Matt Taibbi’s latest blog post demonstrates again the reality disconnect that’s required by the dual jobs of providing cover for President Obama while still trying to display lefty street cred with an attack on the latest obscene tax break for multi-millionaires. Taibbi’s post is by appearances about how a 50% tax break on hedge fund income has successfully survived Obama’s first two years and likely his entire time in office. But the focus of the piece is not Obama. He’s mentioned only once and not in a negative light, in paragraph 11:
Naturally [the tax break] became a campaign issue in 2008. McCain, of course, supported keeping the carried interest exemption. Obama promised to end it. And indeed, toward the tail of his second legislative season, the Democrats took up the issue on the Hill.
Now wait, wouldn’t the 2008 presidential campaign and that Obama promise be the perfect time to stick this into the post:
Yes, informing readers that Obama received double the hedge funds money that McCain did might help readers read a little into that ‘promise’, and get clued into what has really transpired in Congress. Including (of course) why the Obama agenda placed dealing with hedge fund income tax reform at the “tail of his second legislative session.” Taibbi might have also mentioned that Dem Congressional candidates received more than twice as much hedge fund money as Republicans did in 2008, or that Rahm Emanuel was the number one House recipient of hedge fund money that year.
And yet, no, Taibbi proceeds to buckle down and report the unimportant nuts and bolts of the shadow play, as if that really matters. And yes, the usual bad guy is front and center. A mild reform measure passed in the House, but “then went to the Senate, where Max Baucus got hold of it and softened the bill …” Oh yeah, as with health care, once again failed progressive pushes are all Max Baucus’s fault. Taibbi also provides details about Max’s hedge fund manager campaign contributions.
The conclusion to the story is that the reform bill further softened was not voted on during the current session of Congress. And then the afterthought:
The Dems could of course vote it through during the lame-duck session, but they won’t.
Well, okay. But why won’t they? Well, ‘sounding bummed’ (cuz he’s one of ‘our’ guys) John Kerry (who often is prominent in these shadow plays (he ostensibly represents Massachusetts, after all)) gets the last word:
“If there are a lot of bridges burned and unhappy people [after the election], and people anticipate a major change-over in the Congress, it’s going to be very hard to get things done,” Kerry said, referring among other things to the fund-manager tax break.
As usual, that makes no sense compared to what does: hedge fund managers contributed a great deal of money to the Dems in 2008, and sure, they expected a feigned push for reform (intended to satisfy sincere, reform-minded Democrats) that would quietly (with the assured cooperation of the corporate/mainstream media) be abandoned. That’s what we got, and that’s what we always get from the corporate Democrats: “Hey, we tried, but it just wasn’t in the cards. So stop whining.”
Bluntly, this is Barack Obama’s administration with his party dominating Congress, and once again it is behaving exactly as his campaign donation numbers would have predicted. Of course he could’ve got Congress to cancel the hedge fund multi-millionaires tax dodge in the euphoria of his first 100 days, we all know that. This is not a story of ‘foiled strategy’ and/or ‘whoops, that damned Max Baucus again’!
No, the failed reform of the 50% hedge fund tax break is about simply looking at those campaign donation numbers and then asking what a reasonable person would expect. So Barack Obama’s name and 2008 campaign donations needed to be front and center in Taibbi’s post. Why weren’t they? I don’t know, maybe it was just an oversight.
