Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Posturing is not politics. It’s pandering. Boehner and crew are posturing. They lost the election and as even David Brooks admits will be blamed if the country slides off the fiscal cliff. It is not bad politics to admit that. It’s what politics are about. Elections have consequences and one consequence of this election is that Obama and the Democrats have the whip hand on these negotiations.
Brooks thinks there can be a grand bargain where Boehner and his tea party allies concede the point on the tax revenues in return for a 2013 deal to hammer out a deficit reduction package for 2040. Not sure what they have in the air there at the New York Times, but it must be the good stuff. Is there a need for a deficit reduction plan that cuts spending and raises revenue? Yep. Does have it to be a full platter for the rich and a teeter-totter resting on the combined backs of the poor and the middle class? Nope.
The plan that makes sense has not been put forward, at least in what I’ve read. And I’m waiting to see something practical, both politically and economically. Somebody has to put one forward. Maybe Hillary will do it.
On the Whitehouse lawn there arose such a clatter,
the whole nation wondered just what was the matter,
when what to a wandering pundit appeared,
but a tax and spend package, what the tea party feared,
the jolly old elf who delivered the present,
winked, laughed and said, “Now, it’s all spent,”
So come back next year and plan to do nothing,
It’s finished; it’s over; go eat some stuffing.
