The Patriot: How Philanthropist David Rubenstein Helped Save a Tax Break Billionaires Love

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ON AUG. 23, 2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake shook the Washington Monument for about 20 seconds, sending tourists on the observation deck down eight hundred and ninety-seven steps. One of the two strongest quakes ever recorded east of the Rockies, it fractured two dozen of the stone protrusions that hold up the marble slabs at the monument’s peak. That December, Congress appropriated half of the $15 million required to repair the obelisk, saying that the rest would have to be raised from private citizens.

Within weeks, David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, announced that he would provide the funds. On June 2, 2013, Rubenstein joined the Secretary of the Interior and the head of the National Park Service to inspect the progress, atop the scaffolding. In public appearances, he often tells what happened next, in a deadpan manner that he says is joking. As he recalled last year in a talk at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he decided, while his hosts were looking away, to leave his mark: “I took a pen out and I wrote my initials at the very top.”

Rubenstein, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, is one of the wealthiest people in Washington. He is an American-history buff, and practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” on behalf of the national heritage. In 2007, he spent $21.3 million on a 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta. He loaned it to the National Archives and, four years later, financed the construction of a new, $13.5-million gallery to house the document. He has bought two copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, and loaned one to President Obama, who displayed it for a time in the Oval Office. He has made substantial gifts to Monticello, to James Madison’s estate at Montpelier, to Robert E. Lee’s mansion, to the Iwo Jima Memorial, and, last month, to the Lincoln Memorial. (Although he has also donated generously to hospitals, universities, and other traditional beneficiaries, more than half of the several hundred million dollars he has given away fits the “patriotic” theme.)


https://www.propublica.org/article/how-david-rubenstein-helped-save-the-carried-interest-tax-loophole

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The only way to change this behavior is thru very large government wielding a very large stick.