Month: August 2016

Final Business

Reality check: Debunking a canard about Kentucky’s endangered inheritance tax

Grave stonesKentucky generates about $50 million in revenue annually by taxing money or property bequeathed to a deceased person’s relatives, though not close relatives like children or a spouse — a levy that a state legislative committee is considering eliminating altogether.

Like many opponents of the tax, the head of the libertarian-leaning Bluegrass Institute says government shouldn’t be producing revenue off the efforts of people who generated the wealth in the first place because “they’ve already . . . paid the taxes on it during their lifetime,” Jim Waters told WFPL.

Except, that’s often not true. Consider one of the biggest sources of family wealth: unrealized gains on stocks, and the following example: Continue reading “Reality check: Debunking a canard about Kentucky’s endangered inheritance tax” →

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Wake us up when Sony releases the really steamy photos of Lawrence and Pratt in the space-sexploration flick ‘Passengers’

Jennifer LawrenceBoulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:

Two starsWith 129 days before Jennifer Lawrence‘s $20-million payday hits theaters Dec. 21, Entertainment Weekly’s landed the first still photos (see, top) from the sci-fi adventure about a 5,000-passenger luxury spaceship on a 120-year journey to an interstellar colony. Lawrence and co-star Chris Pratt are rudely awakened 90 years too early.

“Alone in outer space with a giant ship as their personal playground,” pants the magazine’s Sara Vilkomerson, “they begin to fall in love just as it becomes apparent the ship is malfunctioning and endangering its entire population.”

And Delta Airlines passengers thought they had trouble last week!

Vilkomerson asked director Morten Tyldum (Oscar-nominated for 2014’s “The Imitation Game“) what it was like working with two of Hollywood’s hottest stars, and his response was enough to put us right to sleep:

“They’re so great together, and both of them are so hard-working,” he z-z-z-z-z-z-ed. “They take the characters so seriously and bring so much to the roles with charm and intelligence and charisma. They really went for it and it is phenomenal to watch.”

Whatever the chemistry, this much is clear: The jaw-dropping $20 million producers are paying Lawrence for the movie made her one of Tinsel Town’s most gravity-defying actresses.

Speaking of countdowns…

Lawrence’s birthday is Monday; she’ll be 26! It’ll be hard to top last year’s celebration with Kardashian momster Kris Jenner, a surprise bash that produced that infamous photo of the two in bed together. Lawrence, a big fan of of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” told The New York Times her two best friends (she didn’t say which ones) planned a big surprise within the surprise, according to People magazine.

Just as her pals started singing “Happy Birthday,” the actress said, “Kris Jenner comes out holding my cake, which is a pile of s—, with a sign that says, ‘Happy Birthday You Pile of S—.’ My knees buckled.”

And they say the Kardashians are trailer trash on steroids.

Latest Headlines

The wails of August: Humana and Aetna bit by surprise consumer focus on price

The unexpectedly close attention consumers are paying to prices on marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act is contributing to millions of losses at Humana and merger partner Aetna, leading both insurance giants to retreat as fewer healthy people than forecast have signed up, according to a new story by The New York Times.

The result: Louisville-based Humana said it plans to largely exit the marketplaces, reducing coverage to no more than 156 counties in 2017 vs. 1,351 today.

Mark Bertolini
Bertolini

Aetna of Hartford expects a loss of more than $300 million in Affordable Care Act business this year; it previously said it was a break-even operation. And it told investors in its second-quarter financial report that it’s halted plans to enter more states. “We are evaluating our footprint as it exists today to understand what solutions we can put forward to either fix the business or exit the business,” CEO Mark Bertolini told Wall Street analysts.

Final Business

Louisville oral surgeon dies regretting his mother denied him a career as a professional wrestler

Grave stones detailThat’s one reading of this week’s Voice-Tribune obituaries, where Dr. W. Ronald “Ron” Harris‘ sendoff takes pains to note that Harris wrestled so well on his high school team, he won a wrestling scholarship to an unidentified Florida university. But! “His mother didn’t tell him he was accepted there until later,” the obit says. “She wanted more for her son.”

He wound up at the University of Louisville, according to the society news weekly. Harris died Aug. 5.

Media and Marketing

CJ owner Gannett files suit to get court records on Donald Trump’s divorce from Ivana to see if she accused him of rape

Joined by The New York Times, Gannett Co. argues in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court today that the rape allegation — which Trump has denied — is of public interest in the GOP presidential campaign of the twice-divorced and thrice-married New York billionaire, according to the New York Daily News.

The filing notes that a 1993 biography of Trump reported that Ivana Trump — his first wife — told friends her husband had “raped” her in 1989 during a fit of rage. Trump and the former  Czech model Ivana Zelníčková married in 1977 and divorced 14 years later in 1991. By 1995, they’d patched things up enough to star in a Pizza Hut commercial where they joked about their divorce settlement:

Gannett bought The Courier-Journal from the Bingham family in July 1986 for $300 million. With the CJ and USA Today, Gannett now owns 110 dailies across the U.S. and the U.K. Adjusted for inflation, $300 million would be equivalent to $660 million in today’s dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

Photo, top: While that photograph is undated, Ivana Trump’s hair screams 1980s; more hairstyles from that era.