Matt Taibbi: Pension-Fund Looters Get Tax Breaks, Too

Rhode Island State Treasurer Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, has declared war on public pensions

Pension-Fund Looters Get Tax Breaks, Too (Rolling Stone, Oct 4, 2013):

by Matt Taibbi

A few weeks ago, I wrote a feature on pension reform in states like Rhode Island for Rolling Stone. Since the piece was sharply critical of alternative investments like hedge funds, I expected a heated response, and got one right away. In fact, a series of raving/chest-thumping emails from one Manhattan Institute hedge fund billionaire appeared in my email inbox about four and a half seconds after the piece went live on the Rolling Stone website.

This colorful personage calmed down eventually, though, and I figured a more sophisticated, for-public-consumption response would come from those quarters later on.

It finally showed up this week in GoLocalProv, when Aaron Henn, an “opinion-leading urban affairs analyst” who appears in striking tie-and-folded-arms pose in his column photo, wrote a piece in defense of the Rhode Island Treasurer profiled in the piece called “Matt Taibbi’s Deceptive Hatchet Job on Gina Raimondo.”

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