Saturday, November 1, 2008

Give every Bengal tiger the wealth of Richard Mellon Scaife


For the price of the Iraq War, we could give every Bengal tiger the wealth of right-wing billionare Richard Mellon Scaife.  

Richard Mellon Scaife is an heir to the Mellon family fortune.  His past activities include donating $990,000 to Nixon before modern campaign finance laws, donating $1.8 million to an effort to unearth damaging information about Bill Clinton, and donating $2 million to a right-wing group called "Accuracy in Media" which produced an October 14 article titled "Was a Communist Obama's Sex Teacher?"  Scaife's wealth totals $1.2 billion.  

Bengal tigers are among the largest subspecies within the tiger family.  Their past activities include eating wild boars, eating water buffalos, and eating rhinoceros.  Giving the estimated 1,411 Bengal tigers each $1.2 billion would cost $1.69 trillion, or $1.31 trillion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.