Excerpt from VINE WATCH

Anderson Valley's Richest People

by David Severn

A primary argument against the inflationary corporate capitalistic economic system developed and practiced here in the good old United States of America is the great and growing disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom of the economic spectrum. We do a lot of talk about opportunity but the reality is that the rich keep getting more so and the poor, well, their numbers keep on growing as well.

I know most of you know that already, but by way of having a little fun let's take a look at how this plays out right here in Anderson Valley where the rich population has steadily grown in proper proportion to the massive rise in the undocumented not-so-migrant farm working poor.

Robert Anderson of the book Boonville fame and part-time resident of the former "Mysteries by Mail" compound up Highway 253 came upon his $800 million wealth more honorably than most, he married it. And as far as I know he is considerably more generous than the others I will be telling you about, having, amongst other things, just provided one of our high-achieving, farm working community, high school graduates a full blown four-year college scholarship.

That scholarship will cost Mr. Anderson $25,000 a year, probably more dinero than any one of the recipient's community members make in the same period. Many of you will call his a whopping contribution but let's put it in perspective. With a modest, well secured, 6.5% investment of his $800 million holdings, Robert Anderson most likely makes one million dollars every week in income.

James Kohlberg, the corporate raiding owner of the Toll House and a Bell Valley neighbor of Robert Anderson, weighs in with a family fortune in excess of $1 billion. Since his game is leveraged buy-outs one could assume his weekly income to be somewhat higher than Anderson's. I don't believe he has given one dime to the Anderson Valley community.

Jess Jackson, a monetary leader of the pack for extractive, imperialistic wine interests in Anderson Valley, owns Edmeades Vineyards across the highway from Navarro Vineyards, a hundred acres plus of grapes above Floodgate, an expanding vineyard at the top of Peachland Road and around a thousand acres snuggled between the top of Deer Meadow and the old Palmer place on 253. This guy's wealth is documented at $1.8 billion, more than double Anderson's and he hasn't given one nickel for any local cause not his own.

At the top of the money mountain, though, as far as I know, is Pierre Omidyar, the current owner of Shenoa in Philo. As the founder of Ebay, his personal fortune is somewhere around $8.5 billion, up $4 billion from the $4.5 billion he was worth two years ago when he first bought the place. Where Robert Anderson is allowed to address the local high school, Pierre gives keynote speeches at graduations in places like Tufts University where he talks on the importance of building community.

To give you some perspective about the volume of money we are talking about here, imagine the following fanciful possibility. If Pierre were ever to realize that he could live quite abundantly on the $4.5 billion he had when he first bought into the Valley and he decided to distribute the $4 billion income he has gained since to the 3,000 legal and 1000 illegal residents it would provide $1 million dollars to each and every man, woman and child that lives here. And he would still be counted as one of the richest persons in the world.

I don't know much about the "community building" philosophy that Omidyar brags about within his dot.com, wannabe crowd but the only visible thing he's done here is to install the gate and "No Trespassing" signs that block access to the nicest swimming hole upstream from the bridge on Philo/Greenwood Road.

For those of you who might be inclined to hit the guy up for a loan, I'll let you know the next time he's spotted distributing his wealth by buying yogurt and broccoli at Boont Berry. You can recognize him by his beard and really fat wallet that makes him sit funny and kind of cant to one side as he walks. Pierre Omidyar, a leaning pillar of the local community.