Buyout Monsters

[DainBramaged]

http://www.july17action.org/godzilla/

Buyout firms such as Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts have made billions of dollars using special tax breaks that reward them for buying and selling companies; and they’ve slashed wages and destroyed jobs all while using tax loopholes to pay an even lower tax rate than everyday Americans on their billion-dollar profits.

On July 17, in cities from New York to Bangalore to Paris, SEIU members will be joined by activists from 25 countries to take aim at the special perks and tax loopholes that buyout firms depend on to get rich.

There is legislation in the U.S. Senate to close the loopholes that would provide money for tax relief for middle income taxpayers and fund healthcare. The buyout industry has spent millions to defeat this legislation.

And now they’re working with powerful friends in Washington such as John McCain, who have vowed to keep their special tax loopholes. John McCain even has powerful buyout lobbyists as advisers, and the granddaddy of the buyout industry, Henry Kravis, is helping him raise money.

[leveymg]

1. One of the monsters already has Chrysler in its teeth - Cerberus Capital

Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing

Rumsfeld and Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors

by leveymg
Sat Mar 10, 2007 at 03:58:42 AM PDT

A large global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management (dba, Cerberus-Gabriel), is at the center of an emerging Pentagon and CIA contracting scandal that has the attention of three Congressional Committees.

In each case, the companies under investigation have links to prominent GOP figures, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several Republican Congressmen indicted for corruption involving kickbacks from defense contractors. The Republican Congressional Campaign Commitee (RCCC) has also received substantial contributions from conservative fund managers running Cerberus, a virually unregulated $30 billion hedge fund, which owns the second largest bank in Israel.

This scandal involves the mismanagement of VA hospital facilities privatized during the Bush-Cheney Administration, as well as intelligence abuses by private CIA contractors.

SNIP...

What a tangled web. One wishes Chairman Waxman’s staff and other Congressional investigators the strength of Hercules in taking down the Three-headed Dog, Cerberus, that guards the gates to Hell.


CONTINUED...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/10/21556/5045