Taplin is speaking on the basis of his own personal knowledge that Ken Griffin funds the efforts to avoid taxing private equity partners and hedge fund managers profits in their own funds as income. The links describe that effort. 1 second on google confirms it.

Griffin is also a big Obama donor and bundler.

Among the group are businessmen such as Kenneth Griffin, a famously private 39-year-old billionaire who threw his support behind Obama's presidential campaign just as he hired a team of lobbyists to urge Congress to preserve a lucrative tax loophole.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041004045_pf.html

A Democratic proposal introduced by House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York would more than double the tax rate paid by hedge funds and private-equity firms or their managers. It would tax so-called carried interest -- the share of profits that managers receive for their services -- as wages at rates as high as 37.9 percent, rather than the capital-gains rate of 15 percent. The legislation would cover other types of firms, including commercial real estate and other partnerships.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4HrSJ5fC0aI

It’s Not the Money, or Is It?

Not that money is the only goal. Mr. Hindery, the cable television entrepreneur, said he would have worked just as hard for a much smaller payoff, and others among the very wealthy agreed. “I worked because I loved what I was doing,” Mr. Weill said, insisting that not until he retired did “I have a chance to sit back and count up what was on the table.” And Kenneth C. Griffin, who received more than $1 billion last year as chairman of a hedge fund, the Citadel Investment Group, declared: “The money is a byproduct of a passionate endeavor.”

Mr. Griffin, 38, argued that those who focus on the money — and there is always a get-rich crowd — “soon discover that wealth is not a particularly satisfying outcome.” His own team at Citadel, he said, “loves the problems they work on and the challenges inherent to their business.”

Mr. Griffin maintained that he has created wealth not just for himself but for many others. “We have helped to create real social value in the U.S. economy,” he said. “We have invested money in countless companies over the years and they have helped countless people.”

The new tycoons oppose raising taxes on their fortunes. Unlike Mr. Crandall, neither Mr. Weill nor Mr. Griffin nor most of the dozen others who were interviewed favor tax rates higher than they are today, although a few would go along with a return to the levels of the Clinton administration. The marginal tax on income then was 39.6 percent, and on capital gains, 20 percent. That was still far below the 70 percent and 39 percent in the late 1970s. Those top rates, in the Bush years, are now 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

“The income distribution has to stand,” Mr. Griffin said, adding that by trying to alter it with a more progressive income tax, “you end up in problematic circumstances. In the current world, there will be people who will move from one tax area to another. I am proud to be an American. But if the tax became too high, as a matter of principle I would not be working this hard.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin