Class, Thy Name Is Rudy

By Kevin Drum

(Political Animal)  CLASS, THY NAME IS RUDY....As part of a campaign stop planned for Iowa last week, Rudy Giuliani's Des Moines office called Deb and Jerry VonSprecken to see if they'd host an event at their farm. They agreed. After several days of planning and a security check, though, Deb was told to call Giuliani's New York office:

"They wanted to know our assets," she revealed, and added that she and Jerry have a modest 80 acre farm and raise cattle.

Later she received a call from Tony Delgado at the Des Monies location.

"Tony said, 'I'm sorry, you aren't worth a million dollars and he is campaigning on the Death Tax right now.' then he said they weren't going to be able to come," Deb continued.

The guy's just all class, isn't he?

POSTSCRIPT: So what really happened? It sounds like Giuliani's gang was playing an old time conservative game: trying to find a family farm that would eventually have to be sold in order to pay inheritance taxes. Of course, they can practically never find one, since inheritance taxes don't even start to kick in until a farm is worth several million dollars, and there aren't very many family farms worth anywhere near that. But that doesn't keep them from trying.