Recently, including yesterday, I’ve been on the case of Sen. Chuck Schumer who seemed to be coddling the private equity and hedge fund industry by opposing legislation that would require that these guys–who are raking in obscene profits–pay taxes like the rest…of the rich people in America (yeah, hard to cry for them, either).

    Chuck may be getting the message. Here’s a snippet from today’s Wall Street Journal:

One of Wall Street’s closest allies in Congress is endorsing a bid to raise taxes on managers of hedge funds and private-equity firms — as long as the change applies to all other investment partnerships, too.

A spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer said the New York Democrat is drafting and will soon introduce legislation that would raise taxes on the "carried interest" paid to managers of all investment partnerships, to personal-income-tax rates as high as 35% from the 15% capital-gains rates at which such compensation is currently taxed.

"He favors taxing carried interest as ordinary income because this will generate more revenue and can be applied equally across all industries. It is a fairer and broader approach," said Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon. Other interests that would be affected include partnerships in the oil-and-gas, real-estate and timber industries

    This is certainly a step in the right direction. I think it’s right for all these titans of industry to paying more (given that tax rates are far too low as it is on the highest earning folks) and I don’t quibble with Schumer for trying to get an across-the-board tax hike.

    But, it still screams out at the casual reader that Schumer is considered "one of Wall Street’s closest allies,"which I don’t think is disputed within the political world. If you adopt the most charitable take (which, because it’s a nice day, I’ll do) on that observation, Schumer is simply a captive of the corrupt political system that requires otherwise decent public servants to get on their knees so they can raise millions of dollars for political campaigns. And Schumer, as head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has got to have some serious knee-pads to do his job.

    Anyway, I’ll stop with the most charitable take lest I get carried away and ruin a nice day.