Whoopi Goldberg turns Republican

Well not really. But damn I miss Rosie. Whoop is against the "death tax" -oh yes she used the words of current Joseph Goebbels-Frank Luntz.

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/luntz.html

Luntz is the wordsmith who championed such catchy phrases as "The Clear Skies Initiative" and "The Death Tax."

FACT: Unless you are filthy rich-oh that's you now Whoopi-there is no estate tax. http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/estatetax/f/estatetaxrate.htm

Generally, the estate tax only applied to assets exceeding $1 million.

According to the IRS literature, an estate tax filing need only be made if the value of an estate exceeds the following amounts:

2005: First $1,500,000 in assets
2006-2008: First $2,000,000 in assets
2009: First $3,500,000 in assets


And this pissed me off so much-using Frank Luntz words-that I wanted to e-mail her. Couldn't find an e-mail. So I posting this.

I wish people admitted the truth-how many people have more than a million dollars to leave to their children? I know Whoopi came from nothing and she wants her grandchildren to have something. But DAMN it-I'd like one time someone to mention you need to have a million dollars left over when you are seventy to pass it on. It's not a tax on someone leaving a kid $50,000.

That's what I thought too. She's swallowed the Repub talking point hook, line, and sinker. Give her another few years and she'll be another Clarence Thomas.

enthusiastic support.

First, the defense of Michael Vick and animal cruelty. Now this.

pissed that I did email the show - used the "send your questions or comments" thing on their web site. And shared almost exactly what you posted above. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who called her on it, because she brought the topic up today, saying that she'd been inundated with comments about it. But she was STILL wrong. Grrrr.

threw her under the bus regarding the "bush" jokes that she made at a fundraiser several years ago. She said it was reported that she compared Bush to a part of the female anatomy, but she claims that wasn't what the joke was about. And she says that the Dems prevented her from running the actual clip which would vindicate her. The right wing nutjobs had a field day and she was effectively blackballed from working as a comic for about 3 years.

Personally, I find The View an exercise in stupidity these days. With Whoopi's lean to the right and the insipid Sherri Shepherd showing her ignorance, it is a joke. I guess I'll just turn it off like I did before Rosie showed up. I won't be watching anyway when Elisabeth comes back sometime after the first of the year--that will be more than I can take.

exactly as it was:

Here is a transcript of the offending joke.

"That's why I'm here tonight. Because I love bush. But someone's giving bush a bad name. Someone has tarnished name of `bush.' Someone has waged war, someone has deliberately misled the country, someone has attempted to amend the constitution, all in the name of bush. The bush I know and cherish would never do such things. My bush is smarter than that. And if my bush is smarter than that, you can understand just how dumb I think that other bush is. And anyone who would wave to Stevie Wonder is not fully there. I will do whatever it takes to restore bush to its rightful place and that ain't in the White House. Vote your heart and mind and keep bush where it belongs."
From Whoopi's own press release - http://www.acmewebpages.com/whoopi/whoopisaid.htm (Frankly some of her other comments were pretty weird too.)

She knew the meaning people would think of. If she meant say lilac bushes - the third sentences could - without ruining the joke, be "Unlike lilacs, someone's giving bush a bad name." then continued as she did.

She had to know that because it was a fundraiser that the RW would go after anything offensive - and she gave them this. That she expected Senator Kerry to defend her and say that he had no problem with it - is crazy. It was frankly in bad taste and it would have hurt him politically if he did. As it was the Kerry campaign statement was mild.

The Kerry campaign distanced itself from Goldberg. "Our campaign has made it clear that those comments were inappropriate and crossed the line," said Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-07-14-goldberg-slimfast_x.htm

Use google and see how they used Whoopi's idiotic comments to trash John Kerry and to a lesser degree Edwards. Many conservative sources reported Kerry laughing - but I think he was not there yet. Here is Whoopi's claim that she didn't say anything wrong - and it is not believable.

"http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/goldberg%20denies%20slamming%20us%20president_1045535"
Comedienne WHOOPI GOLDBERG has denied slamming U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH at a Democratic fundraising event in 2004 - insisting rumours are a conspiracy to tarnish her name. The Sister Act star was vilified after comparing the American leader's name to a crude term for a vagina. In the aftermath, she was dropped as a spokesperson for diet aid company Slim-Fast. But Goldberg insists the comments - which damaged her professionally - were falsified. She tells U.S. chat show host Larry King, "It hurt me professionally hugely. "And actually the truth of the matter was I didn't criticise President Bush. I came out and I made some remarks to the crowd about John Edwards, the then-vice presidential candidate, and made a comment about John Kerry, who was then the presidential candidate. And I then said that I loved Bush and that someone was giving Bush a bad name, and it was time to put Bush in his proper place. That's all I said. "And before I got off the stage, it was on the (American news agency) A.P. that I had been vulgar and nasty and horrible. "And what we subsequently discovered, was that there are groups out there when they target you, they send out emails and... they are charged to go out and target folks. They did it with Sean Penn. They did it with a lot of people. And it cost me four years of work."

I just wanted to bring this up because now she badmouths the Dems almost as much as the Republicans. I wasn't aware of exactly what was said at the fundraiser until your post, so thank you for clarifying it. It sounds like she is trying to twist the truth.

She claims she is an Independent now. I think she is irritating in her new role and not really very funny anymore.

http://www.chimpsternation.com/forum?c=showthread&ThreadID=1293

http://www.wesjones.com/death.htm

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0603/feature5/index.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mountain+topping+coal&btnG=Google+Search

and this about how clean coal isnt.. but it is radioactive


http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Pure bullshit. The highest tax rate by law is 35%, and nobody is paying that, trust me.
She claimed over and over and over that Bill Gates pays 50% - I thought my head would explode.

She also said (again, falsely) that the top 1% earners pay 90% of all income taxes - geez.

Besides, if she wanted to leave her millions to her grandchildren, as she said (and assuming her daughter doesn't skip out on the inheritance tax), they wouldn't pay any inheritance tax. Doesn't she have a fucking accountant to tell her all this?

Interesting how a little bit of $$$ made her a tax-hating, greedy person.

Also interesting how Bill Gates (& Warren Buffet) would disagree with her on the responsibility of taxes for those who most benefit from the American economy.

Greedy and stupid.

Though, I still like Whoopi.

She speaks her mind and her thoughts are clearly her own. She doesn't spew "talking points" the way Elisabeth did or the way that (I sometimes think) Joy does. You never know what Whoopi might say and that's part of what makes her interesting to me.

As for Sherri...what a disappointment. She's almost like a darker version of Elisabeth - and as hard as it is to believe - less intelligent.

The idea that the estate tax forces a person to "pay twice" is based on the questionable assumption that only income should be taxed. It can be argued that income should be taxed to help pay for those government institutions which make it possible for people to earn incomes. However, many of those institutions likewise help people to maintain wealth. For example, in a country with no police, a wealthy individual would likely need to hire their own security force. Hence, there is a valid argument for some sort of tax on wealth.

Property taxes are an existing tax on a certain type of wealth. Taxing all other wealth on a yearly basis, however, would require some additional mechanism to calculate and report that wealth. Taxing wealth just at the end of a person's life, on the other hand, is much easier. There needs to be an accounting of the estate anyhow, at least if there are multiple beneficiaries. Hence, the current estate tax may be the most efficient way to tax general wealth. However, it could arguably be improved by turning it into a "levy on inheritance" as suggested in the Economist article at http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10024733 .

On the topic of Buffett, I suspect that he would have contributed to the exact same charities even if there were no deduction for charity. The only difference is that he may have lessened the amount of the charity by the amount that needed to be paid in taxes. In fact, I have wondered before if it might be better if, instead of allowing a deduction for charity, the government simply matched a portion of people's reported contributions. The matching could be set such that charities receive the same total contributions. However, there would likely be much less cheating under such a system. In any case, you can't blame Buffett for using the laws as they are currently written to maximize his charitable contributions. If people don't like the deduction for charities, they would do better to push for its abolishment than to criticize all those you use it.