Larry Ellison[Oracle] buys the Hawaiian Island of Lanai,for $500,000,000.00+

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What you contemplate you imitate
No man is an island....
Billionaire Oracle CEO buys Hawaiian island
By James Brewer
22 June 2012

Larry Ellison, CEO of software giant Oracle and the sixth richest man in the world (Forbes magazine), is closing the deal on the purchase of Lanai, a Hawaiian Island. The sale is a particularly overt expression of the domination of the ultra-wealthy over all aspects of social life in the US.

This is certainly not the first time a rich man ever bought an island, but what makes this notable is first of all, its scale, and secondly, the fact that it is a portion of an American state. The island is Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian chain.

Lanai is sometimes called "Pineapple Island" because of its history as a pineapple-growing center. Ellison is closing the deal to transfer ownership of 98 percent of the island?s 140 square miles, with former owner Castle & Cooke, a company spun off from the Dole Food Company, the world?s largest producer of fruits and vegetables. Castle & Cook is owned by billionaire David Murdock, who took the company private in 2000 when he bought out the other shareholders for $700 million.

The deal was made public Wednesday by Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, but the sale agreement, which was signed on May 2, was redacted by the sellers? lawyers, saying that the paperwork included confidential information which would competitively hurt Ellison.
The real estate involved is 88,000 acres and includes two Four Seasons Resorts, each with its own golf course, a stable, along with residential and commercial properties. The island has 30 miles of paved roads, 400 miles of unpaved roads and no traffic lights. The population of the island is 3,200, many of whom live on Ellison?s land and will apparently face the prospect of becoming his serfs.

According to local historians, 75 percent of the world?s pineapples were once grown on Lanai. Castle & Cooke shut down pineapple production when it acquired the island in 1985. Murdock has since focused on developing tourism on the island, but mainly aimed at more pampered tourists who can afford four-star accommodations provided by the resorts. When Bill and Melinda Gates were married in 1994, every hotel room on the island was booked for the occasion.

Unemployment is high on the island. According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, tourism has fallen by 6 percent from last year. From January to April of this year, only 26,000 people visited the island.

The price for the sale of the island of Lanai is not known, but the Maui News estimated it going for the bargain-basement price of $500 to $600 million?a steal.

Ellison will, of course, pay in cash.

From:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/rich-j22.shtml
 

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What you contemplate you imitate
Re: Larry Ellison[Oracle] buys the Hawaiian Island of Lanai,for $500,000,000.00+


"Consulting the Oracle" by John William Waterhouse, showing eight priestesses in a temple of
prophecy

In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle
As Mark Twain once wrote, ?There never was a revolution unless there were some
oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.?


Ellison, the third-richest individual in the United States, is notorious both for his
extravagance and his petty avarice. In 2008, he won a $3 million tax refund from the city of
Woodside, California after a court ruled that his house, a reproduction of a Japanese emperor?s
estate that cost $200 million to build, was worth only $100 million on the current market.

The court declared that nobody besides Ellison could afford to live
in the house, which gave it "limited market appeal,"
and on that basis
lowered the Oracle executive?s property taxes.

The taxes that Ellison and his fellow California billionaires avoid paying have contributed to the
state?s $15 billion budget deficit, which is now being tackled through cuts in vital social
programs that keep millions from destitution.

California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and the Democratic-controlled state legislature
reached an agreement last week on a minimum of $8 billion in spending cuts. State welfare
benefits are to be slashed in half and $1 billion is to be cut from the state?s Medicaid program,
$402 million from state workers? wages, and $240 million from child care.

Ellison, whose net worth is $36.5 billion,
could write a check to cover the
amount of these cuts ? four times over. Then there are the other 99 billionaires in the state.

Excerpt from:
The new aristocracy
28 June 2012
By Andre Damon
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j28.shtml
 

scrimmage

What you contemplate you imitate
Re: Larry Ellison[Oracle] buys the Hawaiian Island of Lanai,for $500,000,000.00+

An east coast Larry Ellison,large house,big living,peer/rival:

Another example of the use to which the super-rich are putting their vast fortunes has been captured in a soon-to-be-released documentary, The Queen of Versailles. The film recounts the efforts of the billionaire founder of Westgate Resorts (a time-share company) and his ex-model wife to build the largest house in the United States. At 90,000 square feet, the Orlando, Florida mansion includes ten kitchens and a bowling alley.

The palatial Florida home is named Versailles in honor of the palace of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. That the royal couple had their heads cut off in the French revolution seems lost on the builders of the new Versailles.

A charming detail revealed in the film about the lifestyle of the new Versailles: the family dogs were never housebroken because a small army of servants was always on hand to clean up after them.

Aristocracy, from the Greek root, means "rule by the best." However, the financial oligarchy, whose selfish interests determine the policies of the planet?s governments, encompasses the most ignorant and depraved sections of modern society. "Scum separates by floating upward," said Marx, writing about the speculators and fraudsters of his time.

"The finance aristocracy," he added, "in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society."

Excerpt from:
The new aristocracy
28 June 2012
By Andre Damon
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j28.shtml
 
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