Tidbits: November 10, 2010
1. Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Speak Out For A Strong Estate Tax
2. Honoring Veterans: Almost the Best Law Ever
3. Jonathan Watts on China's Economic Boom and Environmental Bust (NYC)
4. Re: Obama Should Create Jobs by Executive Order
5. Re: Battling Misinformed Consent
===
TELECONFERENCE ADVISORY for Tuesday, November 16 at
11:00 A.M. Eastern Time
Contacts:
* Anne Singer, 202-271-4679, [log in to unmask]
* Susan Roth, 301-530-3539, [log in to unmask]
Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Speak Out For A Strong Estate Tax
Call the Tax Fair, Manageable and Rare
United for a Fair Economy Hosts a November 16 Press
Conference Call Featuring Three Business Owners
Washington, DC - To challenge the myth that the estate
tax is bad for business, three small business owners
and entrepreneurs are speaking out in support of a
strong, permanent federal tax on large estates. They
are urging Congress to restore a strong estate tax.
The issue will be debated when Congress returns on
November 15. Contrary to claims that all business
owners oppose the estate tax, these Americans who have
founded and/or run small businesses want to see the tax
strengthened and are willing to pay it.
The speakers on the November 16 teleconference will
include:
* Two small business owners who represent the vast
majority of farms and businesses that would owe no
estate tax should it return to 2009 levels (a farm
service provider from Arkansas and a microbrewer
from Washington state), and; * A Silicon Valley
entrepreneur who represents the mere 0.02% of all
estates that are small businesses or farms that can
expect to pay estate tax at 2009 levels.
Each of the speakers sees the tax as an investment in
the publicly-funded infrastructure that made their
success possible and continues to benefit their
operations.
Unwilling to serve as poster children for tax cutting
policies they oppose, these American business owners
will discuss how existing estate tax exemptions and
provisions already address the concerns of small
businesses and farms and protect them from unmanageable
tax liabilities.
The estate tax was reduced between 2002 and 2009 and
fully suspended during 2010 as a result of the Bush tax
cuts of 2001. All of these cuts will sunset at the end
of 2010 due to deficit-reduction rules. The future of
the estate tax remains undecided. If Congress does not
act, the estate tax is due to return in 2011 with a $1
million exemption per spouse and a 55% rate on amounts
above that.
These three business owners will join experts from
United for a Fair Economy (UFE), which has been
fighting to preserve the estate tax since 2000, in a
teleconference on Tuesday, November 16 to discuss their
reasons for supporting a permanent and robust estate
tax. Participants will make opening remarks and take
press questions.
WHAT: A press teleconference featuring small business
leaders who support a strong estate tax.
WHO:
* Jean Gordon, Little Rock, AR Co-owner of
Frostyaire of Arkansas, agricultural freezing and
cold storage company.
* Jerry Fiddler, San Francisco, CA Principal of
Zygote Ventures, venture capital firm, and
Founder of Wind River Systems, tech company. *
Dave Eiffert, Snoqualmie, WA Co-founder and Co-
owner of Snoqualmie Falls Brewery, craft brewery
and tap room.
* Lee Farris, Senior Organizer on Estate Tax
Policy at United for a Fair Economy.
* Mike Lapham, Director of Responsible Wealth, a
project of UFE.
WHEN: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 11:00 A.M. Eastern
time.
WHERE: Call-in line # 800-895-1085; Conference ID #
7TAX
===
Can My Boss Do That?
Honoring Veterans: Almost the Best Law Ever
Iowa has a new law that's obvious and imminently
reasonable. Veterans get Veteran's Day off from work.
Surely, other states could get broad support for a
similar law.
All employers in Iowa are covered by the law, although
they can deny the time off if it would significantly
impact their operations.
The headline says it's only "almost" the best law
honoring veterans because the time off doesn't have to
be paid and it requires the worker to give one month's
notice, which is too long to be reasonable.
There are 158,000 veterans working in Iowa. The new law
is Iowa Code Section 91A.5A.
Read the law, here.
Anne Janks www.CanMyBossDoThat.com
===
NYU's Program for Asian/ Pacific/ American Studies
presents:
Jonathan Watts (The Guardian), 'When A Billion Chinese
Jump: A Journey Through A Land of Economic Boom and
Environmental Bust'
Followed by a discussion with Andrew Ross (Social and
Cultural Analysis, NYU)
When: Friday 12 November, 12:30-2pm Where: 4th Floor,
20 Cooper Square (East 5th and Bowery) Free and open to
the public
===
Re: Obama Should Create Jobs by Executive Order
Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn's article presents an
interesting idea about using TARP funds for job
creation, one I'd like to be able to support.
However, it is not clear how close the parallel is
between the "money ... appropriated specifically for
relief" by Congress in the 1930s that FDR used to fund
the WPA under an executive order, and the money
appropriated under the Emergency Economic
Stablilization Act of 2008. For what purpose or
purposes was that money appropriated? I recall
discussion and criticism at the time that appropriation
was not very specific and left Secretary of the
Treasury Paulson too much latitude in how he could use
it, but my recollection is that those discussions were
among alternative financial sector uses -- e.g. buying
"troubled assets" that might have put the government in
a position directly to renegotiate mortgages vs. just
lending banks heaps of money as he ultimately did.
Assigning appropriated money to be spent on public
works projects or other job creation seems to be a
rather different purpose than such financial uses, and
as the authors' own characterization of the
appropriation used for the WPA suggests, appropriations
are usually for a relatively specific purpose. Perhaps
if the language is truly vague about "economic
stabilization" the idea could work, but I think the
language of the purpose of the appropriation in the
2008 act needs to be addressed before the plausibility
of this idea can be evaluated.
Chris Lowe Portland, Oregon
===
Re: Battling Misinformed Consent: How Should We Respond
To The Anti-Vaccine Movement? Anti-Science and Anti-
Corporate.
That's a mix we often have to contend with. From the
anti-fluoridation movement to the great movement that
stopped nuclear power and now the movement to stop
vaccination, the anti-science populists, infused with
the dominant free-market ideology in its libertarian
form, have channeled distrust of the media and the
government and of the forces shaping our lives, forces
over which most of us feel no control.
The difficulty with fighting the anti-science voices
frontally is that, first, they're more often than not
right about the corporations and the compliant and
spineless regulatory agencies that oversee them, and
two, they have the ear of a great number of our people,
on some issues perhaps a majority of the most
politically conscious of us.
On the vaccine issue for example, it is clearly not in
the public interest to have a large and growing part of
the population that is unvaccinated, and the claim that
vaccines are causing autism is both very shaky on
scientific grounds - albeit supported by very
persuasive anecdotal evidence that people hear from
people they know - and a distraction from the search
for what will very likely turn out to be an
environmental cause for the explosion in the prevalence
of this disorder. Yet, how can we not say that the
continuing use of mercury compounds as a vaccine
preservative is unconscionable, when simple (but more
expensive) refrigeration could be used? And how can we
ask people to trust a medical establishment that is
capable of making this choice and failing to respond to
the widespread public demand to reverse it?
If some physicians and nutritionists among us could
actually set up a rival organization that gave
lifestyle and nutritional advice and food and medical
policy criticism, written for regular people in a
popular way but attempting to sift out the legitimate
anti-corporate anti-tobacco-scientist concerns from the
illogical and un-founded fear-mongering that would be a
great contribution. But with or without that, it seems
to me that in the larger battle against the
depredations of the multi-national food and pharma
corporations, driven by lust for profit, with
consciences that amount to nothing more than the
calculations of liability lawyers, risk managers and
marketing specialists, and informed by scientists who
at best are allowed to speak and publish only when it
is convenient, Dr. Mercola and their other libertarian
critics must be seen more often as allies, albeit
uncomfortable ones, than as foes.
Christopher Horton
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