Why Are Teachers Funding Billionaires’ Private Jets?

How are teachers, firefighters and other public workers funding billionaires’ private jet travel? Why are Wall Street firms pretending they are based in Fort Worth, Texas? Who actually got tax increases from all those trickle-down tax policies? Which corporate CEO got an epic grilling at a Senate hearing? How can you be a better person online?

The answers to these questions and more can be found below in today’s edition of Sirota’s Signals, a weekly dose of must-read stories, missed nuggets, and worthwhile distractions from Lever founder David Sirota, exclusively for paid subscribers. 

BILLIONAIRES’ PRIVATE JET TRAVEL, PAID FOR BY PUBLIC EMPLOYEES: Last year, regulators issued a rule requiring hedge funds and private equity firms to better disclose how they spend investors’ money. Since so many of these investors are public pension funds, the rule was effectively designed to prevent Wall Street from stealing the retirement savings of teachers, firefighters, and other public-sector workers. But then Wall Street lobbyists got a Trump-packed court to block the disclosure rule. Now, research shows that Wall Street firms are often using investors’ money — read: pensioners’ money — to finance executives’ private jet travel. 

Institutional Investor reports that nearly two-thirds of investment firms’ contracts allow executives to use investors’ money to pay for their travel — including private jet travel, which has become “common.” Perhaps even more insane: The contracts allow the firms to force investors to pay for executives’ legal fees, meaning that investors like pensions and university endowments are “paying for their own lawyers to negotiate on their behalf (while) also paying for the lawyers who argue against them.”

How much of the cash being spent on private jets and Wall Street lawyers is retirees’ money? A lot: A Columbia University researcher’s study estimated that public pensions are the largest investors in private equity funds, “accounting for 31.3 percent of all investors and contributing 67 percent” of the capital. 

Naked Capitalism’s Susan Webber has been reporting on these kinds of abuses for years, as have others (including me and The Lever). 

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WALL STREET IS PRETENDING IT IS IN TEXAS: You may think that the financial industry is based in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut — but Bloomberg News reports that the industry is now essentially pretending it is based in a small law firm in Fort Worth, Texas, in order to have its lawsuits heard in the Trump-packed Fifth Circuit. The subterfuge highlights the ongoing problem of corporate interests’ forum shopping — which new legislation aims to halt.

GORDON GEKKO IS GETTING RICH OFF CALIFORNIA WORKERS: Recently, Sirota’s Signals told you about how private equity is responsible for American history’s biggest redistribution of wealth from workers to Wall Street. This Wall Street Journal story adds more evidence of that: “California’s worker pension, the nation’s largest, will be paying more money into its private-equity portfolio than it receives from those investments for eight years in a row.” 

THE BLOCKBUSTER EVENT OF THE SUMMER: This is the can’t-miss, must-see-it-to-believe it production of Summer 2024. 

A GUIDE FOR YOUR ONLINE BEHAVIOR: Please read and share this entire thread right now — it covers many of the pet peeves that drive me insane. It’s also a great guide for how to avoid being an online asshole. 

THE LEGACY OF TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS: Congress will consider renewing Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2025. Here’s an important report from the Roosevelt Institute that summarizes 40 years of tax policy in America. A key stat: “Tax rates for the wealthiest Americans decreased by 51 percent, while median-income taxpayers saw just a 15 percent decrease. The bottom 10 percent? Their tax rates *increased* by 10 percent.”

THIS IS HOW CORRUPTION WORKS: The Citizens United decision was predicated on the notion that dark money groups are “independent” of the candidates they support, and therefore there’s no corruption at hand. But a new report by The Hill involving a conservative advocacy group, a billionaire father, and a Michigan congressman debunks that fiction. 

IS ANOTHER HOUSING CRISIS ON THE HORIZON?: Business Insider reports that “the share of ‘seriously underwater’ mortgages — defined as having a balance that’s 25% more than the fair market value of the house — edged up from 2.6% to 2.7% nationally in early 2024. That translates to roughly one out of every 37 homes.”

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HOLLYWOOD USED TO KNOW HOW TO SCARE US: Take a look here — it’s truly amazing that some of the most terrifying scenes in movie and television history involved absolutely zero special effects. 

MORE OF THIS, PLEASE: This is how every lawmaker in Congress should be interrogating corporate CEOs. 

NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE LEVER: I recently found this wonderful email exchange I had with Noam Chomsky about the early days of The Lever. He was — as always — a real mensch. I’m hoping he recovers from his illness. 

THIS WEEK’S TUNES: The soundtrack and extra soundtrack from the 1993 film Dazed And Confused — it’s a trip back to the 1970s.

THIS WEEK’S TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE: A review of some of the most epic fistfights in NBA history (missing from the list is the original Malice At The Palace, which I watched live on TV).

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