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The 1% Fires Back! "I Am a Fat Cat, I’m Not Ashamed"!
Well, here you go. What to even quote? Let's try this!
Asked if he were willing to pay more taxes in a Nov. 30 interview with Bloomberg Television, Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax. “You have to have skin in the game,” said Schwarzman, 64. “I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.”
It's an incredibly hot defensive mess up in there.
Simply from the title of this post, I presumed it was about yesterday's "Dark Knight Rises" trailer.
"The poor can fend for themselves."
-The guy who bought the naming rights to the New York Public Library
(9/11 needs to try a lot harder than that to kill irony!)
"Who gives a crap about some imbecile?" Okay, fair question! I only care because that imbecile is wrecking the economy.
The IRS now accepts skin? Ew.
Tom Golisano is dating Monica Seles? Ew.
@brent_cox A stab in the back for the fans.
Hundredth anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike next month…
These are the people they are putting at the forefront of their PR push? What kind of colossal whiny stupid baby would you have to be not to make the cut?!
@DoctorDisaster I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that any billionaire who thinks that a push to return to Clinton-era marginal tax rates is the same thing as being a persecuted minority is, pretty much by definition, a colossal whiny stupid baby.
wow its amazing cat
"'If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles."
HAHAHAHA
Also, as a Buffalo Sabres fan: Fuck you, Tom Golisano.
@jfruh – "Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up."
This is a joke, right?
@Ham_Snadwich: "Mr. Cooperman is also continually thanked for his untiring efforts to keep the Jews and the coloreds out of St. Andrew's Country Club."
Mr. Schwarzman, can you please tell us what percentage of skin you have in the game of payroll tax?
If you have the money to just up and found a PR firm to defend yourself against (perceived) accusations that you have too much money, you (a) have too much money and (b) are able to take a small hit on taxes in order to better the society that allowed you to be so friggin' rich, which is what everyone is trying to say to you anyway.
Whatever happened to building tiny boats in glass bottles as a retirement plan?
Pardon my French but I'm just thinking he's a cunt. That's really all I have left with this topic now.
"'I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed,' he said last week in a telephone interview from a dressing room in his Upper East Side home."
Clearly the "Aww, are you a fat cat?" portion of this phoner was preceded by a "Where are you?" "What are you wearing?"
@gregorg I think the reporter misheard the "fat cat," who was actually in his ranch dressing room. Floor-to-ceiling hutches, each holding a monogrammed porcelain dish filled to the brim with creamy whiteness.
@NominaStultorum And none of this "Hidden Valley" bullshit, that's for the poors. The 1% slurp up artisanal ranch dressing from boutique dressingmakers you've never even heard of.
OK, there are like two sofasful of embroidered pillows in those quotes right there. Creating jobs on upper Lexington Avenue at this very minute.
@gregorg I'm a crack needlepointer and I'm totes stealing your idea. I'll start with this one: Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.
I was thinking of commissioning some Pareto law throw pillows for next xmas…
@jolie that's the one that got me thinking 'NO, SHUT THE FUCK UP' the most. I guess "very productive" could mean producing heaps of bullshit from their mouths. No I don't feel strongly about this.
There were not as many pictures of adorably chubby felines as I was hoping. So far, this has been a disappointing Hannukah.
An all "egg-white omelette"?
Fast, to the guillotine!
Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.
“You’ll get more out of me,” the billionaire said, “if you treat me with respect.”
And that's when I clicked…the safety to "Off".
"a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at 'shaping the national agenda'"
Welp, they've finally gotten around to trying to shape the national agenda. We're fucked.
@boyofdestiny A nonprofit with the goal of increasing the profits of the already obscenely wealthy. Philanthropy!
@Van Buren Boy How much skin do you think they have in the game?
@boyofdestiny – Probably lots, but it's imported skin, harvested from third-world orphans.
It's simply a fact that pretty much all the private-sector jobs in America are created by the decisions of 'the 1 percent' to hire and invest
Therefore, all the job and wages losses can be attributed to the decisions of 'the 1 percent' too. Lucky for them the rest of us are such complete idiots, we are unable to figure that much out. I'm sorry Mr. Rosenkranz, could you please tell me how to write this next line of code?
@Niko Bellic I'm sure the server-based applications they'll run at Galt's Gulch will be exquisite.
@Niko Bellic – Yeah, it's also mostly bullshit. Small business owners don't earn all that much on average, and bankers and executives at large corporations that are earning in excess of $350k sure as shit aren't investing their personal savings in the company to "create jobs".
Seriously, though, can someone help me with some pithy one-liners to refute these sentiments? My brother-in-law is a Fat Cat and I'm not looking forward to Christmas debates with him…
@Legs Battaglia The best one-liner is a spiked drink and an emptied wallet.
Or: http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/people-buy-things-you-get-rich
@Legs Battaglia -
So there's basically two problems with the "taxing the job creators" narrative:
1. Demand drives business investment and hiring.
2. People making enough money to worry about the millionaire tax aren't putting their personal savings into their business.
The first point is self-explanatory. You don't hire someone because you have extra money lying around, you hire people because you need help making/selling your product. If no one's buying, you don't hire.
Secondly, only very small business owners may be investing their savings in their businesses, but that's because they don't have other sources of capital, like bank loans or stock offerings. These people also don't make enough money to worry about the millionaire's tax (average income for a long term small business owner is around $100k). NPR tried to find the small business owners who would be unable to hire people as a result of the millionaire surtax and came up empty.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/09/143398685/gop-objects-to-millionaires-surtax-millionaires-we-found-not-so-much
Oh, and since most businesses are not sole proprietorships, profits are taxed at corporate rates, not as personal income. Personal income rates changing does nothing to increase or decrease profits.
So, in short, the job creator narrative seems like bullshit because there's no mechanism by which they're actually creating jobs.
@Ham_Snadwich so very helpful and concise! thanks!
@Legs Battaglia – The only sticky wicket is the S-corp, where corporate profits are distributed to shareholders tax-free and taxed as income. And an overly broad definition of "small business". Under some definitions, if someone pays you a couple hundred bucks to use your beach house for a weekend, you're a small business owner. Fact Check gives a decent rundown:
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/11/boehners-big-stretch-on-small-business/
This reminds me that, in these dark days, Mrs. Smitros has invented a cocktail called the Guillotini.
"It's simply a fact that pretty much all the private-sector jobs in America are created by the decisions of 'the 1 percent' to hire and invest"
But what if one doesn't want to be a maid, a nanny or a trophy wife/mistress/rent boy?
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons…"
"And the Union workhouses. Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir…"
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
"Some of Schwarzman’s capital gains at Blackstone, the world’s largest private-equity firm, are taxed at 15 percent, not the 35 percent top marginal income-tax rate." the gov't will never tax carried interest b/c it not only applies to hedge funds, but anything set up as an LLC or LLP, aka law firms. Good luck with that sh*t.
@flatfootafleet Yes I realize they are talking about cap gains, but these guys don't make their money on cap gains, it's all carried interest
PULITZER.
Let's see, Jamie Dimon comes from a line of stockbrokers, went to an elite prep school, Tufts, and Harvard, and then was recruited by the head of American Express (presumably a friend of the family?). To say he "was successful" almost insanely overstates the personal agency involved in his "success."
Just accept the tiny marginal income tax rate increase, you parasitic fucks. The deal is not going to get any better.
@stuffisthings THIS, EXACTLY. Not to mention ZERO accountability or consequences for their fuckups.
@stuffisthings Seriously. These guys won't even notice the difference. If a modest tax hike is going to screw up Jamie Dimon's personal finances, he shouldn't be running a bank.
@Flaneur: He should just think of it as the US taxpayers taking a little return on their 2008 investments.
@stuffisthings Dude went to an "elite prep school" and only got into TUFTS?
@C_Webb Well, when you're friends with the CEO of American Express, it doesn't really matter where you go as long as it's not a, gasp, *state school*.
So…that URL is pretty great. I like when they sneak their position in that way.
@ComradePsmith I did like how they sandwich little plutocratic details between the self-serving quotes.
"I really just can't understand why we're so maligned," said Lord Pinchpenny III, who is 93, taking a break from beating an orphan to death with the sapphire-encrusted scepter his grandfather "acquired" for him during his time as an SS commander just long enough to wipe the flecks of blood and tears from his endangered panda skin robes. "People are just jealous of our success, I guess."
Why is it so hard to understand that the "skin" poor people have "in the game" is, you know, their skin? The skin on their bodies, which require food and shelter and medical care to not die?
@davetar To be fair, with all that fur and fat it's not that easy to remember that "having skin" is not just a figure of speech.
@davetar Well, then they lose! Tough noogies! It's all just a GAME, you see.
Some day when Greenwich is in ashes the richest 1% will wake up and wonder "gee, what happened"?
@Ban KKiller@facebook "This necktie feels so scratchy and… ROPEY. And it's far too tight!"
I know I'm coming late to this, but…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8wQAGDuSRA
I really want to feed that cat something. She looks so hungry.