Maher’s Season Finale: Rachel Maddow, Meacham, Frist Debate Oil, Death, Taxes

Last night’s episode of Real Time was the last of the season, and Bill Maher brought out the big guns for his weekly panel: Rachel Maddow, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and brave former Republican Senate Majority leader Bill Frist facing the trio. They talked filibusters, estate taxes, and Maher even allowed himself to talk about the horrors of the oil disaster in the Gulf, the one story that’s too depressing for him to regularly face.

“I feel like someone from Greenpeace should scrub me down every night,” Maher told his panel, every time he watches coverage of the BP oil spill. Frist called for both the left’s and the right’s major energy arguments: energy independence and alternative fuels, including both renewables and nuclear power. Maher noted that the phrase “energy independence” to him meant more drilling, but Frist disagreed, and Maddow jumped in to add that renewable energy– wind and solar– would only be useful if Americans “reconceive it” and “get super ambitious” about making them work.

On the issue of the estate tax, placed on very wealthy people after their deaths, Maher noted that taxes were necessary and that “of all the things you could tax,” “dead rich people” seemed to be the least harmful. Frist disagreed, and Meacham jumped in to challenge his point that taxing someone on the income that was taxed their entire life. Frist countered with a bootstraps argument: “I think we should repeal death taxes… because, if you’re a family, you’re working hard, you come to America, you earn money, you save, you invest, you pay taxes along the way, you have that money, why shouldn’t you be able to pass it along to your children?”

There’s also chat on the effectiveness of the filibuster, women in politics, and the state of Arizona gets a special season’s-end award from the show:

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!