The hypocrisy really gets ratcheted up with John Oliver, the No. 1 darling to so many liberal anti-Trumpies, who regularly attacks GOP tax schemes as giveaways to the rich and detrimental to the poor. (Again, thatās an apt description, but they evinced less rage about Obamaās economic and tax policies, which also funneled money upward to an extreme degree.)
For years, Oliver has criticized the estate tax, which opponents, in a smart linguistic move dreamed up by Frank Luntz, long ago labeled the ādeath taxā; and the tax codeās raft of loopholes that benefit special interests he identified as oil companies and hedge fund managers. Oliver even briefly established the bogus Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption to draw attention to tax-exempt status granted to churches and charities.
Back in July 2014, in an episode in which he lamented the Wealth Gap in Americaā (which has resulted in the richest one percent of Americans controlling 20 percent of annual income), Oliver said, āAt this point the rich are just running up the scoreā¦What sets America apart is that we are actively introducing policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy,ā such as tax cuts and loopholes like trusts.
So itās a little surprising to discover that just months before, Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the coupleās purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author.
But just four months before Oliverās July show, he had hired slick New York law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which, in addition to union-busting and representing BP America, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, specializes in helping the rich find tax breaks and buy real estate. Proskauer also has a long-time Private Client Services group, whose ālawyers handle complex tax and estate planning matters for wealthy multinational families,ā as well as āexecutives, Internet entrepreneurs, art collectors and investors, professionals and real estate developers, among others,ā according to its website.
Oliverās lawyer at the firm was Jay Waxenberg, who āfocuses his practice on estate and tax planning and estate and trust administration.ā Waxenberg, the website goes on, ārepresents many families with significant multigenerational wealth, and has assisted them in the structuring of their estate plans so as to minimize gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes in the transmission of their wealth through several generations.ā
In other words, Waxenberg is exactly the type of fancy pants attorney who helps his 1 percent clientele get the tax breaks and use the loopholes that Oliver gets such mileage deriding on TV.
