12/31/08 Passing & Estate Tax Trouble

A Passing & Estate Tax Trouble plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. President-elect Obama's middle class tax cut plans will likely mean reversing President Bush's tax cuts, including estate tax repeal. Obama Senior Adviser David Axelrod told NBC, Bush's tax cuts plan is "something we plainly can't affordit's going to go." American Farm Bureau senior economist Bob Young says AFB's biggest concern is return of the estate tax 'full force' after it sunsets at the end of 2010. YOUNG: There have very definitely been cases where families have had to basically give up the farm in order to be able to pay the tax bill that goes along with that passage or with that estate and clearly that is something we just don't think is fair. Tom Mathison has died. Mathison founded Stemilt Growers Inc in 1964 and helped to build the tree fruit industry. Mathison led Stemilt in environmental stewardship and kept pressing the apple industry to change the rules to allow larger sizes to be marketed. He was also instrumental in bringing in more cherry options. Mathison died last Friday at the age of 82. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. The highly tumultuous year of 2008 will be ending soon; definitely a year that brought about a sea of life altering changes, from the fall of Wall Street to the drastic rise of oil prices. The complete list is a long one and going over it in retrospect would be rather like beating a dead horse. So instead of focusing on the turmoil of 2008, let's recap some of the uplifting and promising events that occurred this last year. The one that stands out the most is the election of the nation's first African American president; a presidential choice that for the present seems to offer a brow beaten country a hope for a brighter and better tomorrow. Then there's the image of Michael Phelps cutting through water as if it was butter to take a record eight gold Olympic medals and pledging the 1 million he received from Speedo to help kids; the fall of the price of oil, bringing about the lowest gas prices in years, several medical breakthroughs, the passing of the farm bill, and numerous renewable energy possibilities. The year 2009 is shining with great promise. Happy New Year America! Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.