Mary Katharine Ham has a great roundup of Death Tax repeal blogging. Most notably, the Club for Growth is marathon blogging the Senate vote.
Mary Katharine Ham has a great roundup of Death Tax repeal blogging. Most notably, the Club for Growth is marathon blogging the Senate vote.
mak44
What is it that your jealousy is keeping your two brain cells from understanding?
Either property belongs to the owner or it belongs to the government.
And a death tax is an indication of a philosophy that that “property rights” is a convenient illusion for the “little people”.
In the accumulation of wealth, one pays taxes over and over again. The death tax is the cruelest because it states that the owner only gets to pass on HIS/HER “own” (really leased) property at the pleasure/whim of the government.
Death Tax Proponent: Why, yes, Mrs. Jones, we will let you pass down the family photo album to your kids, but that collection of art you’ve taken your whole life to accumulate? Sell the fuckers cause their money belongs to us and kiss our ass we let you leave ANYTHING to your children.
From communists to anarchists is this hatred of property…usually by people who are pathologically jealous of more talented peers who earn more than them.
At least a robber is more honest that YOU, Mak44… a robber doesn’t demand the moral sanction of the person he is robbing.
“Back in the ’60’s I was an extreme rightist Goldwaterite Republican, so I am well aware of how the crypto-fascist mind views the world.”
So what?
All that means is that your filters on how you view everyone else’s motivations come from a warped and wrong point of view, just reversed 180 degrees since then.
Darleen
You burped: “And a death tax is an indication…”
Yep, your relabeling the Inheritance Tax as you do is an indication that you are a Pavlovian Puppy salivating the propaganda phrase “Death Tax” that was created by that Republican polling bastard, Frank Luntz, whose mastery is repackaging language so as to get the dogs drooling at the proper moment.
Sorry Darlene, but you have been brainwashed w/ too rich a diet of Luntz and his propaganda proteges, Limbarf and insanity.
A “1984″ relabeling of terms & your acceptance of that relabeling simply reveals that you have a very weak mind.
Furthermore, you are so clearly accustomed to labeling as communist or socialist anything that conflicts with greed that you actually reveal that you have no comprehension of the meaning of these words.
Polly, want a cracker???????
cirby
Actually, it’s insight as to why people like you think the way you do. Been there, already done it.
Hmm… I’m tempted to offer a prize to the first person who can find a comment by mak44 that did NOT resort to juveline name-calling, gratuitous insults, gross generalizations, unsubstantiated allegations, and tendencies to use invective and passion to substitute for actual reason and argument, but I suspect I’d be slammed for asking for the impossible.
mak, are you naturally such an asshole, or have you had special training?
J.
Jay,
What really disturbs me is the notion, that if mak is telling the truth, is 40+ years old. And if you rule out a 10 year old who was an active Goldwater republican, older still…
Jay
In spite of your allegation, I have offered numerous ideas apart from invective. When I do, the response is typically unfounded rightie investive and attack of the slime monsters.
BUT: I defy you to show me where more than a handful of posters on here have ever tried reason without sliming as a counterpoise.
I’ll name one: wav_man aka Joel who hasn’t appeared here in awhile. But there aren’t others. Just look at the way diplomatic “Lee” gets slimed most of the time.
It’s amazing how you can overlook “socialist,” “communist,” “pinko,” “Moonbat,” ” leftie,” “jealous” etc to name a few epithets hurled by your unthinking audience.
When it’s dished out, I respond. If a post is just silly and mindless, as many are, I respond w/ sarcasm.
A lot of my posts rely upon tongue-in-cheek.
When you’re dealing w/ such Intellectual Giants as Virgo’s, cubanboobs, Rob LA, . a snitty Darlene and LarryCurlyMoe to name a few, a rational discussion is often impossible.
I would think that you would look at the tenor of some of your like-minded posters and be appalled at the displayed ignorance and puerile comments that they make.
You seem to have a problem w/ some of your folks being hoisted on their own petard of ignorance.
Jay-what you seemingly appreciate is an audience that salivates on cue w/ the posted bells.
Exactly, Jay. Mak couldn’t address any of the factual matters contra the tax. Instead, he just ignored it, or mis-stated an aspect of the family business concerns.
If he actually knew how the tax worked, had filled out an estate tax return, learned what the law actually says, or worked with countless individuals who waste/spend millions of dollars on CPA’s, lawyers, brokers, appraisers, insurance, then we might have a meangingful conversation.
But you don’t get anything but vague, unsusbtantiated policy arguments that stupily gloss right over the detail of what the tax truly does.
You can live in your vague, infantile world, but don’t expect the rest of us to follow you, let alone respect you.
Mak, mak, mak
I defy you to show me where more than a handful of posters on here have ever tried reason without sliming as a counterpoise.
Is that before or after you toss out insults or pavlovian puppies? Aside from being great Reynolds’ bait, what is with you an puppies?
So, to take you bait and only use this thread as an example
You begin with typical hostility towards the author. Then you call the President a Chimp.
Refer to those who support repealing the inheritance tax pigs and liken them to feudal lords (which is an analogy you seem to really, really like).
You toss out numbers, but do nothing to back them up.
In short, your first comment and short follow up are angry and full of spite.
When the next commenter responds without being 100% nice, but still more pleasant than your comment, you just launch into personal attacks and name calling. And don’t address his one point of fact, that the death tax is just another tax on money that has already been taxed.
This same trend, I will bet, will be evidenced in 90%+ of any thread you’ve participated in over the last month. That is, you insult and get offensive, then complain that people insult you in return.
Heck, I’ll even put my money where my keyboard is. Prove, with actual links, that you are the put upon martyr more than 10% of the time, and I’ll give you a $20 giftcard, or make a charitible donation on you behalf of the same amount.
SCSIwuzzy
For starters=your use of “death tax’ is just repitition of a propaganda point discovered by Frank Luntz in his focal group studies for Republicans. It is an example of casting something in a negative context designed to create an emotional knee-jerk appeal & mislead an individual into thinking that there will be some sort of a tax on his death. It is a pejorative term to elicit a desired response.
Your concern about the Middle Class taxed-to-death citizen is missplaced.
The fact is that 10% of this population own 70% of the wealth. If this fact seems unsupported to you then just google search & you will find plenty of documentation for that fact. I am not a walking archive who can spew out reference after reference from the top of my head. If you don’t believe this fact, then prove it wrong. You won’t be able to do so. No other Western Democracy has this magnitude of economic maldistribution.
The result from the above fact alone leaves a 30% cut of the ownership pie to be divvied betweeen 267 million Americans which means through simple deduction that the vast majority of Amnericans will not have to deal w/ an estate tax.
Should you doubt this, there is always the ever-present tv commercial for retirees to avail themselves of the negative mortgage to replace the non-existent pension or the pension revoked because the courts have allowed corporations to escape the obligation. And todayt the majority of jobs offer no pension altho there is access to a 401K in many instances, if a family has any excess funds for investment. And on days like today & yesterday they are taken to the cleaners while the Big Boys short the market, play option, jigger w/ hedge funds and play the currency markets. So as a result, when the average Joe dies, his heirs won’t have to worry about unpaid taxes on a multimiollion dollar home that is no longer a family asset.
There is an increasing liklihood that retirees will have to work longer years and spend their final years on a lower standard than promised.
This is just the tip of the issue. It was your Teddy Roosevelt who conceived of this tax as a stop=gap to minimixe the emergence of Europe-like landed or aritocratic class system.
Now, all the average income Repubs are out there carrying water for the Walrons and their like, operating under the illusion that they too might just be encumbered by such tax obligations.
Where’s your Point????
So, you’ve chosen to address none of my actual points, and instead assign motives and thoughts to me based on… nothing.
Mak, I may tease on occasion, but I do not get insluting in a mean or vengeful manner BUT
You’re an ass and a coward. And you’ve proved my point.
When is the Estate Tax triggered? Upon the DEATH of the estate OWNER.
It is not improper to label a tax that is ONLY assessed upon DEATH as a DEATH tax.
So, makey makey 44 insults a second, you know what you can do with your “focus group” bad-faith labeling.
You have deemed private property owners as “evil”.
May I suggest you swim to Cuba and enjoy the property is theft paradise.
SCSIwuzzy
When I offered some points above you resoond, “So, you’ve chosen to address none of my actual points, and instead assign motives and thoughts to me based on… nothing.”
If that poat above failed to address some of your “actual points” or was an assessment of your motives, then I would coclude that any exchange with you will be deemed as an “attack,” or the use of “insults” or an attack on your motives.
Lest your insult-wary eye mislead your interpretation regarding what I said about Luntz, I was mot accusing you of such a tactic, but rather commenting on the way it works w/ people who are regular followers here and across the conservative spectrum. The evidence is reflected by the autonomic repitition of “Death Tax.”
The problem with people like you on Wizbang is just as you illustrate above: anything apart from agreement w/ the choir is scurilous.
BTW Dittos to Darleen for the post just above, Having failed to agree w/ her, I am now a Castro-Cuba hugger, and a socialist, if not commie, by implication.
Are you watching this, Jay?
Mak: to further illustrate your ignorance, you might try to find out what it is the Senate is actually voiting to do.
The death tax repeal that is proposed would be coupled with a capital gains tax with no stepped up basis at death. Therefore, all assets of a decedent that were later sold would be taxed on the gain as if the decedent still had his original basis in the property.
The realistic forecast is that the new cap gains tax would actually yield MORE funds to your beloved public trough than the current death tax.
It always amazes me how much the leftists like you, Mak, love to speak of what they know not. Do us all a favor, and read a little economics and tax law before you hold forth on your love of taxes for social engineering.
Maybe, Mak, if you could make some money, you would find yourself wishing to preserve it for your family, like the rest of us.
Mitchell
You posted: “The realistic forecast is that the new cap gains tax would actually yield MORE funds to your beloved public trough than the current death tax.”
The current $9 trillion dollar National debt proves your Laugher Curve econ is no more thatn Medieval alchemy.
A definition of insanity is reptively doing the same thing over and over , looking for a different outcome. After 25 years of Reagan/Bush/Bush Laugher alchemy, insanity has become well-established.
Mak, fine post. But wholly irrelevant.
What a waste of time you are. Is this your only social outlet?
Mitchell
Clearly, whenever someone posts a point that doesn’t square w/ myopic vision, it is “fine post. But wholly irrelevant.”
You are a 21st Century Flat-Erather. Amazing that you ever left the cave & stopped dragging your woman around by the hair.
Mak,
I address your behaivor, and you tell me about my concern for the middle class. About which I have said nothing, either way.
Rather than prove that you are unfairly put upon, you instead go on another rant about the term death tax and T. Rooseveldt.
Every response you have to any other poster here is laden with insults.
And you then complain to Jay, like running to mommy, that not everyon is nice to you?
If you are indeed in your middle age, how do you survive in the real world? How did you get out of school, for that matter?
If you were as young as you act, I’d suspect you of being the next Columbine in the making… 😉
scsiwuzzy
I honestly thought your most recent post re: addressing an argument was a challenge to address the point of the thread and so I posted what I did above.
Now it appears that what you wanted was my defense to the accusations made about the nature of my posts. Sorry, not going to do that, apart from referring you to my original post on the “Fort Lewis Officer” thread by Kim.
It was a response to a prior general challenge from a Cybrludite. If you bother to follow the thread, you will see that I was far from the initiator of all that you accuse above until the tenor of the responses took the course that they did, which was near-instantaneously.
Anything I posted was simply dismissed as “irrelevant” or unfounded, primarily because it was out of sync w/ group-think.
Since honest give and take on this site is rare and degenerates to epithets from posters like Rube in LA, LarryCurlyMoeron, Veirdgo & others, I rely on satire & irony which then leads people like you yocharge “insult.”
Virtually everything that doesn’t square w/ right-wing reality (?) is dismissed as “moonbat,” “commie,” “socialist,” “pinko,” or
“crybaby whining.”
Virtually no one here is willing to offer counterpoints other than stating “group-think” by fiat.
In addition, any argument is typically dismissed w/ “and Clinton got a hummer” and cries of “Monica Lewinsky” and insults hurled at Carter.
You people are so imbued w/ group-think that an image of Pavlovian Puppies is inescapable to non-members of the choir.
Two of your Grand Masters, Limbarf & Insanity are geniouses at holding opposition at bay, screening it out altogether, or overtalking it & redirecting the thrust from years of practice when it is allowed, but tightly controlled.
Problem is, you conservatives here just can’t stand non-member thought. Some of your favs, like Ann Cunter, have raised villification to new unsurpassed dizzying heights.
The fault is in your eye, Brutus.
Mak, you’re not out of sync with group think, you’re out of sync with the facts, of which you have none on point.
Since you can’t specifically address the merits of the proposed law or the law it would replace, referencing how the law works in practice, and the disincentives inherent in the code, and how the new law would actually work, you’re left in a quandry.
If you say nothing, you’ve lost. But, in this case, when you say something, but that something is unresponsive and so general as to be more of an epithet than analysis, you’ve lost.
Either way, it must really be irritating to put your ego out on a limb and have it swatted away so often.
Do you work for the DMV, the Health Dept of local government, a university or school? I can’t imagine you actually have worked in private enterprise. We expect people to know what they’re talking about out here.
Hooray for the Death Tax! – by Larry Kudlow
Okay, so the estate tax cut went down in the Senate; class warriors rejoiced.
Congratulations to Democratic Senators, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, and Mark Pryor, who all voted against death tax repeal, after voting in favor of it a few years ago. At last! They have finally have come to their senses!
Congratulations are also in order for Republican Frank Keating. After crusading for abolition of the death tax when he was governor of Oklahoma, he is now getting right-sized in firm opposition as K Street’s newest insurance lobby hero.
I think all of this is great. America should attack rich people. We must abolish wealth. It’s a tremendous drag on our economy. It’s high time that we made the rich, poor.
In fact, for all the xenophobes that want to depart the illegal immigrants who are helping our economy, may I respectfully suggest that their generals (i.e. Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Tom Tancredo and company) consider expanding their dragnet? Let’s deport rich people too!
These rich people are bad for America.
We don’t want their ingenuity, or their entrepreneurship, or their capital investment. They are not crucial to creating new high growth companies and jobs. We just don’t want them. Actually, I think we should figure out ways in the name of egalitarian socialism, to tax their dollars even more times. It definitely is right that they’re not taxed enough.
So, in addition to taxing rich incomes, once as salaries, a second time as corporate profits, a third time as dividends, a fourth time as capital gains, and a fifth time at death, there must be a way to tax them again.
Perhaps, if they donate huge contributions to charities there should be a tax?
Or if they build a new church or synagogue, tax ’em. Or if they create another college, tax em. Or if they finance private scholarships, or inner city kids’ education at parochial schools, or Hebrew schools, tax ’em. Or if they just go about their business and consume goods and services, can’t we have a special tax surcharge? Or if they buy a new home that employs ten, twenty, or fifty construction workers, I say slap a high rich person’s tax. Or if they hire a driver, tax ’em. If they show up at a five-star restaurant, tax ’em.
In fact, lets criminalize the entire class of successful American entrepreneurs. Let’s haul out the Joint Tax Committee and Congressional Budget Office’s distributional tables, and target the upper-end income earners for special wealth taxes.
I like the idea from my crazy Wall Street Journal editorial friends, who talk about “dying for dollars.” Maybe we can even impose jail sentences for rich people! No more interest income just like the radical fundamentalist Muslims!
Let’s publish their names in newspaper and blog sites. Let’s encourage the class warfare, “soak the rich” advocates to swarm over them when they appear on streets and towns, just like the animal rights people, who throw paint on women in mink coats.
We must strive to make America like France or Germany–income leveling; income redistribution. Remember how well this worked with the old Soviet Union?
Actually, I checked the international tax tables and found that the U.S. only has the third highest estate tax rate of the top 50 countries. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Only third? We tax estates at a 46 marginal rate, but Japan is the best at 70 percent, followed by South Korea at 50 percent. We are pikers. We must not let this happen. How can we let Japan be ahead of us on taxing rich people?
The fact that 24 countries have a zero estate tax rate, including China, should not concern us. They don’t know what they’re doing. And, surely, we don’t want to be competitive in the world economy. We want to hang a sign out: “Capitalists are unwelcome to the United States.” Let’s make the whole country like New York.
This idea of keeping more of what you earn and own is just plain stupid. In fact, this whole capitalistic notion, which is spreading worldwide, is just one of these temporary, bizarre, worldwide trends that will undoubtedly be soon reversed, as people come to their senses.
Czech Republic, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, they’re obviously all nuts with their zero tax rates on estates. Did I say Mexico? That’s perfect. As I said earlier, we will deport all our rich people to Mexico. At a zero estate tax rate, they’re likely to produce and invest so much more, that they will completely revive the stagnant Mexican economy.
Instead of creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs in America, along with funding schools, colleges, symphonies, cultural centers, hospitals, medical research and so forth, they can do it for Mexico. That of course will solve our immigration problem. What a great idea! Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
Meanwhile, Senator Kyl’s fallback position of a fifteen percent rate, after exempting the first five million dollars of an estate, is an equally demoralizing idea. That would move us much too close to Canada, Australia and Argentina, which also have a zero rate. That would also promote the foolish incentive idea that there is a link between reward and work, or reward and risk. This crazy, far-out, ultra right wing idea that it must pay after-tax to work and invest is insane.
After all, we know that the best way to generate more saving and investment in this country is to tax it more. That’ll do the trick. Contrary to the brilliant Arthur Laffer, the tax the rich crowd must be exactly right with their newfangled, modernistic, 21st century idea that if you tax something more, we will get more of it. Huh?
This may all sound wrong, but these soak the rich guys are deep thinkers. They have their fingers on the pulse of the hundred million strong Investor Class. They know that the worldwide spread of free market economics, which was launched by Reagan and Thatcher, twenty-five years ago, and which has raised global prosperity to record heights, caused the phenomenal growth of middle classes in places like India, China, and Russia, along with record amelioration of poverty, is absolutely nuts.
After all, capital is the enemy of labor! Forget about the obvious fact that you can’t create a new job without a business. And you can’t fund a new business without capital. Forget all that. It’s obviously wrong.
Once again, capital is the enemy. Rich people are evil. We have to put an end to all this capitalist, supply-side nonsense.
By the way, when is Karl Marx’ birthday? I have to stop writing now, so I can go look it up. I can’t wait to celebrate the master’s birthday…
They’re more principled than that. Two-thirds of the public wants to repeal it because they think taxing a lifetime of thrift due to the accident of death is unfair, and even immoral.