Dear Dave,
My in-laws have lots of debt. In fact, they’re always joking that the debt they’ll leave us is more than the inheritance. How will this affect my wife and family if they die with all their debt still in place?
Matthew

Dear Matthew,
You do not inherit debt. Either your in-laws are misinformed, or it’s just a bad joke on their part. Now, if you were foolish enough to co-sign on a loan with them, then you’d be liable for the remainder of that loan. But if they ran up $100,000 in credit card debt on their own before they died, then the credit card companies just don’t get paid. It wouldn’t cost you a dime, except that you might get no inheritance from them, because what they left behind would be sold to pay off as many creditors as possible.

Here’s an even bigger example. Let’s say they owned a home, and they’re behind on the mortgage or upside down on the house — meaning that they owed more on it than it’s worth. You can just hand it back to the mortgage company. You’re not legally or morally obligated to accept the house and the situation surrounding it because it was left to you in a will. Just because it’s family doesn’t make it jump over onto your plate!

Let me say it again, Matthew. You don’t inherit debt. Don’t let creditors, or anyone else, tell you differently.
—Dave

Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business. He’s authored four New York Times best-selling books: Financial Peace, More Than Enough, The Total Money Makeover and EntreLeadership. His newest book, written with his daughter Rachel Cruze, is titled Smart Money Smart Kids. It will be released April 22nd. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 6 million listeners each week on more than 500 radio stations. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com.

“300: Rise of an Empire” earns the right to call itself something of a prequel because the opening sequence starts years before where it’s 2006 predecessor “300” started. It can also call itself a sequel because the film ends after the climax of the first film but, somehow, before the epilogue. However, the majority of both “300” films take place concurrently – which is interesting and confusing.

While “300: Rise of an Empire” is a sequel, kind of, chronologically, it is more difficult to call it a sequel based on subject matter. The first “300” film was not really about the Greco-Persian Wars; it was about the Battle of Thermopylae and, more importantly, the embellished culture of ancient Sparta. “300: Rise of an Empire,” is very much a middle chapter in a story arc about the conflict between Greece and Persia.

Treacherous technicalities aside, “300: Rise of an Empire” is an exercise in cinematic preference. Those who want gallons of digital blood, one great performance and a fresh take on fantasy action, “Rise of an Empire” will deliver.

For me, the best part of the first “300” was the romanticized look into some of the greatest soldiers the world has ever known. Seeing a group of Spartans laugh hysterically while facing insurmountable odds is a fascinating glimpse of the line between greatness and madness. Since the Spartans are largely absent during this “sidequel” we are left with the also great, but considerably less-interesting Athenians.

This time around it is Eva Green, who plays the villainous Artemisia, who flirts with insanity. Green delivers a resounding performance that keeps “Rise of an Empire” off the rocks and guides it into the uncertain waters between A-Movie and B-Movie territory. It’s fitting that super-human Greek soldiers be faced with a thoroughbred supervillain – complete with a broken childhood and an insatiable thirst for revenge.

While “300: Rise of an Empire” does score a sound victory, it won’t echo through the years the way that “300” has.

4 of 6 stars

James Gerstner works at Fort Hays State University Foundation.

The Kansas Senate voted last week to make a courthouse-shaking, or maybe a ground-shaking, change in the way our courts are run, bringing a new level of power politics to the obscure culture of justice in Kansas.

The change? Allowing the chief judges of the state’s 31 judicial districts to opt to single-handedly allocate the budget of that judicial district in which the chief judge — now generally agreed to by consensus of the local judges and often rubber-stamped by the Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court — sits.

Oh, and did we mention that another portion of the bill lets district court judges and judges of the Kansas Court of Appeals elect their own leaders?

There are many moving parts to that legislation which is anchored by fully funding the Judicial Branch budget for the year that starts July 1 and which avoids what has been predicted to be as many as seven weeks of furloughs of non-judge employees of the state’s district courts.

That full-funding is the bright spot in the bill, solves a major problem, not just for the courts but for the Legislature and for the businesses and law enforcement agencies which like the certainty of knowing that the courts are up and running.

Nothing firm yet, but chances are decent that the House will buy into the Senate product.

Now, let’s see…if the chief judge of a judicial district—and those range from single-county districts with more than 30 judges to small multicounty districts with just two judges—controls the local budget…that’s a big deal.

Oh, and yes, we’re figuring that a district court judge can campaign for the chief judgeship with budget promises to other judges, along with the typical promises to move a judge who has been assigned—sentenced?—to hear just traffic or divorce cases.

That budget authority? It also means shuffling who gets the court reporters and administrative assistants and what non-judge employees are paid and probably who gets the new office chair.

We will see some political power shifts within courthouses that Republicans in the Senate want—nicely decorated in a bill that touts full funding for the court system.

There’s no better way for anyone to climb to power than to control the budget—it works in the Legislature, and it probably works in your home, too.

And the bill also, by letting district court judges just send a “we’ll take care of the budget here” note to Topeka, removes a lot of top-down authority of the Kansas Supreme Court, which the governor and an apparent majority of the Legislature find unseemly.

Pretty subtle way to chip away at the power of the Supreme Court? Seems like to some, diluting the top-down authority of the Supreme Court and its chief justice.

We’ll have to see where this one goes…

Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.

“It costs more to put the label on the can than to put the tomatoes in it.”

It was 1953. I was seven years old when I heard this. Half of our neighbors were farmers who grew the crops. Others worked at the canning company. It was true.

But it didn’t sound right then. And it doesn’t sound right now.

Sixty years later, we are rightfully complaining about the exorbitant cost of health care, pharmaceutical drugs, and higher education. Unfortunately, all of these costs are higher due to the cost of labeling.

The cost of medication took off when drug companies discovered that sales of prescription drugs skyrocketed when they advertised on television: “Is blork right for you? Ask your doctor! (Side effects may cause thinner wallet, etc.).” The slick-dressed drug sales representatives (making five to six figure salaries) who are ever visible “educating” physicians about the benefits of their drug and the constant barrage of commercials are a major expense that drives up costs far beyond what it costs to produce the drugs. Actual research on new drugs only consumes 15-20 percent of their budget.

Since patients cannot directly buy prescription medicine on our own, there is absolutely no excuse for this advertising. If the drug is still under patent, there is no “competition” excuse. By charging what the rich market will bear, they can ignore the many poor folks who will go without.

And why are medical doctors and hospitals also advertising on billboards and television? Those added costs of advertising are paid by patients who are mostly in doctor’s offices and hospital wards for conditions they did not elect to have.

But my battleground is education. I think it is time for Kansas citizens to ask why our interstates are lined with billboards and our cable channels laden with advertisements for colleges and universities? Advertising may not be anywhere as big a portion of college expenses as it is in pharmaceuticals. But the bottom line is that either state taxpayer money, student tuition, or alumni contributions go toward convincing students to attend one school rather than another.

In public universities, this advertising cost is less than for private non-profit colleges. But the extent of money wasted on advertising becomes outrageous when we move to for-profit and especially for-profit online “schools.”

The report “Student Debt and the Class of 2012″ was recently released by the Project on Student Debt, part of the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success. It breaks down borrowing by state and by college. College debt goes up dramatically as students shift to for-profit and online, the schools that also do the most advertising.

Another analysis of “Millionaires at Private Colleges” released in December of 2013 shows where their money goes. Some for-profit online operations spend more money on advertising than they do on faculty—who are mostly adjunct “hire-a-profs” living in poverty. And for-profit online institutions also have far more presidents who are paid more than $1-million a year. That pay is more an award for pulling in more “customers” than it is for providing a good education.

Unfortunately, higher education administrators and education leaders in Topeka may blather about advertising merely being a “cost of doing business.”

But every dollar spent on a fancy label is one dollar that cannot go to making the product better or less expensive.

Any 7-year-old knows that.

Planning for the future is vital for families who want to preserve assets for the next generation.

Kansas State Research and Extension will offer the workshop “Preserving the Family with Estate Planning,” to aid families in beginning the process of transitioning from one generation to another.  The workshop will be held in two locations:  Thursday, March 13, 2014 at the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Hoxie, and Friday, March 14, 2014, at Thirsty’s Banquet Room in Hays.  Workshop hours are 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with registration opening at 9:30 a.m. The cost for the workshop is $15, due by March 7, and includes program handouts, refreshments and lunch.

Hays attorney Stacey Seibel will open the program with “Estate Planning Basics,” featuring information about what to do and what not to do when creating an estate plan and how to prepare for a visit to an attorney about estate planning.

Charlotte Shoup-Olsen, K-State Research and Extension’s family studies specialist, will speak on the importance of family communication.  Her presentation, “Get the Family Talking,” will help participants understand family dynamics, how communication can help or hinder long-range planning and to re-think ways of interacting in order to create a positive atmosphere.

The transfer of non-titled assets, like’s Grandma’s quilts or Grandpa’s shotgun, will be the subject of Kathy Lupfer-Nielson’s session “Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate?”  This presentation will help participants understand the sensitivity of transferring meaningful personal property and how families can accomplish this in a fair process. Lupfer-Nielsen is with the K-State Research and Extension Post Rock District in Lincoln.

Doug Beech, Kansas 4-H Foundation Planned Giving Officer, will give an overview of the major tools that will allow individuals to preserve and pass on their values through their estate plan. Some techniques may be familiar and some may be new and different.  Beech’s session, “Leaving a Legacy,” will be helpful for those considering making charitable estate gifts and also for charities and charity board members interested in learning about these options.

Michael Irvin from Kansas Farm Bureau Legal Foundation will present the final session of the day on “Farm Transition Planning.”  This session explores how essential succession planning is to keeping the farm in the family.

The workshop registration brochure is available on the Ellis County Extension Office website at www.ellis.ksu.edu, or your can contact us for more information at (785) 628-9430.

Registration and fees are due postmarked by March 7 to Diann Gerstner, Thomas County Extension Office in Colby, (785) 460-4582. To register and pay in a simple online process, go to www.northwest.ksu.edu under Events.

Late registration (after March 7) or at the door is $20, however, the meal cannot be guaranteed for those who register late. Space is limited, so early registration is advised.

Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.

By Kansas Wheat

MANHATTAN — Kansas Wheat is teaming up with the Kansas Department of Agriculture and Dillon’s Food Stores to provide 100,000 meals for Kansas families in need, through the Neighbor to Neighbor food drive.

The Neighbor to Neighbor statewide food drive will help support Kansas neighbors in need and reduce hunger in Kansas communities. Harvesters – the Community Food Bank in Topeka, Kan. hosted state leaders, including Governor Sam Brownback and Acting Secretary of Agriculture Jackie McClaskey, representatives of the food banks of Kansas, Dillon’s Food Stores employees, and members of the Kansas agriculture community, including Kansas Wheat representative Marsha Boswell, on March 3 to launch the event.

“As partners in the Kansas agricultural community, Kansas Wheat Commission and Kansas Association of Wheat Growers encourage Kansans to join forces in this worthwhile cause,” said Marsha Boswell director of communications for Kansas Wheat. “We hope you will join us in supporting your neighbors in need and making a donation to the Neighbor to Neighbor food drive.”

The food drive is a collaborative effort by the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Dillon’s Food Stores, Harvesters – The Community Food Network, Kansas Food Bank, Second Harvest Community Food Bank and the Kansas agriculture community. The goal is to raise 100,000 meals for Kansas families during the food drive that will run March 3-25, ending on Kansas Agriculture Day.

Kansans can contribute to the campaign by making a monetary or food donation at Dillon’s Food Stores or at other locations in communities across the state. The most needed items are cereal, peanut butter, canned meat, canned fruit and soup.

“Because all donations stay in the respective areas they were contributed, you really are supporting your neighbors in need,” said Boswell. “While you are grocery shopping, consider purchasing a few items and dropping them in the barrels.”

Kansas Wheat Spokespersons and other ag representatives are working in Dillon’s Food Stores in Topeka and Junction City on Saturday, March 8. Visit Donna Martinson in Junction City or Kris Wallace in North Topeka to make a donation and learn more about the nutritional benefits of wheat products.

On March 3, Governor Brownback teamed up with staff from the three food banks, Secretary McClaskey and representatives from Dillon’s Food Stores. Members of the Kansas agriculture industry, including Kansas FFA officers and commodity organization representatives also participated. The teams boxed food items for Kansans in need. Governor Brownback’s team put together 105 of boxes in 15 minutes; however, the second team lead by Marsha Boswell of Kansas Wheat filled 112 boxes. The boxes will be distributed to low-income elderly recipients and included items like shelf-stable milk, whole wheat pasta, canned beef, cereal and an assortment of canned fruits and beans.

According to the Kansas Food Bank, more than 433,000 Kansans are “food insecure.”

Dillon’s Food Stores made an initial donation of 6,400 pounds of non-perishable food items at the kick-off event on Monday. These food items will be on display in the Kansas State Capitol March 3-25. To learn more about the Neighbor to Neighbor statewide food drive and ways to participate, visit agriculture.ks.gov/ksagday. Follow along with the conversation during Kansas Ag Week and the Neighbor to Neighbor food drive via Twitter #n2nks and #ksagday.

The two cousins who run the private equity giant KKR took home an astounding total of $327 million in 2013, new regulatory filings reveal.

Much of this lush windfall came via “carried interest,” Wall Street-speak for the cut that private equity kingpins take on the profits they make for their investors.

Taxpayers who qualify for carried interest enjoy one of the most generous loopholes Uncle Sam offers. On every $10 million in carried interest that private equity execs collect, the carried interest loophole saves them over $1.6 million in taxes.

Will this situation ever change? Maybe. A surprising new change agent has just emerged. Representative Dave Camp, chair of the Republican House Committee on Ways and Means, has proposed a tax reform package that would repeal the carried interest loophole.

This same package includes a variety of other moves that progressive tax justice activists have been demanding for years.

The Michigan Republican’s plan, for instance, denies corporations tax deductions on any annual corporate executive compensation that runs over $1 million — and also calls for a special tax on the assets of too-big-to-fail banks.

All these proposals represent an abrupt and rather amazing about-face from the “no-new-taxes” orthodoxy that GOP leaders have robotically mouthed over recent years.

Camp even describes his proposals with language that Republican lawmakers typically dismiss as pure “rich-people bashing.”

“Stop Subsidies for Excessive Compensation,” reads the title that Camp’s official summary places over his proposal to limit how much corporations get to deduct off their taxes for executive pay.

“Today,” the summary continues, “Wall Street tycoons” are receiving “compensation packages riddled with special tax-exempt treatment — courtesy of hardworking taxpayers.”

What? A powerful Republican is going after tax loopholes near and dear to “Wall Street tycoons”? This turn of events has left veteran Capitol Hill observers searching for the catch. They found more than one.

Yes, the Camp proposal does go after loopholes that have funneled huge tax savings to America’s rich. But Camp’s tax plan also lowers the top tax rate on both individual and corporate income.

The Camp tax package drops the top personal income tax rate down to 25 percent from the current 39.6 percent. A surtax he proposes does bring that rate up to 35 percent on “certain types” of family income over $464,000. But those certain types don’t include all capital gains and dividend income, the main source of wealth for America’s super rich.

The loophole-plugging proposals in Camp’s plan, for their part, turn out to have some leaks. Camp’s limit on how much corporations can deduct for executive pay, for instance, only applies to a few top executives at each corporation.

The Camp tax plan essentially gives America’s top income-takers a free pass from higher taxes. If Camp’s plan becomes law, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, tax bills for taxpayers reporting over $1 million in income will actually fall slightly in 2015.

Rich taxpayers in the $200,000-to-$1 million per year income range, interestingly, would see a slight increase in taxes. But these comfortable taxpayers need not worry. Both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders are declaring Camp’s package dead on arrival.

So why pay the Camp plan any attention at all?

One reason: The bill reflects the first crack in the GOP’s stonewall against undoing tax code provisions that tilt towards the wealthy. Senior GOP legislative heavyweights like Camp are clearly sensing deep public anger over an economic system that privileges the rich. Astute conservatives are realizing they can’t afford politically to keep handing Wall Street blank checks.

Something, they understand, has to change — if only for show.

But even that can have consequences. Conservatives can’t call for ending subsidies for carried interest and executive pay and then holler when progressives push legislation that actually sets out to accomplish these same goals.

David Camp has pushed open a door. Advocates for greater equality in America now need to rush in.

OtherWords columnist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, edits the inequality weekly Too Much. His latest book is “The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class.” OtherWords.org

Dear Dave,
How do you feel about gambling at a casino, as long as you limit your spending and don’t expect to win big money?
Brian

Dear Brian,
I don’t really have a moral problem with it, but I don’t understand the concept. Call me crazy, but I do not get a thrill from losing money I’ve worked hard to earn. That’s not my idea of entertainment.

When someone tells me they gamble for fun or recreation, my first thought is they’re delusional enough to believe that they’ll actually win—that they think they’re the exception to the rule. Otherwise, there would be no thrill. You may see a news story once in a while about someone winning big money in a casino, but that rarely happens.

Think, too, about how much money those people had flushed down the toilet previously while gambling. There’s a really good chance they didn’t really “win” anything. In most cases, they probably just recouped a small portion of their previous, substantial losses.

My advice is don’t waste your time and money on that stuff. One way or another, the house always wins. That’s how they’re able to build those giant, billion dollar places called casinos. Did you know that some of those companies are so big and expansive that they’re publicly traded entities? And guess what? The profits they make off people who are foolish enough to gamble their money away inside their fancy halls—and call that entertainment—drives their stock prices!

Think about it, Brian. Why do all the folks sitting at slot machines and card tables look like they can’t afford to lose money? Most of them look like sad, broken, lonely people. Maybe they change when they sit down. Maybe they were winners in life and with money before they walked through the doors, and their slumped body language and the look of stress and hopelessness they carry is just a coincidence or the indoor lighting. But I don’t think so.
—Dave

Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business. He’s authored four New York Times best-selling books: Financial Peace, More Than Enough, The Total Money Makeover and EntreLeadership. His newest book, written with his daughter Rachel Cruze, is titled Smart Money Smart Kids. It will be released April 22nd. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 6 million listeners each week on more than 500 radio stations. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com.

The über rich are full of ideas. Not ideas to help humanity, unfortunately. They’ve thought up new ways to help themselves grab more money and power at our expense.

Take Tom Perkins. He’s one of a growing number of the put-upon rich — billionaires who grabbed a fabulous fortune by hook or crook but now complain that they are victims of a “rising tide of hatred.”

Excuse me, Tom, but the words “billionaire” and “victim” aren’t a natural pairing.

Yet, even though he candidly concedes that he lives a life of vulgar excess, Perkins wrote a sob-story letter to the editor The Wall Street Journal published in January. In it, he pleaded for relief from the “war on the American 1 percent, namely the ‘rich.’”

He even compared the plight of the super-rich with the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. He was roundly ridiculed after that, but he’s since come back with a pragmatic idea for redressing the grievous plight of our 1-percenters.

What’s needed, he explained, is a slight tweaking of America’s democratic election system. “The Tom Perkins system,” he lectured, differs from the current one because “you don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes. But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”

Gosh, how did he cram so much vanity and ignorance into only three sentences?

Apparently, no one has informed Tom that poor people pay a larger percentage of their income in various taxes than privileged tax evaders like him.

Nor does he seem aware that a democratic government cannot be anything like a corporation, for government must serve the whole public, while a corporation is an autocratic hierarchy that serves only a few.

And golly, Tom, why should you and all of your billionaire buddies get anything special — like extra votes — just for paying taxes? What you get in return for taxes is what we all get: civilization.

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org