If the Seattle Times is so good at psychically predicting the future, um, why’d they leverage their paper to the edge of bankruptcy by spending nearly a quarter billion dollars they didn’t have, to purchase a struggling Maine newspaper chain just as the industry was about to collapse? Shortly after the purchase in late 1998, the Times boasted:
“With the Maine purchase, we increased the financial strength of The Seattle Times Company and expanded our opportunities for continued growth in asset base and cash flow.”
A decade of red ink later, and under pressure from creditors, the Times sold it’s Maine papers at a near total loss.
Now the Times predicts that a high earners income tax will eventually be extended to the middle class; in fact, its editorial page writes, “We are sure of it.” But if they can so disastrously misread the near-term future of their own industry, why should anybody take their prognostications the least bit seriously, especially on economic issues?
I’m just askin’.
I hope it’s now clear the Newspaper Guild’s modest desire for a living wage and decent health benefits for reporters had NOTHING to do with the Times’ financial struggles. Add $150 million for the Bothell printing plant to the $250 million for the Maine newspapers and you’ve got $400 million on the floor. That would have paid for what the union was asking for until Kingdom Come with plenty left over to pay the Times’ shareholders a fat dividend.
Logic demands that if Frank Blethen is upset with the union for striking, then he must HATE himself for the business decisions he made.
Liberal hypocrites on the estate tax
An indecent amount of fun at the expense of rich liberals pontificating on the need to resume the estate tax.
Do not read this unless you enjoy laughing at rich liberals looking like craven hypocrites.
The first sentence cracks me right up:
“OPPONENTS of the proposed Washington income tax — and this page is among them — say the tax will be extended to the middle class. We are sure of it. Here is why.”
Note to the Times – newspaper pages do not talk nor do newspaper pages have opinions. Editors do, and those editors have proper names. Don’t be such chickenshits.
why should anybody take their prognostications the least bit seriously, especially on economic issues?
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Sorta reminds you of the current administration, the one you trumpeted early on, but not so much anymore, eh?
And for someone whose business requires donations to survive, you’re about the last one to hand out advice.
Goldy, you just don’t understand what it is like to run a newspaper while completely ignoring the present. Poor Old Frank has fucked things up so bad that reality started to suck, so he retreated into a realm of utter fantasy, where past and present cease to have meaning, where FDR was never born, and where the Estate Tax is a mortal sin throughout the World.
But Frank really shouldn’t feel this way. Instead he should be reveling in his successes.
Roger tells us that Old Frank spent $250 million to reestablish the Blethen Tradition in Maine, the State that the miserable bastards came from. And from that standpoint, Old Frank has been a resounding success. He took functioning Maine newspapers and completely fucked them up. He lost all of his money and left a mess for others to fix. Now, if that ain’t the Blethen Tradition, I don’t know what is! But you can damned well bet that those Maine rags firmly opposed the Estate Tax.
And Old Frank really should savor his victory over the far-superior P.I. And he should savor his victory over those pesky Knight-Ridder guys. So what if they held 49% of his paper. Frank showed them! He made their 49% worth exactly ZERO!!!
So what if he fucked up the newspaper business in Seattle and destroyed his own franchise? He won, bygoddammit, and now he’s the King of Seattle. And he will repeal that damned Estate Tax if he has to elect Dino Rossi to do it.*
Of course, by the time that Old Frank is through he may not have anything to left to inherit. But, dammit, he won.
Didn’t he?
* I am not trying to match Frank by predicting the future. But like an old whore on the third day of a Shriner’s convention, I already know what’s coming.
@3. So? Typical Republican behavior. Because one person does something they think is bad, the whole thing they don’t like is corrupt. One person cheats on welfare, the whole thing should be abolished.
rich liberals = 2 people.
Why do conservatives who are always screaming about the unfairness of entitlements, then like the estate tax, where people who did not earn it, feel they are entitled a bunch of free money?
@7 yeah, your right blue John. You cant be rich and liberal. Look at our congress. Also, all those big name actors in Hollywood are barely making it. Michael Moore is so poor he can barely eat (thats why he is so skinny!). The estate tax isn’t about entitlements. I guess liberals hate their kids and are not motivated by the idea of passing something on to them. The same money should not be taxed more than once. There is already a sales tax for when you spend the money you inherited.
You seem to be under the mistake idea that the estate tax takes everything. It takes a percentage and only after a threshold amount.
Very few, if any, small family farms or small family business in recent times have been lost by having to pay for an estate tax.
Do you have the same hatred of the rich when it comes to walmart heirs and rich conservatives?
Do you have the same hatred of the rich when it comes to walmart heirs and rich conservatives?
I Do! I Do!
H3re’s a new unit of time measurement: Is some event longer or shorter than the time that it takes to become bored with the Seattle Times?
9
The new income tax, if passed will clearly take Bartells out of state. It applies all 9% to all private companies like Bartell drugs. If you anr not incorporated outside this state, 1098 hits you while all other iinc companies like Rite aid who incorporated out of this state do not pay this. Bye Bye every non incorporated business of any volume, and their employees, if this turd lands
ls @11,
You are talking out of your ass.
I-1098 is not a corporate income tax. It imposes a 5% tax on the portion of your personal income between $400,000 and $1 million per household, and 9% on the portion of your income over $1 million.
If you are a business owner, how and where you company is incorporated makes no difference.
@11 and @12
As a small retail business owner who is being absolutely hammered by the B&O tax, I only see I-1098 as a business owner’s friend. I-1098 will reduce this onerous tax and actually give us a fighting chance to survive this damn Bush economy.
@10
You rock.
Goldy,
I am not going to go to the Seattle Times website, no matter how much you want people to go there.
Actions by our legislature in the past do not support the fear that additional tax will be heaped upon the middle class.
Even with majorities all around, they took their sweet time coming up with the series of lame taxes on candy, pop and cigarettes. It was feeble, ineffective and done with much hand wringing.
It’s just not going to happen especially since the 2/3 majority initiative will likely pass too.
@13 This is the Obama economy. The midterms are 9 weeks away and the congress has been in Democratic hands since 2006.
Goldy-
You ignore history. The top Federal income tax rate in 1913 was 7% on incomes over $500,000, incomes under $20,000 (a huge amount then, the national average was $15k) were taxed at 1%.
So your non-sequiter about The Times M&A history and their condemnation of I-1098 is both stupid and wrong.
Outsourcing jobs is a bigger hit on the middle class than any minuscule state income tax would be.
But the reality of the situation is that consumption taxes will rise as the tax money can’t be raised elsewhere.
@9 I am not under that impression. I said the same money should not be taxed twice. How could it be taxed twice if it was already taken away. Family should have the right to give whatever they want to their kids. I do stand corrected though. Its taxed three times since the people who earned it directly already paid income tax on their earnings. I dont understand your question at the end of your response, though.
@13 yeah its still Bush’s economy after a year and a half, but things were Bush’s FAULT as soon as he took office. Thats liberal logic for you. When the earth is incinerated by the sun as it turns into a red giant in 5 billion years it will be Bush’s fault.
@16 the 2/3 thing (as with any initative) can be overturned by the state legislature after 2 years. This is why it is even on the ballot again. They in fact DID over turn it. They dont care what we want. If they had no problem saying FUCK YOU to the voters of our state, how could they possibly having a problem with “just expanding” what the “people already avoted for.” I know no one said those words yet, but I think there argument will have to be something close to that. Afterall, no one will be voting AGAINST having people under 400,000 being taxed.
Wait.
ST’s horoscopes are now available for tax policy?
Chris @20
It’s not taxed already if it’s a capital gain. If the patriarch bought land or stock years ago, for 50K and now it’s worth 2 million, the heirs can sell it and pay no tax at all.
@20:
(a.) Nearly all inheritance tax paid is actually a tax on the the untaxed growth of financial assets held by the deceased. It is essentially a tax on wealth that has NEVER been taxed in the first place.
(b.) Five billion years from now, conservatives will still be blaming everything on Clinton. So what’s your point?
(c.) Please explain why THE PEOPLE do not elect Republicans in this state? Perhaps that is a big FUCK YOU to your politics, eh?
Uhh @ 20dood, most of that money hasn’t even been taxed once. If someone dies without realizing a capital gain, yet passes on that capital gain to an heir, it has never been taxed.
What you want is for the recipient of the inheritance to get a death gift –
freedom from a tax the dead person would have paid if that capital gain were realized before death.
Think dood. It isn’t a death tax, it is a death gift, and we all pay for that gift to the rich.
Considering how skillfully he’s run his own business into the ground, isn’t old Frank being more than a little presumptuous lecturing the citizens of Washington State about how to finance their government?
The merit of taxing estates at 100% is that doing so would be a step in the direction of creating a meritocracy. We’d see a more level playing field for everyone. Wingies always want to proclaim that whatever status they’ve achieved came through their own hard work and persistence, so I would think they would see the judiciousness of a 100% estate tax.
@26
A 100% tax is reasonable to you? DIAF.
To the people who said no tax was paid, well, property tax was paid. Also, sales tax is paid on the stuff they buy with the money they make. No dollar should be taxed more than once.
@23B I dont here conservatives still blaming Clinton for things. I dont, my family doesn’t. The media sure as hell doesn’t
@23C Maybe they dont elect Republicans because the 2/3 requirement for tax increases is in place and the other ideas of republicans are not as important to them (i.e. being libertarian) The Washington voter may say, well I dont like the idea of taxes going up if I vote democrat, but that requires a 2/3 vote so I can vote democrat and get the social/individual liberties they need without my taxes going up. Or maybe its because King County finds magical ballots everywhere when a Republican wins. Whatever the case its never a FUCK YOU to me when the people get what they want. It is all about the people.
Delbert @ 17: Your simplistic blame-assignment doesn’t work here, except for the handful of wingnut trolls who parrot such nonsense.
1. The Democratic control of Congress in 2006 didn’t occur until Jan. 2007. Even then it was precarious, at best. With the Senate in a virtual 50/50 deadlock, and only the Connecticut Republican-in-Democratic clothing as a “swing-vote”, the Democrats were unable to control anything without Republican approval.
2. George W. Bush was still President, and promised to veto any legislation put forth by Democrates in Congress. Even Congressional investigations were stymied as he refused to allow his staff to testify or produce documents.
3. The collapse in the housing bubble begain in 2007, and that’s now the year when economists agree that the current rescession actually began.
4. The banking/financial collapse started in August 2008, before the 2008 elections. The Democrats didn’t take a firm majority in the Senate until Jan. 2009.
5. The Republican strategy for the past year and a half has been pretty clear. Use the filibuster to obstruct any attempts at economic recovery, and then blame Obama for not doing more to help the economy.
Of course, the economy is doing much better now than it did when it was in the free-fall as late as January 2009, when Obama took office. Republicans are counting on voters having really short memories, and being very simplistic and easily manipulated by lies, in order to gain seats in the upcoming elections.
@29 Republicans are counting on voters having really short memories, and being very simplistic and easily manipulated by lies, in order to gain seats in the upcoming elections.
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Well, I guess then voters are pretty simplistic and easily manipulated because the polls are showing a BIG Dem drubbing coming.
You bought into the hope and change hype like so many of the HA faithful, though these days you never know Obama existed if you depended on HA for your news.
So much for your judgement.