...El Jefe Maximo is still pushing the elimination of the estate tax because the offspring of the ludicrously wealthy need a break:
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D'Ivoire -- if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That's more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.
Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:
* Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts
* Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut
* Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut
And so on and so on. Sanders additionally pointed out that the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks.
Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.
Remember: if Paris Hilton pays taxes on money she never earned, then the terrorists win.
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After all, somebody's gotta take care of Anna Nicole's baby...
Are you agreeing with Honore de Balzac in the fine novel "Le Pere Goriot" (1835):
"Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublie, parce qu'il a ete proprement fait."
[sorry for leaving out the accents]
The usual translation: "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac
comments: "This is an oversimplification- the actual quote would translate to something like "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed."
Me, I'm a 3rd generation Capitalist on one side of the family, and much more on another. I like to think that some great fortunes -- a small percentage, perhaps -- are due to honestly executing a business plan of giving customers what they want at a fair price.
But... but... if we don't repeal the estate tax, the small percentage of wealthy elderly people whose estates will pay it won't have any incentive to keep working! Who will single-handedly fuel our economy when Rob Walton retires because he can no longer build a nest egg?
Well, you just go and talk about how much of a tax break the wealthy get. What about the family of a typical cab driver? Don't they lose a fortune when their patriarch dies? Or the family of a secretary, don't they have to sell off their vacation homes in Antigua, their polo ponies, and collection of restored classic automobiles? Why do you think the Bush Administration is pitching their repeal the death tax to the broader segment of society?