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Matt Taibbi, over at AlterNet (and RollingStone.com), wrote a pretty concise article last month after receiving some numbers from Bernie Sander's office (Socialist Senator from Vermont) regarding Bush's latest budget proposals:

If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years. The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.

If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the amount these families would receive in tax breaks is broken down (with the corresponding figure of cutbacks proposed by Bush):

* Heirs to the Mars Candy Corporation - $11.7 Billion in tax breaks (cuts to the Veterans Administration budget = $3.4 Billion)

* Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts.

* Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grant would be eliminated - a $630 million cut.

* Ernest Gallo family (the wine family) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut

The author continues:

And so on and so on. Sanders additionally pointed out that the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks.

Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.

Somehow, to me, that's the worst one on the list. Here you have the former CEO of a company that scored record profits even as it gouged consumers, with gas prices rising more than 70 percent since January of 2001. There is a direct correlation between the avarice of oil company executives and the increased demand for federal aid for heating oil programs like LIHEAP, and yet the federal government wants to reward these same executives for raising prices on the backs of consumers.

Why is this necessarily bad (all ethical matters aside regarding how we'd like to structure our tax system)?

That's not only bad government, it's bad capitalism. It makes legalized bribery and political connections more important factors than performance and competition in the corporate marketplace. Beyond that, it's just plain fucking offensive to ordinary people. It's one thing to complain about paying taxes when those taxes are buying a bag of groceries once a month for some struggling single mom in eastern Kentucky. But when your taxes are buying a yacht for some asshole who hires African eight year-olds to pick cocoa beans for two cents an hour ... I sure don't remember reading an excuse for that anywhere in the Federalist Papers.

Matt is exactly right there. Read the article for to get the complete effect.

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