We, the People -- Are Screwed

Art by Crockett Johnson.Frank Rich: "It’s the very top earners, not your garden variety, entrepreneurial multimillionaires, who will be by far the biggest beneficiaries if there’s an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for income over $200,000 a year (for individuals) and $250,000 (for couples). The resurgent G.O.P. has vowed to fight to the end to award this bonanza, but that may hardly be necessary given the timid opposition of President Obama and the lame-duck Democratic Congress."

The New York Times moderators again found my comment too -- something. So here it was:

The President has been hinting for weeks that he will roll on tax cuts for the wealthy. His faint, equivocal denials are merely a redeployment of the tactic he used during the healthcare debate on provisions like the public option. Every remark he has made is a signal to Republicans that he'll go along with them. Political observers should stop pretending that the President really opposes tax cuts for the super-rich, & he would let them expire if it weren't for those darned Republicans. Everybody in Washington knows what s/he's doing, and everybody will play his or her role in seeing that the oligarchy remains intact and continues to prosper at the expense of the rest of us.

What will happen is this: Democrats will get almost enough Congressional votes to let tax cuts for the rich be decoupled from those for the rest of us. But, gosh, they'll just fall short. A few "villains" like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson or a disgruntled Arlen Specter or a nothing-to-lose Blanche du Arquansau will hold out. The President will sigh audibly & repeat a slightly-more eloquent version of David Axelrod's "We have to deal with the world as we find it." Then he will quietly sign the bill extending tax cuts to all. Everyone in Washington will have played his part and most partisans from both sides will be none the wiser. That, Mr. Axelrod, is "the world as we find it." It's pretty disgusting. And so are you, for playing your role so well.

If that scenario sounds familiar to you, it's because you've witnessed it before: on the public option drama, on the plan to allow those 55 and older to buy into Medicare, on curbs to derivatives trading. The Congress proposes, the Congress disposes. Somehow they just can't quite pass legislation that helps us commoners.

There is a way out of the tax cuts impasse. It won't succeed, but it's a darned good backup plan. It's the suggestion of Sen. Mark Warner, a brilliant businessman & politician himself. Warner suggests a Republican-friendly compromise that has eluded All the President's Men: scrap the tax cuts for the rich & put the cuts, at least temporarily, into growth businesses that will create jobs for middle-class Americans. Let's see how far Warner's reasonable compromise goes. Enjoy the idea while you can. You may never hear of it again.

Who will stand up to the rich? Nobody in Washington. It's pitchfork time. You will find me among the angry mob.