Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says he would change the tax laws to force people who work at hedge funds to pay more in taxes, because "the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder."Raise taxes?! On job creators?! Heresy!
In an interview with Time Magazine published last week, Trump said he might want to "switch taxes around" because "I have hedge fund guys that are making a lot of money that aren't paying anything." He confirmed on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that he would change the tax system to force those who work for hedge funds to pay more.
"They're paying nothing and it's ridiculous. I want to save the middle class," Trump said. "The hedge fund guys didn't build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky."
But no, as I learn from at least some of the folks in this Free Republic thread, it's cool, because hedge-funders are primarily Democrats:
i approve forcing hedge fund to pay the same rate, but this rate should be lower. So many hedge fund managers are democrats who advocate higher taxes on others, but not themselvesSo, are hedge-funders really Democrats? Judging from their giving -- at least in the recent election cycles -- no, they aren't, according to Open Secrets:
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Eliminating carried interest will hit leftist billionaires such Tom Steyer, Warren Buffett, Soros, Jon Corzine, and the boys at Goldman Sachs hard.
It won’t affect the 20% capital gains rate for the average middle class taxpayer with stocks in her/his retirement portfolio.
Generally I’m not for higher taxes but at least this one might actually reduce some of the millions of dollars progressive billionaires give to leftist political candidates and causes.
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I wouldn’t care if marxists hang from the lampposts. They created the current financial system. The investors play by their rules.
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Then-US Sens Clinton and Corzine. Corzine was fresh out of Goldman Sachs executive suite, buying his NJ Senate seat office for $65 million; then buying the NJ governorship. Out of office, Corzine ran a hedge fund where $1.5 B went missing.
Chelsea's husband, Mark Mezvinsky, runs a hedge fund that gained access to bigtime Wall Street investors w/ ties to the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.
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I know a couple of hedge fund guys from business. Pure sleaze. Think wolf of wall street. And they’re Dems.
It should be noted that New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a Democrat, was the largest individual recipient of hedge fund cash in 2014. But the next 19 recipients in the top 20 were all Republicans:
And, of course, in 2012 Mitt Romney received nearly four times as much hedge fund money as Barack Obama.
Hedge funders give to Democratic presidential candidates when they think a Democratic presidency is inevitable and they want to try to ensure that the winner of the election will play ball. (That happened in 2008.) They give to some useful Democrats in the Senate, particularly in states such as New York and New Jersey, where Republicans rarely win Senate elections -- and, yes, frequently they get what they pay for from those Democrats. (What they get is not liberalism.) But none of this means that the majority of hedge-funders are Democrats, or liberals (except on certain social issues).
But if it comforts the Trumpites to believe this, and to believe that "marxists ... created the current financial system," which are then imposed on poor, suffering investors, well, whatever floats their boat.
4 comments:
I am so not surprised by this. The "tax hedge fund guys" is absolutely a gimme, easy to sell to right wingers who are hating on east coast elitists and jews and international capitalism at the same time. And there are plenty of those guys--in fact lots of right wing political social engineering has gone into both stimulating these guys hate glands and also diverting their attention to other, weaker, prey. But going after someone's money has always been integral to the right wing dodge--its just that the people they usually think of as having or getting money are poor, single mothers, moochers, professors, state colleges (never private universities), climate scientists, etc..etc...etc...
I also think that people are naive if they think that anything Trump says now is dispositive about what he would do if he were elected. Trump is not known as a guy who keeps his word about anything--he thinks of himself as an ideas man and a deal maker. If he were to be elected (which I'm not worried about) and the hedge fund guys made him a better deal like "take the money from poor people or from social security" he'd do that like a shot. He's not wedded to making wealthy people in general pay for good government, just like he's not interested in good government. Hedge fund guys are a convenient target, but their money will spend as much as anyone else's if he is willing to be bribed or negotiated with. And he is willing to cut a deal, of course.
"The Art of the Steal," eh, aimai?
Trump has always taken what's not nailed down - and some that is.
He has never demonstrated having even a couple of atoms of scruples, so why should he start now?
He's just saying that to say that because it sounds good.
The conservative rubes will twist anything he says in a way that pleases their inner hate-filled Id.
Nevertheless, there's an interesting idea floating around in all of this, and it has to do with how to make the Republican constituency vote against conservatives. Or do I mean how to make the conservative constituency vote against Republicans? Well, anyway....
The Koch brothers? They're spiritual Democrats, dontcha know. I mean, how else do they give money to dangfool Liber-ul and kultchural causes like NPR and the symphonic hall in New York? And also, why kind of name is Koch? Wasn't that the name of a Joosh mayor of New York? And wasn't he also gay? I rest my case on the Koch brothers.
Opposition to Obamacare? Why, those Rinos are only opposing it because they want to replace it with even worse leftwing ideas like single-payer socialism.
Opposition to the Iran Nuke treaty? That's because they know that if we don't ratify it, all them Euro-peen Liberuls can feel free to abandon the U.S. and leave us twisting in the wind.
In fact, the whole Republican conservative movement is a nest of secret lefties, lying in wait to grab our guns.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
@The New York Crank- I have alo found it interesting and dismal somehow that Charles Koch throws around so much money in NYC for cultchah. Like, getting the NY State Theater at Lincoln Center renamed after himself. It's what egotistical billionaires do, I guess.
But the TRULY odd and weird thing was when Charles Koch bought the apartment of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at 1040 Fifth Ave after her death in 1994. He seemed to seize it like a talismanic trophy. I didn't know who he was when I read he had bought it; I certainly know who he is now. Anyway, Koch soon tired of Jackie's aerie: it was rather outdated and needed work, and at 14 rooms it was too small for him. My point being, there was some sort of weird symbolism there that he HAD to have Jackie's apartment for some reason. Was it sympathy to her and the Kennedy legend? Was it hatred of that, this seizing a trophy from an ideological enemy? It's very peculiar either way.
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