Public Citizen has generated a report (pdf) showing that 18 of America’s super wealthy families are primarily responsible for a lobbying effort to repeal America’s estate tax or “death tax” as Republican PR gurus and their devotees like to call it.

According to the press release by Public Citizen:

[The report] reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.

The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.

These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal.

. . .

In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than 0.25% of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.

. . .

While they extol the hard work of individual farmers and small businesses, most of the 18 families have been wealthy for generations; only five still include the people who first earned the family fortune. Members of the families are far less likely than most Americans to have paid taxes on their wealth; to a large extent, that wealth lies in assets that have appreciated but, unlike paychecks, have never been taxed.

I have written about the estate tax in the past. Nobody likes paying taxes, and every tax contains elements that are unfair or particularly undesirable. But, I have never had anyone adequately provide a justification for eliminating the estate tax before eliminating the income tax. Whatever moral claim an heir has on the state of his father at the end of his life, it pales in comparison to the claim a worker has to his paycheck at the end of the week. So, whatever problems the estate tax has, there is little or no reason to address them while we still tax the paychecks of working people. Furthermore, extreme concentrations of wealth have pernicious effects on our democracy. I don’t have any serious problems with allowing individuals to amass ridiculous amounts of wealth based on their own luck and skill. But I don’t see any particular public good served by extreme levels of wealth in the hands of the children and grandchildren of those people. How many generations since John D. Rockefeller made his first billion? And we still have his progeny directly affecting our lives through their various prominent roles in our government. Skilled as those individuals may be, I would hazard a guess that they would not have attained their positions absence a pile of inherited wealth.

I just thought I’d mention that Doghouse Riley is a freakin’ genius. (I run a family blog here –by which I mean a couple of my best friends’ moms read occasionally — so I have to keep it clean. He doesn’t.) In particular I got belly laughs out of the Peggy Noonan entry and the discussion of generals critical of Donald Rumsfeld.

Yesterday there was an immigration demonstration in Indianapolis. 20,000 or more marchers rallied to protest the immigration legislation being considered by the United States Congress. I don’t have any deep thoughts to offer up at the moment. But I will note that:

1) The Latinos I’ve seen in my communities of Monticello and Lafayette seem to be, by and large, very positive additions to the community.  As a collections attorney, I come across the poor people of every race in our community. My general impression is that the Latino debtors, by and large, try harder to pay their debts. I couldn’t say whether a particular debtor is in the United States legally or illegally, but I’d be surprised if a substantial number weren’t here illegally.

2) Historically this nativist fear of being overrun by immigrants crops up again and again and again. From the Know-Nothings in the 1850s to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the 1880s to the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. I’m not sure the current panic is any different or any less ugly than those in the past.

3) If you do want to do something about the problem, such as it is, drain the swamp, don’t try to go whacking alligators on the head.  If we’re serious about controlling immigration, give a try to enforcing the laws currently in place against employers who routinely hire undocumented workers.  And I think the sentiment that they will do jobs Americans won’t is nonsense. It’s supply and demand. When your supply of workers is reduced, demand increases and the price increases. In short, we’d have to pay a living wage for these services.

The Washington Post has an article on the contest to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader entitled Lobbying Colors GOP Contest. NPR had a similar story this morning. Because the contest is colored by DeLay’s tainted ties to lobbyists, including indicted “superlobbyist” Jack Abramoff, the stories focused on the lobbying relationships of the two principal candidates, Roy Blunt and John Boehner.

Assisting Phillip Morris is practically a family business for the Blunts:

Just hours after Blunt was named to the House’s third-highest leadership job in 2002, he unsuccessfully tried to insert a measure benefiting Philip Morris into the 475-page bill creating the Department of Homeland Security. Blunt’s ties to the company are thick: He was very close to a company lobbyist, Abigail Perlman, at the time, and married her in 2003. She does not lobby Congress. One of his sons, Andrew B. Blunt, lobbies the Missouri legislature for Philip Morris.

The story gives an example of a Boehner lobbying boner as follows:

Boehner’s most famous act of the sort also involved the tobacco industry: In 1995, he distributed checks from tobacco political action committees to members on the House floor.

The story further reports, “both men have established a web of lobbying connections that touch Abramoff’s fundraising and lobbying machine.”

So, I would suggest that the House go with someone like John Hoestettler as House Majority Leader. Personally, I disagree with just about every policy issue I’ve ever heard Hoestettler discuss, and I certainly hope he loses in the 2006 election. But he doesn’t take PAC money, and I suspect that he’s probably squeaky clean by Congressional standards as far as fiscal corruption goes. Blunt and Boehner just seem like more of the corrupt same-old-same-old in Washington.

DailyKos has reprinted, with permission, a National Journal article on Howard Dean’s efforts as DNC chairman to revitalize the state and local Democratic organizations. His new approach has, apparently, alienated some of the D.C. Democrats, but the folks at the state level really seem to appreciate it.

Sylvia Smith, ordinarily the Washington Reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an opinion column in which she asserts that the Democrats are delusional fools for having the audacity to dream of a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. We’ll see, but it’s good to see where Ms. Smith is coming from on the issue.