Time: GOP senators looking for a RICH KATRINA CORPSE for estate tax pitch

Nothing Without Hope

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Sun Sep-18-05 03:05 AM
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Time: GOP senators looking for a RICH KATRINA CORPSE for estate tax pitch

Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 03:27 AM by Nothing Without Hope

This is apparently only in the online edition of Time Magazine, which is too bad - more people should see this. In this age of all spin all the time, I suppose it was inevitable, but this is uniquely shameless and bizarre. It also adds one more item to the long list of awful things GOP Congress people will do to get their way - now it's digging for weeks-old corpses to show that SOMEBODY needed that estate tax repeal for their pathetic, needy heirs.

Seems they haven't found EVEN ONE rich Katrina corpse yet. Too bad they can't do a negotiation that would reflect their true views of human value, say 10,000 poor black corpses equals one rich white corpse. Guess not - those rich GOP donors are priceless. They're still looking. I'm sure we'll hear about it if they finally find a ripe "volunteer character witness" for their estate tax cut pitch.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1106213,00.html
Web Exclusive | Nation

Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case

Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax

By MASSIMO CALABRESI
Posted Saturday, Sep. 17, 2005

Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: " Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."

If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote. After hearing from Sessions, Apolinsky, an estate tax lawyer who says his firm includes three multi-billionaires among its clients, mobilized the American Family Business Institute, a Washington-based group devoted to estate tax repeal. They reached out to members along the Gulf Coast to hunt for the dead.

It's been hard. Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax�in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that's only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina's cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income. For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? "Not yet," Apolinsky says. "But I'm still looking."

Now it seems to me that if they DON'T manage to find a live one - so to speak - this can be used as a nice talking point against them. And if they DO find one, well, I think most Americans would perceive the awfulness of searching for a rich white corpse as a "poster boy" to push a tax cut for the wealthy while thousands of poor black ones are lying there in plain sight rotting. Meanwhile, more poor are dying every day, but they don't care about that. So I think we should keep an eye on this and let people know about it. It really shows what the GOP truly are. I'll bet Conyers would appreciate this, and maybe Keith Olbermann would too. It's a truly revealing and sickening glimpse of the neocon "soul."