jerk of the week: blue sky mining for jerks

How about a little musical accompaniment for this week’s jerk?

Ah, Midnight Oil … who *is* going to save you?

Certainly not this week’s JERK OF THE WEEK, who thinks there’s nothing as precious as a hole in the ground …

GINA RINEHART

If you’re not familiar with this charming sheila from the land down under, Rinehart is one of the richest women in the world, earning an estimated $600 PER SECOND from the mining concerns she’s inherited from her father, the late Lang Hancock. She currently has a net worth of about $18 billion, but that number continues to increase rapidly. She’s single, for what it’s worth … which apparently is quite a bit.

Anyway, simply being rich doesn’t make one a jerk—if it was, to paraphrase Rep Tavier from Fiddler on the Roof—I should be so cursed. No, Ms. Rinehart earns this week’s title for apparently not having enough money.

From NPR:

Nothing ignites controversy like having one of the world’s richest women tell her fellow Australians that they need to cut labor costs in order to compete with Africans who are “willing to work for less than $2 a day.”

Georgina “Gina” Rinehart, who the BBC says earns about $600 a second from the mining company she inherited, says in a video she posted on the website of the Sydney Mining Club that Australia is just too costly for businesses such as hers and that she worries “for this country’s future” because it’s so much less expensive to mine and manufacture elsewhere.

“Business as usual will not do,” she says, in the pitch for lower taxes and creation of a special economic zone.

Apparently, the 1 percent isn’t confined to the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Here’s the full video where she essentially tells Australians that she’s may not be able to afford to do business in their country any more if workers insist on being paid living wages. Nice.

Well, she has clearly struck jerk gold here in rayality. Enjoy!

And if you want to mine for jerks, can I recommend Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Connecticut History, which comes out on Sept. 18. Dig deep in your pocket and pre-order it now at Amazon.com.