When I was 15, way back in 1970, I traveled by train into a rougher New York City to attend my first New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. (Legendary Wilt Chamberlin was in town taking on Willis Reed, for you aging basketballs fans.) That's when I was convinced by some street sharks to bet a few bucks on a scam game called, I learned later, three-card monte. I lost my money but gained some street smarts.
Thirty-four years later, here I am again in New York. Again heading to Madison Square Garden, this time for the start of the Republican National Convention. And once again, I am learning there's a lot to learn about personal economics - and national politics - on Manhattan's sidewalks.
This time around, I am surrounded by a crowd of bluebloods of questionable pedigree. They are dressed in top hats and tuxedoes, or evening gowns. And they brandish names like X. S. Prawfutt, Ivan Aston Martin, Tex Shelter, Noah Credibility, Fillmore Barrols and Fonda Sterling (who favors a gold necklace with the word "Corrupt" dangling at its end).
These are just a few members of Billionaires for Bush, which calls itself a national network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies.
They have gathered in Manhattan this week purportedly to thank Bush for an economic recovery in which no one needs to be hired, and for tax cuts strongly favoring the rich. Billionaires for Bush is anything but pro-Bush, of course.
It's a national protest group that uses street theater and humor to ridicule how the Bush administration has promoted changes in tax laws and business rules in favor of big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of average Americans.
Can you imagine this protest group marching in Tampa or St. Petersburg or Clearwater? I can't, at least not seriously. But as they say in real estate: Location is everything. When this group is marching past Manhattan's Fortune 100 corporate skyscrapers, picketing outside hotels that routinely charge $600 a night - just at the start of the Republican National Convention - then somehow it all seems less absurd.
And more dead-on on the subject of economic fairness.
That is, after all the political wind, what much of this presidential election is all about.
Four years ago, there were two groups: Billionaires for Bush and Billionaires for Gore. This time around, Bush's prorich policies have made it all too clear to this protest group that there is only one candidate at which to aim their political activism.
Of the nation's 277 billionaires, 122 of them have given handsomely to Bush, explains the group's Web site, billionairesforbush.com. Only 37 have sent money to Kerry.
As in three-card monte, nothing is quite so simple in economic policy as the players can make you believe. But there's plenty of fresh economic data out that give Billionaires for Bush fresh credibility in the minds of middle-class Americans. Where is all the economic prosperity they keep hearing about? Where is this promised rebound of new jobs? Why are costs soaring but wages flatlining?
These are questions I posed to Hal E. Burton, a Billionaires for Bush protester who is not (as his name suggests) an ethically challenged Texas CEO, but in real life a worker from Brooklyn.
Hal pulls from his pocket a copy of a two-day-old newspaper clipping that says new U.S. government census data show the number of Americans in poverty and without health insurance each rose by more than 1-million last year. The figures also show income fell for whites and Hispanics, while the pay gap between men and women - after years of shrinking - actually widened.
That's why, the street protester said in response to my question, he joined the other members of Billionaires for Bush, about 200 strong on Sunday outside one of Manhattan's more elite hotels, the Plaza. They shouted slogans like "Four More Wars," sang songs skewering Republican economic policy, and held signs ranging from "Free Ken Lay," "Privatize Everything" and "Corporations Are People, Too" to "Widen the Healthcare Gap" and "Outsource: Because Cheap Labor Costs Less."
The effect is humorous satire, judging from the grinning New Yorkers who watched the protest, and not threatening.
The group then marched south down Fifth Avenue, fittingly passing Rockefeller Center and such high-end stores as Saks and Gucci, and joined a larger protest.
On Monday, a smaller group of Billionaires for Bush again protested in Union Square before marching over to the United Nations in the afternoon to lend its own style of praise to what the group calls corporate welfare. Members will continue their moments of satire in the streets throughout the remainder of the convention.
In fact, Billionaires wants to show up at as many Bush campaign events prior to Nov. 2 as it can across the country. The group has a fledgling outpost in the Tampa Bay area run by Oli Garky, better known as Aaron Bond. He says recruiting members has been slow.
Among the New York protesters, a white-haired gentleman certainly looks the part of a senior Wall Street investment banker. He goes by the charming name of Grafton Kiquebax, though his real name is Jay Shuchter. He traveled many hours from State College, Pa., where he produces plays for The Next Stage Inc. to express his frustrations with Bush economic policies.
Shuchter knows a lot about acting. He'd probably put the Bush administration up for an Academy Award for best upbeat portrayal of an economy that's making so many Americans struggle to maintain their standard of living.
Says Billionaires for Bush: Bush's media team has managed to construct him as a folksy guy whose tax cuts are good for all Americans. It is this image that the Billionaires campaign is aiming to upend.
