Harry Truman reportedly said, “Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I’ll show you a crook.”
Throughout her lifelong career in “public service,” Dianne Feinstein amassed for herself an absurd fortune fit for a Fortune 500 CEO, not a senator making a relatively paltry salary.
Now that she’s dead, after the fog of war of endless fawning over her braveness and stunningness clear, let’s talk estate tax. I generally don’t favor the estate tax, derisively called the “death tax” by critics, but in the case of corrupt, lifelong politicians, I’m willing to make a glaring exception.
Her family doesn’t deserve the life of luxury enabled by her grift. Let the relentless sycophancy over her “legacy” from the corporate state media console them.
Via Daily Mail (emphasis added):
Dianne Feinstein’s daughter and three stepdaughters are set to inherit the late senator’s $102 million property portfolio, as well as her $62 million private jet.
The California congresswoman, who died in DC Friday aged 90, leaves behind an Italianite mansion with stunning views of San Francisco Bay that’s worth $21 million.
Democrat Feinstein – whose vast wealth raised eyebrows – died in a Washington DC mansion she owned that’s worth $7.4 million.
She also owned a $5 million Hawaii duplex, $7.5 million beach house in Marin County, California and a $62 million Gulfstream G650 jet she used to shuttle between her property empire.
Feinstein’s already-vast coffers were further swelled by the sale of two other enviable homes in recent years – an Aspen ranch sold last year for $25 million, and a Lake Tahoe compound sold for $36 million. She is also believed to have had around $70 million cash in the bank.
Let’s be generous and assume that throughout her 31 years in the Senate, Feinstein was making her $174,000 annual salary that entire time and that she saved every red cent. She would have been worth $5.39 million at the time of her death.
Related: How Did Nikki Haley Increase Her Wealth by Tens of Millions in a Few Short Years?
I don’t care, as has widely been reported, that the bulk of her wealth was generated by her also-deceased husband, Richard Blum, an investor at Blum Capital Partners. Richard almost certainly used his wife’s government connections to build his fortune.
The late couple’s degenerate children and stepchildren are circling in the water like sharks already for a payday. Via The New York Times:
A judge in San Francisco on Monday ordered the two factions of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s family fighting over the estate of her late husband, the wealthy financier Richard C. Blum, to try to settle the case through mediation.
The order, which both sides agreed to, came as the lawyers in the case appeared in a courtroom for the first time after trading hostile accusations in legal filings over the summer.
On one side is Senator Feinstein, who at 90 is in declining health and has faced questions about her ability to carry out the duties of her job, and her daughter, Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco judge. On the other side are the three daughters of Mr. Blum from a previous marriage, and his former business partners who are the trustees of his estate.
Here’s a novel solution: let’s skip the mediation and all of the lawyer’s fees involved, put her ill-gotten fortune in a public trust, and distribute it evenly among the American taxpayers on whose backs she garnered it. Then her kids could finally have the opportunity to make an honest day’s wage in whatever capacity they can. Surely they’d be able to do very well for themselves on their lucrative familial connections alone.