Well, here I am in a place I never expected to be-the blogosphere.  Part of what this proves, I suppose, is that if you stick around long enough you’re going to be doing a lot of things that were never in the original game plan.

In my close to 29 years at National Underwriter (and I know a lot of you are thinking ‘how the hell has he lasted that long!’), I have seen amazing changes in the way news and commentary are delivered to our readers. Not only have I been witness to these changes, but I’ve been in charge of implementing them here at the Underwriter.  Honestly, that’s what’s kept the job so much fun and so challenging over the years. 

This is a great business to cover, contrary to the widespread misperception of the life insurance and health industry.  What the agents and companies in this business do touches nearly every life in the United States in one way or another.  This is a business founded on noble principles and aspirations, which continue to inspire the overwhelming number of practitioners, producers and companies.

I have no problem recognizing that when I see it, as I have done many times in print.

But as the Japanese haiku poet, Basho, once wrote, “And yet, and yet.”

Those ‘and yets’ have been what my column has been about over the years and what you can expect-even more frequently!-in my new blog.

I like to think I call things as I see them and try to do it entertainingly.  This blog is your opportunity to reciprocate in kind-and I’m hoping a lot of you will take advantage of the bracing world of interactivity.

But enough of niceties, let’s get to it.  Check out the next entry.

In addition to all the other balls the Obama administration is currently juggling, it looks as if it also plans to prevent the possibility of something truly macabre happening because of a law concerning 2010 that has been on the books for years.

As we all know, the estate tax is scheduled to disappear in 2010 before making a reappearance at 2001 levels in 2011.  This bit of financial soufflé was the brainchild of the now departed Bush administration, which specialized in whipping up such concoctions. 

Even at the time this provision was enacted into law, nobody believed it would really unfold in this way.  The amount of ‘wink, wink’ going on in Washington at the time was so great that whole cadres of congressmen and members of the executive branch were thought to have developed a facial tic en masse.

However, despite the fact that no one really expected the estate tax to vanish in 2010, especially as the budget deficits started to bloom in earnest, there was still uncertainty in the estate planning market because the law was on the books.   And we are a country of laws.

Every once in a while someone would raise the specter of seniors with estates large enough to owe estate taxes voluntarily choosing to go to the Kool-Aid counter just to spite the government during this very narrow window of opportunity.  Imagine all that extra dough available to your loved ones simply because you cashed out before Jan. 1, 2011.

The Obama administration is not labeling its initiative ‘Save the Seniors,’ but that’s what it amounts to. 

It’s likely that 2009’s estate provisions will be extended to cover 2010, meaning no free ride next year.

Further, a bill now on the table, S. 722, sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., would reunify the estate and gift taxes, establish a $3.5 million per person exemption, index it for inflation, set a top tax rate of 45% and take the individual spousal exemption and make it automatically portable to the other spouse.

Sounds pretty generous to me.  In fact, one could easily view S.722 as a new lease on life for those people rich enough to be affected by it.    

So, wealthy seniors, live long and prosper.  You’re going to pay in the end, anyway.