The weepy billionaire's BFF
by digby
From Jonathan Schwarz at The Intercept:
Phil Gramm, a former three-term Republican senator from Texas who once ran the Senate Banking Committee, told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that “it was an outrage” that his friend Edward Whitacre, the CEO of AT&T, only got “$75 million” when he retired in 2007.
“If there’s ever been an exploited worker” it was Whitacre, said Gramm, testifying on the 5th anniversary of passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Gramm appeared genuinely aggrieved by Whitacre’s shabby treatment and literally pounded the table while speaking.
Whitacre actually received a retirement package totaling $158 million.
Gramm attributed public anger at CEOs like Whitacre to “the one form of bigotry that is still allowed in America,” which is “bigotry against the successful.”
This is a clearly a long-standing belief of Gramm’s, who said almost the same thing, word for word, in 2001.
Why the next thing you know, these rich people are going to be forced to retreat to their estates and spend all their time counting their money and ordering the servants around.
#Billionaireslivesmatter
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