Joy Riding off The Fiscal Cliff
As we approached the 2012 election and the presidential candidates engaged in the theatrics of the debates, we entered an arena where substance doesn't matter. What truth there was was expressed in either meaningless platitudes or the frighteningly heartless calculations of budget cuts. In the midst of all the chatter about tax rates, the budget and the deficit, the fog began to clear and the vague outlines of a calculated plan appeared. It was a plan enclosed by a threat: to allow the dormant aristocracy of the United States to return to power. The threat that unless we cede the presidency to Mitt Romney and effectively allow the GOP to protect the wealthy, we will head right over the fiscal cliff into a national financial abyss. That attempt failed. Yet, the political perspective that presumably represents the middle class and the nation's poor was quickly put on the chopping block, offered as a bargaining chip as an artificially manufactured budget crisis threatened to der