Noted Wu-Tang Clan fan (they’re not a fan of him), scumbag, and convicted felon Martin Shkreli is going to jail early for the Shkreliest of reasons:
A federal judge on Wednesday revoked the $5 million bail of Martin Shkreli, the infamous former hedge fund manager convicted of defrauding investors, after prosecutors complained that his out-of-court antics posed a danger to the community.
While awaiting sentencing, Shkreli has harassed women online, prosecutors argued, and even offered his Facebook followers $5,000 to grab a strand of Hillary Clintonās hair during her book tour. Shkreli, who faces up to 20 years in prison for securities fraud, apologized in writing, saying that he did not expect anyone to take his online comments seriously, and his attorneys pleaded with the judge Wednesday to give him another chance.
āThe fact that he continues to remain unaware of the inappropriateness of his actions or words demonstrates to me that he may be creating ongoing risk to the community,ā said U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, in revoking his bond.
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. IS. WRONG. WITH. PEOPLE?
Tom
YES!!!!!!!!!
Dupe70
My mama used to say, stupid is stupid does.
bystander
Lock him up!
Don’t know which story I’m enjoying more: Shkreli to Riker’s or Flynn Jr being targeted by Mueller, and by implication, NY AG Schneiderman.
Tom
Now, let’s have the judge impound his net worth and use it to set up a fund to pay for EpiPens for those who can no longer afford them due to this maggot’s selfishness.
lollipopguild
“That’s a joke son, a joke”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Tom:
That was a different scumbag – Joe Manchin’s daughter’s company. Shkreli’s pill gouging still out scumbag’s her, which is saying something.
MattF
Another case of limited behavioral repertoire. It’s not that Shkreli can’t help being an asshole, he is an asshole.
Davebo
And his sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet! I’m sure he was fine with that while on bail but I’m fairly certain his lawyer will now be demanding swift justice.
He’s not going to do 20 years but I’m glad he’s at least serving some time now.
Big Ole Hound
Shkreli’s parents raised an amoral kid with no idea of right from wrong. Does he have siblings who should also be jailed?
NotMax
Lavender slacks? Really?
Karma’s a bee-yotch, ain’t it.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
Maybe even better, Wu-Tang is putting out new music, so the ~$1M he paid for the “final” Wu-Tang album is …depreciated. Heeheeheeheehee
Amir Khalid
If he’d only had the sense to keep his nose clean and not flaunt his immense talent at being an asshole, Shkreli could have found himself being hailed as a rising star of the business world. His assholishness doesn’t have an “inside voice”. I reckon that’s all the difference between him and the other business bros, the ones who don’t get caught for stupid shit.
Redshift
I looked up his Wikipedia bio and apparently he got a Wall Street high school internship through a city program at age 17. I think it’s terrible for impressionable teenagers to be exposed to bad influences like that!
His (short) bio is a litany of horrors, short-selling biotech companies and then trying to manipulate the stock price so it goes down, and in the process making it less likely that promising treatments will get to market.
schrodingers_cat
Next GOP nominee.
MomSense
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I approve of scumbag becoming a verb. There goes our president scumbagging again. Works for me.
Shkreli unfortunately seems like all the MRA/gamer gate brotypes who think they can say or do anything they want. He just has more money. I’m all for the Judge making an example of him.
FlyingToaster
@bystander: Not Rikers. MDC Park Slope, Federal temporary holding. Holds ~3000; people awaiting trial and those with non-felony federal sentences. Al Sharpton did 90 days there.
Nicole
Between this and The Guardian’s excellent long-read on the continuing power of the aristocracy and how much money they bilk from the government while avoiding tax themselves, I’m all full of rage today.
Though, on balance, I think the aristocracy thing makes me ragier.
ETA: Linky: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/07/how-the-aristocracy-preserved-their-power
danielx
Wonder how long his smirk will last when he finds out he really does have a face that cries out for a fist.
schrodingers_cat
@Nicole: Don’t worry someone will be right along to tell you how wonderful Queen Elizabeth is, she has cute dogs too.
Amir Khalid
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:
I guess the Wu-Tang Clan didn’t want Shkreli to have their last word.
Hmm. Even WordPress doesn’t like Martin Shkreli. It puts the Red Squiggle of Incorrect Spelling under his name every time I type it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m picturing a jail summit where the leaders of all the gangs agree that he is to be despised, and how they will allocate his substantial bribes to everyone to avoid a daily ass kicking.
He can bring all together – white supremacy, Latino, black and Asian….
AliceBlue
@FlyingToaster:
Awww. The thought of Shkreli in Rikers made my day.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
Shkreli is someone who has never in his entire life had the hammer come down on him in a manner that made enough of an impression that he would make the slightest effort to change his behavior. I suspect he’ll get crosswise of someone in prison pretty quickly, The judge seems to have decided cutting him slack was a proven bad idea at this point.
He much be a major PITA to represent, and I hope his defense team has made sure to keep him on a pay-as-you-go basis.
FlyingToaster
@AliceBlue: It’d have been more fun to keep him in Manhattan, but they’re seriously overcrowded.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
Waiting for the inevitable Trumpista claim that ‘his kind’ is biased against white men and that Shkreli is innocent.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Amir Khalid: @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: The Wu should put out a double album produced entirely by Pete Rock & DJ Muggs, and it must be subtitled Soul Brother vs. Soul Assassin.
The Moar You Know
I am profoundly grateful for Shkreli. He’s the no-apologies representative of 21st century capitalism, a guy who has no qualms about saying in public “why yes, I think all the poors should die. In fact I’ll happily help.”
I don’t think we’ll see any sort of profound change in this nation, but on the off-chance we do, it will be because of the tireless efforts of conscienceless wealthy people just like him. Of which there are many.
zhena gogolia
Thread is “Assholes,” and I think Pennywise the clown qualifies, so here’s this article in Russian Life magazine that looks intriguing (circuses are a BFD in Russia): “Send in the clowns! Or rather, ban them. And one in specific: Pennywise, the murderous clown from the horror novel-turned-movie It, is making professional clowns fear for their livelihoods. With a new film adaptation set to hit theaters next week, a comedy troupe in St. Petersburg protested the film. Clowns across Russia worry that the film will discredit their profession, making children fear for their lives rather than revel in the joys of red noses and balloon animals.”
Timurid
I had to chuckle while I was reading what was otherwise a very serious article…
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This guy is like Donald Trump. There’s just something missing here. It’s like they had lobotomies or something, and somebody took out of their brains whatever it is that tells us how to behave decently. I really don’t think they understand why people get upset by the things they do and say. There’s something missing.
rikyrah
Glad he’ll spend some time in jail.
Major Major Major Major
Haha, fuck him.
@Amir Khalid: That’s not wordpress, it’s your computer.
rikyrah
Bernie Sandersās Bill Gets America Zero Percent Closer to Single Payer
By
Jonathan Chait
The sight of 15 Senate Democrats, including many of the partyās likely presidential contenders, co-sponsoring Bernie Sandersās single-payer health-care bill may look like a momentous step. āWhat that means,ā writes Jake Tapper, āis that with the notable exception of former Vice President Joe Biden, every top tier(ish) 2020 Democrat is now on board with a policy proposal that Clinton said less than two years ago would ānever, ever come to pass.āā
But this image of progress only holds true if you imagine the process as a series of continuous steps. In reality, single payer has always been, and remains, a political dilemma that nobody has been able to resolve, and there is no evidence the resolution has grown any easier. What looks like a large step forward is actually a party edging closer to a cliff it has no intention of going over.
The barrier to single payer is that the American health-care system has been built, by accident, around employer-based insurance. The rhetoric of single payer concentrates its moral emphasis on people who lack insurance at all. (āDo we, as a nation, join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee comprehensive health care to every person as a human right?ā writes Sanders today.) But the barrier to single-payer health care is the people who already have coverage. Designing a single-payer system means not only covering the uninsured, but financing the cost of moving the 155 million Americans who have employer-based insurance onto Medicare.
That is not a detail to be worked out. It is the entire problem. The impossibility of this barrier is why Lyndon Johnson gave up on trying to pass a universal health-care bill and instead confined his legislation to the elderly (who mostly did not get insurance through employers), and why Barack Obama left the employer-based system intact and created alternate coverage for non-elderly people outside it.
In theory, the transition could be done without hurting anybody. The money workers and their employers pay to insurance companies would be converted into taxes. But this means solving two enormous political obstacles. First, most people who have employer-based coverage like it and donāt want to change. Second, higher taxes are unpopular. Yes, in an imaginary, rational world, people could be reassured that Medicare will be as good as what they have, and the taxes will merely replace the premiums theyāre already paying. In reality, people are deeply loss-averse and distrustful of politicians.
Health-care experts have spent decades trying to grapple with this dilemma. Sanders has not come even a single inch closer to resolving it. Instead he hand-waves the problem away.
FlipYrWhig
@AliceBlue: Indeed you can’t have “Shkreli” without “Rikers.”
rikyrah
What a charmer…
Anthony Scaramucci Reportedly Wants a Paternity Test for Newborn Son
By
Madeleine Aggeler
https://www.thecut.com/2017/09/scaramucci-reportedly-wants-a-paternity-test-for-newborn-son.html
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Someone pointed out the other day that he would be in max security. And as he hasn’t been sentenced I’d bet he is separated from the general population. Still orange for lavender, and all because of how big a douchebag he is. Wonder if his sentence will be more appropriate now…….
Barbara
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): I think this is basically the reality. Shkreli is living his life as if he is the adolescent child of someone with unlimited wealth and unlimited tolerance for his bad behavior. He never expects to have to account to people for basically anything. After the fallout from Alex Jones’ malicious and fabricated tale of a child sex ring in the basement of a DC pizza restaurant, the joke defense is officially unavailable.
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: Sanders and hand-waving go together like… Sanders and finger-wagging.
rikyrah
no kidding
…………..
Frank Rich: Donald Trumpās āIndependenceā Is a Complete Farce
By
Frank Rich
After President Trumpās decision last week to accept the debt-ceiling deal pushed by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, shocked conservatives floated rumors that theyād target Paul Ryanās Speakership to help their agenda, and the Times described Trump as āin many ways, the first independentā in the White House in more than a century. Is this the start of a broader opening for congressional Democrats?
Before this one brief shining moment of ābipartisanshipā goes up in smoke, we must relish the sheer delight of watching Trump stiff Ryan and Mitch McConnell in favor of his new besties, āChuck and Nancy.ā It didnāt turn out well for the Vichy collaborators in World War II, and the same fate in one way or another will befall those Republican leaders who abandoned whatever principles they had once Trump occupied their party. History will be merciless to them, but how much fun to watch them reduced to thunderstruck supernumeraries in real time.
Still, this instance of victory for congressional Democrats was a one-off. The new coinage that Trump is somehow an āindependent,ā with its implicit invocation of the Teddy Roosevelts of American history, is a way of dignifying and normalizing erratic behavior that hasnāt changed from the start. Itās the latest iteration of those previous moments when wishful centrist pundits started saying things like āToday Trump became presidentā simply because he stuck to a teleprompter script when addressing Congress or bombed Syria. Trump is an āindependentā in the same way a toddler is. He jumped at the Democratsā deal solely on impulse. He remains a drama queen who likes to grab attention any way he can, especially when he thinks he can please a crowd, whether the mobs at his rallies or the press Establishment he claims to loathe but whose approval he has always desperately craved. The most telling aspect of this whole incident was his morning-after phone call to Schumer to express his excitement that he was getting rave reviews not only from Fox but CNN and MSNBC as well.
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Is it that “sort” of prison? I think it’s a holding pen for white collar criminals.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
It is? Well, I’ll be danged. I never knew my laptop cared one way or the other about Shkreli.
The Moar You Know
@zhena gogolia: I fucking hate clowns. Never read “IT”, either. Just always hated them.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Such a smart man, and he can’t see the largest fly in the ointment for such a nice turn of phrase. This is why he is president.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: It’s a fact: she DOES have cute dogs!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@FlyingToaster:
He’s in a personal bad spot that he won’t be able to extract himself from. The fellas are going to give him routine solid beatdown with a promise of more if he doesn’t deliver on funds for child support arrearages, fines, restitution, family living needs, jail commissary “book” money, or just plain payoffs. When he whines to the staff, they’re apt to ignore him at best or maybe even punish him for being an asshole.
Lots of people with money can manage jail by keeping their mouths shut, identifying ordinary decent criminals to befriend and having a physical “presence” that defines them as OK, and not to be messed with. Shkreli’s the kind of frail shit with attitude that has never taken a beating, can’t physically take a beating and is too pathetic to deliver a beating or even a credible defense.
My take is that he needed more bullying in school in order to learn that there’s a price.
NotMax
The complete pool of potentials is now limited entirely to the Senate? Would that sloppy journos would cut this nonsense out and cease and desist from assigning tenuous ancillary motive..
Laura
Consequences? For entitled douche bronies?
Well I’ll be damned. I did not think that happened in Amurka.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Tapper is mostly right, which is why the answer has always been to construct a parallel path (which is what the ACA did) that would, over time ratchet down the number of people who get insurance through their employers, until the political problem would not be so overwhelming. The only thing that the ACA did not do was to create a parallel public option. It took the Medicare Part D route — coverage only via insurers — rather than the Medicare Advantage route — benefits via Medicare fee for service or private insurers.
I think Tapper overestimates the degree to which people love their private insurance, because cost sharing has become so punitive among so many kinds of employer provided plans. But they are still afraid of what the alternative might be. To address the transition problem, it is better to give people the choice to walk away from an employer plan that is not as good as an exchange plan. This really isn’t that hard to understand. It’s the transition that has always been the sticking point.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Plus she gets points for being despised by Margaret Thatcher for not being right-wing enough to suit Baroness Thatcher.
FlyingToaster
@rikyrah: Just when you think you’ve gotten to the bottom of the pond scum…
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: Shashi Tharoor is full of it, why is he picking on poor Rajdeep Sardesai? I notice that he name dropped Rishi Kapoor and the fact that he went to one of Mumbai’s elite schools in that article where he is patting himself on his back for being indifferent to caste. IIRC, there is a whole chapter in one of his books about some untouchable person coming to his family home ( an incident that sounds completely made up, btw)
Mr Tharoor is not as emancipated as he would like you to believe either, I remember an article he wrote about how sad he was that Indian women are giving up sarees for daily wear and how much better they looked in sarees compared to any western outfits or even the more practical salwar kameez.
Also, its not the matter of allowing people to enter the kitchen where caste has its stranglehold on Indian society it is the institution of arranged marriage.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Cute dogs are no excuse for her family’s thieving and genocidal ways from which she has greatly benefited.
ETA: Her dogs are cute and she has great taste in hats. I have nothing against her personally but I don’t think highly of the institution she represents, the British monarchy.
Boatboy_srq
@Big Ole Hound: Siblings? I’d go after the parents too, for aiding-and-abetting if not accessory.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@The Moar You Know: Is “mime” a subset of “clown”? At any rate, I suspect there’s lots of overlap between clown-haters and mime-haters. And so enjoy this clip from “Tootsie”.
Clown hate is one of those things I don’t get. I never found them funny, but my reaction even as a kid to a clown act was more “meh”. I’d just roll my eyes and wait for the act to be over.
Unless they included dogs in the act. Dogs working are always fun to watch. But I guess animal acts are taboo now.
One exception to the “I don’t exactly hate clowns”: I saw one street performer in Milan, whose entire schtick consisted of sitting in a stroller (his body hidden behind, his head poking through from the back, on top of a doll’s body) and making incredibly annoying high-squeaky “baby” sounds, which would get angrier whenever a tourist passed without giving him money. So far as I noticed, nobody gave him money during the time I endured him while waiting at that corner. I could cheerfully have watched that stroller get hit by a meteorite. And a truck. And burst into flames. And then another meteorite.
Tom
@Big Ole Hound: Why won’t the white community control its worst members? (Disclaimer: being of mixed Scottish-Irish-English-Greek ancestry, I’m about as white as it gets)
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
The “dalit in the kitchen” survey was unconvincing. The respondents were basically being asked “would you let a poor person in your kitchen?” Americans would likely score just as badly if asked the same thing.
germy
Boatboy_srq
@schrodingers_cat: Meh. Paying the House of Windsor to sit still, and letting their well-ingrained sense of civic duty lead them to worthwhile charity and public works endeavors, seems like a bargain compared with letting arseholes like Shkreli (and Prince and Koch and Mercer and Walton) amass private fortunes and let them fvck with the public sector just because it helps Those Other PeopleĀ®.
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: Indeed. Women are dalits no matter which caste they belong to. Caste is India’s (Hinduism’s) founding sin, just like slavery is for this country.
Of course other Indian religious communities have not escaped this scourge either. For example the older (Syrian Orthodox) Christians look down upon the recent converts and derisively call them rice Christians.
Tom
@rikyrah: Damn! I had no idea the question of “What is the most extreme example of rich, entitled assholery” was actually an Event Horizon type phenomenon.
schrodingers_cat
@Boatboy_srq: Almost anyone is going to look better compared to our oligarchs.
germy
Betty Cracker
@germy: I hope no one uses that address. Let him rot in obscurity. That would be the worst punishment of all.
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
Nitpick.
The primary way one can be hit by a meteorite is if someone else picks it up and throws it at him or her. A meteor (well, technically its remnants) becomes meteorite(s) after initial impact.
(The grammar police here have been unusually silent of late. :) )
Major Major Major Major
@Barbara: it’s not so much that people love their employer insurance as they don’t know that it’s coming out of their paycheck/how much it really costs, haven’t seen the alternatives articulated correctly (and won’t as long as there’s so much disinformation and a media this useless), and are extremely change-averse to a system that has thus far been helpful/useful for the most part. It’s a hard sell.
germy
Joe Falco
I’m afraid the diagnosis is acute affluenza. The cure? 20 years in prison and a boot to the head.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
The MoonInertia is a harsh mistress.The Moar You Know
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: oh hell yes.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Preach it, brother!
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: If MSM had done that to the narcissist in the WH when he announced his run or during the birther nonsense he would never have been elected.
No Drought No More
Simpson: “Well, maybe I’ll just shut my big mouth now”.
Bart Simpson to Principal Skinner, after wise cracking his way to progressively more severe punishments..
germy
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: and the Sanderseses (pronounced like Flanderseses) are selling it as an obvious moral imperative rather than articulating its differences, and without a payment mechanism you can’t articulate its savings, and most voters don’t give a shit about the moral imperative for single payer (as opposed to universal coverage).
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: This is the core of the problem.
I straddle a line here; I pay that insurance bill for the company every month. And mine is very, very good. But it is by far the largest non-salary expense we have, period. Would the ownership like to not be paying it? Of course. I’ve been shocked for years now that employers haven’t come out swinging against the current system, it doesn’t help retention that much (people in my industry (software/IT security) who are “locked in” tend to not be very good at their jobs) and the costs can put you under faster than anything else can.
The two biggest proponents of single payer in my entire company are the owners. And me, the token libtard.
NotMax
@No Drought No More
“Top of the world, ma!”
– Cody Jarrett
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
The English aristocracy has been writing the laws for their own benefit for centuries now.
A hereditary aristocracy was one of the things we thought we had rejected with the American Revolution, but apparently not.
beergoggles
Affluenza induced sociopathy.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@No Drought No More: Bart, a fictional character, is capable of realizing (if a bit belatedly) that his actions have consequences.
I don’t know if Shkreli is capable of getting there. I doubt he understands that the revoking of bail and jail sentence is due to his own actions.
And we seem to reward that kind of sociopathy in our culture. I don’t know why or if it’s fixable. But my basic optimism does keep surfacing and saying “something something arc of moral justice something something getting better before I die”.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: the employers I know want employer based coverage to DIAF. The conservatives because they’re cheap, and the liberals because they’re cheap and it’s the right thing to do. Some of them also believe in entrepreneurship and as discussed yesterday employer based coverage is bad for that.
Nicole
@Mnemosyne: All aristocracies have. I’ve recently been reading some European history and was fascinated and horrified by France’s centuries-long policy of taxes being only paid by the little people. Leona Helmsley was late to the party with that one.
Which reminds me of a story from when I was taking French class. The word for “penguin,” came up, and in French, there are two, “pingouin” and “manchot.” “Manchot,” my teacher explained, was also the word for a man without an arm. He then asked us, “What is the French word for a man without a leg?” We didn’t know, and he said, “unijambiste.” He then asked us, “What is the French word for a man without a head?” Again, we didn’t know, and he grinned and said, “Un aristocrat.”
WaterGirl
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): There’s a name for that, and I think it’s sociopath.
Roger Moore
I know this is intended as a rhetorical question, but I think the basic answer is that the man has no empathy whatsoever. He’s been able to get as far in life as he has by being able to read people and tell them what they want to hear, but that doesn’t work when some of the people listening to him aren’t there for him to read. In this case, I get the impression it was made worse because the people he was trying to impress were a bunch of evil assholes, so he felt the need to prove his alpha status.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Again, can anyone imagine the uproar if a single current or former member of the Obama administration had done that?
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Her kind. Which may be one of the reasons, given how much of Shkreli’s acting-out since his conviction has targeted women, Judge Matsumoto came down so hard on the little putz. I can see where a woman would be a lot less inclined to dismiss these things are bad but essentially harmless.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: @Roger Moore: I think back to that first appearance when all the Beltway talking heads were telling me that he was smooth and charming and won over the press corps and was the nth sign that the Great Pivot Pumpkin was due to arrive any minute. This was the guy I saw up there, a smarmy douche would give used car and time-share salesmen a bad name
JGabriel
WaPo via John Cole @ Top:
To be fair, IF Shkreli really is unaware of the inappropriateness and potential consequences of his actions, then he belongs in a mental home for the criminally insane instead of a prison.
(Note the IF. Frankly, I think he’s just a sociopathic putz.)
NCSteve
@Big Ole Hound: I don’t necessarily blame parents for giving birth and raising a psychopath. Child abuse, neglect and prenatal substance abuse are risk factors, but they can also just happen. And raising one who “just happens” is a terrifying thing.
But, to answer John’s question, that’s what the actual fuck is wrong with this guy: he’s a psychopath. I do not know, however, what the actual fuck is wrong with people generally.
diierent-church-lady
Sociopathy is the new orange.
David Evans
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, the British did take over other people’s countries. However, we did not (in general) drive those people off their lands, and they are now back in control of their countries, unlike the original inhabitants of what is now the US.
dr. luba
@David Evans: So the British had no part is settling what is now the US?
LAO
I could not be later to this thread, but damn I’m still chuckling a day later. And that’s awkward because I so rarely root for the DOJ.
schrodingers_cat
@David Evans: What about Australia and Canada? Of course I need to be thankful for tea and cricket, right?
Mike S.
@NotMax: Obligatory XKCD link Meteorite identification
debbie
@JGabriel:
I think it’s more like James O’Keefe Envy.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Have never understood how any American has any great interest in or fascination for the British Aristocracy, from top to bottom mostly despicable in the crunch. Same goes for the rest of European “nobility.” I’m not much for American elites, either, really.
I think putting people in a ‘caste’ from birth is how we get wastes of space like Scaramucci or convicted felon Martin Shkreli. Or the Hapsburgs.