Ever since the days of FDR’s first winning coalition, which combined northeast progressives and Wilsonian southern segregationists, the Democratic party has been a patchwork of grievance groups and special interests that often have little in common, aside from a visceral hatred of Republicans. And very often, the goals of these disparate groups collide hard — for example, NIMBY environmentalism stifling building projects, which cripples pro-construction unions. Or with this example, in which The Hill spots the “AFL-CIO, Dems pushing new Wall Street tax:”
The nation’s largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters.
The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax — about a tenth of a percent — on every stock transaction.
Small and medium-sized investors would hardly notice such a tax, but major trading firms, such as Goldman, which reported $3.44 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2009, may see this as a significant threat to their profits.
Yeah, stick it to those fat cats on Wall Street! What did they ever do for Obama? Err, wait a second…
Meanwhile, to bring this post full-circle, UCLA spots another progressive, pro-labor president whose policies helped cause an earlier extended period of economic strife.
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