Editorials

One of the perks of this job is that you get an early window on what lies are currently being launched in the D.C. fabrication industry. No sooner do the Republicans dream up a lie in one of their many captive think tanks than it’s on the Internet as a press release directed at editorial writers across the country. That’s how we first found out about that masterpiece of doublespeak titling, the Healthy Forests Initiative, which was a covert attack by the logging industry on the nation’s old growth forests. Frankly, we laughed at it. We didn’t believe that such blatantly untrue propaganda would find any audience among thinking people. We set our Netscape filter to deposit the Healthy Forest people’s press releases in the trash folder and forgot about it. Boy, were we wrong! It passed, with some Democrats supporting it. 

That’s why we’re taking a more serious look at this week’s reprise of another infamous doublespeak campaign, the self-styled American Family Business Institute’s press release entitled “ 2005 GOP Senate Agenda: Kill the Death Tax, Protect Family Businesses and Farmers.” Here’s where you have to keep your eye on the ball. The tax cutters got what they wanted in 2001 by re-christening the tax formerly known the estate tax as the ominous sounding Death Tax. 

The U.S. estate tax, modest by the standards of any first-world country with a respectable social safety net, is currently on hold, thanks to the Bush administration’s tax cutting mania, and the Republicans (or at least the ultra-cons who now control what was formerly the G.O.P.) want to make sure that it doesn’t come back, as it’s scheduled to do in 2010. Permanent repeal of the estate tax is opposed by, among others, Responsible Wealth, a group of socially-minded rich people, including Bill Gates’ father. Many of them were even Republicans, at least until their party was shot out from under them by the radical right. They point out in their literature that the estate tax which was suspended fell exclusively on the richest 2 percent of taxpayers—those with a net worth of at least $1.5 million per individual ($3 million for a couple). Nearly half of all estate taxes have been paid by the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the American population—a few thousand families each year. All sorts of intelligent people like Warren Buffet and Paul Krugman favor keeping some form of estate tax, though there are proposals to raise the exemption amount even higher and lower the percentage tax rate.  

The disinformation campaign waged by the Republicans seems to be working, per the AFBI press release: “Today more than 70 percent of Americans believe the estate tax is one of the most unfair taxes assessed and 92 percent of Americans feel it is unfair for government to tax a person’s income while it is being earned and then tax it again after death.” That’s probably many of the same folks who don’t believe in evolution. What’s sad is that most of them will never have any contact with the estate tax because they’re in the poorer 98 percent, not the richest 2 percent.  

And here’s the most ominous sentence in the release: “Currently, California is a target state for the American Family Business Institute. We hope to gain both of California’s Senator’s [SIC] vote on this important issue to help protect family business owners and farmers in the state from this unfair tax.”  

Oh, no, you think. Not our savvy California senators. They’d never fall for that kind of phony propaganda.  

Sen. Barbara Boxer has consistently voted against estate tax repeal, and good for her. She’s been doing really well lately overall, what with standing up with the Black Caucus to question the election results and raking Condi Rice over the coals in the confirmation hearings. If she keeps this up, we might even let her off the hook for saying she supports the death penalty, especially because she can’t do much about it as a U.S. senator.  

But you know what? California Sen. Diane Feinstein was one of the Democrats who joined the Republicans in putting across the Healthy Forests scam. And she (estimated net worth: $50 million) has supported estate tax repeal in the past. So voters who understand that some form of the estate tax, the most effective way of taxing the super-rich, is necessary to keep this country solvent should start those cards and letters off right now, in case Feinstein can be turned around before it’s too late. Lots of good talking points and statistics are available on the responsiblewealth.com website. 

—Becky O’Malley