Jim Goodman at In These Times writes—Wisconsin Dairy Farmer to GOP: Your Estate Tax Claims Are Bogus:
The mystique of the family farmer in this country goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson’s model for democracy. Jefferson centered his vision on the yeoman farmer, who, with family labor, worked a small farm and embodied the virtues of honest and hard work. It was an important idea to a new nation that was supposed to be built on independence and fairness—not aristocracy and privilege.
The idea of the yeoman farmer has evolved into the present-day notion of the family farm, a life few Americans understand but one that they seem to hold dear and want to preserve: The family farmer cares for the land, the animals and the local community because that is their heritage. It’s no wonder that food packaging depicts that image of the family farm, with little red barns, cows and chickens in the grass and the farm family working together—it sells. This image has nothing to do with how the vast majority of food that fills supermarket shelves is produced, but that hasn’t stopped politicians from invoking the family farm when selling the public on policies that have little to do with those of us who still do the work of family farming.
As Republicans push ahead with their tax reform plan, the small farmer is again invoked. This time it’s about the estate tax. During a speech in North Dakota, President Trump declared, “We’ll also protect small businesses and family farmers here in North Dakota and across the country by ending the death tax.” He added: “Tremendous burden for the family farmer, tremendous burden. We are not going to allow the death tax or the inheritance tax or the whatever-you-want-to-call-it to crush the American Dream.”
But few farmers put the elimination of this tax on the top of their wish lists. Only about 20 farms a year are subject to any inheritance tax, and in almost all cases, those farms have adequate liquid assets to cover the taxes without having to sell any part of the business to do so. After searching for 35 years for one example of a family farm that was lost due to the estate tax Iowa State professor Neil Harl stated simply, “It’s a myth.”
It is a sales pitch, nothing more, again capitalizing on that mystique of the family farm that people hold so dear. Getting rid of the estate tax is a gift to the very rich, not to farmers. As the old saying goes, ask a farmer what they would do if they won a million dollars: Keep farming till it ran out. While estate taxes are not a threat to the family farm, we face plenty of other challenges. But you’ll never see politicians tackle the greatest threat to the family farmer: unfairly low prices for our products. [...]
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—How About Some More of that Bush Bipartisanship?
Life goes blithely on in BushWorld, elections or no. Whether it's trying to bring back John Bolton or renominating already rejected judicial nominees, he's intent upon continuing to play to his wing-nut base, apparently unaware that he lost already.
The good news is that Democrats can now stop Bolton and those judges for good. The bad news is that he can make executive branch appointments that don't have to be approved by the Senate. Today he did just that, with a big ol' FU to the Democrats by appointing Dr. Erik Keroack to head up the Office of Family Planning, which adminsters all Title X programs. Title X of the Public Health Service Act provides family planning services primarily to low-income women.
What's so special about this appointment? After all, he's a doctor, right? A doctor at a crisis pregnancy center, one of those deceptive clinics that pose as real clinics and prevent women from having abortions through tactics like this:
According to a recent Planned Parenthood email, a 17-year-old girl mistakenly walked into a crisis pregnancy center thinking it was Planned Parenthood, which was next door. "The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their 'other office' (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby)."
When she showed up for her nonexistent appointment, she was met by the police, who had been erroneously tipped that a minor was being forced to abort. The crisis pregnancy center staff followed up this harassment by staking out the girl's house, phoning her father at work, and even talking to her classmates about her pregnancy, urging them to harass her.
Right, just who we want heading up our governments' efforts to provide quality family planning services
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Unbelievably, there’s still MORE about Roy Moore. New accusers, and new lows, including a SECOND girl pestered while she was IN SCHOOL. And is his wife forging endorsements? Then… Al Franken. Christopher Steele says follow the money laundering.
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