Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 163 Shares33 Views

    in Elections

    Trump Wants to Kill Carried Interest. Wall Street Will Fight to Keep It.

    President Trump has been trying to eliminate the tax loophole, which benefits Wall Street, but Congressional Republicans may stand in the way.Nearly a month has passed since President Trump last spoke publicly of his desire to kill the carried interest loophole. (Yes, we know, some of you don’t consider it a “loophole.”) And yet the private equity industry, which stands to lose big if the president upends the tax break, is still bracing for a fight.This is the biggest challenge to the provision since it was nearly neutered three years ago under former President Joe Biden, Grady McGregor writes for DealBook.A reminder: the carried interest rule means that executives at hedge funds and P.E. and venture capital firms pay roughly 20 percent tax on their profits, a rate that’s so low it’s drawn criticism from Warren Buffett and from progressive senators like Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.One Washington lawyer described the lobbying effort to DealBook as “significant,” a sign of the escalating stakes.Consider what’s happened in the past month: The American Investment Council, the private equity lobbying group, is reportedly circulating memos on Capitol Hill reminding lawmakers that private equity is a jobs creator. Venture capitalists, seemingly omnipresent in Trump’s Washington, grumble that they have to keep returning to Congress to “educate lawmakers” about the rule’s benefits. So-called free market groups, meanwhile, have banded together to ask Congress to maintain the status quo.“They’ll fight tooth-and-nail on any sort of change,” said Jessica Millett, a tax partner at Hogan Lovells.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 175 Shares33 Views

    in Elections

    Gwen McCrae, Singer Who Helped Open the Dance Floor to Disco, Dies at 81

    Originally a gospel singer, she went on to meld soulful melodies with dance-floor-friendly grooves on songs like the 1975 Top 10 hit “Rockin’ Chair.”Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former husband and frequent singing partner, George McCrae, said she died in a care facility from complications of a stroke she had in 2012.Though she had her share of nationwide hits, Ms. McCrae was best known on the music scene in the Miami area, where her upbeat R&B fit perfectly with the hot nights and subtropical vibe.She released most of her best-known songs through TK Records, a regional powerhouse founded by Henry Stone that counted other proto-disco acts, like Betty Wright and KC and the Sunshine Band, among its stable.Ms. McCrae and her husband, George McCrae, in the early 1970s. After the worldwide success of his signature hit, “Rock Your Baby,” she recorded her own hit, “Rockin’ Chair.”GAB Archive/Redferns, via Getty ImagesShe began performing with Mr. McCrae as a duo. They recorded their own albums, sang backup on others and carved a presence for themselves in the clubs of South Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 138 Shares28 Views

    in Elections

    Kim Kardashian’s Skims Balloon in Times Square Is a Marketing Moment

    The seamless, poreless, sanitized effigy of a capitalist titan was a startling piece of marketing for Skims.Last week, for a very brief moment, something unusual appeared in the middle of Times Square. It wasn’t a marquee announcing the latest TV celebrity joining a Broadway show, or a billboard featuring a lingerie-clad model. And it wasn’t one of those cartoon mascots — the costumed Disney princesses, cowboys and space creatures — who pose for photos with tourists.And yet, it combined aspects of all the above. For two days starting on March 4, a 60-foot rubber, inflatable version of Kim Kardashian — America’s leading celebrity-sexpot-corporate icon — occupied this famous plot of land. Nearly nude save for a tiny blue bikini, Balloon Kim was there to advertise the new swimsuit collection launched by Ms. Kardashian’s fashion line, Skims.Balloon Kim held court from an elevated platform emblazoned with the Skims label. She lay on her right side, knees slightly bent, in a pose that emphasized the figure’s torso and maximized the exposed surface area of her body. Just one part of this figure resisted our gaze: Her face, which was obscured by her raised arms, crossed at eye level, as if shielding her from a tropical glare.Of course, the March sun in Manhattan barely glares at all. But the same cannot be said of the hordes of passers-by, who stared and took photos of this massive, pool-float version of the glamorous billionaire. At any given moment, dozens of people perched around the perimeter of the platform, cellphone cameras aloft.The face of Balloon Kim was obscured.Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYou might think such a scene — lines of strangers ogling an exposed female body lying in the middle of the street — would feel unsettling or prurient, like the opening of an episode of “Law and Order.” Instead, the atmosphere felt mildly jovial, as people exchanged amused glances, shrugged, and snapped photos. Nothing untoward was happening here, because Balloon Kim seemed protected from any personal transgression. Naturally, being 60 feet long helped. This creature was more invincible giantess than damsel in distress — with the onlookers resembling Lilliputians discovering Gulliver.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 88 Shares31 Views

    in Elections

    Shaming Child-Free People Doesn’t Raise the Birthrate

    On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on fertility trends from 1990 to 2023, showing that the birthrate declined slightly in 2023 to 1.62 from 1.66 in 2022. The demographer Jennifer Sciubba summarized the statistics in her newsletter, noting that overall, fertility has declined 22 percent since 1990 in the United States but that “the real decline is much more recent, taking a turn around 2007, just before the Great Recession.”The biggest drop in fertility is among teenagers, Sciubba writes, and the birthrate among women over 30 has increased, with a particular surge in births among women over 40. Sciubba predicts that the birthrate overall will plateau, continuing to hover between 1.55 and 1.7 for the next decade.Being below replacement birthrate presents economic challenges, including to Social Security, though this may not yet be cause for immediate alarm. I don’t know how you can argue that fewer teenage parents is a bad thing, since very few teenagers are emotionally or financially equipped to raise children.I’m not worried that the United States is going to become South Korea. That country, which has the world’s lowest birthrate at 0.75, is the subject of a recent article by The New Yorker’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus, who does a good job describing what a truly anti-natal society looks like. A 20-something South Korean woman tells him: “People call moms ‘bugs’ or ‘parasites.’ If your kids make a little noise, someone will glare at you.”Governmental and societal pressure has not really worked to increase the birthrate in South Korea. It’s a society that enforces traditional gender roles and that blames feminists and working women for the decline in fertility. “The insinuation that women are at fault for the demographic crisis has turned gender friction into gender war,” Lewis-Kraus writes, with women swearing off men entirely with the 4B movement rather than become tradwives.In the United States, we see our own very muted version of this dynamic playing out. Religious conservatives slam “childless cat ladies,” and in return, some liberal young women are going “boy sober.” Again, I do not predict that this is going to greatly affect the birthrate in the near term; the United States is a much more gender-progressive and diverse country than South Korea is.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 163 Shares51 Views

    in Elections

    My Father Spoke to Me Only Once About Why He Led This Nation

    My father spoke only once to me about why he wanted to be president of the United States. It was the night of his inauguration in 1981. I had been assigned to one of the inaugural balls and was supposed to wait there for my parents to arrive. After sitting onstage, on a metal folding chair with a crowd of people staring up at me for what felt like an hour, I broke the rules and left. Lying awake in the Lincoln Bedroom, I hoped Lincoln’s ghost would visit me as he has been said to have visited others in the White House living quarters. I had some serious questions for him.Late that night, my father came in to see me. Sitting down on the bed, he commented on my early departure that evening and I apologized, although I think both of us knew I wasn’t really sorry. Then he said that he knew his election was hard on everyone and would change everyone’s life. But, he said: “I really believe I can make this world a safer, more peaceful place. That’s why I ran for president.” When he left and the stillness of Lincoln’s bedroom folded around me, with all of its history and stories, I was struck by the fact that he spoke about the world, not just America.I’ve thought about that night a lot lately, as America becomes more isolated, as we back away from allies and tensions grow. I’ve thought also about the lessons my father imparted to me as a child. He taught me at an early age about the Holocaust and that no country is immune to horrors like that. He told me that America’s democracy, while strong, is also fragile, and to remain strong, we had to recognize that. He believed our democracy was a “grand experiment,” and as such it should be treated carefully. Those conversations also trail behind me these days, making me wish my father’s ghost would visit just as I’d wished Lincoln’s ghost would appear to me in the White House.So often these days, people will tell me that even though they didn’t support my father when he was in office, now they miss him. Me too, I always tell them. It’s no secret that I publicly opposed some of his policies, nor that I have expressed regrets about some of the ways I did so. I also apologized to my father in quiet moments later in his life. But even in my public disagreements with his policies, I never doubted his motivations. I knew he wanted America to be a strong partner in the world, bonding with other countries to defeat tyranny and aggression.He nurtured the alliances that are important in this unpredictable world. Queen Elizabeth II and my father went horseback riding in Windsor in 1982 and the following year she and Prince Philip visited my parents’ ranch in Santa Barbara. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada became a friend as well as an ally. My father and Mikhail Gorbachev stepped onto history’s stage and made the world safer, at least for a while. When my father died, Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Mulroney and then-Prince Charles came to his service. Margaret Thatcher, whom he had become good friends with, sent a filmed tribute because she was too ill to travel. Mr. Mulroney, in his eulogy, quoted William Butler Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”After President Trump’s speech to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night, Senator Elissa Slotkin gave the Democratic response, in which she mentioned Mr. Trump’s use of my father’s phrase “peace through strength.” She said that Ronald Reagan is probably rolling in his grave. My wish is that he would whisper from the grave and remind those in power that America is supposed to be a beacon to guide others, to shine brightly for them, a country that reaches beyond its own borders to help those in need and make this world a little safer, a little stronger. He really did see us as a shining city on the hill — a place that other countries looked to and trusted. A place that shared its light and its strengths, and in doing so, became stronger.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares28 Views

    in Elections

    Self-Deportation Taught Me What I Know About This Country

    On Jan. 1, 2015, I self-deported from the United States, my home of more than 22 years, to return to the Philippines, where I was born and lived until the age of 9. At takeoff, sorrow overtook the terror I felt at check-in. The T.S.A. agent had scanned my passport — renewed in 2002, devoid of a visa — and waved me through. I froze in place: Where were the ICE agents?That day, I found out that no one cares if an undocumented immigrant leaves America. Only my husband, waving from beyond the gate, cared. He would eventually meet me in London; I was to go to Manila first to apply for a British spouse visa, which I couldn’t do in the United States because I was an undocumented person.America is home; it raised me. I came in 1992, the daughter of Filipinos who left their homeland — an economy drained by dictatorship — in search of a better life. I left in 2015 as a broken adult of 31, still in search of that better life. When I returned last month, I found a different country.My decision to leave the United States seemed crazy, the resulting bar on returning for 10 years a self-inflicted wound. This view requires the belief that America is exceptional, the only nation capable of caring for its people and helping them achieve their potential. After a near-lifetime of being undocumented, I had stopped believing this.In my experience, America had become a place to flee from, not to. At the time I lived in New York without papers, I couldn’t secure a license to drive, afford to go to college, start a career, get health care, vote, open a bank account or travel freely. My life was a struggle with domestic and sexual violence, financial hardship and suicide attempts. By self-deporting, I ended my American life to save what remained of my actual life.In the years before I left New York City, in my 20s and early 30s, I worked, hoping to save for a bachelor’s degree I would never earn. On Craigslist, I found temp jobs that didn’t require proof of legality: street fund-raiser, receptionist, assistant, office manager. The city’s buoying energy saved me in those years. I convinced myself that hiding and surviving was enough, that I didn’t need papers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 75 Shares36 Views

    in Elections

    The Future of News Looks Niche

    The media entrepreneur Jessica Lessin chats with DealBook about the news landscape and her latest media bet.In 2013, Jessica Lessin, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, left the paper to start a competing publication, The Information.A few years later, her fledgling newsroom had grown to nearly two dozen reporters and editors and booked more than $20 million in sales, as she revealed in a profile I wrote for The Times’s Sunday Business. She says she has since doubled her editorial staff and continued to stay profitable, with revenue growing 30 percent in 2024 over the previous year.But it’s her investments outside of The Information that are gaining attention these days.Her company Lessin Media has put money into Semafor, The Ankler, the former Business Insider editor Nicholas Carlson’s Dynamo, Kevin Delaney’s Charter Works and other titles at a time when the news business appears bleaker than before. Lessin, however, is optimistic.I caught up with the entrepreneur about her latest media bet, the tennis publication Racquet magazine, and what she thinks about the changing news landscape. This interview has been edited and condensed.This investment seems different from your others. How did you come to it?I actually got introduced to Racquet by a number of fans of the magazine. And it was like the weirdest experience, because I was reading the magazine, and then I wanted to buy, like, all the clothes in the magazine. I went to the website, and I wanted to buy all the merch. And they’re hosting an event at the U.S. Open. And I was like I want to go to that. And I want to read this great profile about the mental coach behind the world No. 1 tennis player.This sounds like it was something that just struck you personally. I assumed you’d be more focused on sales and market size and margin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 100 Shares51 Views

    in Elections

    North Korea Says It’s Building a Nuclear-Powered Submarine

    The announcement came amid fears that Pyongyang may be receiving crucial military technology from Russia in return for sending troops and weapons for its war against Ukraine.North Korea said on Saturday that it was building its first nuclear-powered submarine to enhance its nuclear weapons abilities, and the state news media showed the nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting part of what appeared to be a new submarine larger than any owned by the country.The announcement, made in the state news media, came as United States and South Korean officials feared that the North may be receiving technological help from Russia to help modernize its military in return for sending troops and conventional weapons to help in its war against Ukraine.Mr. Kim “learned about the building of a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a report on Saturday about his visit to an unidentified naval shipyard. The agency carried photographs showing what appeared to be the hull of a submarine under construction.It was the first time that North Korea claimed that a nuclear-powered submarine was under construction and claimed to show a photograph of it.North Korea has dozens of old Soviet-era submarines, all diesel-powered, which would have to resurface frequently to recharge their batteries during a long-distance trip like crossing the Pacific. A nuclear-powered submarine, which can cover a long distance without resurfacing, would enhance North Korea’s ability to approach a faraway enemy like the United States without being detected, and to strike it with nuclear missiles.The state news media on Saturday quoted Mr. Kim as saying that his country’s naval might would be “fully displayed in any necessary waters without limitation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More