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VinceZeb · #1

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html

NOW .. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO OPPOSE A REPEAL OF THE DEATH TAX

This obituary appeared on Saturday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm going to reprint it in full because I know some of you won't follow the link ... and I want to make sure you read it. Read how a man with no running water ... a man who grows sweet potatoes and tomatoes and then sells them in the town square ... read how this man is suddenly hit with a half-million dollar death tax bill when his brother dies. Yeah ... only the evil, nasty, wretched rich pay death taxes, right?

Quote:

OBITUARIES: MARIETTA
J.C. HYDE, wanted no wealth, but farm. [Derrick Henry - Staff Saturday, March 6, 2004]

J.C. Hyde was an unassuming farmer, land-rich but cash-poor. For virtually his entire life, he plowed by mule on his 127-acre farm along the Chattahoochee River in east Cobb County, land he had lived on since his father bought it in 1920. Surrounded by pricey subdivisions, it had become one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in metro Atlanta..

The land survived the boll weevil and the Great Depression. Mr. Hyde intended to make sure it would survive developers.

"I remember being there when a real estate developer drove up, as many did, and said: 'J.C. Hyde, I can make you a wealthy man,' " said Rand Wentworth, head of the Atlanta office of the Trust for Public Land from 1990 to 2002. "J.C. answered : 'But then I would not be happy.' "

Mr. Hyde was plenty happy to live the way he did, in the log house he grew up in, with heat from a pot-bellied stove and water from a well.

"I have running water," he joked in a 1991 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. "I run out to the well and get it."

Working beside his brother, William "Buck" Hyde, he grew sweet potatoes, corn, okra, green beans, peas and tomatoes, selling them from the back of a pickup truck near Marietta Square. In 1996, Mr. Hyde was selling a bushel of his "Gold Nugget" sweet potatoes --- Grade 1 --- for $16.

After a long day's work, he might pick up his fiddle and play some music.

Mr. Hyde was a bachelor, not given to idle talk. "I remember picking sweet potatoes with him for six hours and during that period he never said more than four words," said Kevin Johnson of Atlanta, Chattahoochee River Program coordinator with the Trust for Public Land.

He lived with his brother, also unmarried. While the men tended the fields, their four married sisters took turns cooking and helping with the domestic chores, said Mr. Wentworth.

When Mr. Hyde's brother died in 1987 and left him his share of the farm, the IRS and state revenue collectors arrived. They assessed Mr. Hyde with a debt of $467,000 to the IRS and $96,000 to the state for estate taxes.

"This is all something new to me," Mr. Hyde said in a Journal-Constitution story in 1991. "I never owed anybody nothing."

The private, nonprofit Trust for Public Land worked out a deal in 1992 with the National Park Service to buy 40 acres of riverfront property from Mr. Hyde for $1 million, more than enough to pay the taxes. The deeded land would become part of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area, safe from developers. Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, could continue living and working there.

J.C. Hyde, 94, of Marietta died Wednesday. The funeral is 2 p.m. today at Roswell Funeral Home.

"I have never met a better conservationist than J.C. Hyde," said Mr. Wentworth, now president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, a national umbrella of conservation organizations. "He cared for that land like it was family, like it was part of his body. When he feared he might have to sell part of it, he said, with tears in his eyes, 'Losing part of this land would be like cutting off my arm.' "

The future of the nearly 90 acres not owned by the National Park Service remains to be determined, said Mr. Wentworth. "The challenge now is that the land could be lost to subdivisions."

Survivors include three sisters, Rosa Lee Stroup of Atlanta, M. Maglee Mitchell of Mableton and Gladys A. Holcomb of Marietta.

I'm sure glad that the death tax was there to take away a Jag and a new houseboat from this evil capitalist!

phnompehn · #2

Holy crap! You're still alive?!

mburbank · #3

He had just enough strength to move his chubby fingers long enough to cut n' paste a Boortzdump. Sadly, it took all his energy and he was unable to empty his spitvalve after Boortz played him like the passive instrument he is.

davinxtk · #4

Wait a minute.
Who clicked on the link, instead of just reading Zeb's regurgitation?

OF ALL OF THE THINGS ON THAT PAGE, YOU CHOSE THIS?

This is some INSIGNIFICANT BULLSHIT compared to the rest of the document.
Where is your head, Vince?

AChimp · #5

Just having piles of money does not make you wealthy. You can also be classified as wealthy if you're sitting on 127 acres of prime real estate, and to hell with what you "want" to do with it.

KevinTheOmnivore · #6

Two thirds of all the revenue raised by the estate tax comes from the top 0.2% of our society. VERY few people have what this guy had happen to him. It's a sob story case that you use to argue with when you might not have enough numbers, ya know, like Al Gore and the elderly eating cat food....?

mburbank · #7

Okay, call me Mr. Class Warfare if you want, but the top 0.2% of our society? I think they should get taxed every time they blink. Deserving, underserving, hardworking, criminal, whatever. I don't care how they got to the tippy top of the heap in the greediest country ever , it takes a whole lotta juice to keep a country this size running, and lord knows the top 0.2% got juice to spare. You want to hassle about what that money gets spent on, that's whole nother argument, but I'll tell you what. The bite taken out of my paycheck makes more of difference to my family than anything uncle same will EVER suck of our Richie Rich and Company, and I pony up willingly. If Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump have to cut back on their spare yacht budget I think they'll somehow manage to soldier on.

davinxtk · #8

This country is fucking ridiculous.

KevinTheOmnivore · #9

I feel it.....the arrival the tool-in-training will soon be upon us.....

mburbank · #10

If you mean OAO, his school bus should be pulling up just about now. He still has to eat his oreos, drink his milk, and put on his thinkin' cap, though. Brace yourself.

The One and Only... · #11

Quite frankly, the only possible way you could support the death tax would be if you seek to aspire to some sort of egalitarian dream world.

The estate tax is not used to collect revenues. I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not, but the estate tax actually costs more to collect than it rakes in. The tax's real purpose is twofold - 1) to break-up large congregations of wealth and 2) insure charitable donations.

I don't see the point in the first issue. I don't see why it should be an end in and of itself. It is, however, potentially harmful to the economy, as it could disrupt rather productive companies.

The second issue could be solved by establishing such things as dollar-for-dollar tax credits.

mburbank · #12

Cheerleading keep you late or is your ego so big it's in a seperate time zone?

In the sentence
"Quite frankly, the only possible way you could support the death tax would be if you seek to aspire to some sort of egalitarian dream world. "
One or more of the following words has to have been used incorrectly
1.) Frankly
2.) Only
3.) Possible
4.) You
5.)Seek
6.) Aspire
7.) Egalitarian
8.) Dream

So many ways that sentence could be wrong, and no way for it to be right. Is it 'frankly'? That would be easy. If he meant he wasn't being frank at all, then the rest of the sentence might stand as some sort of nonsense or verbal spasm. If 'only' were used incorrectly as an exclusive term, and he only meant 'one possible way among many', he'd be fine. If by 'dream' he'd meant something possible... maybe that's it. After all, last night I dreamed I had lunch. And today I did.