Quotabull

Today, a megayacht is indispensable. It’s not like 15 years ago, when a yacht was a luxury item.

— Olivier Milliex, head of yacht finance at the Dutch bank ING, on the occasion of this year’s Monaco yacht show.

At the moment, there is a definite war being waged in fashion, a move by a handful of designers, including Nicolas Ghesquiere, Alber Elbaz and Raf Simons, to build a modernist defense against standard-issue blue-chip luxury and the value it represents.

— from an Oct. 3 New York Times fashion review by Cathy Horyn.

She owns a house in Palm Beach. A villa in St. Bart’s. A condo in Sun Valley. And yet a piece of her still lives on a cul-de-sac in Ohio.

— text of a Bank of America ad that’s part of a $25 million campaign (themes: “the new face of wealth” and “wealth management for today’s wealth”) to transform its mass-market, blue-collar, populist image to one with “wealth management” capabilities for elite investors.

It’s wealth with values. These people don’t call themselves millionaires or rich, though they certainly are.

— Barbara Glasser, the head of marketing at investment bank Smith Barney, describing her firm’s campaign, “‘Working Wealth, [which] focuses on money made, not inherited, by a new generation of ‘millionaire baby boomers’ who are now in their 50s and 60s.”

I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a private jet and it’s just me, the athlete, his best buddy from home, and a hair stylist.

— sports agent Steven Reed, who has 75 clients with an estimated worth between $500 million and $750 million, saying how he tries to make “an effort to understand where a client is coming from culturally and where his priorities might lie.”

The average ticket price for Cowboys home games (non-suites) will increase from $72.78 in 2005 and 2006 to $84.53 for the 2007 season.

— from a March 23 press release from the Dallas Cowboys, meaning a family of four will average $338.12 (not including gas, parking, concession stand hot dogs and beer) to see America’s Team, valued at “$1.5 billion, putting them atop the NFL team value rankings for the first time in eight years and making Dallas the most valuable sports franchise in the world.”

NEWS ANCHORS (salary per year)
Katie Couric, CBS Evening News — $15 million
Matt Lauer, NBC Today coanchor — $12 million
Diane Sawyer — $12 million
Meredith Vieira, NBC Today coanchor — $10 million
Brian Williams — $8 million
Anderson Cooper — $5 million
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC anchor — $4 million
Harry Smith, CBS The Early Show coanchor — $3 million
Ernie Anastos, New York local news anchor — $2 million
Lesley Stahl, CBS 60 Minutes correspondent — $1.8 million
Sr producer for network newsmagazine — $250,000-$400,000
Average local TV news anchor — $75,500
Broadcast news associate entry level — $30,000

— from July 27 TVGuide summary of celebrity salaries.

At least seven of the 18 candidates actively seeking Republican and Democratic nominations have at least $1 million in assets, according to financial disclosure reports filed this week with the Federal Election Commissions, and three candidates who have not yet filed are known to be millionaires. … All of the candidates are seeking to lead a country where the median net worth is about $93,000, and the median yearly income is about $46,000.

— from a May 17 CNN story about candidates’ financial disclosure statements.

American values are at the heart of America’s historic rise to world leadership. These include, among others, respect for hard work, sacrifice, civility, love of family, respect for life, education and love of freedom. To remain a superpower in the world we must continuously and vigorously reaffirm these key components that have led to America’s greatness as a country.

— from the Web site of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has reported assets of as much as $350 million and who has loaned his campaign nearly $15 million of his own money, which is more than the combined fundraising total in the first half of this year of presidential candidates Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter.

Republicans often taken on really unpopular positions because it does sound great to say that you’re going to spend a lot more on children’s health care, but when you start digging deeper and realize that they’ve got a funding cliff, that basically in 2011, there’s no money left for the S-CHIP program. They don’t fund it sustainably. And on this idea of raising taxes on the American people right now to fund a war, well, does that sunset? Do they wait for al Qaeda to wave a white flag and then those taxes are going to go away? Does anyone seriously believe that the Democrats are going to end these new taxes that they’re asking the American people to pay at a time when it’s not necessary to pay them? I just think it’s completely fiscally irresponsible, and the president won’t go along with it.

— White House press secretary Dana Perino at an Oct. 2 press briefing, commenting on whether the president would veto a bill expanding health care for children in low-income families.

This bill is not socialized medicine. Screaming ‘socialized medicine’ is like shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. It is intended to cause hysteria that diverts people from reading the bill, looking at the facts.

— Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who helped write a bipartisan bill that would expand a program, known as S-CHIP, that would provide health insurance for 10 million children, most of them in low-income families, Sept. 28.

What the president said is, look, send me the bill, I will veto it, and then we will get about the business of trying to find some common ground and reach an agreement on a way forward.

— White House press secretary Dana Perino, Oct. 3, after President Bush vetoed the S-CHIP bill.

What makes this a ridiculously bad move is decorating it ‘Native American style.’ They probably brought in a Native consultant and heard what they wanted to hear, which is that Native Americans like sunrises and rainbows and feel real connected to the earth and the night sky and stuff.

— a reader identified as “la foi” on the Web site of The Portland Mercury, an alternative weekly near Nike headquarters in Bend, Ore., criticizing Nike’s Air Native N7 sneaker adorned with feathers and arrowheads.

There are always going to be negative comments, but most of them are saying that because they are not really familiar with the whole process that Nike went through.

— Rodney Stapp, a podiatrist and a member of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma who is director of the Dallas Urban Indian Health Center, describing the history of Nike’s attempt to provide footwear inexpensively for his diabetic Native American patients who typically have wider forefeet.

I’m really concerned about my health. This stuff is safer than cigarettes, it’s discreet, and it’s really good.

— Jesper Froberg, a maître d’hôtel, who tries to limit his smoking by using a Swedish smokeless tobacco called snus that American tobacco companies are looking to as a “potentially profitable, less dangerous alternative to cigarettes.”

It’s a clever marketing ploy. I’m not a health fascist, but I don’t believe the solution to the tobacco problem lies in a new product from the tobacco industry.

— Margaretha Haglund, the director of tobacco prevention for the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, about American tobacco companies’ consideration of plans to market snus (rhymes with loose).

xpost: Scholars & Rogues

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues appearing Thursdays.

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