Red Team candidate for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's campaign plans to stay on message. Youngkin worked for master message-maker David Rubenstein for decades. Surely he picked up something from the co-founder of The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU). Rubenstein's public face is philanthropist. However, his ex-wife calls this an image move driven by underlying greed.
Former Carlyle group managing director and Fed Chief Jay Powell traded his personal funds, as did many regional Federal Reserve bank heads. They did so ahead of major events and policy shifts.
The Culture of Glenn Youngkin is greed and leverage. He loaned his campaign money. At what interest rate and repayment terms? Youngkin is worth hundreds of millions at the very least. He wants political donations from common people to pay back his super wealthy estate. Devilish?
Political operatives mine culture war issues that drive people to polls. Once in office Youngkin will steer the state wallet to his private equity peers. He will dole out more tax benefits to fellow wealth club members.
Private equity has been around for decades, long enough for the greed and leverage boys to dance between PEU employment and public service. Former Blue Team Senator Evan Bayh blocked for corporations and the wealthy during his time in office. He was hired by Leon Black's Apollo Global.
Bayh would be proud of Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema for her courageous defending of corporations and PEU preferred "carried interest" taxation.
Sinema’s dramatic rightward shift toward the barons of finance and pharmaceuticals at the cost of progressive tax reform stands in sharp contrast to her childhood origin story, in which she talks about having grown up in an abandoned gas station without electricity or running water, at one point living out of a car.
In response to a colleague’s expression of support after an NPR story detailing her family’s struggles with financial hardship, Sinema, then a representative, speaking to colleagues in the Democratic cloakroom just off the House floor, deadpanned: “Yeah, voters love that stupid shit. They eat it up.”
PEU executives from Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe and Blackstone sponsor Senator Sinema. Like Evan Bayh, Kyrsten Sinema will have ample PEU opportunities after her time in Congress. It would be her reward for defending the privileged class. Voters don't like that at all. We've eaten enough of that shit and it never tastes anything but disgusting.
That's why the Youngkins and Sinemas have political handlers to hide their true selves. Handlers want voters to project their hopes and fears on their candidate's faces. Take off the mask and one can easily see, Politicians Red and Blue love PEU. The common people are only needed for their vote, every two to four years. That's the mark of evil, even devilish politicians.
Update 10-25-21: A 2019 study reported, private equity takeovers have cost over 1.3 million U.S. workers their jobs. So far Youngkin has not answered for the thousands of American jobs Carlyle affiliate UCI sent to China.
Why is this important? Because roughly 12 million Americans, 7 percent of our country’s workforce, work for PEU affiliates. The very suburbs Youngkin et al helped hollow out may clamor to vote for him due to school safety fears.
The greed and leverage boys are outstanding at redirection.
Private equity, argues analyst Matt Stoller, amounts to “a highly ideological social movement that comes out of the modest conglomerate craze of the 1960s” and the junk bond mania that followed soon after. The essential lesson private equity’s pioneers gained from these episodes: Go for it. Get everything you can grab.
I wouldn't call it a widespread social movement amongst the populace, however it is pervasive in America's power centers. PEU's know how to use philanthropy slight of hand to fool the public.
Update 10-26-21: Youngkin's team decided to mine racial outrage over Blue Governor Northrum's blackface yearbook photo.
Update 10-27-21: After nixing an increase in the corporate income tax rate Blue Corporacrats pulled the proposed billionaire tax. It's like Lucy with the football in Charlie Brown. It took months for Democrats to run up to the football, swing hard with their foot and land flat on their back.
Update 11-1-21: The ultra rich win again according to uber-wealthy Larry Summers. The Blue Team tax plan includes:
"No rate increases below $10 million, no capital gains increases, no estate tax increases, no major reform of loopholes like carried interest and real estate exchanges but restoration of the state and local deduction explain it."
Update 11-4-21: Synema supports tax cuts for wealthy. Newly elected Virginia Governor Youngkin knows how the U.S. tax code benefits the greed and leverage boys. NYT reported:
The Trump administration’s farewell gift to the (PEU) buyout industry was part of a pattern that has spanned Republican and Democratic presidencies and Congresses: Private equity has conquered the American tax system.
Update 11-18-21: Politico reported:
House Democrats are on the verge of passing a massive tax break for high-income earners — raising a cap on local and state tax deductions that primarily affects high-cost states.
Update 11-29-21: Blue corporacrats rake in millions in contribution cash, some from the billionaire class they serve.
Update 12-19-21: President Biden's agenda, hostage to Senator Joe Manchin Blue Team-WV, is dead or on life support:
“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Manchin said. “I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”
Billionaires win.
Update 1-22-22: "Weak taxation of the wealthy combined with anemic regulation of campaign fundraising have handed America's billionaires outsized political influence to go along with their huge economic clout." U.S. billionaires dumped a staggering $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections—a 39-fold increase compared to 2010. "In the 2010 election cycle, billionaires gave $19 million to Republicans and $11 million to Democrats," ATF noted. "By the 2020 cycle, those respective figures were $656 million and $539 million." They expect a return on their political investment (ROI).
Update 3-1-22: Young workers understand how they are judged on their productivity and the never ending drive to squeeze more out of them. For executives it is never enough. Like the PEU boys corporate chiefs are grabbing what they can.
Update 12-9-22: Sinema hung her independent shingle to drum up funding from the billionaire boys.
Update 1-24-23: Sinema is fresh from attending the World Inequality Forum in Davos and rubbing elbows with the billion class. It turns out the PEU boys were very generous with the Independent Senator after she saved their preferred taxation.
Senator Krysten Sinema received at least $526,000 from donors in the private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital industries after killing a bill closing tax loopholes for private equity.
It sounds like the bidding has already started for her future services.
Update 10-24-23: Kyrsten Sinema said she doesn't care if she loses reelection because she 'saved the Senate by myself' and can go serve 'on any board I want to.' For saving PEU preferred taxation I'll wager she gets more than a board seat.
