SternSkipper
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Pity the Poor Billionaires
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
We had the perfect headline all picked out for this piece but our colleague Paul Waldman at The American Prospect magazine beat us to the punch:
"It's Hard Out There for a Billionaire."
You see, according to Politico.com, the so-called "mega-donors," unleashed by Citizens United and pouring boundless big bucks into this year's political campaigns, are upset that their massive contributions are being exposed to public view, ignoring the right of every one of us to know who is giving money to candidates -- and the opportunity to try to figure out why.
"Quit picking on us" is part of Politico's headline. Their article says that the mega-donors' "six- and seven-figure contributions have... bought them nothing but grief."
This is definitely not what they had in mind. In their view, cutting a million-dollar check to try to sway the presidential race should be just another way to do their part for democracy, not a fast-track to the front page.
Uh-huh. The sound you hear is the world's smallest violin, say, a teeny-tiny Stradivarius insured for millions. "Is there a group of people you can think of who have thinner skin than America's multimillionaires and billionaires?' Paul Waldman asks.
Wall Street titans have been whining for a couple of years now about the horror of people in politics criticizing ineffective banking regulations and the favorable tax treatment so many wealthy people receive... America's barons feel assaulted, victimized, wounded in ways that not even a bracing ride to your Hamptons estate in your new Porsche 911 can salve. And now that the presidential campaign is in full swing, their tender feelings are being hurt left and right.
Last month, an Obama website cited eight mega-donors to Mitt Romney's campaign as possessing "less-than-reputable records." Among them was Frank VanderSloot, a Romney national finance co-chairman who has raised millions for the campaign. He's a rancher -- with 110,448 acres, on which he no doubt roams playing "This Land is Your Land" on his little Stradivarius -- and CEO of the billion-dollar company Melaleuca, which Rolling Stone describes as "a 'multilevel marketing' firm based in Idaho that sells off-brand cleaning products and nutritional supplements."
VanderSloot and his wealthy pals went ballistic and cried intimidation. "You go back to the Dark Ages," VanderSloot said, "when they put these people in the stocks or whatever they did, or publicly humiliated them as a deterrent to everybody else -- watch this -- watch what we do to the guy who did this."
Conservatives described the Obama ranking of Romney contributors as an "enemies list," conjuring images of Nixonian wiretaps and punitive tax audits. But despite protestations to the contrary, these deep-pocketed plutocrats aren't shelling out the shekels for the love of flag, Mom and apple pie (or tarte tatin, as they call it in the swanky joints).
"Most of the megadonors backing [Romney's] candidacy are elderly billionaires," Tim Dickinson writes in Rolling Stone. "Their median age is 66, and their median wealth is $1 billion. Each is looking for a payoff that will benefit his business interests, and they will all profit from Romney's pledge to eliminate inheritance taxes, extend the Bush tax cuts for the superwealthy -- and then slash the top tax rate by another 20 percent." As at least one of them has said, they view these cash infusions as an "investment," plain and simple.
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Looking forward to The Dead Singing The National Anthem At The World Series.
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We Are Being Too Mean To Billionaires... - 
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