Being a lobbyist can’t be easy. First off, in most cases, you have to actually rid yourself of any soul whatsoever to get into the business. Secondly, there are no career goals outside of getting paid – even the most successful lobbyists on the planet have no real “achievements.” Just bucketloads of money.

Are they a necessary evil? I don’t know. But perhaps America might be a better place if lobbyists didn’t tell Americans that they could get cancer if they tax the wealthy.

From Politico:

Lobbying campaigns by people who have money must appear to be for the good of those who don’t, or they aren’t worth the money.

Thus, the venture capital and private equity lobbies have worked hard in the past few weeks to claim that raising the tax rate on executive compensation is less about the executives than it is about the danger to minorities, academics, pensioners, economically depressed Michigan, “the average American home,” the fight against cancer and jobs.

The fight-against-cancer argument comes courtesy of 28 scientists— “members of the U.S. academic and research community,” according to a letter to President Barack Obama — who, while thanking him for increasing grant money for medical research, warned that the tax measure could cut into the funding they get for long-term research from venture capital.

The jobs arguments comes from a new study for the Private Equity Council that, the group says, shows the venture capital industry isn’t just for rich capitalists but for 10 million regular Americans across the country who are directly or indirectly employed in it.

At issue is a provision in the financial reform bill that would curtail the tax treatment of so-called carried interest, by which venture fund managers get part of their fee in the form of an interest in the funded venture, allowing the fee to be taxed under lower capital gains rates when the gain is realized.

Speaking as someone who not long ago lost his mother to cancer, this is as disturbing and ugly an argument against taxing the wealthy as has ever been proposed. But the simple fact is that – with Obama and Democrats constantly bending over backwards for Conservative beliefs – it may work. And that’s just sick.

–WKW

Crossposted at William K. Wolfrum Chronicles