Point No Point to Deception Pass: Billionaire class is blind to realities of regular folks

Published 1:30 am Saturday, April 11, 2026

Here on Whidbey Island we recently witnessed the passing of one of our better angels, Nancy Nordhoff. Her generosity and kindness to our community is a legacy that will long outlive her. She was a modest public figure, often dressed in simple work clothes for an afternoon in the garden or when seen driving around in an old pick up truck carrying plants or soil amendments. Her control of millions of dollars of inherited wealth was mostly just a way for her to do good for others, including for the wildlife and nature that surround us.

And on the larger public scene there are other lovely angels such as MacKenzie Scott. She has reportedly already given away some $19 billion of her wealth from Amazon stock, received in her divorce settlement with Jeff Bezos in 2019. Her public generosity has astonished the world. In a very short time she has donated over half of her wealth to such varied groups and organizations as food banks and rural hospitals and clinics, as well as a myriad of other underfunded educational and social welfare programs for the disadvantaged. She did her own research and reached out to many of these groups herself, releasing funds with few strings attached, bypassing the lengthy usual process for those soliciting private funds.

Billionaires, like other people, come in all shapes and sizes, but wealth and power does not readily go hand in hand with generosity and kindness. The incredibly wealthy fear the average person. That probably accounts for why so many wealthy people work against things like voting rights for the common folk. This also explains why so many of the super rich spend much of their lives locked away inside luxury compounds, and when they do venture out, they do so only in armored vehicles with heavily armed guards. If you took away all of the luxury trinkets in their lives, their actual lives might not look much different than that of your average maximum security prisoner in lock up or in transport.

Today more than ever, billionaires are buying political influence. Supreme Court justices, presidents of the United States, and other influential politicians are showered with gifts from such people as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg. One of the last acts of President Clinton upon leaving office was to pardon a billionaire who, no doubt, had done him a great favor, or would do things for him.

We are learning the hard truth that the billionaire class has more than its share of the depraved and corrupt. There are few constraints on people continually surrounded by sycophants and flatterers and servants who know enough to serve in silence. And the super rich simply don’t suffer the consequences for their actions that the rest of us do.

These are the conditions that allowed a monster like Jeffrey Epstein to thrive, and why those in government were so unwilling to confront him in his perversion for so many years. The rich and powerful attended his glamorous events, flew on his luxury jets and enjoyed his luxury estates for decades, while also enjoying mutually beneficial financial deals with him. All the while looking the other way or joining in his abuse of vulnerable children. Some, no doubt, shared his willingness to simply buy off the occasional rebellious child, or, if need be, frighten them into silence, or in extreme cases, silence them permanently.

A sizable part of the American public last year failed to see that the super wealthy would, in fact, be the least capable group to practice wise and good management of society if handed the reins of power. Now we are today seeing this reality close up. The billionaire class in charge of the U.S. government today has robbed the U.S. Treasury of many billions of dollars for their further enrichment. They have at the same time mismanaged the economy and social safety net so badly that many millions of Americans are struggling to merely survive as inflation impoverishes them and social services disappear. And now we are seeing vast sums of money being spent on endless wars abroad and on a growing war against dissent at home.

The good news is that, by their bad example, they have taught us what must be done. The next generation of political leaders will need to outlaw the purchase of politicians by putting an end to laws such as Citizens United. They will also need to generously tax extreme wealth in order to fund universal health care, social security and similar measures. And they will need to curtail arms manufacture and prison construction that lines the pockets of the wealthy while promoting the worst violence abroad and unjust, brutal detainment at home. This is the short list of what we know needs to be done when the sane majority in our society finally prevails in upcoming elections.

Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.