I was reminded of this old story a few minutes ago when talking with a friend. Thought I'd share it. Just another example of inconceivable wealth.

I cannot seem to find a valid news link to this anymore - used to be able to pull up a Wilmington News Journal article on it. Nonetheless, it is a true story.

Al Lerner (Wiki Link) was the chairman of the board of MBNA when I worked there. He was a rich dude - was, like, the 35th wealthiest person in the country at one point. He owned the Cleveland Browns, by the way. Nice guy.

Anyway, he passed away from cancer in 2002.

The thing is, when they were settling his estate, they realized that City of Wilmington had extracted "wage tax" from his earnings during the last year of his life. MBNA was centered in Wilmington, DE, after all (they were later bought out by Bank of America) and he was the chairman. During that year, I suppose sensing the end was nigh, Mr. Lerner took advantage of tons of stock options - his income was through the roof, even for him.

Problem was, though, Mr. Lerner barely set a foot in Delaware, let alone Wilmington, during that year. He was operating out of Cleveland.

Wilmington owed the Lerner estate a refund. The catch: that amounted to roughly 7% of the the city's annual budget. Whoa! (And you know that money was already way spent...heh...).

"Sorry, kids, school will be letting out in February this year..."

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"Compassionate Conservatism"?!?! That is a stupid phrase. Conservatism is inherently compassionate. It is liberalism that is cruel for the sake of maintaining a constituency.