one death tax victim is Elaine Gunland of Fresno. She and her husband Carl began farming in 1941 just outside Fresno. The couple raised three children and a niece on a 900-acre farm. In 1981, when Carl died, Elaine had to sell 160 acres of the farm and take out a $690,000 loan to pay off the estate taxes. Three more payments are due on the loan, and Pauli said she is concerned that her sons will face the same burden again when she dies.

Consider the experience of the Hilliard family in southern Florida. When Martin Hilliard died in 1981, his heirs were forced to sell 17,000 acres in order to pay the $17.5 million estate tax assessment on their land. Most of that land, 12,000 acres, has been developed and the remaining 5,000 acres may soon be as well. Before getting hit by the estate tax; however, the Hilliard family had no intention to sell or develop the land. As one of MartinÕs nephews told Hammond and his colleagues, "It was a loss, just a total loss."

I have been keeping tabs on this debate over the past couple of years, and I often read that only 2% of American taxpayers actually pay this tax. Mr. Chairman and members of this Committee, I can assure you that more than 2% of Americans do pay this tax-not to the federal government, but to lawyers, accountants and life insurance agents. We get involved in estate planning, because if we don't, all that we have worked for will be eliminated. To ignore the death tax statute is suicide for our family business. My family alone pays $100,000 per year on a life insurance policy to cover the tax liability in the event of my mother's death. Plus, I would estimate annual legal and accounting fees at $20,000.

some dont pay any.

BUT once a certain exhorbidant level has been reached there are no further charges.

they overuse bc they incur no further charges.

he rich benefit substantially MORE from government expenditures

Give me “an obscenity starting with the ‘f’ word” break!

This is horse poo!!! It’s a lame argument but I suspect you already know that OR perhaps you’ve bought into the right wing propaganda mill, either way shame on you for robotically repeating such garbage. Where pray tell do you get your information?!?

"The federal government is taxing family-owned small businesses and farms out of existence," Walden said. "99% of American farms are family-owned, and more than half of farm operators are 55 or older. The death tax will lead to the breakup of many of these farms in the coming decades unless we can bury the tax for good."

The National Federation of Independent Business says that 70% of small businesses do not survive the death of the owner and 87% don’t survive to a third generation of family ownership. Furthermore, 60% of small business owners indicate that they would create new jobs if the death tax were eliminated. Americans spend around $23 billion annually in an attempt to avoid the crushing burden of the death tax.

"Small business owners have enough to worry about without having to fret about being taxed when they die. Small businesses are the engine of the economy in Oregon’s small towns, and our bill will help more of them survive and continue to contribute to the economy," Walden said.

Prior to the 20th Century, the federal death tax was a temporary means to pay for the high cost of war, rather than a long-term source of federal revenue. A "stamp" tax levied at death was established in 1797 to pay for a naval buildup during heightened tensions with France. This tax was eliminated in 1802 and America was without a death tax for 60 years until Congress reenacted it in 1862 to help pay for the Civil War. After the conflict ended the tax ended, too, not to reappear until the Spanish-American War in 1898. This form of the death tax was eliminated in 1902, but was brought back in 1916 to pay for World War I and the U.S. has suffered under the death tax ever since.

"World War I is over and, happily, we won. The Department of War apparently forgot to tell the Department of the Treasury about the victory, though, and we’re still stuck with this tax. It’s time to end it and today’s vote was a big step forward," Walden said.

The tax is levied when property worth more than $650,000 is passed from one generation to the next after the owners' death. While this sounds like a large inheritance, one must remember that the unexpected income is often not in the form of a liquid asset, but in the form of a business or small farm.

The National Federation of Independent Business attributes 90 percent of small business failure after the death of the founder to inheritance taxes. Charles Kruse of the American Farm Bureau Federation notes that the tax is particularly vicious in the agricultural sector. According to Kruse, children are often forced to sell off parts of the family farm to developers in order to pay the federal taxes.

While benefits of the tax are dubious at best, the costs are clear-unnecessary burdens on family farms and the wildlife they harbor. People are starting to realize this. A recent Zogby Poll showed that 86 percent of Americans think the death tax is unfair.

Well if that’s the way you choose to look at it and the rich indeed must be FORCED through thievery then I say thieve away!!!

I might choose not to even dignify this with a response but I don’t… I do not send additional monies to the government every year however you can bet you’re a$$ I don’t hoard every last red-cent of what I do have for my own greedy, selfish pursuits either.

Gotta wonder sometimes if Dubya understands democracy at all.

Yet, can we all agree that unauditable electronic voting machines are unAmerican? Give us back our paper trail!

Let’s look at taxes for a moment, shall we? Dubya gave the wealthiest Americans ENORMOUS TAX BREAKS while saddling the rest with higher local taxation. MIDDLE CLASS WORKERS (that’s probably you!!!) NOW PAY A HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF THEIR INCOMES IN TAXES THAN MULTI-BILLIONAIRES.

Now, let’s look at the estate tax. Dubya’s attempt to permanently repeal the estate tax is fiscally irresponsible and morally reprehensible.

Now, before you go assuming I’m some low-life government program sponge, you should know I stand to benefit substantially more from Republican fiscal policy however at the end of the day I have to sleep with myself – greed, selfishness and a disgusting sense of entitlement do not make attractive bedfellows.

geez, cableguy, i'm not really a truckdriving type of a dude. *smirks*
gotta come up with something better than that.

Myths To A Plame: The Case Against Rove
Investors.com
Posted 10/19/2005

Politics: As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's mandate expires, Karl Rove's only crime may be not that he "outed" Valerie Plame as a CIA operative but that he exposed her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, as a liar.

The case involving Rove and who "leaked" Plame's "secret" identity as a CIA employee to the press is so convoluted that it's easy to forget the whole thing began with President Bush uttering 16 words in a 5,400-word State of the Union: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

It was these 16 words that Wilson spent eight days in Niger investigating on behalf of the CIA, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," as he put it, afterward writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times essentially claiming the Bush administration sent U.S. soldiers to Iraq to die for a lie.

Wilson, who later was a foreign affairs adviser to the Kerry campaign, turned out to be a physician in need of healing himself when it comes to truth-telling, as revealed on July 9, 2004. That was when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The report concluded that Wilson lied when he denied his wife got him the Niger assignment. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote in his book, adding, "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
But according to the Senate report: "Interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." This included a memo Plame herself sent to the CIA.

The report also said Wilson lied when he told The Washington Post he knew the Niger intelligence had been based on forged documents. The CIA didn't obtain the document said to be a forgery until a full eight months after Wilson's return from Niger.

Wilson told the public Niger had denied the uranium connection. But the Senate found that Wilson's own report said that the Niger government had confirmed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium.

So when Rove, in an e-mail sent to Time magazine's Matt Cooper in July 2003, said Wilson's trip to Niger for the CIA was arranged by "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency," without providing her actual name, he was not exposing Plame as an agent.
He was exposing her husband as a prevaricator, in effect warning Cooper and others not to take his claims seriously.

While Wilson was found to have lied repeatedly, an independent British investigative committee on WMD intelligence headed by Lord Butler in its report (butlerreview.org.uk ) found "the intelligence was credible" and Bush's statement was "well-founded."

Rove is said to have blown a CIA operative's cover. But didn't Wilson, who was hired as a consultant by the CIA, and presumably signed the routine CIA confidentiality agreement, blow his own cover by afterwards writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times?

Plame's name was certainly no secret, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who In America" entry. Nor were her political affiliations and those of her husband. It could be argued that Mrs. Wilson blew her own cover when she made a contribution to the Al Gore for President campaign and listed her CIA cover company as her employer in the FEC filing.

The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which Rove is accused of violating, was designed to protect the CIA from subversion and treason by those who wished harm upon the agency and the United States. It wasn't designed to protect the identities of desk jockeys and their spouses who willingly inject themselves into a national political debate.
If Karl Rove is a criminal, exactly what was the crime?

There is no crime, according to attorney Victoria Toensing, who drafted the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She says that under the statute the "outed" agent must have operated outside the U.S. within the previous five years, and Plame had given up her role as a covert agent in favor of a desk job in Langley, Va., nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

The usual suspects who got even with Newt Gingrich for electing a Republican Congress, and who are pursuing Tom DeLay for pushing the Republican agenda, are now trying to settle the score with the man who got George W. Bush elected twice.

As we've noted, this isn't the first time an attempt has been made to criminalize political differences or to get even with GOP gurus for their political prowess and success. It is somewhat disheartening to see the administration Rove has served so well not mount a passionate defense of this innocent man, saying merely that anyone found guilty of leaking a CIA agent's name would be fired.

This is an attempt to use — or rather, misuse — the law to achieve what Democrats could not at the polls: the neutering of the Republican revolution. As columnist Ann Coulter points out, the only person to have demonstrably lied and possibly broken the
law is Joseph Wilson. We can only hope it will not succeed.

yes, we don't own cats, they own us, we are thier humble servants

They have their cable, let them enjoy in peace.

You wouldn't be the type of neocon that would unplug the cable box in a burn ward would you? How about the vets of the Gulf War and Iraq who lost major limbs and have nothing but TV to fill their lonely days?

- ya, don't pay too much attention to CableWonk there, he's fond of presenting the world with Non-Sequiters. Coupla weeks ago he had a big tussle with somebody over whether or not the poor, down-trodden welfare recipients of America should get "Cable" to add a glimmer of cheer to their miserable lives. Well, being the CableWonk he is, he is of course an expert on the subject, and weighed in heavily on the side of the "Haves". Course, what would you expect from the only place I can think of on the entire planet where people are more politically naive than Alberta or Texas - those guys actually voted a big majority for Jesse Ventura. Wow.

I guess we'll know tomorrow.

Judith Miller Exonerates Bush Officials
By Cliff Kincaid ,Accuracy in media.com | October 16, 2005 The media, of course, are not interested in probing Wilson and Plame, only the Bush administration.

The true facts in the CIA-leak case are now becoming astonishingly clear. New York Times reporter Judith Miller's testimony, as she describes it in the Sunday edition of her paper, proves that the wrong people are under investigation. It's not really a story about Bush officials Lewis Libby and Karl Rove and their conversations with the press. Rather, it's a story about a CIA bureaucracy working to undermine the Bush administration through the media and cover up for its own mistakes.

It's now obvious that Bush officials are spending time before a grand jury and big money on lawyers for the alleged "crime" of trying to use the press to get out their side of the story. They trusted the press and got burned. Now, if the media have their way, these officials may be further punished by being indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. This would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

The case has been a revealing and disappointing look into how Bush administration officials tried to work with various reporters, in order to counteract false accusations about the administration's Iraq policy that had appeared in the press. In the end, they failed. It's a failure that demonstrates the folly of trying to curry favor with the liberal press.

Journalists, by contrast, may come out of this drama with special rights. Senator Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on Wednesday on a proposed federal media "shield law" to protect some journalists from disclosing sources to a grand jury. Miller will be the star witness. Accuracy in Media has been denied the opportunity to testify in person against the bill because of opposition from Democratic congressional staffers.

In the same way that Democrats still call the shots on Capitol Hill, despite a Republican Senate majority, the Times and other liberal media forced the Bush administration to agree to their demands for an investigation in the CIA leak case. Fitzgerald was appointed by the Bush Justice Department and administration officials have been cooperating from the start. By contrast, the Times and Miller, who just recently left jail to testify before the grand jury in the case, had been obstructing the investigation. All Miller had to do to avoid jail was to tell the truth. She now has done so, and her account of what she told the grand jury under oath turns the media version of this bizarre case completely upside down.

Most of the coverage had created the impression that the administration was out to damage or destroy an administration opponent, Joseph Wilson, by illegally identifying the identity of his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame. Her name originally appeared in a Robert Novak column citing administration officials.

But Miller's account indicates that she was in contact with Libby after Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist at the paper, published a claim that Wilson had been sent to Niger to investigate an Iraq-uranium link "at the behest" of Vice President****Cheney's office. Libby knew that was false and wanted to get the truth out. But there was much more to it than that. Libby was upset about the CIA's role in sending Wilson on the trip.

Libby was frustrated and angry, Miller testified, about "selective leaking" by the CIA and other agencies to "distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments." Miller says Libby believed the "selective leaks" from the CIA were an attempt to "shift blame to the White House" and were part of a "perverted war" over the war in Iraq.

This is the real story of the CIA leak case. We have one or more intelligence agencies planting false stories with the press in order to damage the Bush administration. They wanted to divert attention from the fact that the CIA had gotten the facts wrong about Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Taking issue with the President's charge in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, Wilson had written a column for the Times doubting that such a transaction had taken place. On other occasions Wilson said he even doubted the claim that Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger. Miller says that Libby told her that the Wilson essay "was inaccurate." Miller adds, "Mr. Libby then proceeded through a lengthy and sharp critique of Mr. Wilson and what Mr. Libby viewed as the CIA's backpedaling on the intelligence leading to war. According to my notes, he began with a chronology of what he described as credible evidence of Iraq's efforts to procure uranium. As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium."

What's more, Miller says, "My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson."

In other words, Wilson was denying something that he had actually confirmed. In fact, there had been an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Africa. No wonder Libby was upset with Wilson's article in the Times and the CIA's role in arranging his trip. Libby had every reason to believe there was a campaign underway to undermine the Bush administration and he must have been desperate to counter it. So desperate that he would talk to Judith Miller and other reporters. That was a big mistake.

In terms of more evidence of an Iraq-uranium link, Miller says that Libby "also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium."

The situation was that the administration had evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, based on Wilson and other sources, and yet Wilson was using the Times and other outlets to deny it. Libby, Rove and other administration officials had every reason to conclude that Wilson was part of an effort by some in the CIA to deliberately undermine the Bush administration's Iraq policy. But other than Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, we still don't know the names of those CIA officials. They can apparently operate under the cover of anonymity, legal or otherwise. They are media "sources," now on the verge of getting more protection from the Senate under a media shield law.

Under these circumstances, it was natural, as Miller recounts, for the conversation to turn to Wilson's wife, a CIA employee who recommended him for that Africa trip. Miller says the following about Fitzgerald's line of questioning: "Mr. Fitzgerald asked me whether Mr. Libby had mentioned nepotism. I said no."

This is important because Plame's role in recommending him for the Africa trip, as documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee, possibly violated federal nepotism laws. According to Miller, Libby apparently didn't offer an opinion on that. But that gets to the heart of what was going on in the CIA. Who in the CIA was orchestrating the Wilson affair to damage the Bush administration? Is Fitzgerald investigating that?

If not, a major miscarriage of justice is underway. The media, of course, are not interested in probing Wilson and Plame, only the Bush administration. The name of the game was and still is to "get" the administration through concocted scandals. This one involved an alleged effort to smear Wilson, whose wild and reckless charges should never have been published by the Times in the first place, by going after his wife. It's also probably the case that Plame and other CIA officials are trusted "sources" for the press. So why would reporters want to scrutinize them?

It's been repeated endlessly by Miller's defenders that Miller was ordered to testify about the case but never wrote a story about it. She should have. Her story exonerates the Bush administration and it should put the focus where it belongs—on Wilson, his wife and the duplicitous bureaucrats in the CIA.

The media are now clamoring for indictments of Bush officials, with CBS Evening News anchorman Bob Schieffer saying that it would look foolish for Fitzgerald to essentially drop the case after investigating the matter for so long. This kind of media pressure may be difficult to resist. But Fitzgerald should live up to his reputation and be independent enough to understand that he, too, has been manipulated by the media in this affair and that indictments of Bush administration officials would only serve to distract attention from the real problem—an out-of-control CIA.

cable...
oh, what kind of job is that? i highly doubt anyone could do it/have it. or is it working at a nuclear facility? or being a lab rat for some unknown chemical concoction testing?

Did you ask yourself why Bush was re-elected with the largest margin in the history of the Electoral College?

Yesterday, I (bottom right corner in the picture) was chosen to be among a small group of soldiers assigned to the 42ID's Task Force Liberty that would speak to President Bush, our Commander-in-Chief. The interview went well, but I would like to respond to what most of the mass-media has dubbed as, "A Staged Event."
First of all, we were told that we would be speaking with the President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, so I believe that it would have been totally irresponsible for us NOT to prepare some ideas, facts or comments that we wanted to share with the President.
We were given an idea as to what topics he may discuss with us, but it's the President of the United States; He will choose which way his conversation with us may go.
We practiced passing the microphone around to one another, so we wouldn't choke someone on live TV. We had an idea as to who we thought should answer what types of questions, unless President Bush called on one of us specifically.

President Bush told us, during his closing, that the American people were behind us. I know that we are fighting here, not only to preserve our own freedoms, but to establish those same freedoms for the people of Iraq. It makes my stomach ache to think that we are helping to preserve free speech in the US, while the media uses that freedom to try to RIP DOWN the President and our morale, as US Soldiers. They seem to be enjoying the fact that they are tearing the country apart. Worthless!
The question I was most asked while I was home on leave in June was, "So...What's REALLY going on over there?" Does that not tell you something?! Who has confidence in the media to tell the WHOLE STORY? It's like they WANT this to turn into another Vietnam. I hate to break it to them, but it's not.

Tomorrow morning, the Iraqi people will vote on their constitution. The success of our mission or the mission of the Iraqi security forces is not defined by the outcome of that vote. If the people of Iraq vote this constitution down, that only means that the FREE, DEMOCRATIC PROCESS is at work in Iraq. They are learning to voice their opinions in the polling stations, not through violence. If it is voted down, they will have the chance to draft an even better version; One that may better serve the people of Iraq. This is up to them. It is history in the making and I will not let the media or anyone else (who has not spent more than two weeks here) tell me otherwise. I have been here for almost a year. I have seen the progress made in so many ways from January's elections to this referendum. Don't tell me what the Iraqi people can or can't do. They will tell you with their VOTES!

Taking her act one step further, this morning she appeared on a suburban street . . . paddling a canoe. There was one small problem. Just as the segment came on the air, two men waded in front of Kosinki . . . and the water barely covered their shoe tops! That's right, Kosinski's canoe was in no more than four to six inches of water!

The panel, meeting in Washington today, agreed the current $1 million cap on deductible mortgage interest should be reduced, possibly to about $350,000, and that the deduction should yield no more than a 25 percent tax savings, down from a top savings now of about 35 percent.

The Democratic Party under Harry Reid have already put forth a proposal which would end America's dependence on oil by 2020. So so much for me having to "find someone who represents my views."

Most of the FIrst World is already working on such a scenario. Did you know you can run cars on the cooking oil used by fastfood restaurants? And it's totally clean and cheap.

IF only 1 of 19 people makes that much, what DO you call "rich"?

Do you make that much?

Close to that much?

Why are you defending people who do?

Also, if they derive that much more benefit from the system than everyone else, why shouldn't they pay that much taxes?

Could they make that much money in any OTHER COUNTRY?

If so, then why aren't they?

Clinton balanced his... three years running and during a war. Why can't Bush do that?

but he never lowered government spending..

(actually the top 5% pays about 50%)

So if they do that, then we can't pay for all the government services they derive direct benefits from: like airports, shipping ports, roads, police services, military, schools, hospitals, infrastructure and everything else. Of COURSE they should pay more. They get more benefit. We put it there so they could use it. Why shouldn't they pay more than everyone else?

will go to trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court after a ruling last week by Judge George H. Wu. Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit against Jackson, his son Jonathan, and others on behalf of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who was the victim of a physical and verbal assault at an event hosted by Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. in December 2001.

the job market still sucks & i'm in no position to go to school, etc.

when they've lowered taxes (twice) for the top 5% earners in the country.

i think they're trying to make OIL king...

people have mistaken ideas about low income people paying little or no taxes. that's crazy. the economy still hasn't improved for me & in fact has gotten much, much worse. i make less now than i did 5 years ago, & less than i made 10 years ago, also. the prices have gone up rapidly, especially recently with all the gas/heat expenses, so my "extra" money has been depleted quite a lot. i don't owe old debts, but i can't afford to help the economy with a bunch of purchases, either, cuz this economy is stifling me (exactly like i knew it would when bush got in office). & i pay taxes on ALL my income (not just to a certain cutoff for social security), & it's a big percentage of what i have... i get very little back in return.

how to fix the deficit or pay for katrina? take some of the money set aside for feeding the poor, & greatly reduce conservation programs (one republican's idea).

if tax cuts went to everyone, but especially the lower income, there would be more spending.

the rich just get richer & the poor remain poor.

Nose clean? Oh for God's sake, mr. perfect. He was speeding