Greenwich's State Senator and her courageous rejection of privilege

Vote, just not for her

Alex Kasser nee Bergstein, our current state senator running for reelection, gave a TED talk last year to some gullible Wesyleyan students entitled “Breaking the Bondage of Patriarchy and Privilege: She’s achieved the first part, abandoning her marriage and children and running away with a female staffer 20-years her junior, but it seems she’s still having difficulty with that letting go of privilege bit.

A reader went down to Superior Court and copied the entire Bergstein/Kasser divorce file and, unsolicited, has forwarded it to me. It’s a public record, and though I won’t publish the intimate details of the family’s travails, Kasser’ sworn financial affidavit seems fair game, so here are excerpts. Bear in mind, these are monthly expenses: Kasser claims to be spending $108,000 a month — that’s a lot of privilege.

(Not counting the house in Greenwich currently occupied by her former family, Kasser owns: 2 homes in Nantucket; 1 apartment in Monaco; 1 estate in Milford; and a cabin in the Adirondacks.)

In her pleadings, Kasser asserts that “the Defendant has no expertise in finance”. Notwithstanding her current position as Chair of the State Senate Banking Commission, I’m inclined to believe her; anyone who can spend $4,000 a month ($48,000 annually) on clothes, $3,400 on restaurants ($40,800), and $4,500 ($54,000) on vacations strikes me as a privileged profligate. Let’s hope she’s just a figurehead on the Banking Commission.

To her credit, though she herself may be mired in the world of privilege, Alex is determined to save her own children from growing up in a pampered environment. While, according to the husband’s pleadings, she hasn’t visited those children since March, she did file an objection to the presence of a nanny in her former household. Her husband’s response was cutting:

I don’t ordinarily begrudge a person spending money — it’s not mine, so it’s none of my business — unless that person is a politician with a $19.2 million trust fund, who spends $1,296,000 a year on personal expenses, and then lectures us schnooks on our privilege. In that case, I get angry, contemptuous and disgusted.