Still no word back yet from Seattle Times editorial page editor Kate Riley regarding my request that the paper retract and correct its blatantly erroneous “Death Tax” editorial. But several HA readers have reported that they’ve received from Riley the following cut-and-paste response:
Thank you for your note. We are looking into this and trying to get back in touch with the McBride family.
We want to be accurate and appreciate when our readers bring such questions to our attention.
Or, so she says.
Huh. Not sure why I wasn’t given the courtesy of a reply. Must be some sort of inadvertent clerical error or something. Otherwise, I’d have to assume that they don’t appreciate when I bring such questions to their attention.
But regardless, you would think that the editorial board of a major American newspaper would bother fact-checking before publication rather than after, especially considering that anybody who knows anything about the estate tax would know that a $4.5 million working farm is not be subject to any state or federal estate tax at all. I mean, that’s the law.
You cced big Frank B in your e-mail. I think your response will be from the top.
maybe the fact-checker at the times ran out of his or her allotment AOL discs for the week , and your response will come next month?
In ‘Conservoworld’, if you claim to believe your lie, that’s the same as telling the truth.
got the exact same response this morning.
But both the ST piece and the Issaquah Press article a month earlier http://www.issaquahpress.com/2.....ore-100553 basically say that the farm has been carved down enough that it’s not able to earn enough to pay the property tax bill, which is still very different from the estate tax.
Maybe they’re going to re-do the editorial to focus on property taxes.
A newspaper’s editorial page is where they offer comment and opinion, and they are free to operate in a fact-free manner if they wish. God knows some STimes political endorsements support such a conclusion.
@5 My burrow doesn’t earn any income. Does that mean I should be exempt from property taxes?
Republicans have whipped the “family farm” mule so many times, by now, everyone in America knows family farms are exempt from estate taxes.
I remember, some years ago when an estate tax repeal initiative was on the ballot, driving past a billboard on East Marginal Way near the Boeing plant that depicted a little old lady sitting on the curb with her piled-up furniture and belongings in front of her little cottage with a white picket fence and a sign “Sold for estate taxes.” Really tugged at the heartstrings.
The lies these estate-tax liars tell are shameless. I guess they read Hitler’s dictum that when you lie to the masses, you should tell real whoppers, because people will figure “nobody would lie about that!” (The theory of the Big Lie.)
@6 They may operate without facts, if they choose. But when they intentional distort and misrepresent the facts, they have crossed an ethical line.
When the retraction finally comes, if it ever does, it’ll be interesting to see how it’s worded:
“As many readers have pointed out, family farms are exempt from estate taxes, and upon further investigation we’ve realized the McBrides were talking about property taxes. We apologize for the confusion.”
“Since publishing our editorial, some of our readers have commented about whether family farms are exempt from death taxes. To clarify, the McBride family sold their farm because of property taxes.”
“A few readers have commented about a recent editorial on death taxes. This page has consistently opposed death taxes and continues to do so. We are not implying that death taxes apply to family farms. Rather, our concern is that families who wish to pass on businesses and other assets to their children may be forced to sell assets they want to keep, including family farms and heirlooms, to raise the money that death taxes confiscate from grieving families.”
@9 Silly you! You’re still thinking in terms of “journalistic ethics.” That’s a throwback to when Pop Rabbit was still alive. Those days are gone (sniffle), and you’re merely naively sentimental. There’s no such thing as ethics anymore — in business, politics, journalism, or anywhere else. Journalism is now all about “he said/she said.” Kate Riley said (or gave the impression she said) that death taxes confiscate little family farms. You said they don’t. Their “correction” will look like this:
“We say death taxes confiscate little family farms. Mr. Goldstein asserts they don’t. There, we’ve presented both sides of the story, and now we’ll let our readers decide.”
The ‘death tax’ is presented to the public as a tax that the dead person must pay on his property from beyond the grave. It is, in fact, a tax on the people who inherited the property who never paid a dime of tax on the property.
This tax needs to be re-branded. Maybe the ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy inheritance tax’ would strike the right note.
“The ST once again opposes the Little Lord Fauntleroy inheritance tax as being unfair. “
I got the same response word for word. Meanwhile, the status quo remains and apparently will remain just that. Classy.