Bull Moose Strikes Back

This is one from Dear Abby:

My girlfriend, “Donna,” and I have shared a wonderful relationship for nearly three years. During her college days she had a sexual encounter with her best female friend. (They had been friends since high school.)Although they graduated from college five years ago, they continue to see each other. Donna tells me that nothing sexual goes on between them. Personally, I don’t trust her friend. Please help me get over this. — TONY IN WHITTIER

Abby gives some blather about trust. Here is the correct advice:

Dear Tony,

You are sitting on a freaking sexual goldmine. If you can’t figure out what to do with this situation, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your testicles. (HINT: It involves Everclear. The booze, not the band.)

Bull Moose

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George Steinbrenner had good timing. By dying on the day of the All Star game he got a final bit of attention from all of MLB. And by dying in 2010, he saved his estate a half billion dollars in taxes and likely kept the Yankees in his family.

Now Steinbrenner isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. In fact, I’ve been joking that the Steinbrenner estate is one of the few that I wouldn’t mind see being hit with the estate tax. But of course, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and I think the estate tax – and the gift tax – should be permanently abolished.

The death tax has its roots, like many of our laws, in English law.  Because in England everything in the domain ultimately belonged to the King or Queen, it was only right that when someone died his property was split up between the King and the heirs. In fact, it was an act of generosity that the King left the heirs anything at all.

However, that’s exactly the kind of thinking that irritated people like George Washington and the Adams cousins in the first place. And indeed for most of America’s history, the estate tax did not exist except for in times of national crisis – a “will tax” to finance a new Navy in 1797,  a 5-6% tax for the Civil War, and a 15% tax for the Spanish-American War, all repealed after the crisis.  When World War I broke out, a 10% tax on estates over $5 million (about $100 million in 2009 dollars) and a 25% tax on the portion of estates worth over $10 million (about $200 million in 2009 dollars) was enacted. The top rate was lowered to 20% after the war.

Then FDR came along and decided that the rate of 20% – something that might be able to be argued as reasonable – was too low and jacked the rate up to 70%.  From then until G. W. Bush the rates bumped up and down, but was always around half.  Insidious things like generation skipping tax were introduced.  (More or less, a generation skipping tax means that if you leave money to your grandson in your will, it will be taxed as if it was left to your son and then he left it to your grandson.)

So back to Steinbrenner. Here’s a guy that turned a $10 million investment into the Yankees into a billion dollar net worth over the course of 35 years.  And while he was making that money he was paying taxes on it much of it, and he was certainly paying taxes on his income. (I understand that much of his wealth is in the form of unrealized capital gains, which have never been taxed. However, if there is no step up in basis upon generational transfer, the government will not ultimately lose that money once there is realization of the investment.) He was employing ball players and front office staff who paid plenty in taxes.  He built an empire while paying his share of taxes on the way.  I fail to see a justification for the government taking half of what he had built, likely meaning that the Yankees would have had to have been sold by his family, if he had died six months later.  The crowning achievement of Steinbrenner’s work would have been ripped away from his family because he was successful. That’s sick.

The estate tax is politically expedient because it only targets the rich. But it is un-American, contrary to the very principles that the country was founded on.  The estate tax rears its ugly head again on January 1, with a 55% rate on estates over $1 million. Long live the King.

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Hey, look at that! A federal judge actually found the Tenth Amendment! And all it took was a search for a way for him to ignore DOMA. (Not “strike down DOMA”. Trial level judges to not “strike down” laws. Their rulings have no, or very little, precedential value.)

Of course gay marriage supporters see this as a victory. And it is something of a victory, I guess.  However, gay marriage supporter Jack Balkin recognizes the “danger” of federal judges dusting off and reading the Tenth Amendment:

As much as liberals might applaud the result, they should be aware that the logic of his arguments, taken seriously, would undermine the constitutionality of wide swaths of federal regulatory programs and seriously constrict federal regulatory power.

….

To be sure, there is something delightfully playful and perverse about the two opinions when you read them. Judge Tauro uses the Tenth Amendment– much beloved by conservatives– to strike down another law much beloved by conservatives–DOMA.

This particular conservative doesn’t think much of the substance of DOMA one way or another, and agrees that it likely runs afoul of the Tenth Amendment. So I’m all for this ruling being affirmed in the SCOTUS. Then we can get started on the work of cutting off all of the other obscene growths that have been festering on our federalist body using the Tenth as a scalpel.

However, I’m not holding my breath that this new found respect for the Tenth Amendment will last long.

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Althouse has a poll on her post about the silly Sienea poll ranking the presidents historically.  Althouse’s poll asks “Who is the best president in your lifetime?”

First, an aside about the Sienea poll and why it is silly.  First, it ranks Barack Obama as the 15th best president ever. Any poll or study that tries to rank a sitting president historically should automatically be disqualified from being taken seriously.  Frankly, we can’t even rank G.W. Bush yet because his decisions are still playing out. Second, any poll that consistently has FDR as the #1 president is clearly a poll of political hacks. And this year Teddy Roosevelt is ranked #2. You all know my affection for TR, but who can make a serious argument that either Roosevelt was a better president than Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, or even John Adams? (OK, I’m sure there are some Confederate sympathizers that rank Lincoln low.)

Back to Althouse’s poll. Curiously she doesn’t include anyone before Carter. That works for me, since I was born under Ford.

Right away I would disqualify Ford and Carter for obvious reasons. I won’t consider Obama since he’s only 18 months in. I’d also get rid of George H.W. Bush for mishandling the end of the first Iraq War and for mishandling domestic priorities. So that leaves the two-termers: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan.

W. had some great moments, oversaw the response to an appalling attack on America, started to address the problems with the rouge states in the middle east, and cut taxes nicely. He also didn’t veto enough spending bills, didn’t lead Congress well enough when he had the majority,  didn’t change strategies in Iraq quickly enough, and presided over the disgusting bailout at the end of his term.  So I’ll put him aside.

Clinton presided over the nice, comforting lull we had between the Cold War and 9-11.  He ran a surplus and presided over a nice economy, but he had help from the ‘94 Contract with America congress and the economy on the surplus  and didn’t really have much to with the economy booming.  People forget that Clinton handed Bush a deflating bubble much like Bush handed Obama a deflating bubble.

Reagan took on the commies, changed fiscal policy which helped turn around an economy with a high misery index, took on the commies, bombed Gaddafi, and took on the commies.  His downsides were increased spending and an increased deficit a result of having to deal with the devils of Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy to get what he needed for his priorities. (And the deficit wasn’t that historically out of line).  People tend to poo-poo his change of policy regarding the Soviets, (or give the credit to Gorbachev) but that is usually due to either a misunderstanding or underestimation of the evil that was the Soviet empire.  Even the Reagan administration’s scandals were about fighting communism.

Frankly, it’s hard for me to understand how there can even be a discussion about which president from Ford through current was the best. Even if it becomes a partisan discussion the choices are Clinton or Reagan, and Clinton just didn’t have the foreign policy accomplishments of Reagan.

It is amusing to look at the difference between the results of the Althouse poll and the results of the New York Daily News poll with the same question.

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