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Opinion | Private Equity Doesn’t Want You to Read This

Editorial/OP-ED

Opinion | Private Equity Doesn’t Want You to Read This

Published

4 years ago

on

August 6, 2022

By

Doni Glover

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This column has been updated.

This column is about the excesses of the private equity investment industry. It delves into the minutiae of the tax code, corporate structure and certain abstruse practices of financial engineering. There will be jargon: carried interest, leveraged buyout, joint liability. I am aware that none of this is anyone’s favorite thing to be discussing on a summer’s day.

But private equity is counting on your lack of interest; the seeming impenetrability of its practices has been called one of its “superpowers,” among the reasons the trillion-dollar industry keeps getting away with it.

With what? An accelerating, behind-the-scenes desiccation of the American economy. Democrats in the Senate were poised to pass a rule that might slightly clip the industry’s wings — a change to the tax code that would force partners in private equity firms, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists to pay a fairer share of taxes on the money they make.

I can’t fathom what her reluctance might be. One of private equity’s main plays is the leveraged buyout, which involves borrowing huge sums of money to gobble up companies in the hopes of restructuring them and one day selling them for a gain.

But the acquired companies — which range across just about every economic sector, from retailing to food to health care and housing — are often overloaded with debt to the point of unsustainability. They frequently slash jobs and benefits for employees, cut services and hike prices for consumers, and sometimes even endanger lives and undermine the social fabric.

It is a dismal record: Private equity firms presided over many of the largest retailer bankruptcies in the last decade — among them Toys “R” Us, Sears, RadioShack and Payless ShoeSource — resulting in nearly 600,000 lost jobs, according to a 2019 study by several left-leaning economic policy advocates.

Other investigations have shown that when private equity firms buy houses and apartments, rents and evictions soar. When they buy hospitals and doctors’ practices, the cost of care shoots up. When they buy nursing homes, patient mortality rises. When they buy newspapers, reporting on local governments dries up and participation in local elections declines.

It is unclear even if private equity pays off for the investors — like university endowments, public pension funds and wealthy individuals — who put money into the industry in the hopes of outsize returns. Since at least 2006, according to a study by the economist Ludovic Phalippou, the performance of the largest private equity funds has essentially matched returns of comparable publicly traded companies.

Still, the industry has been growing quickly, and it had a record year in 2021. According to McKinsey, private equity’s total assets under management reached almost $6.3 trillion last year. The American Investment Council, a trade group representing the industry, says that companies backed by private equity firms employ nearly 12 million Americans.

With the help of lax regulation and indefensible tax loopholes, private equity’s apparent destructiveness can be enormously profitable for its partners. Private equity firms make money by extracting hefty fees from their investors and from the companies they purchase, meaning they can succeed even if their investments go kaput. Phalippou found that between 2005 and 2020, the industry produced 19 multibillionaires.

“It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose model,” said Jim Baker, the executive director of a watchdog group called the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

But it gets worse: Not only do private equity partners make money even if their companies blow up; they also get a pretty good deal from the government on what they earn. Private equity funds generally charge their investors two different fees: a management fee of 2 percent of invested assets per year (funds are held for an average of about six years), and a “carried interest” fee that is 20 percent of any investment gains realized in the fund.

In most other industries, the Internal Revenue Service would categorize a fee like carried interest as ordinary income (like how your salary is taxed) rather than a capital gain (like how your stock market winnings are taxed). After all, the partners are receiving the fee as compensation for performing a service (managing investors’ money), not collecting a gain on their own invested capital (because it’s the investors’ money, not theirs).

But that’s not how it works for partnerships like private equity, hedge funds and venture capital firms. Under I.R.S. guidelines, carried interest is taxed as a capital gain, which has a top rate of 20 percent, rather than as income, which has a top rate of nearly 40 percent. The upshot: Millionaire and billionaire partners in private equity firms pay a far lower tax rate on much of their income than many of the rest of us.

The private equity industry defends its preferential rate by citing “sweat equity” — even if partners don’t put much of their own capital at stake, they are being rewarded for investing their “ideas and energy,” as Steve Klinsky, a former chair of the American Investment Council, put it in a recent article. But it’s difficult to find many beyond the industry who will defend carried interest’s low taxation.

Barack Obama called for the loophole to be eliminated. Donald Trump pledged to eliminate it. So did Joe Biden. Even several financial tycoons have called for its repeal — Jamie Dimon, Bill Ackman and Warren Buffett among them.

Despite widespread opposition, though, the tax break has somehow endured — as Tim Murphy wrote recently in Mother Jones, it has been “the most unkillable bad idea in a town with no shortage of them, a testament to the unstoppable combination of money and inertia.” (Murphy’s piece was part of an excellent, multipart investigation of the private equity industry published by the magazine.)

The Democrats’ proposal would have merely narrowed — but would not have eliminated — the carried interest loophole. Passing it would have been a good start toward reforming the private equity industry.

Even if it passed, though, much more would need to be done. Eileen Appelbaum, an expert on the private equity industry who is a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank, told me she favored many of the ideas in the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a bill introduced last year by Senator Elizabeth Warren and several other liberal Democrats. The act would impose lots of new rules on the industry, including limiting tax deductions on excessive debt and adding worker protections for when debt binges lead to bankruptcy.

One of the most important ideas, Appelbaum said, is known as joint liability, which would hold private equity firms responsible for the debt incurred by portfolio companies if the companies go belly up.

“It doesn’t tell you how much debt you can put on it,” Appelbaum said. “It just says, ‘whatever debt you put on it, you’re going to be jointly responsible.’”

That struck me as an elegant and sensible idea. If private equity firms claim they should get credit for their “sweat equity,” why shouldn’t they be held responsible when the sweat turns to tears?

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Editorial/OP-ED

107 Years Later, the Wire Service Gets an Upgrade: BlackUSA.News Is Here

Published

2 hours ago

on

April 4, 2026

By

Doni Glover

(BALTIMORE – April 4, 2026) – This is my contribution to the Black press — an institution I love and adore.

Not an institution that began in America. An institution whose roots go back before Freedom’s Journal — to the earliest Black newspapers in Sierra Leone and Haiti. To the Afro-Latino journalists of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil who wrote in Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole — voices too often excluded when we tell the story of the Black press through an English-speaking lens alone.

But across every language, every country, every century, those publishers shared one thing: they were fighting for liberation. Fighting for freedom. Fighting for equality.

And they did it by building their own press — because the mainstream press could not be trusted to tell their story. It ignored them. Overlooked them. And often did so intentionally.

That is the purpose of the Black press. It always has been.

By the time Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm launched Freedom’s Journal in New York City in 1827 and declared “too long have others spoken for us,” Black people had already been building their own press for generations — across continents, across languages, across the diaspora.

That tradition is what I stand in today.

And BlackUSA.News is the next chapter in that story.

107 Years After Claude Barnett, We Built the Upgrade

In 1919, Claude Barnett built the Associated Negro Press — a wire service created because Black America was invisible in the mainstream press.

For decades, it worked. Black newspapers thrived. Black stories moved. Black voices reached Black people on their own terms.

Then the landscape shifted.

The internet came. Social media followed. And a new kind of gatekeeper emerged — one you couldn’t see, couldn’t negotiate with, and couldn’t appeal to.

It worked in code.

107 years after Barnett built his infrastructure, we built ours.

The Problem Nobody Wants to Name

Let me tell you something about BMORENews.com.

We’ve been publishing since August 9, 2002. We have over 8,200 videos. We’ve covered governors, mayors, presidential campaigns. We’ve made more than 60 visits to the White House.

We’ve documented Black Baltimore in ways no one else has.

And I can prove our content resonates.

When we published Albert Perry — viral.
Damian O’Doherty speaking on Black communities — viral.
Pleasant Yacht Club — viral.
Dwight Braxton, Muhammad Qawi — viral.

Every time our content reaches people, the people respond.

So why do we have fewer than 10,000 YouTube subscribers?

That gap has a name:

algorithmic precarity.

The systematic suppression of independent Black digital media by platforms that profit from our content while limiting our reach — invisibly, without explanation, and without recourse.

I’ve lived it.

In 2020, our Facebook page was deleted.
211,000 followers. Gone.

No warning. No explanation. No appeal.

Years of community, trust, and history — erased by a system that answers to no one.

That is not a glitch.

That is a pattern.

And the mainstream press is not coming to save us.

We have to save ourselves.

The Existential Threat Is Real

We don’t have to look far for proof.

In February 2026 — just weeks ago — two of the most respected Black newspapers in America shut down in the same month.

The Richmond Free Press (founded 1992) closed after 34 years.
The Skanner (founded 1975) closed after 50.

The reason was simple: advertising moved to digital platforms.

Nearly 40% of all U.S. local newspapers have disappeared since 2005. Over 130 closed in the past year alone.

When revenue collapses, Black and independent outlets feel it first — because we rarely have corporate backing, large reserves, or margin for error.

This is not a future threat.

It is already here.

The Only Viable Solution

The answer is not individual survival.

It is collective strategy.

Not every outlet scrambling alone. Not every publisher begging the algorithm.

Together.

As a coalition. As a press corps. As a people.

But coalition alone is not enough.

We must adapt:

Master video
Build multi-platform strategies
Meet audiences where they are

And we must prepare the next generation.

They bring digital fluency.
We bring institutional memory.

Neither can do this alone.

Black media needs both — working together — to survive what’s coming.

What We Built

BlackUSA.News — powered by Vizzible — is that answer.

Think of it as a modern wire service. A national aggregation platform bringing together Black digital journalism — independent, legacy, and emerging — in one place.

It is not a directory.
It is not a link list.

It is a living system.

A real-time content carousel pulling stories from across the country.

A platform designed to increase visibility while strengthening the ecosystem.

This is infrastructure.

And it is long overdue.

What Separates Us from the Pack

We are not venture-backed.

We are not investor-controlled.

BlackUSA.News is independently built — owned by the community it serves.

No boardroom influence.
No equity pressure.
No editorial compromise.

That independence is not a detail.

It is the foundation.

Why This Is Historic

The National Newspaper Publishers Association — through BlackPressUSA.com — serves the traditional Black press. That work matters.

But it was not built for the digital-native publisher.

The one who built on Facebook… lost reach.
Moved to YouTube… lost visibility.
Adapted again… and kept going.

That publisher had no home.

Until now.

107 years after Claude Barnett built what didn’t exist — we did the same.

The difference is this:

He fought exclusion.

We are fighting invisibility engineered through code.

BlackUSA.News breaks that dependency.

This Is Just the Beginning

I am currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, where my research focuses on the algorithmic suppression of independent Black media.

BlackUSA.News is not separate from that work.

It is the proof of concept.

And to every Black publisher reading this:

You are not imagining it. The suppression is real.

And we are building the alternative.

From Sierra Leone to Haiti.
From Freedom’s Journal to the Associated Negro Press.
From BMORENews.com to BlackUSA.News.

We have always built our own infrastructure.

We have always told our own story.

And we always will.

The Black press was born out of liberation.

And in 2026—

liberation is digital.

BlackUSA.News is live.
The coalition is forming.
The carousel is running.

Claude Barnett would recognize exactly what this is.

And I think he’d say:

It’s about time.

Doni Glover is the founder and CEO of DMGlobal Marketing & Public Relations, LLC, publisher of BMORENews.com, host of the Emmy-nominated Doni Glover Show on WMAR-TV 2, and a DBA candidate at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He is the author of four books: Unapologetically Black, I Am Black Wall Street, Journapreneur, and Black Blueprint: Baltimore to Burkina Faso.

BlackUSA.News is available now at BlackUSA.News.

Editorial/OP-ED

Black Women Were Always at the Table — Stop Writing Them Out

Published

8 months ago

on

August 8, 2025

By

Doni Glover

(BALTIMORE – August 8, 2025) – The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) recently dropped a timeline highlighting major milestones in U.S. women’s political history — from Seneca Falls to Kamala Harris. It’s long, detailed, and well-produced.

But let’s keep it real: it’s incomplete.
And this is personal for me — not because I’m a woman.
I’m a man. A Black man.
And as a journalist, publisher, and student of history, I have a responsibility to call it like I see it.

What I see is a whole lot of celebration for white women’s progress — and not nearly enough credit given to the Black women who’ve been leading, building, organizing, and risking it all from day one.

Where’s Sojourner Truth, who stood up in 1851 and demanded the world answer: “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Where’s Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Baltimore legend who confronted white women suffragists with truth and grace?
Where’s Ida B. Wells, who stared racism in the face and built her own organizations when others tried to silence her?

And how do you miss Frances Ellen Watkins Harper — a Baltimore-born powerhouse who was one of the first Black women to publish a book in the U.S. and who addressed the 1866 National Women’s Rights Convention with a message that still resonates? Raised and educated in Baltimore at her uncle’s Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, Harper’s early years in this city shaped the moral clarity and courage that defined her national work. She’s not a side note. She’s a cornerstone.

You mean to tell me there’s a 48-year gap between the 19th Amendment and the first meaningful mention of a Black woman in elected office? That’s not an oversight. That’s historical malpractice.

Black women have always been in the fight.
They didn’t wait to be invited. They didn’t ask for permission. They created their own lanes — from the Black women’s clubs of the 19th century to the organizing of the Civil Rights Movement to the halls of Congress today.

And while others were patting themselves on the back, Black women were doing the work.

I’m not speaking for them — I’m standing beside them.
And I’ll use every mic I’m handed to make sure their names, their labor, and their leadership are never erased. Because Black women didn’t just join the movement.
They moved the movement. And BlackUSA.News will always make sure the world knows it.

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Editorial/OP-ED

Message to the World: We Are Not Trump

Published

8 months ago

on

August 3, 2025

By

Doni Glover

(BALTIMORE – August 2, 2025) – Greetings. 你好. Namaste. Hola. Bonjour. Salaam alaikum. Nomoshkar. Olá. Shalom. Здравствуйте.

I come to you humbly and respectfully to say this: most of the people I know and live among are nothing like President Donald Trump.

From where I stand, I imagine much of the world watches in disbelief as this man — and those aligned with him — continue to dismantle civil rights protections, gut healthcare programs like Medicaid, and insult global allies without remorse. It’s disheartening, shameful, and dangerous.

And yet, here we are.

Even after years of evidence — his public misogyny, the racism, the cruelty, the lies — millions still voted for him. Only now, with democracy in crisis and global trust fractured, are some Americans having what we call a “come-to-Jesus moment.”

That’s what we call cognitive dissonance: when someone knows the truth but refuses to fully accept its consequences.

Around the world, cultures may differ, but many share a basic value: respect. It costs nothing — but means everything.

I felt that truth in my bones when I watched Vice President J.D. Vance berate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of the global press. I was sickened. The disrespect was not only unnecessary — it was classless.

I wasn’t raised like that. And neither were many of the good people I know across this country.

To be honest, I think the group most manipulated in all this were white women voters. They knew who Trump was. The video clips, the criminal allegations, the “grab ‘em” tape — it was all out there. But still, many chose him over Kamala Harris, a competent and qualified leader.

Was it the trauma of having had a Black president for eight years that made the idea of a Black woman too much to bear? Maybe. But it’s worth asking.

America has never truly reconciled with its original sin: slavery and the structural racism that followed. And now we have a president who canceled MLK Day, who mocked a teenage climate activist on the world stage, and whose wife often appears unwilling to even fake a smile beside him.

Let us not forget: this is the man who incited a violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021.

Dear world, please know this: America is better than what you’re seeing right now.

As my mother always said, “Nobody is better than you, and you are no better than anyone else.” That’s the kind of America I believe in — not one built on ego and profit, but on humility and shared dignity.

Still, we live in a society where your bank account defines your worth, where kindness is seasonal, and where too often, decency gets buried under division.

But where I come from — Baltimore — we still learn respect. At home, in the streets, in school. You give it, you get it. You don’t give it, you learn the hard way.

That’s the American spirit I stand for. That’s the America I want the world to know.

So no, we are not all like Trump. And many of us are doing everything we can to keep our country from falling deeper into that abyss.

Wishing you peace in the midst of this storm.

‘Til next time,
Doni Glover