Notice how they weave the facts together with propaganda, conflation, and bullpoop. The article uses my favorite (least favorite) piece of soundbite bullpoop as well, mentioning "the top 1%" instead of the top 0.1% ... thus conflating billionaires together, again, with your neighborhood plumber and doctor. Yeah, NY Times there really is NO difference between billionaire hedge fund managers and your local doctor or plumber ... all equally "rich". Sure.
One more thing which goes conveniently by the wayside: the article waxes glowingly about Obama's apparently heroic efforts to battle back those evil Republicans and close that loophole for hedgefund managers. But this is demonstrable nonsense. The Dems OWNED the entire Congress when Obama came to power and it would have been EASY ... at least in terms of end running Republicans ... to have closed the hedgefund manager loophole AT THAT TIME. BUT NOTICE THAT THEY DIDN'T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST EFFORT TO DO THAT...DIDN'T MAKE THE SLIGHTEST PEEP. OBAMA WAS TOO BUSY STUFFING HIS WEST WING WITH BUDDY-BOY PIGMEN FROM G.S. AND OTHER PLACES. I note the Repubs, borrowing from De's earlier comments, could have done something similar about abortion when THEY controlled the government beyond any blockage from Dems...but they didn't, either.
It's all hypocrisy as far as I can tell. Obama could have EASILY closed the hedgefund managers obscene loophole when he came to power but he was conveniently silent on the issue until now ... now when he CAN'T close it ... but can make political hay.
As I said, all propaganda, conflation, and bullpoop. Backed up by ERSATZ newspapers ... which are rightfully sinking into complete oblivion as people, increasingly, don't want to pay for garbage cast as "news".
The country is BANKRUPT, folks. Economically, yes, but firstly morally. And this article makes my point in ways the article author didn't really intend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/opinion/07kristof.html?src=me&ref=general
...
So take a look at one of the tax loopholes that Congressional Republicans are refusing to close — even if the cost is that America’s credit rating blows up. This loophole has nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with protecting some of America’s wealthiest financiers.
...
This carried interest loophole benefits managers of financial partnerships such as hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds and real estate funds — who are among the highest-paid people in the world. John Paulson, a hedge fund manager in New York City, made $4.9 billion last year...
Mr. Paulson declined to comment on this tax break, but here’s how it works. These fund managers are compensated mostly with a performance bonus of 20 percent or more of the profits they make. Under this carried interest loophole, that 20 percent is eligible to be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate (if the fund’s underlying assets are held long enough) of just 15 percent rather than the regular personal income rate of 35 percent.
This tax loophole is also intellectually vacuous. The performance fee is a return on the manager’s labor, not his or her capital, so there’s no reason to give it preferential capital gains treatment.
...
One important proposal has to do with founder’s stock, the shares people own in companies they found. Professor Fleischer has written an interesting paper persuasively arguing that founder’s stock is hugely undertaxed. It, too, is essentially a return on labor, not capital, and shouldn’t benefit from the low capital gains rate.
...
I have come to realize that men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men. -Napoleon
| 
