The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page today defended venture capitalist Tom Perkins’ Jan. 24 rant about the “progressive war on the American one percent.
The co-founder of high-tech venture capital outfit San Francisco’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers complained in his letter to the WSJ editors about his hometown paper’s “demonization of the rich” and a “rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent.”
Poor sensitive Tom just wants to be loved.
Unfortunately, Perkins likened his perceived “dangerous drift in our American thinking” to a progressive version of Nazi Germany’s “Kristallnacht, which kicked off Hitler’s war on the Jews.
“Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now,” wrote the very overheated venture capitalist, who also defended SF’s sky high real estate market that squeezes the young and middle class.
The WSJ excused Perkins’ Nazi comparison as “unfortunate, albeit provocative.” To its credit, KPCB disavowed Perkins’ blast. It tweeted: that “Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree.” Kudos.
Another whiner, Sergio Ermotti CEO of banking giant UBS, wants critics to knock off their bank bashing. “Life is hard enough, and I think this constant lecturing on ethics and on integrity is probably the most frustrating part of the equation. Because I don’t think there are many people who are perfect,” he told fellow one percenters in Davos.
Super-sensitive Ermotti spoke following news that JP Morgan Chase chief Jamie Diamond received a 74 percent raise last year to $20M. The unconscionable hike covers a year in which JPMC reported its first quarterly loss in nine years and shelled out more than $20B in fines.
That lack of accountability of JPMC’s compensation committee in showering money on Dimon is exactly what bank bashers bristle about.
Executive heads should roll rather than get patted.
Maggie Moran, who is well-connected in New Jersey and New York Democratic politics, has established Moxie Strategies in Asbury Park, NJ.
Husch Blackwell Strategies has added FleishmanHillard alum Michael Slatin as a principal in its public affairs group.
Rory Cooper, a veteran Republican operative and policy specialist, has joined Teneo’s Washington office as senior managing director in its strategy & communications practice.
Brian Fallon, who served as national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run, is signing on next month as Vice President’s Kamala Harris’ campaign communications director.
TikTok is nothing more than a Chinese propaganda tool that poses “a grave threat to America’s national security and, in particular, impressionable children and young adults,” say two Congressmen who want the platform registered as a foreign agent.
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