Former Carlyle Group co-CEO Glenn Youngkin is now the 74th Governor of Virginia.
References to Virginia's long history and America's Founding Fathers were woven through the address, but Youngkin also acknowledged the country's “chapters of great injustice."
Oddly, Youngkin's administration riffed dozens of lawyers in the state's civil rights division.
Youngkin also helped Friday to landscape an area along the Richmond Slave Trail, which commemorates how the city became a major hub in the trading of enslaved people before the Civil War.Glenn spent twenty some years leading a politically connected a private equity underwriter (PEU). He's used to lofty language that bears little resemblance to reality. As he landscaped the slave trail did he think about his predecessors?
On the eve of the Civil War, enslaved black people, in the aggregate, formed the second most valuable capital asset in the United States.
Founding father Thomas Jefferson was the state's second governor, serving two terms.
It had long been accepted that slaves could be seized for debt, but Jefferson turned this around when he used slaves as collateral for a very large loan taken out in 1796 from a Dutch banking house in order to rebuild Monticello. He pioneered the monetizing of slaves, just as he pioneered the industrialization and diversification of slavery.
Thomas Jefferson levered slaves, which makes him a PEU forefather. What makes this act even more egregious?
In 1817, Jefferson’s old friend, the Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, died in Switzerland. The Polish nobleman, who had arrived from Europe in 1776 to aid the Americans, left a substantial fortune to Jefferson. Kosciuszko bequeathed funds to free Jefferson’s slaves and purchase land and farming equipment for them to begin a life on their own. In the spring of 1819, Jefferson pondered what to do with the legacy. Kosciuszko had made him executor of the will, so Jefferson had a legal duty, as well as a personal obligation to his deceased friend, to carry out the terms of the document.
Jefferson refused the gift, even though it would have reduced the debt hanging over Monticello, while also relieving him, in part at least, of what he himself had described in 1814 as the “moral reproach” of slavery.
Youngkin banned the teaching of a subject not taught in Virginia schools, critical race theory. I have no idea how Virginia's newest Governor reconciles "chapters of great injustice" with systemic oppression of people based on race, religion or other personal characteristics.
Glenn's recent history as an ESG loving, Beijing rush hour monitor does not fit with his amorphous political campaign. He did loan his campaign $20 millions. Now that he's won, it's payback time. At what interest rate?
Youngkin will use state coffers to enrich his PEU peers. Carlyle leaked the formation of a new infrastructure fund to take advantage of federal infrastructure funds and Youngkin's newfound control of Virginia state budget.
Update 1-17-22: Are Virginians ready for a PEU way forward? The big money funnel should crank up for Youngkin's former peers, supporters and friends. It will be humming in no time.
Update 1-18-22: "We are living in a world crafted by billionaires to funnel more wealth to themselves."
