Is the death tax the death knell for organic family owned farms?

Yesterday I wrote a post about the effects on hunting lands, but by the time I was finished typing I realized the reason hunting lands would be eliminated is that family owned farms would be either split up and sold to developers or bought up by large corporate farms. This should be especially alarming to those who want to buy non GMO locally grown organic foods. Most of these farms are family owned. When the owners pass away, with the inheritance tax, the heirs will not be able to afford to carry on the family farm because they won't be able to afford the taxes.

This should not be a Republican vs Democrat issue. Yes the Republicans were the primary proponents arguing for eliminating the death tax, but most organic farms are owned by liberals. (Disclaimer: I tend to be a conservative on most issues, but there are some where we should agree, and this is one of them.)

If we keep the inheritance or death tax in place, we may be only a generation away from losing nearly all access to non GMO foods. The only organic farms will also be large corporate farms instead of family owned farms. Gone are the days when a family could count on their children continuing the tradition of farming the family homestead because the federal government will mandate that it be sold piecemeal to subdivision developers or intact to farm corporations in order for the government to extract its pound of flesh.

Is the Death Tax a Death Knell for Hunting?

This is the title of an article I read this week, and it brings up some important facts. Many family farms are having to be sold off when the owner passes away instead of staying in the family because the heirs can't afford to pay the inheritance or death tax. It's not just the land and buildings, but all the farm equipment, livestock, everything that belon

ged to the family that owned the farm.

Many of these farms are being sold to developers instead of other farmers because the developers are able to pay more per acre since they're going to split up the farm. Because of this, much of the privately owned land that hunters have counted on hunting on will no longer be available, but will be turned into subdivisions and suburbs.

One thing the article didn't mention, since it was in American Hunter, is that this will also decrease the number of acres available for farming and withing a few generations could eliminate all that's left of family owned farms, leaving only the corporate owned farms.

It's not just the corporate jet owners who end up splitting their "fortunes" with the federal government with the death tax. It's also family farmers.

PS - If you don't like GM foods, you've only got a generation left if the family farms have to all be sold off to pay inheritance taxes.

Urinalysis and politics

A lot of people have been proposing recently that we test welfare applicants for drugs before paying them welfare since many employers require applicants pass a urinalysis test as a condition of employment. While we're at it, why don't we make the same requirement for our legislators? They have much more responsibility than most government employees because of the power they wield. Shouldn't we have some assurance that they are not using illegal drugs? After all, shouldn't they prove they aren't violating the very laws they create?