Monday, October 22, 2007

Salacious GOPer Divorce: Spawn of Satan, Richard Mellon Scaife Gets Some Karma

Wow. This was buried in the Style section of the Washington post. 5 pages of delicious schadenfreude that couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. This guy is the poster child for why we need a robust estate tax in this country. He has over a billion dollars that he never did a thing to earn, and which he uses to oil the GOP propaganda machine. Here's a taste:

Remember him? The cantankerous, reclusive 75-year-old billionaire who's spent a
sizable chunk of his inherited fortune bankrolling conservative causes and
trying to kneecap Democrats? He's best known for funding efforts to smear
then-President Bill Clinton, but more quietly he's given in excess of $300
million to right-leaning activists, watchdogs and think tanks. Atop his list of
favorite donees: the family-values-focused Heritage Foundation, which has published papers with titles such
as "Restoring a Culture of Marriage."
The culture of his own marriage is
apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the
story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night
in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery.
snip
Now we know that Scaife is beneficiary of nine different trusts, including
one called the "1935 Trust," with an approximate value of $210 million, and
another called "The Revocable Trust," valued at $655 million. Altogether, these
gushers are worth about $1.4 billion.
snip
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.

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