The Gray Lady's Senility

[Annie]

I just loved the headline, so I had to share. Links at site:

http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2006/06/the_gray_ladys_.html

The Gray Lady’s Senility

“Estate taxes imposed after one’s death are no more of a penalty than income taxes withheld from paychecks.” So writes the New York Times editorialist today.

Huh? The top income tax rate is 35%. The top estate tax rate is 55%. Yet the NYT says estate taxes are no more of a penalty that income taxes.

Is it laziness? Innumeracy? Mendacity? Has the Age of Pinch brought with it plagues too new and strange for diagnosis?

Take, for example, the NYT’s role in the spread of a rotten form of political correctness. Now I went to college in the mid-1970s, at the dawn of the PC era. This was only a decade after the needed Civil Rights Act of 1964, and I can sympathize with PC’s origins, which are rooted in common decency and respect. But PC turned vengeful and Orwellian in the 1980s, and now is aided and abetted by “liberals” such as Pinch Sulzberger. Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis points out the NYT’s latest dive into the Animal Farm hog slop:

“When a big story breaks — like, say, a major arrest foiling a frightening terrorist plot in peaceful Canada — the first question anyone wants to know is ‘who?’. Who did it? That is, after all, the first of journalism’s five Ws: who, what, when, where, why (and how).

“But The New York Times on my doorstep this morning didn’t bother answering the who question in its story today until a spare mention of ‘Islamic’ in the 22nd paragraph and ‘Muslim’ in the 31st and even those were not terribly informative. In the fifth paragraph, the suspects were merely ‘mainly of South Asian descent.’ India? Burma? Thailand? Indian? Southeast? Southwest? French-speaking terrorists from Vietnam coming to join their Quebecois confrères, perhaps? Who’s to know?”

Then there’s the unsinkable Swift Boat issue and the NYT’s one-sided handling of it. Thomas Lipscomb points out the NYT’s errors and agenda here.

“Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, ‘Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss,’ is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the ‘unsubstantiated’ charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term ‘unsubstantiated’ more than twenty times during its election coverage and continues to make no discernable effort to examine any of the charges in detail.

“But there was plenty of evidence in the work of other news organizations that some of the charges, and the Kerry military records themselves, were worth examining seriously. I found numerous problems with Kerry's records on his website in my own reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times: a Silver Star with a V for valor listed that the Navy stated it had never awarded in the history of the US Navy, three separate medal citations with some heavy revisions in Kerry's favor signed by former Navy Secretary John Lehman who denied ever signing them, to name two.”

Lipscomb’s full piece here

 

[Bullypulpit]

In fact estate taxes are not a penalty. They serve to prevent the accumulation of wealth in a dwindling number of hands, which inevitably results in the establishment of an aristocracy. Which was not what the Founding Fathers had in mind for this country. Would you REALLY want Paris Hilton making decisions about the lives of you and yours?

Even the current caps on estate taxes, $2 million per individual and $4 million per couple, only affects <a href=http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=108143,00.html><i>the wealthiest 2% of Americans</i></a>.

The income taxed is not the product of earned wages, but the capital gains on property and its fair market value (discounting for depreciation) as well as the capital gains and losses on financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.

If you want real tax reform, lower the overall tax rates on earned income and maintain the estate tax at 55% and increase capital gains tax rates. An added incentive to buy and hold stocks, bonds and property would be to lower the capital gains rates for those held for two years or more.

 

[dmp]

Funny - most estates are earned and paid taxes upon while earned, yet they strive to take MORE taxes cuz the original owner died? I really hate socialism/wealth re-distribution.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Funny - most estates are earned and paid taxes upon while earned, yet they strive to take MORE taxes cuz the original owner died? I really hate socialism/wealth re-distribution.

You would prefer to live in under a monarchy then?

 

[Annie]

You would prefer to live in under a monarchy then?

Back to the topic, it was't taxes, but NYT presentation they were at an equal rate. They aren't. Fact checking anyone?

 

[dmp]

You would prefer to live in under a monarchy then?

Stupid question.

 

[jasendorf]

Back to the topic, it was't taxes, but NYT presentation they were at an equal rate. They aren't. Fact checking anyone?

Just because Lipscomb is misrepresenting the idea presented in a sentence from an editorial doesn't mean jack squat.

If I were to say, “The Easter Bunny is no more a fictional character than Santa Claus.” Lipscomb would say, "But Santa Claus is based on a real person! And, the Easter Bunny is an impossible 7-foot tall bunny whereas Santa Claus is a possible human being!"

Lipscomb is obviously reading impaired.

 

[Annie]

Just because Lipscomb is misrepresenting the idea presented in a sentence from an editorial doesn't mean jack squat.

If I were to say, “The Easter Bunny is no more a fictional character than Santa Claus.” Lipscomb would say, "But Santa Claus is based on a real person! And, the Easter Bunny is an impossible 7-foot tall bunny whereas Santa Claus is a possible human being!"

Lipscomb is obviously reading impaired.

Ok, he doesn't have editors. Right.

Moving onto the next example, which is news related...