My view is that establishment media backs Romney on the tax avoidance and private capital stuff because a lot of establishment types have a lot of money and don’t like the idea of anyone scrutinizing other rich people’s finances. Also too, they work for companies that engage in all kinds of financial shenanigans, of course.
I’m not the first person to touch on Glenn Kessler’s super-wealthy background:
Kessler is a great-grandson of Jean Baptiste August Kessler, who was largely responsible for the growth and development of the Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil Company) and a grandson of Geldolph Adriaan Kessler, who helped create the Dutch steel industry.[31]
I wonder, and I don’t mean this in a malicious way, would it be fair to ask Kessler to reveal his own financial situation? Does he have a trust fund that benefits from tax loopholes?
I honestly would like to know.
schrodinger's cat
Yes we should know this, definitely a conflict of interest.
beltane
It must be another sign of America’s decline that our upper class, which once produced the likes of Gore Vidal, can now do no better than belch out money-grubbing hacks such as Glenn Kessler.
gogol's wife
This is funny. I just watched Some Like It Hot, in which Tony Curtis, talking in a funny Cary Grant voice, pretends to be the heir of Shell Oil in order to seduce Marilyn Monroe. Now I’m going to picture Glenn Kessler in a yachting outfit and thick glasses.
danimal
I don’t know much about Kessler’s financial portfolio, but I am certain that DougJ has it right about “a lot of establishment types have a lot of money and don’t like the idea of anyone scrutinizing other rich people’s finances.”
The outrage over Reid’s remarks expose a certain sensitivity that most “99 percenters” don’t have.
schrodinger's cat
I just checked the link, doesn’t Kessler looks like Mark Halperin’s long lost brother.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh dear, with a face like that he never would have been able to seduce Marilyn Monroe no matter how big the size of his trust fund.
FlipYrWhig
Media people inhabit a realm where rich people hide money and brag about it to each other. Anyone who brings it up is obviously just jealous, as they see it. They’re awful. And Romney, who they don’t even like, is reaping the benefits of their awfulness.
dr. bloor
I doubt he’d do so. On the other hand, a real potential benefit of challenging him like thisis that it would lead all of the Villagers to spontaneously combust.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I hadn’t thought about this, but it makes all the sense in the world. These people have no capacity for self-reflection, and their empathy only reaches as far as other people like them. These are the people who can talk about poor dumping families off the few programs that pay a few pennies to help them stay alive, while bleating about the unfairness of “punishing success” by raising the top marginal income tax rate a few points. Hell they don’t know any poor people, so they can’t work up much energy to care about them; but they know all kinds of Romneys and assorted minor league Romneys, so they sure can find it within themselves to worry about those tender souls.
Hunter Gathers
This post gets 4 Gelatos for questioning Kessler’s monetary background. Unless Kessler releases his taxes, you’re nothing but a Harry Reid type liar. And you’re not doing anything to help the political tone in this country. So Kessler was born into money. Big deal. That just proves that he is smarter that you are.
Ash Can
I don’t think we need to know any details of Glenn Kessler’s personal financial situation. The way he tries to pass himself off as a “fact checker” while obviously shilling for Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular say it all about this buffoon.
MattF
I realize this is comic-strip level snark, but I note that the Wikipedia article says is wife is named “Cynthia Rich.” Cousin of Richie Rich, presumably.
Michael G
No! Shuddup! Pants on fire! One MILLION Pinocchios, you big stupid Pinocchiohead!
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: Or the shady Mark Rich?
Roger Moore
@MattF:
But does she have Richie Rich money, Bruce Wayne money, or Scrooge McDuck money?
cat48
DougJ, You would get 4 Pinocchios b/c he didn’t like your tone or the way you asked. He gave Obama 3 Pinnochios today for the way he handled the Waivers on Welfare Reform. He said the Cong was upset b/c they should have changed it; not his Executive Order. Mitt got 4 b/c his Ad was a lie, but he just had to punish the Kenyan too for tone.
BGinCHI
Salary caps for fact checkers.
amk
Is there even an iota of doubt the talking heads and media hacks are in the 1% and they worship the 0.01%ers?
Hill Dweller
@cat48: Both sides!
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: There have always been rich douchebags. People like GV are rare. I don’t see it as a sign of cultural decline.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: You spot Cole around town yet?
I’m thinking you set up a stand selling cabbage and you’ll get him. He loves that stuff.
aimai
People who are the umpteenth heir to big money have zero idea how money is actually made, or what they owe to the military (in Dutch Shell’s case) or ordinary taxpayers for the safety of their investments. Its just something that grandpa put aside in the mattress, as far as they can see.
But there is this attitude on the part of the upper classes about everything to do with wealth and business. Look at this Papa John’s pizza thing. His big bitch point is that doing business costs money. Yeah, that’s right. You even have to pay the workers, sometimes with benefits, and that costs money to the “shareholders.” Well, fuck me sideways and color me surprised. Is that really news to anyone not in the upper class? Why, yes, there are lots of costs associated with producing a product and selling it on the open market. You don’t get to do what you do without paying for the base costs like the flour, or the labor, or the worker’s health care. The “free market” doesn’t mean that all your inputs are free to you because god loves you so much.
aimai
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: A lawyer selling cabbage. I’m gonna let that mental image percolate in my brain for a bit.
You up for coming boozing with us?
Phil Perspective
I Tweeted Kessler and asked him for comment on this post. I even linked to this post in my Tweet.
shortstop
They don’t even have to have a lot of money themselves for this to be true (some do, some don’t). They just have to have reasons to promote the interests of people with a lot of money.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@aimai:
This is about the best, pithiest explication of what I have long wanted to put into words, but I lacked the pith or the brains or something. Gracias. Only drawback is that it would be hard to fit it on a sticker or icebox magnet…
Joey Maloney
Please, please, please please, pretty please someone accost him at the National Press Club and do this with a Flip cam at the ready. The resulting poutrage would be epic.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Folks like Kessler and Romney obviously MUST be awesome people, better than the rest of us…
…otherwise, why would Jeebus have given them so much money?
ericblair
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Well, yeah, it’s all about the economic rent, baybee. The big money is tied up for generations in assets that make money by simply existing. Once you actually look at a business that has actual costs besides cutting a bunch of rich assholes a check every month, then it’s outrage time.
Also explains the paranoia about inflation. A certain amount of inflation reduces the real benefit of rents over time, meaning that eventually you have to go out and do something somewhat useful with the money instead of sitting on it. Horrors. Not acceptable. So if there’s a choice between greasing the skids a bit by raising inflation and embracing Austerity to let the dead hand of rent keep taking its due, it’s Austerity every time.
...now I try to be amused
I’ve a hunch that some very rich people will be hopping mad at Mitt after his vanity stunt of running for president results in the curtain being pulled back on their financial shenanigans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have a fantasy that every talking head has a scroll with their annual income as they spout about “entitlement reform” and Bowles-Simpson. I don’t think it’s even quite as paranoid and resentful as DougJ suggests, not wanting their own assets scrutinized, as it is the “everyone I know….” syndrome, the true cluelessness of privilege. How many times do you hear “everyone has money in the stock market these days!”, in reality I think the number is just over half, even accounting for pension funds, IRAs, etc.
I do think we need to keep hitting the media on their economic-class biases. I think the whole “liberal media” schtick has been internalized because, I suspect, the vast majority of journalist are pro-gay rights, believe in global warming even if they don’t get that we really have to do something about it (Friedman thought himself quite the eco-warrior for a while there, ’cause he wrote several columns including the phrase ‘green is the new black’ till different butterfly flitted through his intellect) and if they’re squishy on abortion, they don’t support person-hood amendments. The majority of them, at least the ones who appear on TV and thus drive the debate, probably think of social security as a nice little supplement to one’s retirement funds.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: I may have seen him. I cannot be sure though; fat, bearded, blond, shambling men are not exactly uncommon here.
TheF79
I’d bet he has granite countertops.
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: If you get back here, yes, let’s make a plan soon. We arrive a week from today.
pluege
its a point that anyone taking advantage of a tax loophole is costing tax payers money of the services the extra government revenue would have paid for. As such, taxpayers should have a right to know all usage of tax loopholes. In other words, the right of use of a tax loophole should at least come with the cost of public disclosure. That would go a long was towards reducing tax loophole malfeasance and would provide light on which loopholes were being used and abused, and which weren’t.