Hullabaloo

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

 
Leave the poor billionaires aloooooone!

by digby

For those of you who haven't seen the now infamous Tom Perkins interview on Bloomberg yesterday, here are a couple of the choicest bits.

Mr. Perkins apologized for his comparison of attacks on San Francisco’s wealthy to Kristallnacht. After all, he spoke with Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, and repeatedly acknowledged that his use of the “awful” comparison was inappropriate.

But he then resolutely stood by his point: that a majority was intimidating a minority. He said that his late partner Eugene Kleiner, a refugee from Nazi Germany, would have agreed with the letter to the editor.

“When you start to use hatred against a minority, it doesn’t go well,” he said on the program.

Mr. Perkins doesn’t count himself among the richest Americans. He noted that he’s not a billionaire, only a multimillionaire. But he defended the wealthy as helping to lift the so-called 99 percent. Recent targets of class criticism, including high-rise buildings in San Francisco and Google’s shuttles, are actually part of the solution to helping spur the economy.

“I don’t feel personally threatened,” he said. “But I feel that an important part of America, namely the creative 1 percent, are threatened.”

He later added, “It’s absurd to demonize the rich for being rich and doing what the rich do, which is get richer by creating opportunities for others.”

It's hard to know how to react to someone who so perfectly embodies the arrogance, the self-pity and the Randroid intellectual rot of our 21st century robber barons. He's obviously convinced that he's an oppressed minority who must be protected from the plebes. But he also hates the government and says it's the instrument of his oppression. So I don't know who it is he expects to protect him from the pitchfork mob. Does he think the Tea Party has an army?

Here's the evidence for the horrific oppression of this brave, persecuted minority.  You can see why they feel this rhetoric is so darned unfair. 

The top marginal did go up a teensy bit in 2011 -- back to where it was in 2000.

So you can see the tremendous burden that's being placed on the "creative"  1% who are working themselves to the bone getting richer so we can all benefit.

Here's the whole interview. You just won't believe it ...


Update: Here's what he does for kicks

The largest privately owned sailboat in the world, the Maltese Falcon arrives under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Owner Tom Perkins has brought her here to get outfitted for a submarine, his latest interest.




The Maltese Falcon mega-yacht is getting a new toy - a private, high-performance "flying" submarine. This is a deep flight personal submarine built for Tom Perkins Maltese Falcon yacht. Tom Perkins was there for the launch of his new private submarine, he's the one in the black blazer.

Perkins sold the yacht in 2009 to a hedge fund owner from Cyprus.

By the way, everything I could find via Mr Google says that Perkins is a billionaire around 8 times over. But he denied it in the interview.  Which seems odd.

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digby 1/28/2014 12:00:00 PM