The Co-Chair of Snell & Wilmer's Venture Capital and Private Equity Industry Group wrote a piece in The Arizona Republic defending Senator Kyrsten Sinema's preservation of private equity's preferred "carried interest" taxation. Public will has long demanded this unfair tax break be eliminated.
His "practice is concentrated in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, securities, private equity/venture capital, corporate law, and advising corporate boards.
His bio includes:
- Represented Phoenix-based private equity fund in the formation and raising of a $120 million fund
- Represented and advised numerous private equity sponsors in the formation and raising of opportunity funds, venture funds and private equity funds from private investors that focus on the investment in or acquisition of identified operating businesses, real estate, and distressed loans or assets
Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blanfein, who's son Alex is a private equity underwriter (PEU), congratulated the PEU lobby for once again keeping its deeply unpopular tax break.
Here's how the PEU shill characterized carried interest taxation:
"it is an enduring recognition of the risks taken to aid the entrepreneurial engine that has forged American prosperity for decades"
I did not know America's entrepreneurial engine involved loading up affiliates with debt, charging them deal fees/management fees, bleeding cash for sponsor dividends, borrowing even more later to fund a massive PEU payout, and/or spinning off physical assets into another highly leveraged entity for free shares in the original entity.
American prosperity for the middle class has not been aided by the greed and leverage boys. As they've exploded in number and assets under management wages have stagnated. The middle class is disappearing as those at the top take and take and take.
Private equity is wildly unpopular as many workers personally experienced consequences from their greed. PEUs turned housing into a volatile asset with one private equity accounting for a third of house sales.
It should not be a surprise that someone who makes their living serving the PEU class would write a nonsense defense of the ethically indefensible. But that's where we are. He can write it but I call horse hockey.
Sinema is but the latest politician to tilt the already imbalanced scales in further favor of the PEU boys. The public remains Charlie Brown trying to kick the tax fairness football. Senator Sinema is the latest to pull it away after a seemingly serious run up. Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and increasingly more are one.
Update 8-22-22: NYMag's Intelligencer saw through the PEU attorney's puff piece defending Blue Corporacrat Sinema.
Update 12-9-22: Sinema hung her independent shingle to drum up funding from the billionaire boys.
Update 12-22-22: Sinema expects aides to pick up her groceries, fix her internet, book her weekly massage and learn her criteria for choosing an airline seat. That and more queenly expectations reside in a 37 page guide for staff.
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.
