are teaching? At least among the business, law, and foreign policy programs it is becoming increasingly clear that what is being taught is an unapologetic winning at all cost ethos. If we look past the rhetoric to the actions of these incorrigible ‘leaders’ what emerges is a group of institutions that really are more Poison Ivy than Ivy League.

 

The Financial Crisis of 2007-8
Many excellent and exhaustive narratives exist that examine in great detail the debacle of our most recent financial nightmare, and we aren’t going to attempt to join this crowded field. However, it’s important to understand just how pivotal the Poison Ivies were in creating this mess. The collective myriad of discourse on the subject agrees on the following 5 causes of the resulting blow up:

1. The repeal of large sections of the Glass Steagall Act via the Gramm Leach Bliley Act

2. The banning of derivative regulation via the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

3. The relaxing of capital reserve ratios

4. Goldman Sachs and AIG’s manipulation of complex mortgage securities

5. The decision to allow Lehman Brothers to Fail

 

1. The repeal of large sections of the Glass Steagall Act via the Gramm Leach Bliley Act

In 1998, Citigroup and Travelers announced a merger. This was extraordinary because under the Glass Steagall Act it was illegal. Under Glass Steagall, Investment Banks and Commercial Banks were not allowed to mix under the same ownership. Implemented after the stock market crash of 1929, the idea was to protect ordinary consumer banking from the risks of investment banking. Citigroup chairman Sanford Weill (Cornell, -3) appealed to Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin (Harvard, Yale, -7), and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan (Columbia, -4) and received a two year waiver from the Glass Steagall rule.

Together with the Clinton administration, they collectively lobbied congress to relax the banking mix ban, and in 1999 Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealing these prohibitions. Upon its passage, Rubin joined Citigroup as a director.  Banks were now free to use regular consumer deposits in extremely risky ways. In 2002, Phil Gramm, chief sponsor of the deregulation bill went to work for UBS bank.

2. The banning of derivative regulation via the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

Also in 1998, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission released a “concept release”, seeking comments from the public and industry on potential modifications to derivatives regulation. Brooksley Born, the Chair of the CFTC, was extremely concerned about the 25 trillion dollar unregulated marketing over the counter derivatives. Born was a Stanford Law educated attorney with 20 years experience in securities law. She was immediately and stern fully rebuked by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (Harvard, Yale, -7) Assistant Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers (Harvard, -5) and Alan Greenspan (Columbia, -4). Rubin’s top deputy Timothy Geithner (Dartmouth, -3) handled much of the grunt work.
In a meeting just after her appointment to the CFTC, Greenspan invited her to lunch and flat out told her that he wasn’t concerned about fraud in the financial services, and felt that there shouldn’t be any regulations related to fraud because the free market would weed out fraud on its own. Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan mounted an immediate counter attack, and they forced the CFTC to leave derivatives alone.

So three Ivy League elitists bullied a non Ivy League (and well respected) regulator into non enforcement. Just a few months later, in incredible irony, Long Term Capital Management blew up largely because of derivatives gone wrong. Nonetheless, the bullies got Congress to specifically ban the regulation of derivatives with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act in 2000.

3. The relaxing of capital reserve ratios

In 2003 George W Bush selected William H. Donaldson (Harvard, Yale, -7) to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, the first time in 10 years the position had gone to an Ivy Leaguer. Sensing an opportunity, Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson (Dartmouth, Harvard, -6) pleaded with Donaldson to relax the 12 to 1 capital ratio mandated to investment banks by the SEC in 1975. Donaldson and the SEC Acquiesced, and investment bank Net Capital ratios rapidly increased to well over 30 to 1.

Interestingly, both men worked in the Nixon Administration. Paulson was assistant to Nixon counsel John Ehrlichman, who eventually went to jail for his role in the Watergate scandal. Donaldson served as Assistant Secretary of State to Henry Kissinger (Harvard, -7).

4. Goldman Sachs and AIG’s manipulation of complex mortgage securities

Goldman Sachs, as did many other financial companies, sold massive quantities of mortgage back securities. A the housing bubble neared its peak, Goldman recognized that the high leverage (Net Capital Ratio) they had fought for was saturating the financial world, and sensed an opportunity to take out some of their competitors. First they sold many of their riskiest MBS, building up a large cash reserve. They also bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of MBS insurance, much of it from the American International Group
In 2007, they began marking down their MBS investments and bet against the housing bubble any chance they could.

They even bet against MBS they were actively marketing to clients. It was like they were buying fire insurance on lots of houses and then started setting them on fire to collect the insurance. And they definitely collected. Their collateral calls to AIG eventually ran into the billions, forcing AIG in to major financial trouble. Merrill Lynch, AIG”s second largest mortgage insurance client in the U.S. and headed by John Thain (Harvard, -4) also started enforcing collateral calls.

This was a major contributor to the devastation being wrecked in the financial sector in 2007-8. There was widespread concern that the 5 major investment banks could all fail, and it was increasingly apparent that AIG was nearing bankruptcy. Early September 2008 saw a panic in the financial industry that was eerily reminiscent of 1929. Merrill Lynch was forced by the Government to sell to Bank of America on September
14. On September 15, of 2008, the U.S. Government seized control of AIG, while simultaneously on the exact same day forcing Lehman Brothers in to bankruptcy.

AIG stakeholders, counter parties, and regulators after months of negotiation, neared an agreement that would require counter parties like Goldman and Merrill to take a haircut (discount) on the insurance payouts of up to 40%. This would have reduced AIG payouts to by tens of billions of dollars. In November, Timothy Geithner (Dartmouth, -3), now head of the NY Federal Reserve, took over negotiations and in concert with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (Dartmouth, Harvard, -6) and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke (Harvard, -4) decided to use taxpayer money to pay Goldman and Merrill 100 cents on the dollar. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein (Harvard, -7) and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke  were friends and lived together in Winthrop House at Harvard.

5. The decision to allow Lehman Brothers to Fail

The Federal Government spent enormous time and capital in 2007-8 to ensure that all of the failing investment banks lived to see the light of the next day. Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch were absorbed into large financial institutions, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley benefited from massive government investment. The Governments decision to let Lehman fail was particularly curious given the lengths they went to save other financial institutions.

Furthermore, Lehman had massive investments through its London branch. Unlike in the U.S., the U.K.’s bankruptcy laws required the immediate closing of the London branch. Financial companies with investments in the London division lost everything. The market blew up, and the corporate paper market, used by businesses to fund day to day operations, dropped precariously.

To this day, experts are still confused as to why Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. Curiously, Lehman CEO Dick Fuld (Colorado, NYU) did not attend an Ivy League school.

The fox guarding the hen house

During this time of unprecedented financial crisis, caused by glaring violations of law, both of the men who served as America’s chief law enforcement officer were members of this New Aristocracy-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (Harvard, -4) and Attorney General Michael Mukasey (Columbia, Yale, -6). Is it really any wonder that no one has ever been prosecuted for their role in this fiasco?

AEX-The Aristocratically Exempt Index

The premise of Chasing Aristocracy is that there is a New Aristocracy in America, and they are aggressively looking to expand their influence on major American and even foreign institutions, especially government. In short, this New Aristocracy aims to control all of the country’s wealth, and is increasingly aggressive in excluding the rest of us from the American Dream.

Identifying this Aristocracy is the first step, and luckily there seems to be a very predictable set of qualifications for membership in this new aristocracy:

-Ivy League undergraduate degree

-Rhodes Scholar to Oxford or/and Ivy League graduate degree

-Private sector work in Wall Street either in a financial company or law firm/consulting firm to Wall Street

-Revolving door between corporate America and government

-A winner take all view of world resources

-A sense that they are the ‘chosen ones’ and therefore are exempt from the rules and regulations that may interfere with their winner take all attitude

The Aristocratically Exempt Index (AEX) is a measurement of these membership qualifications. Index scores are computed based on a formula that quantifies Ivy League schooling and affiliations with institutions and organizations that support the New Aristocracy. An Index score of 0 is considered neutral. Negative Index scores correlate to a high probability that an individual is part of the New Aristocracy, and Positive Index scores correlate to a high probability that an individual is not part of the New Aristocracy. The current Index encompasses a range of values from -7 (Very Aristocratic) to +4 (Not Aristocratic).

Currently, the Index exists in a very cumbersome spreadsheet, and I have a friend helping me incorporate it into a database that should make analysis far more manageable. Until then, I will periodically post AEX Index scores of various groups of people. Moving forward, all potential New Aristocrats will have their Ivy League schooling and AEX Index Score listed in parenthesis after their name. For example: Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard, -6). Scores may change as I continue to do more research into individual’s backgrounds.

Here are some AEX Index scores for some currently relevant groups of people:

U.S. Cabinet

 U.S. Supreme Court

 Potential 2016 Presidential Candidates

 

Recent U.S. Presidents

AEX Affiliations

 

 

An Ivy League Aristocracy…

The idea behind Chasing Aristocracy is to explore an alternate way of looking at governance in America. The traditional view of governance, that is one that is seen as an ideological battleground between Democrats and Republicans, or Liberals and Conservatives, fails to adequately address what may very well be the defining issue of our time. Wealth inequality has been growing since the early 1970’s in essentially a straight line. There is literally no correlation to the political party affiliations of the President or Congress.

However, there appears to be an interesting curiosity at play. Since 1970, the percentage of the senior members of the Executive and Judicial Branches of the U.S. Government that attended Ivy League schools has increased from 45% to 73%. And even more interesting is that 100% of the current Ivy League senior leaders in the Judicial and Executive Branch attended just one of five schools at some point in their college careers: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, or Princeton in the U.S., or Oxford (in the U.K.).

In the last few years, a new phrase has come roaring in to our lexicon: the 1%. This refers to the top 1% of income earners, which currently in the U.S. means people with annual incomes of about $400,000 per year or above. Most of us have assumed and reluctantly accepted that there is some level of extra influence that these wealthy individuals have on policy and politicians. What we haven’t perhaps understood is that these 1%-ers are literally running the government (some might say running it in to the ground). In reality, it’s a very specific subset of the .5% that’s running the country: those people who by and large have attended the five schools mentioned above: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Oxford, and to a lesser extent the other Ivy League schools-The University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth.

Wealth Inequality
In the last year or so, two monumental studies dealing with wealth inequality have been released, building on a momentum of concern going back at least till the financial crisis of 2007-8. Thomas Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ is a nearly 700 page discourse on the concentration of wealth among the very few. And more recently, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s ‘Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913’ documents the rise of the .1% and the stagnancy of the middle class.

To understand this dynamic a little bit more, let’s take a look at some interesting data.

The two charts in Figure 1 show something pretty amazing. Clearly, the top .01% are doing very well. The top 1/100th of income earners in the U.S. have been on an amazing roll. And the bottom 90% of Americans-those of us with net assets (total assets minus total liabilities) of about $700,000 or below, have seen their wealth share decline since 1986 (Figure 2 Below). But what’s even more interesting is that at about the .5% level, wealth is stagnant. That means that the average wealth increase of the top 10% of Americans is exclusively attributed to the top .5% of Americans. Think about that for a moment. 99.5% of Americans-those with net assets around 10 million dollars or less, have seen their wealth decrease over the last 30 years. A cursory web search will show a slew of experts and theories as to the cause. But what if there was just one cause?

Figure 3 below represents the percentage of the top positions in the Executive and Judicial Branches that were filled with people who attended Ivy League Schools. While not quite as linear as Wealth Inequality, there nonetheless is an overall trend upwards from the mid 40’s in 1960 to the mid 70’s today. The peaks and dip of the Nixon-Ford-Carter Administrations skew the increasing trend but are certainly not inconsistent with the known historical turmoil of the era. And it’s been 27 years since we had a President who didn’t attend Harvard or Yale.

Source: Chasing Aristocracy

When we look at all three Figures in tandem, some interesting correlations start to develop:

-The percentage of wealth owned by the top .1% hit its all time low in 1978 and the percentage of Ivy League Cabinet and Court hit its all time low in 1979

-The recent wealth decline trend of the bottom 90% started in 1986 and the stable increase in percentage of Ivy Leaguers started in 1989

-The most recent low in the percentage of Ivy Leaguers occurred in 1989-91, and started its rise in 1992. This unabated rise has happened entirely under the leadership of Presidents who attended Yale or Harvard-Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama

-The 50% line in Figure 3 was crossed 7 times from 1960-1992, averaging once every 4-5 years, suggesting some sort of natural fluctuation-or at least a battle of ideals. It’s been 23 years since the 50% line was crossed, strongly suggesting a purposeful trend.

To be sure, not everyone who attended an Ivy League school is a bad character. In fact, some of the best research in America is being conducted at Ivy League schools. And correlation does not always mean causation. But the fact of the matter remains that wealth inequality has reached enormous proportions, and has done so nearly exclusively while Ivy Leaguers have been in charge.

A lifetime of Coddling

At the very least, from the time they are 17 or 18, Ivy Leaguers are told they are the special ones, that they are part of an exclusive club that takes care of each other, that they can be guaranteed at minimum a six figure income, unrivaled prestige, and precious few closed doors. They’ve been constantly evaluated, tested, and elevated to the highest echelons of schooling. Selective admission has driven their lives for the better part of 12 years, sometimes more, and the exclusivity of their club is on display 24 hours a day. And the vast majority of Ivy Leaguers have had this drilled into their persona from birth, gifted to them by their already privileged parents, and many of the non-privileged students quickly embrace the club and trade their humble past for the allure of a lifetime of privilege.

Is it fair to expect these silver spooned, self proclaimed elitists to have a healthy dose of empathy for the rest of us? More importantly, is it reasonable to expect that these aristocrats will govern fairly?

I find this all, at the very least…curious. And as we shall see, I find myself wondering if maybe these Ivy Leaguers are really more Poison Ivies…