Back in April, Chris K. reported on Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell’s out-of-character votes to scale back the estate tax.
Chris also reported on U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA, 7) bill to up the estate tax—or, more accurately, restore it to pre-neutered, pre-Bush levels.
The latest issue of Rolling Stone has an excellent primer—”The ‘Death Tax’ Scam”— on the estate tax (apologies, the online version is cut short), where they conclude that the issue is the first real test of the Obama administration’s commitment to changing special interest tax policy in D.C.
Washington state politics gets a lot of ink the article. Writer Michael Crowley outlines Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen’s leadership in building the national astroturf movement to repeal the tax; they call out Sens. Murray and Cantwell for caving to pressure from Blethen (although, they fail to note that the Seattle Times’ Mike McGavick endorsement against Cantwell in 2006 didn’t carry much weight—Cantwell won by nearly 60 percent); they hype McDermott’s progressive alternative plan; and they note that Washington state voted down a measure to repeal our local estate tax. (None other than our own Sandeep Kaushik was the spokesman for the winning campaign to stop the repeal effort.)
The article is worth reading in full.
