New Year Follies: Happy Fiscal Cliff?

Will it be a cliff drop today?

The Demanders: Another Way to Look at Job-Creation

I hate the term "Job Creators."

I mostly hate it because it's palpably falsely applied.  It smacks of the same kind of Madison-Avenue Political Speech in which Frank Luntz specializes (e.g. the Estate Tax as "the Death Tax").  What Republicans tend to mean by "Job Creator" is "rich person."  And mostly, when Rs call rich people that, they are saying that we should give rich people tax breaks because then they will take pity on the rest of us and create more jobs.

Friday Follies: Cliff-Diving Edition

Eddard Stark.  Every Week.

So there are some saying it's not a cliff, it's a slope.  There are some saying let's go over.  But no matter what direction, the imagery of the Fiscal Cliff just begs for some Follies...

Let's Make a Deal: Top 4 Reasons We're Still Headed for the Cliff

The Fiscal Cliff/Slope/Happy-Fun-Ride is still coming.  It's self-made, and totally avoidable.  So why is it barreling towards us?

A Cornucopia of Post-Turkey News

So I only have the time left in a playground outing of the hubby and kids to write, but there are a few stories that bear discussion this week...

1. R.I.P. Warren Rudman - Warren Rudman was a Republican Senator from New Hampshire, one who earnestly sought progress and bipartisan governance.  He resigned from the Senate after two terms because he said it was too partisan and fractious.


He was well-known for his work in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, which established some bipartisan (Hollings was a Democrat from South Carolina, Gramm a Republican from Texas) budget processes to try to tame budget deficits in the mid-1980s.  Those processes were about... raising the debt limit.  They would have created mandatory sequestrations by the Comptroller General, but they were found unconstitutional (as was the Line Item Veto - which was not in GRH but was also supposedly a method for achieving budget sanity, though at the same time a large grant of presidential power).    Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) also penned budget control measures in the same era.


Rudman later served in a Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President Clinton.  And he helped steer the Iran/Contra Hearings with Senator Inouye (D-HI), producing a bipartisan document that said Reagan officials knowingly violated the law (hence the Bush Pardons).  Rudman supported aid to the Contras, but famously said (and here you will hear echoes of C.J. Roberts from the Affordable Care Act decision - "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."):

YBGP Index: Math Is Hard

Election Contest Update:  We have not forgotten the Election Contest, but Arizona has been crazy slow to count, so we haven't had the numbers until this week.  I'll sit down and do the math sometime this week when the kids are at their least frenetic.  The T-Shirts are in and ready to go once I figure out the winner.

In the meantime:  with a nod to Harper's, I give you the YBGP Index...

3 and 1/2 Reasons Republicans Should Be Glad They Lost

Okay, my Republican Friends: enough with the predictions of gloom and doom.  What Would Reagan Do, people?  Reagan wouldn't talk about the country being awful these days, and he wouldn't despair.  Let's try to find the bright side here, folks.  And there really is one.  Three and a half, even.

Seriously, Grover.

1. The Game of Tax-Raising Chicken Can End.  A.K.A. Grover K. Norquist: will you please go now?


Grover Norquist (founder of Americans for Tax Reform or ATR) has been holding the Republican Party hostage for years now.  He's bullied almost all Republicans running for any national office to sign his no-raising-taxes-ever pledge.


And then he puts together a highly-biased yearly rating based on his own estimation of what votes should count as "raising taxes" and which should not.  He threatens legislators with rating given votes in his yearly tally.  And he has been very successful in keeping Rs in his line...

The Taxman and Question 7

I've been thinking about this post for awhile, trying to boil it down to the essence, to shake off the unnecessary or confusing parts of the argument I want to make.  I'm using the suggestion of a friend - to write about Maryland's Question 7, which would increase the amount and type of legal gambling in Maryland - to springboard into a larger discussion.


I've spent a lot of time on tax policy, and tax policy is complex - needlessly so.  But there are underlying theories behind the tax decisions we make, and I've noticed that we almost never talk about them.  It may be due to the influence of guys like Grover Norquist, but the political discussion we have about taxes is almost entirely this: