Death tax isn't dead.(Correction notice)

ITEM: The Christian Science Monitor for May 1, 2006, reported:

 
   Tax disputes don't often turn so 
   clearly into moral issues. Usually, 
   legislators make tax choices along 
   the lines of Jean Baptiste Colbert, 
   a 17th-century finance minister of 
   France's Louis XIV, who said: "The 
   art of taxation consists in so plucking 
   the goose as to obtain the largest 
   amount of feathers with the least possible 
   amount of hissing." 

Well, there's a lot of hissing right Flow over the estate tax. "There is a big moral dimension" in this tax, says Steve Ricchetti, cochair off the Coalition for America's Priorities, and a former deputy chief of staff for President Clinton.

The United States, he says, "was not founded on the principle of inherited wealth." Rather; the goal is a system with "basic fairness and equity" for all so that "hard work" can be rewarded with achievement, success, and prosperity.

ITEM: New Republic columnist "TRB" (real name, Peter Beinart) contended in the magazine's May 4 issue:

"If the estate tax goes, progressive taxation follows, and social inequities continue to harden, then the danger of social unrest may not always seem as remote as it does today. The liberal challenge is to make sure that day never comes--to protect capitalism once again, not merely from new radicals who might attack it, but from a new Gilded Age right that sings capitalism's praises while eroding the moral foundation that permits it to endure."

CORRECTION; Death and taxation are said to be certainties. There is one good thing you can say about death, however: it does not get worse each time Congress convenes.