Surprisingly, members of Hartford’s leftist community watch the Super Bowl. At this party, a few of us managed to ignore the corporate speech between football plays and converse about issues small and large.

A friend is retiring this week, and he plans to spend some time writing a book about social movements. I told him that I had written a paper in law school on social movement theory, centered on the universal right to education.

 

He agreed that education merited an important role in the debate of how to shape the nation, but he countered that jobs were more important. And there aren’t enough of them to go around.

 

And there won’t be any for a while, at least according to a story titled “No Rush to Hire Even as Profits Soar” in the Tuesday, February 8, 2011 Wall Street Journal. The story, by John Shipman and Joe Light, stated corporate profits in America are rising, but companies aren’t hiring. 

 

Earnings are up 28% from a year ago for 73% of the companies in Standard-and-Poor’s 500-stock index. Profits are up because companies relied on “aggressive job cuts,” the Journal said.  Pleased with improved profits, they are “in no hurry to add to their payrolls.”

 

This, my loyal readers, is the jobless recovery. One would be foolish to think that corporations can harvest so much money from us without facing consequences for not hiring. Or would one be?

 

My friend at the Super Bowl party argued we are overeducated now, and social movement theory should focus on jobs.

 

Too many students in America have an education, but nowhere to work. Student loans create pressure not just on the graduates, but on the economy, he warned.

 

The student loan bubble may pop, he said.  He might be right. Student loans now amount to the largest type of debt in America, outranking home mortgage debt and consumer credit debt.

 

Student loans represent easily obtainable credit: you can get them for cosmetology school or culinary institutes, neither of which guarantee a great income. But then again, nor does a bachelor’s degree guarantee a great income anymore.

 

Finally, banks may think student loans are guaranteed investments because Congress back in President Clinton’s day made student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Special thanks to corporate water-carrier Speaker of the House John Boehner on that one.

 

So it seems possible banks which underwrite student loans like Chase or Citigroup, which are already laden with toxic assets will suffer further issues with their bottom line when students begin defaulting on a massive basis because there are no jobs.

 

I graduated from law school with $40,000 in debt, which, capitalized, went to $48,000, and by the time I repay it, will be $105,000 or so. That is a $340 monthly payment.

 

My law school debt is on the low end, as the average student ends up with $80,000 or so in law school loans. Whoever has the average doubles my monthly payment - $700.

 

And since it is an average, that means because I only had $40,000, someone else has $120,000 in debt. Triple my payment to $1320 a month. Who can afford that?

 

Recall that the legal industry is shrinking, and there are fewer legal jobs than ever. Now lather, rinse and repeat for every field you can think of that requires a undergraduate degree – computer science, journalism, education and the core liberal arts disciplines.

 

None of these fields have jobs. The unemployment rate should tell us that. Thus, thousands of young Americans have super-expensive educations and attendant student loans, but no way to repay them. Many are already defaulting.

 

You don’t even need to convince people to purposefully default in protest in order to start a mass movement, he said. So many people can’t afford to pay them now. Go to college, study the intricacies of global finance, and the only job available is folding shirts at the mall.

 

The retail job doesn’t cover the monthly obligation on the loan. Almost no job short of $100,000 a year will cover that kind of a payment, and rent, and car payments, and insurance, and so on.

 

Not only that - It is long-term debt servitude. One wonders when people will wake up to this and organize. My friend suggested that this is a movement waiting to happen, and we just need to tap into it.

 

Look at Egypt, he said. The revolution in the streets resulted from overeducation. Egypt trained all these young people for jobs that don’t exist, and those youth are upset now because they have brains, but no way to use them to earn a living. They are shackled to poverty.

 

Some of those conditions in Egypt exist here: overeducated youth wired into the internet. Yet the fundamental desire to protest seems missing here. We have no political culture right now that encourages protest.

 

Having been to Egypt, I can say the poverty in that nation of 80 million is far worse than what we see here. And one wonders if the sense of national unity that exists there is here.

 

For example, recall the recent New Year’s Day bombing on the Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. In the aftermath of the bombing, Muslims (Shiite and Sunni) and Christians locked arms around the church to make sure people were safe to pray.

 

Here in the United States, a 63-year-old lunatic from California attempted to bomb a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. Police stopped him because he bragged about what he wanted to do in a bar, and an alert patron took down his license plate number.

 

But if the bomb had gone off, would Christians have used their bodies as human shields to insure that Detroit’s Islamic community is safe?

 

Also, in Egypt, it seems like the right to protest is more alive and well than here in the United States. Democracy Now! on Tuesday, February 8, 2011 highlighted the story of Asmaa Mahfouz, the 26-year-old female activist in Egypt.

 

Mahfouz posted a Youtube video three weeks ago, that, at least in Amy Goodman’s eyes, helped ignite the national protests.

 

Mahfouz’s moving video said: “I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square, and I will stand alone. And I’ll hold up a banner. Perhaps people will show some honor. Don’t think you can be safe anymore. None of us are. Come down with us and demand your rights, my rights, your family’s rights. I am going down on January 25th and will say no to corruption, no to this regime.”

 

Mahfouz didn’t get arrested when she marched to Tahrir Square to protest. Her video went viral, she went down to Tahrir Square, and hundreds of thousands of people joined her.

 

For those who have followed this column, loyal readers should be aware of what happened to me when posted a call to protest online. Four years later, I am still entrenched in a lawsuit over the arrest. It leaves one with a sinking feeling.

 

So, rather than focusing about the glory of the Super Bowl, my friend and I wondered what would it look like if the educated American youth took to the streets like in Cairo demanding jobs? And how does that fire get sparked?

 

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A wealthy UConn football booster had a hissy fit this week and demanded his donation back, and wants his name taken off the football complex that he helped fund.Why? Because his donation didn't give him access to the hiring process for the new football coach.

 

Since it is highly unlikely that any court would ever force UConn to disgorge the gift from Robert Burton, Sr., the more interesting aspect of the story to me is the pathology of wealth that Mr. Burton demonstrated.

 

If anyone doubts that mega-wealthy people demonstrate pathological behaviors, I point them to Thomas Frank’s Easy Chair column in the February 2011 Harper’s Magazine, “Servile Disobedience.”

 

Frank gathered the results of psychological research studies on wealthy people; for anyone who has been a deckhand on a megayacht owned by someone worth half-a-billion, the results don’t surprise.

 

Research papers published in scientific journals like Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that rich people have no common touch, Franks noted.

 

One study showed that when rich people talk to strangers, they tended doodle and fidget more, and give fewer engagement cues – body language that shows you’re listening. Another study showed that lower-class people performed better on measures like generosity, charity and helpfulness. One of the researchers noted that the rich seem to lack empathy.

 

Frank summarizes: “All of which is to say, the rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don’t get what others are thinking. And apparently, they really don’t care.”

 

After motoring halfway around the world with a 67-year-old man-child multi-millionaire on his 150-foot mega-yacht, I have no questions about how rich people see normal folk. The “Let them eat cake” line of thought didn’t end with the demise of the French monarchy.

 

If you had any doubts about the fact that the rich lack empathy, and expect power where none should be given, please, read the letter from the rich UConn donor, Mr. Burton.

 

Let’s start with the letterhead. Mr. Burton drafted his diatribe on Burton Capital Management, LLC company stationary. Burton Capital Management, LLC was formed in Delaware on January 4, 2004, according to the online database provided by the Delaware Department of State Division of Corporations.

 

Burton Capital Management, LLC is not registered with the Connecticut Secretary of the State’s office, according to a search of the Secretary of the State’s online business entity database. Does this mean Mr. Burton is skipping out of his $250 a year entity tax?

 

Av Harris, spokesman for Secretary of the States Denise Merrill has not returned calls yet. But my guess is that foreign corporations have to file with the Secretary of the State’s office.

 

Burton Management Group, LLC is registered with the state, and shares the 100 Northfield Street, Greenwich address of Burton Capital Management, LLC.

 

Burton Management Group, LLC is also a Delaware limited liability company formed in Connecticut in June, 2003. Both Burton LLC’s have the same agent for service and address in Delaware: 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200, Wilmington.

 

The Wikipedia entry for Robert Burton states that Burton Capital Management, LLC was formed to “acquire manufacturing companies.” Wikipedia says it was formed in 2003, but thanks to the Delaware Department of State, we know it was 2004.

 

One company Burton acquired: Cenveo, a printing outfit with four percent profit margins. This was well below the industry standard of seven percent, Wikipedia tells us. Burton bought enough company stock to get himself appointed CEO.

 

To make Cenveo profitable, Burton cut the workforce from 8,000 employees to 6,000 employees, and closed various printing plants, according to Wikipedia’s sourced entry, a story from the Stamford Advocate.

 

Burton then laid off Cenveo’s entire Colorado headquarters and moved the company to Stamford, where he rehired some 50 of his people from previous printing enterprises.

 

In 1999, Burton had his hands in consolidating Quebecor printing into the world’s largest printing conglomerate. Ten years later, Quebecor filed bankruptcy and reorganization papers.

 

Mr. Burton has used his handsome profits to buy the 1994 colonial-style mansion at 170 Clapboard Ridge Road in Greenwich. This 8,500 square foot home, with 12 rooms, (six bedrooms), is perfect for the aspiring capitalist narcissist. Assessed at $3.6 million, Burton's palace sits on 2.3 acres of prime land.

 

If you guessed that Mr. Burton was a Republican, you’re right! He donated $700 to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, according to Opensecrets.org. This doesn't make him a heavy spender in politics.

 

But by the research highlighted by Mr. Frank, we should be thrilled, indeed, that Mr. Burton gave any money at all to UConn. True to form, Mr. Burton didn’t give out of altruism, but a desire for power, and perhaps a vicarious attempt to relive his college football glory days.

 

Burton is no Andrew Carnegie, the first paragraph of his six-page missive to UConn Athletic Director Jeff Hathaway (a man who I really don’t care for myself) shows that he didn't give $7 million to UConn football to help people, but because he wants to pull strings.

 

At least he's honest about the business of college athletics.

 

Mr. Burton thinks UConn football hired the wrong coach – Paul Pasqualoni. I might agree. As a Syracuse University alum, I might contend that Pasqualoni drove the proud Orange football franchise into the ground.

 

Yet Pasqualoni's win-loss record in the Big East is not why I think he was a bad hire. UConn was wrong to hire him because instead of the $150,000 annual salary of a professor, he signed a contract for $1.5 million a year.

 

Though this dough doesn’t put Pasqualoni in the mega-rich range, with some prudent investing, he too might become a pathologically wealthy fool, like some other high-profile coaches at UConn.

 

Burton's dislike of Pasqualoni isn't that he is common folk. Burton's letter rages that Hathaway didn't ask Burton's son Joe about Pasqualoni. Joe might have complained that Pasqualoni didn't make him captain of the Orange squad like Edsall did for Burton’s other son, Mike.

 

The six-page letter contains other gems that no kindergartner should feel comfortable stating in public. But since Burton invested $7 million in UConn football, he thinks he has the right to micromanage. If only donors to U.S. Senate campaigns were so honest!

 

The Greenwich kingmaker says because he paid for his alma mater, Murray State, to play UConn, he should have a say. It makes you wonder how a donor could arrange schedule choices, and it questions the validity of certain opponents.

 

Burton also whined that he even paid for artwork on the walls of the weightlifting room in the complex named after his family. I would rather that he paid for a bodyguard for Jasper Howard, the UConn star who was stabbed to death on campus.

 

The funniest part of Burton's scorned lover screed - why won't you listen to me? - is that Burton controls printing printing presses and has the chutzpah to complain no one listens.

 

Thomas Frank’s piece in Harper’s notes the same irony of a rich man lamenting the lack of a voice: “We’ve furnished them with megaphones so that their voices might be heard over the hubbub of the crowd.”

 

Before Burton petulantly revoked his largesse to UConn, Burton delivers his "Taxes are for little people" line: “We do not want to deal with people like you and your committee, who we do not trust and cannot count on to make the correct decisions or do anything right with our money.”

 

Well said, Mr. Crazy Rich Guy. Ask Coach Calhoun for a dime to call someone who cares.

 

UConn has options about Burton's name. The school could deny Burton’s demands, and leave his name on the stupid football complex, just to make him mad. It’s not like it’s a classroom building.

 

While I like my father’s million dollar daydream to name the building for my grandfather, a UConn footballer player from way back in the 1920s, I might suggest something different: grant Burton his wish, and name the football complex after Jasper Howard.

 

Howard's name in big letters will remind all football players who step through the doors of that building of their own mortality, that there is life outside of football, that it should be guarded zealously, and that being a college football player does not make one invincible.