bustardblog

Vive le Death Tax!

I sent the following e-mail today to [email protected]. Please do the same. Buffet and Gates both hate the idea of repealing the inheritance tax, so let's ask them to match their fellow billionaires on spending on the issue.

Dear Mr. Buffet,

Your gift of $31 Billion is incredibly generous and impressive. I realize that it is presumptious for me to ask that you give more, but that is why I am writing you now.

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments on the estate tax, as reported in today’s New York Times. In trying to determine its cost to the government, I have come across numbers as high as 1 trillion over ten years. A repeal would also significantly affect charitable donations in this country. Price Waterhouse has estimated that the elimination of the estate tax would result in a reduction of gifts to charity of about $5.2 Billion per year. The value of the gift you made yesterday to charity would be more than offset by the losses charitable institutions would suffer should the tax be repealed. We can only guess at how severely Congress would gut programs in education and health care, as well as scientific research, when faced with a trillion dollar loss in revenue.

The primary actors pressing for elimination of this tax, primarily other billionaires like you and Mr. Gates, have spent about 490 million on lobbying and advertising since 1998.  They have used this money to distort the public’s understanding of what the inheritance tax really does and who it really affects.

I am asking you to spend money now  to correct their campaign of disinformation. I am sure that the public could be persuaded that the inheritance tax is a good thing for a lot less than 490 million. A few large ad-buys in a few selected markets that would make it clear to the Senate that there can be consequences for voting against the tax next week should do the trick. After all the truth is on our side. Because the vote is next week, I must ask you to take action at once.

Sincerely Yours,

bbbustard's actual info

 

 

Repealing the Estate Tax

Contrary to yesterday's tongue in cheek post, (which was numerically honest) any repeal of the estate tax must be stopped, and Senator Kyl's cynical compromise must also be rejected.

• Repealing the estate tax completely would deprive the government of 1 trillion over ten years. Kyl's compromise would cost $500-600 Billion.
• It affects less than 1/3 of 1% of the people in the U.S.; but it is this small percentage who have hijacked our government. (86% of campaign contributions were made by less that 2/10 of 1%)
• Although they have said that it must be repealed to save the family farm, neither the Republican party nor the American Farm Bureau have ever identified a single farm lost under the current program. They also say that it disproportionately harms black Americans, but again, has no evidence.
• Only 23% of the country supports repealing the tax. This is doubtlessly the same group who believe in Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11.
• This version has been in effect for 90 years, proposed by the Republican and Conservationist Teddy Roosevelt.  The first version was in 1797.
• Reasonable Rich people do not approve of repeal. These include Bill Gates Sr and Warren Buffet.  Steven Rockefeller calls the idea "fiscally irresponsible and bad social policy."

The Bush administration and Congress's push on this is simply further proof of greed and corruption that are the only values valued  by today's Republican party.

Spearheading the eighteen families that are financing the propaganda machine that is driving this is the Walton family. Each of the four who inherited the Wal-Mart estate is worth 15 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.

Norway announced today that it was selling all the stock that it's oil fund owns in Wal-Mart, "because of what it called "serious and systematic" abuses of human and labor rights."  USA today reported that:

The ministry said the council had found "an extensive body of material" that indicated Wal-Mart had broken norms, including employing minors against international rules, allowing hazardous working conditions at many of its suppliers and blocking workers' efforts to form unions.

 

Repealing the estate tax would be morally reprehensible.

Another Voice

Please read the iconoclastic views of our guest, The Sparkle Bustard:

I am honored to have been asked by my old friend, the blogmaster of this blog, to contribute to its content. I expect mine will be just an occasional contribution, so I can’t be considered a blogger – maybe more a (fifth) columnist.

I understand that blogs are supposed to take contrarian views, and I’ll try to do honor to that tradition, on topics that I either know something about or, more likely, about which I’d like to provoke reaction from others. 

I do part company with my orthodox liberal friends on some issues. Like, say, Wal-Mart. I don’t understand why people who believe in universal government sponsored health insurance, as I do, are so upset about Wal-Mart referring its underpaid employees to public programs like Medicaid. Sure, we should be upset by these folks being underpaid. But shouldn’t we support a big employer facilitating enrollment in government-sponsored coverage? If more big employers did that, we could disengage health coverage from our employer-based system, make our products more competitive on world markets, and move toward the much more efficient social insurance systems of other industrialized countries. 

Or take, for example, Dick Cheney’s duck hunting trip with Justice Antonin Scalia last year, when he had business pending before Scalia’s court. I must admit, I joined the chorus of outrage then at what appeared to be an opportunity for improper influence. But ever since this weekend, when Mr. Whittington gave new meaning to the term “face time” with the vice president, I’ve begun thinking that such frolics may have a potential up-side. I am calling on readers of this blog to contribute to Bustardblog’s Fund for Vice Presidential Face Time, a new charity that will give scholarships to many of our conservative federal judges who would appreciate the opportunity, providing air fare and expenses for hunting trips with the Veep. On these trips, they can perhaps gain insights into the Executive branch’s point of view that will be useful on the bench, and who knows, there might occur some natural thinning of this herd.

I realize this is not so elegant or certain a solution as Anne Coulter’s call for rat poison in Justice Stevens’s crème brulée, but we on the left are not so ruthless. And we must recognize that many of these judges gave up gazillions in potential income at private firms serving large corporations in order to serve on the bench. Like the employees at Wal-Mart, they see themselves as underpaid and must unfortunately rely on publicly funded health insurance. A little financial supplement for recreation is the least we can do.

Sparkle Bustard.