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- Mar 18, 2014
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Cliven Bundy and the entitlement of the privileged
As weve seen in recent years, this sense of entitlement pervades the privileged. Billionaire hedge fund operator Stephen Schwarzman feels so entitled to his obscene hedge fund tax dodge the carried interest exemption that he viewed Obamas call to close the loophole as a war. Its like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Tom Perkins, co-founder of venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, considers mere criticism of the wealthiest Americans akin to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
When Republican Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had the temerity to propose a surcharge on the biggest financial houses (those with $500 billion in assets or more), to correct for the subsidy and competitive advantage provided by being too big to fail, Wall Street went ballistic. Republicans were told the spigot of political fundraisers would be closed until they recanted their heresy. Were going to beat this like a rented mule, boasted Cam Fine, head of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Big Oil feels so entitled to its multibillion-dollar annual subsidies, that Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, even denies their existence: The oil and gas industry gets no subsidies, zero, nothing. The more than $4 billion that the most profitable companies in the history of the world receive annually from U.S. taxpayers are apparently entitlements, not subsidies.
No one exemplifies this sense of entitlement more than the billionaire Koch brothers, self-proclaimed libertarians who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting think tanks, lobbies and candidates who will protect their right to pollute our air and water while leaving taxpayers to pay billions of dollars to repair damage done. Owners of companies that have serially violated environmental, health and safety laws, the Koch brothers have played a major role in propogating the views adopted by rancher Bundy.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Cliven Bundy and the entitlement of the privileged - The Washington Post
As weve seen in recent years, this sense of entitlement pervades the privileged. Billionaire hedge fund operator Stephen Schwarzman feels so entitled to his obscene hedge fund tax dodge the carried interest exemption that he viewed Obamas call to close the loophole as a war. Its like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Tom Perkins, co-founder of venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, considers mere criticism of the wealthiest Americans akin to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
When Republican Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had the temerity to propose a surcharge on the biggest financial houses (those with $500 billion in assets or more), to correct for the subsidy and competitive advantage provided by being too big to fail, Wall Street went ballistic. Republicans were told the spigot of political fundraisers would be closed until they recanted their heresy. Were going to beat this like a rented mule, boasted Cam Fine, head of the Independent Community Bankers of America.
Big Oil feels so entitled to its multibillion-dollar annual subsidies, that Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, even denies their existence: The oil and gas industry gets no subsidies, zero, nothing. The more than $4 billion that the most profitable companies in the history of the world receive annually from U.S. taxpayers are apparently entitlements, not subsidies.
No one exemplifies this sense of entitlement more than the billionaire Koch brothers, self-proclaimed libertarians who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting think tanks, lobbies and candidates who will protect their right to pollute our air and water while leaving taxpayers to pay billions of dollars to repair damage done. Owners of companies that have serially violated environmental, health and safety laws, the Koch brothers have played a major role in propogating the views adopted by rancher Bundy.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Cliven Bundy and the entitlement of the privileged - The Washington Post
