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Welcome to
the e-Voices MONDAY MINUTE, your weekly email newsletter from New
Mexico Voices for Children. Please take a minute to add your voice
to the pressing issues of the day. Also, tell us what issues you'd like
to know more about so we can tailor the MONDAY MINUTE to your interests.
Thanks! June 5,
2006 Next week, the Senate is expected to take up legislation that would either repeal or drastically reduce the estate tax. This represents yet another giveaway for millionaires.
Proponents of the repeal cleverly changed the name from the estate tax to the “death tax.” Aside from giving the issue a more negative image, it also gave it broader appeal. We’re all gonna die, after all, so we must all be effected by the “death tax,” right?
Wrong. The fact is, the estate tax effects less than 2 percent of the population, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. So, unless your parents leave you a sweet $2 million when they go, the estate tax will not take a bite out of your inheritance.
What repealing the estate tax will take a bite out of are important social programs – Medicare, food stamps, Social Security, etc. -- that are lifelines for our most vulnerable citizens.
It will also mean adding more to the national debt – some $1 trillion in the first decade alone. So while the repeal will be a boon for the lucky 2 percent inheriting their parents’ vast wealth, it will mean an inheritance of a vast and crushing debt for the rest of our children.
What You Can Do Email
or call your senators (see sample email message below)
Arm yourself with the facts Read the CBPP reports on the estate tax and what affect a repeal or reduction of it would have:
Another Day, Another ... Tank of Gas?
We all grouse about gas prices, but the rising cost of a gallon of gas has dire consequences for some. The Center for American Progress released a report recently on how the current price of gasoline impacts minimum wage earners. On average, you’d have to work more than a day at a minimum wage job before you’d earned enough money to buy a tank of gas. The work-for-gas equation has changed dramatically since 2001, when it only took half a day of work at the minimum wage to fill the gas tank.
This is especially disturbing when in most American cities having a car is a virtual requirement for getting and keeping a job – especially for many minimum wage workers whose odd and overnight shifts make using public transit either very unsafe or completely impossible.
It’s one more reason (as if we needed one) to pass a minimum wage increase statewide.
To read the whole report, go to: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/s/custom.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1706375 Champion
Children of Color There’s still time to RSVP for our Race Matters follow-up meeting.
Please join us on Tuesday to discuss and further develop the recommendations that came out of our very successful Race Matters conference. These policy recommendations are aimed at reducing the inequities our children of color suffer in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems and in accessing mental and reproductive health care services. The meeting is free and all are welcome. Race Matters follow-up meeting: Tuesday,
June 6th, 2006 2:30pm in Albuquerque (location on RSVP form) Whatever you do, don’t forget to vote in tomorrow’s primary elections! Your vote is your voice in local, state and federal government.
The
polls are open from 7am to 7pm June 6th. You do not need the voter ID
card sent out by the Secretary of State.
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