[IP] Estate tax vs. Holocaust
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 12:38:16 -0800
From: Severo Ornstein <severo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Out of Their Anti-Tax Minds
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post
Tuesday, January 6, 2004; Page A17
This is the way things happen in my business. In October the extremely
influential GOP activist and White House insider Grover Norquist was
interviewed by Terry Gross on her National Public Radio program, "Fresh
Air." By December a portion of that interview was reprinted in Harper's
magazine, where, over the holidays, I happened to see it. I am writing
about it today because, among other things, Norquist compared the estate
tax to the Holocaust.
This remark, so bizarre and tasteless that I felt it deserved checking,
sent me to the transcript of the show, where, sure enough, it was
confirmed. In it Norquist referred to the supposedly specious argument that
the estate tax was worth keeping because it really affected only "2 percent
of Americans." He went on: "I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust.
'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. I mean, it's not you. It's
somebody else."
From the transcript, it seems that Gross couldn't believe her ears. "Excuse
me," she interjected. "Excuse me one second. Did you just . . . compare the
estate tax with the Holocaust?"
Norquist explained himself. "No, the morality that says it's okay to do
something to a group because they're a small percentage of the population
is the morality that says the Holocaust is okay because they didn't target
everybody, just a small percentage." He went on to liken the estate tax to
apartheid in the old South Africa and to the communist regime of the old
East Germany. How he neglected Iraq under Saddam Hussein I will never know.
It's hard to overstate Norquist's importance in contemporary Washington. He
is head of Americans for Tax Reform, is an intimate of Karl Rove, the
president's chief political aide, and has easy access to the White House.
He presides over a weekly meeting of important Republican activists and
lobbyists where the agenda -- at least Norquist's -- is to ensure that
taxes are reduced to a bare minimum, the government is starved and
everyone, the rich and the poor, is taxed the same, which is to say almost
not at all.
The Bush administration has mindlessly applied this doctrine. It has three
times reduced taxes -- mostly on the rich -- careening the federal budget
from a surplus to a deficit without end. The rich, who can afford their
schools or health care, will not suffer. But the poor and the middle class
will hurt plenty -- and state and local taxes, often the most regressive,
will go up.
To my mind, the Holocaust should be compared only to itself. I make some
allowance for, say, Rwanda or the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica or the
gulag of Stalin's Soviet Union. But when it comes to legalized murder by a
state, almost nothing can approach it -- not in its size, not in its
breadth and not in its virtually incomprehensible bestiality. The morality
of the Holocaust, I would argue, is somehow different from that of the
estate tax.
For some time now, the estate tax has been a demagogue's delight.
Republicans, including George Bush, like to call it the "death tax." It is
said to have produced the demise of the cherished family farm -- although
the government can offer not a single example. It is, however, the tax most
hated by those who hate taxes the most.
Inexplicably, Norquist's "Holocaust" has somehow left quite a few
survivors. Among the 10 richest Americans, for instance, are five Waltons
-- heirs to the fortune left by the storied Sam, the founder of Wal-Mart.
Forbes magazine says they are each worth $20.5 billion. The rest of
Forbes's list of the 400 richest Americans is peopled by other heirs,
although some got only a billion or two.
In fact, the moral equivalency Norquist concocts is his own -- and it
speaks volumes about the morality of anti-tax Republicans. To them, the
rich owe nothing -- just like the poor, they would say. (The difference
between rich and poor escapes them.) This is unbridled selfishness in the
guise of ideology and makes wealth the moral equivalent of ethnicity or
religion or even sexual preference. To Norquist, distinguishing between
rich and poor is like making a selection at Auschwitz. It not only
trivializes the Holocaust, it collapses all moral distinctions.
When Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond, the longtime segregationist (and
laundry room Lothario), he revealed a mentality that not even Senate
Republicans could publicly support -- and Lott had to resign as majority
leader. Norquist has gone even further, likening the morality of mass
murder to the imposition of a tax on the rich. At his next meeting of GOP
activists, someone ought to ask him if he's out of his mind. If no one
does, it's because they all are.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57436-2004Jan5.html
_________________________________________________________
--
Severo M. Ornstein
Poon Hill
2200 Bear Gulch Road
Woodside, CA 94062
Tel: 650-851-4258
Fax: 650-851-9549
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