Back in mid-January, in the run-up to the Nevada caucuses, Barack Obama did an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal in which he said
I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.
Republicans call it the Death Tax. Clear thinking individuals call it the Estate Tax. Regardless of name, if you die and own more than $2 million in assets, every dollar you leave to your heirs over $2 million is taxed at 45%.
John McCain wants to do away with the Estate Tax, even though next year the asset threshold jumps up to $3.5 million. Perhaps he could at least be a little more subtle in giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans . . .
But the Estate Tax is simply too important to just cast aside. We must stand up and fight the attempts to abolish or raise the exclusion amount. Here's why.
I'm posting this as the fluffy bunny tale end of the diary I posted several hours ago but didn't have room for to include all I wanted so cut short. Please consider this a complementary companion diary to my earlier one:
The Irony of Valentine's Day is that so much of what we give as gifts are awash in pain and suffering. It does not have to be that way.
THE TOPICS: In this diary I'll talk about possible gifts for your Valentines as well as alternatives, providing much alternative and further reading at your discretion. Among the topics included are:
♥ Flowers
♥ Non-Sweets
♥ Chocolate
♥ Coffee
♥ Doing Without
♥ Dinner & a Show
♥ Jewelry
♥ Wine
♥ How to find "Love" and support kossoks too
Part of how I ended up at dKos was finding out how Republican the grocery store Safeway was. I already despised Wal-Mart (and more with each new thing I discovered about them) but was still to discover just how neck-deep in Neo-Con they are.
Essentially, I didn't want another damn dollar of mine going to support Bushco keeping them in power. As Dr. Phil would say:
For many years, Americans assumed that the great majority of money available to be taxed, was earned income. After all, everybody works, everybody generates income, and it seems fair to tax this money as it comes in. It was the bulk of money earned in the United States. After all, the USA was the place to be, to earn a good income. Since the Reagan administration, we have created a different kind of America.
Multibillionaire Warren Buffett believes the estate tax is a necessity to prevent the U.S. from becoming another "dynastic plutocracy," according to the New York Times via Bloomberg News.
Buffett, 77, is listed as the third richest man in the world by Forbes Magazine. So you might think that he would be opposed to the estate tax. You would be wrong.
"I think we need to ... take a little more out of the hides of guys like me," Buffett told the panel.
One of the world's richest men and biggest philanthropists, Buffett has been outspoken against efforts, mostly by Republicans, to repeal or reduce the federal tax on inheritances. Democrats argue that a repeal would amount to a huge windfall for the nation's wealthiest families.
All well and good, yes? Of course it is. Buffett's a brilliant financial mind and he sees the issue objectively. And seen plainly and objectively, it's a clear cut issue (absent the ultra muddied waters of propaganda and press influence, and appalled that they too might have to pay Nancy Pelosi a tax...just to die!) for the vast majority of Americans as well.
But then, and of course this could be simple error, the AP writer decided to clarify the issue politically for her readers....
Some items up on News Unfiltered may interest the community.
Billionaires for Bush announced the launch of a nationwide search for a family farmer who can prove his or her farm was lost because of the Estate Tax.
The Billionaires for Bush launched a tongue-in-cheek but real contest today challenging Senator Jon Kyl's unsupported claim that the Estate Tax hurts family farms. The nationwide search awards prizes to any farm family that can prove they actually had to abandon their farm because of the Estate Tax.
Top prize is a gift bag filled with items from the 18 wealthy families funding the "movement" to repeal the Estate Tax, including a jug of wine from the Gallo Estates, a candy bar from the Mars family, and "something nice, but plastic," from the Wal-Mart heirs.
Washington Watch provides a legislative update on HR 3915, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007.
In Alabama’s 2008 Senate race, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is in a strong position for reelection, according to a new SurveyUSA poll. He is leading state Sen. Vivian Figures (D) by 22 points, 59% to 37%.
Therefore, we must assume that Alabamians have forgotten about this (below the fold):
With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Americans can expect an onslaught of grim retrospectives and even gloomier forecasts for the Gulf Coast. Stories recalling the destruction of New Orleans, the calamitous response of the Bush White House, rampant corruption in the storm's wake and the proposals of the 2008 presidential candidates will flood the web, the airwaves and the printed page.
Here, then, is my look back on the Katrina disaster and the death of New Orleans with four pieces from 2005.
Today Republican Tax Cut Zombie John Campbell (ca 48) bombarded Orange County with great economic news!
According to the CBO, the federal deficit shrank $19 billion over the past 5 months. Additionally, CBO projects the deficit will be $90 billion less than 2006.
"Free-market" John goes on to quip:
Is this because of the Democrats policies? No.
Is this because the Democrats have cut spending? No.
This decrease is the continued result of President Bush’s tax cuts.
Thanks for coming out here to western Iowa. Yesterday you presented yourself as an amiable, thoughtful and pragmatic candidate for the Presidency. And yes, a Presidential one too.
You talked about Iraq and diplomacy, about health care and education, about fiscal responsibility, about science and space tourism.
You offered a sensible explanation of the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill and what it did without once using the word 'amnesty'.
Almost every time you used what would politely be called a politician's cliche, you stopped to define precisely what you meant by it.
You made jokes, good jokes, with probably more natural ability and less conscious effort than any candidate I've seen yet this year--and now that you've been here, I've seen 'em all.
Not only did you arrive on time, you arrived freakin' early.
As far as I can tell, you made a lot of friends, impressed a lot of people, and probably gained some caucusers.
In the african community we are starting to get involved in the investment game, as well as planning for retirement better. The game was often times stack against us. However, I have notice lately, which has now been written about in the TheHill.com, that alot of blacks becoming involved in the investment fund industry are siding with the Republican/Blue Dog Democrat way of thinking about business and picking up the worst habits, namely, make as much money as you can, and simply move it from account to account. No trickle down there.
And Bob Johnson, founder of BET, is exhibiting this "business" ailment.
While reading 'Culture Warrior', i've found myself seriously questioning O'Reilly's stance on a lot of things. When listening to Bill on TV and reading his poorly constructed prose, you've got to ask yourself if he really believes in the words that he drools out day after day. What is he like in his personal life? Does he treat his family the way that he treats his co-workers or his guests on his shows? Has his life been shaped by his upbringing, his family, his education; or is this all just a persona he adopted to satiate his masters, Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes? Bill likes to call the 'secular progressive' crowd 'selfish'. But, something tells me that Bill isn't exactly ready to share his toys with the rest of the kids on the playground.
Thanks in part to what seems to have been a pretty serious misstep by the Clinton campaign, right-wingers have seized upon the Marc Rich pardon as a counterpoint to the Scooter Libby commutation, with some success. But if not for the knee-jerk Clinton-blaming that has substituted for 95% of Republican public policy discourse since 2001, tax evader Rich would be an odd choice as the GOP's poster child for unpardonable felons. All Rich did was give himself "tax relief," keep "his own money," and assert his "property rights," while doing more than his fair share of "starving the beast."
To read this diary correctly, I have to ask you to work a little harder than you normally do in a diary. I'm not going to explain that much; just note the discrepancy between the words and the links and images over the jump.
Original tags include: patriotism, environmentalism, agriculture, mountain top removal, global warming, food safety, theocracy, bigotry, racism, Hurricane Katrina, tort reform, September 11, working poor, non-proliferation, George W. Bush, John Conyers, MT-Sen, Scooter Libby, domestic spying, Iraq War, Constitution, torture, abortion, Supreme Court, economy, debt, Russ Feingold, healthcare, Murder by Spreadsheet, Federal Marriage Amendment, Kelo v. New London, hate speech, estate tax.
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