{"id":9415,"date":"2012-11-09T09:17:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-09T17:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9415"},"modified":"2012-11-09T09:17:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T17:17:20","slug":"just-say-no-to-blackmail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/09\/just-say-no-to-blackmail\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Say NO to Blackmail!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben \u2018Bankster Boy\u2019 Bernanke coined the term fiscal cliff<\/em>, when trying to spur the Super Committee to reach a deal.  He intended it to sound scary, and the news media love it, because it could not be more conducive to sound bites.  Failure to act before the end of the year is just not as catastrophic as it sounds.  Republicans love fear, because they use it to commit economic terrorism against America in the form of blackmail.  Way back in July, I said we should not fear the fiscal cliff<\/a>.  Lately, I\u2019ve seen that some pretty high powered experts share that view, such as Paul Krugman.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"GOPTerror\"To say the obvious: Democrats won an amazing victory. Not only did they hold the White House despite a still-troubled economy, in a year when their Senate majority was supposed to be doomed, they actually added seats.<\/p>\n

Nor was that all: They scored major gains in the states. Most notably, California \u2014 long a poster child for the political dysfunction that comes when nothing can get done without a legislative supermajority \u2014 not only voted for much-needed tax increases, but elected, you guessed it, a Democratic supermajority. <\/p>\n

But one goal eluded the victors. Even though preliminary estimates suggest that Democrats received somewhat more votes than Republicans in Congressional elections, the G.O.P. retains solid control of the House thanks to extreme gerrymandering by courts and Republican-controlled state governments<\/strong>. And Representative John Boehner, the speaker of the House, wasted no time in declaring that his party remains as intransigent as ever, utterly opposed to any rise in tax rates even as it whines about the size of the deficit. <\/p>\n

So President Obama has to make a decision, almost immediately, about how to deal with continuing Republican obstruction. How far should he go in accommodating the G.O.P.\u2019s demands<\/strong>? <\/p>\n

My answer is, not far at all. Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a \u201cgrand bargain\u201d on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

If no deal is reached, one will be as soon as Congress reconvenes in January, and it will be made retroactive to the first of the year.  Since the Bush tax cuts will have expired, Republicans can vote for a tax cut for the middle class without voting for a tax increase on the rich.  If they hold out for bonus tax breaks at the top, and refuse to cut taxes for 98% of Americans, they will no longer have ideological cover, and the political cost to them would be a disaster.<\/font><\/p>\n

Ed Schultz and Bernie Sanders explained why Obama and the Democratic Party hold most of the cards.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As usual Bernie said it all!<\/font><\/p>\n

Finally, consider this.  The super rich are not hurting for money.  The opposite is so true that they just spent nearly a $billion trying to buy the US government for the Republican Party.  Since they have so much money to flush down the toilet, shouldn’t some of that excess, stripped over the years from the poor and middle classes, be returned to benefit those people from whom they took it?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben \u2018Bankster Boy\u2019 Bernanke coined the term fiscal cliff, when trying to spur the Super Committee to reach a deal.  He intended it to sound scary, and the news media love it, because it could not be more conducive to sound bites.  Failure to act before the end of the year is just not as […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}