Wednesday, August 24, 2011

GUESS WHICH ONE OF THESE PEOPLE BOB TURNER WANTS TO GIVE A TAX CUT TO?

The man in the picture below is John Paulson, shown next to his $41 million estate in the Hamptons.


Paulson made a lot of money last year:

Topping the charts in hedge fund pay was John Paulson, who reportedly earned $4.9 billion. Paulson's name at the top of the "rich list" isn't too surprising, given that his $36 billion Paulson & Co has emerged as one of the industry's top performing funds.

AR reports that Paulson's 2010 earnings even bested the $3.7 billion he made in 2007, when he rocketed to hedge fund fame with his enormously successful wager on the housing market's collapse.


This is Elisa Mizerany.


Her luck lately hasn't been quite as good, as the New York Daily News reported last December:

Ground Zero volunteer Elisa Mizerany of Nashville would like to give a piece of her mind to her two senators this week, except she's too sick to make the trip to Washington.

The former office manager, 54, is housebound on oxygen, coughing her guts out, a shell of the dynamo she was when she volunteered with the Red Cross near the rubble of the World Trade Center for six weeks in 2001.

"Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) need to come here and meet people who got sick like me and Dottie," she said, referring to her fellow Tennessean, Dorothy Hall, who has the same interstitial lung disease that killed NYPD Detective James Zadroga.

"And they need to pass this 9/11 health bill now. There are too many of us who were there in it, in the dust, in the crud without proper equipment," she added. "For them to sit there in Washington and pretend nobody needs anything is a lie. Pardon my French, but they need a fire lit under their asses."


The bill was eventually passed -- but guess which one of these people the Republican candidate for Anthony Weiner's seat wants to help out with a massive tax cut, and which one he'd squeeze for a bit of shared sacrifice?

The GOP hopeful running for ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner's seat says the $4.3 billion Zadroga 9/11 health law is too broad -- and shouldn't cover volunteers sickened at Ground Zero.

Republican Bob Turner told the Daily News Editorial Board the measure President Obama signed into law last year "had a lot of things that could have been a lot better."

... "My call would be to protect police, fire, emergency workers, construction workers, etc.

"If someone said, 'I volunteered' or walked through there, it's just not the type," added Turner, who faces Democrat David Weprin in the Sept. 13 special election....


As for Mr. Paulson? Well, if he's like most hedge fund managers, his income is taxed at the capital-gains rate of 15 percent -- well below the rate paid by much of the middle class. But at National Review Online a couple of months ago, Turner wrote that that tax rate is still too high:

My desire to go to Congress was to fix what’s broken and go home. End subsidies. End government dependencies. Dramatically cut the budget by 30 or 35 percent. Slash capital-gains taxes down to zero. Cut taxes across the board.

(Emphasis added.)

Ah, but it's only fair, right? Paulson and the rest of the hedge funders have allowed people like Elisa Mizerany to have a free ride for way too long.

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