When you read this think of the little white Baptish Church in Indianapolis and if these thieves get out of paying this "death tax" well this little church should be forgiven too - regardless this newspaper which looks like a front for something, had the chance to oppose the death tax and did not......strange though, most newspapers I worked for always had a man who knew where to book bets, and play the numbers - sanitation departments always have big chunk here, all black operated. So to many may I say equal protection of the laws - these people wanted their civil right and equal protection of the laws - they finally got it. Saba
What a delicious irony! The obscene, confiscatory inheritance tax is about to smite the *Defender* (our host knows very well the inflammatory nature of this publication). Yet that newspaper and its constituent readership monolithically and vigorously support the very people who denounce the abolition of the inheritance tax as "a gift to the very wealthy". What goes around, comes around, I guess! ---David the Troglodyte ======================================================= Legendary Black-Owned Newspaper Threatened By Death Tax By Gene J. Koprowski CNS Correspondent February 22, 2001 Chicago (CNSNews.com) - One of this city's institutions, The Chicago Defender, a newspaper founded by the son of freed slaves, is battling the Internal Revenue Service over inheritance taxes, being ordered to come up with about $4 million. Launched in 1905 by Robert Abbott, a black lawyer and printer who had moved to Chicago a few years earlier, the paper at one time had a paid daily circulation of 230,000. The founder's nephew, John H. Sengstacke, took over the publishing empire in 1940, expanded and opened papers for the black communities in Detroit and Memphis. Sengstacke died in 1997, and the IRS came calling, claiming 55 percent of the value of the Defender in death taxes. Family members aren't the only ones angry with the IRS. Local political activists are involved as well, criticizing the agency for targeting a small family-owned business that has an important history of fighting for civil rights for blacks. "The notion that the death tax only hurts the ultra-wealthy is a misnomer," says Curt D. Mercandante, associate director, Illinois Public Policy Caucuses, a low-tax advocacy group, based in Chicago. "The overwhelming majority of the estates that pay the death tax have a net worth of under $10 million -- in this day and age, considered a medium-sized estate." Indeed, Sengstacke's eldest grand-daughter, Myiti, who is 29 years old, indicates that the family wants to keep the paper, and is trying to get the IRS to negotiate a deferred tax payment plan, which would allow the paper to expand into the Internet and television industries. The IRS, however, is not backing down. The family hopes it won't have to sell the paper, the daily circulation of which is now about 23,000, making it Chicago's fourth largest daily, behind the Chicago Tribune, The Sun-Times and The Daily Herald. Some observers believe that cases like the one involving the Sengstacke family will help Congress realize the need to repeal the death tax. "It's high time the death tax, that Marxist scheme of despoiling children of their parent's wealth, is repealed," says C. Preston Noell, III, president of Tradition, Family and Property, Inc., a group advocating traditional values and low taxes. "How many families have been forced to sell a cherished ancestral home to pay Uncle Sam this immoral tax? How many farmer's children have seen their parent's dreams vanish when the grave robbers' tax hits them? Thank God this blight on the right to private property is going the way of the dinosaur," Noell said. According to Mercandante, the U.S. now has the second highest death tax in the world, just behind Japan. Many nations have started eliminating the taxes, realizing that they provide a disincentive for savings and investment, he adds. "The truth is, the death tax doesn't raise much money at all for the federal government," said Mercandante. "Over roughly the last half-century, the death tax has only raised between about one and two percent of the total federal revenue - not nearly enough to counteract the disincentives to savings, investment and economic growth." http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200102\POL2001022 2a.html ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~> eGroups is now Yahoo! Groups Click here for more details http://us.click.yahoo.com/kWP7PD/pYNCAA/4ihDAA/CxaWlB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> THIS SPACE FOR RENT For details, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please limit your postings to this list to 3 messages in any 24 hour period.****** Subscribe to SlickPlus and receive columns from some of the finest political writers on the net. Send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words JOIN PLUS in the subject. If you're more of a reader than a writer, you may want to receive the Slick-D DIGEST instead of individual emails. Send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To remove your address, send blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] No muss, no fuss. Have a great day :=( Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
