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Dude, chances are you're paying a lot less to the federal government than you did three decades ago

So quit complaining already! ...Unless your household earns $25,000 or less.  Those are the guys -- the lower income earners -- paying the largest chunk of their income to sustain the rest of us. 

In fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010. ...NYT

Take a look this chart.  The tax system has grown less progressive -- has gone off the tracks -- and is more punitive to the low earners.

The question is:  what's fair?  Ask around and come to find out that what's fair is whatever is fairest to most of the people you'll ask. "Me" is the center of our world, the person who should get the best deal.

"We are not all in this together."

Paul Krugman notes the irony of the jammed parking lot at Boston's airport the night of Romney's, uh, victory celebration on November 6.  No, not too many big cars at Logan, says Krugman -- just not enough room for Romney supporters' private jets.

Oops, fellas.  The political situation has changed.  Those jet owners were "misinformed about political reality."

But the disappointed plutocrats weren’t wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor.

And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish “centrists” and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory.

The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election. ...Paul Krugman, NYT

Face it.  This isn't about fiscal responsibility.  After their total irresponsibility during the Bush years (and look at the debt Reagan left behind), the Republicans' claim to fiscal rectitude may be the greatest example of chutzpa in our history.  No -- they want the money, e.g. the power, to remain in the upper stratosphere of our polity. It's as simple as that. 

For now we have the upper hand and, damn!, we need to keep it!

...Keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It’s an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let’s not let them pull it off. ...Krugman, NYT

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By the way: at some point we're going to have to talk about how money didn't buy the election.  Both sides threw whole ingots at each other but the most invested side didn't win.  Karl Rove has gone underground after what can only be described as one of the most dramatic failures of political calculation ever. 

We need to remember that the Republicans didn't just lose the White House and an embarrassing number of seats in Congress.  They lost the cherished belief that they could buy the 2012 election.  So behind all this -- behind even Paul Krugman's worry about the money/power guys keeping their money and their power -- Republicans may be waking up at 2 a.m. to the horrible thought that money's not going to secure their future.  Where they're still throwing money and power around, though, is in individual states.  Which reminds me to remind you about Bill Moyers' program on ALEC.  America's need to be as conversant with ALEC as they are about Al Qaeda -- and realize ALEC is a much worse problem.

Time off

Now we know what Americans are really doing in bed

Well, they're probably playing with their laptops.  In or out of bed, our interaction is with people we can't see and it's social and political in nature.

Maybe that explains the story on the same page with this information from Pew Research about our behaviors and predilections.

Do Senate Republicans deserve to be nuked?

Sure.  No question about it.  But should Harry Reid press for the nuclear option? 

Maybe not.  But that's what he appears to be doing.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) may be short on votes he needs to force changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules, as nine Democratic senators sit on the fence about the proposed reforms.

In addition, Sen.-elect Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) did not commit during the campaign to reforming the filibuster rules, which brings the total number of undecided Democrats who will vote on the issue next year to 10.

 Of the nine sitting Democrats who have declined to commit to voting for the constitutional option — the controversial tactic whereby Reid could change the chamber’s rules by a simple majority vote — three indicated they could be persuaded to follow Reid’s lead.

That means Reid might be only one or two votes short of the 50 he needs to trigger the change, which Republicans call the nuclear option.

“What this tells me is that we’re very close to 51,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who has been a leading advocate of using the constitutional option to limit the powers of the minority to use dilatory tactics. ...The Hill

Jay Rockefeller thinks something has to be done.  "I’m for radical over nothing."

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Greg Sargent makes good sense.

... Caution about changing the rules is understandable, particularly with something as dramatic as the constitutional option. But let's put this as simply as we can: We cannot continue with the Senate remaining as dysfunctional as it is. This situation was forced upon Democrats. No matter how many times Republicans insist otherwise, recent GOP obstructionism is simply unprecedented, not just in degree, but in nature. Republican adopted a deliberate strategy of grinding Senate business to a halt -- on even routine matters -- with the goal of denying Obama bipartisan successes, pinning the blame on him for ineffective government, bolstering the GOP's anti-government ideology, and rendering Obama a one-term president. Surely that is worse than adopting a set of modest changes designed to prevent excessive and deliberate obstructionism for its own sake -- even if those changes are adopted by (gasp!) majority vote.

And one last time: The reforms Dems are pursuing would not take away the minority's ability to filibuster legislation on the motion to end debate. The minority would still be able to thwart the majority's will if the minority really deemed it necessary. All the changes would do is make it harder for the minority to gum up the works with the explicit purpose of making governing harder for the majority, rather than expressing the minority's will. ...WaPo

Finally, leadership.

Well, the Republicans are "startled," according to the Washington Post.  After three weeks of mucking around, making derogatory statements, and cursing their bad "luck," they're finally having to face a shift in power. 

Two things stand out in the media's commentaries:  "exit polls" (showing a daunting degree of disapproval of Republicans on most issues), and Obama as Real President.  No longer a Kenyan foundling, racial inferior, or Muslim spy, President Obama has taken charge.  The GOP is taking a spanking from the public and the Democrats are seen as the reasonable party by most voters and "more like responsible leaders."

Yesterday Obama said, Okay, here's how we're going to deal with your delays, your fiscal irresponsibility ...

President Obama offered Republicans a detailed plan Thursday for averting the year-end “fiscal cliff” that calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, $50 billion in fresh spending on the economy and an effective end to congressional control over the size of the national debt. ...WaPo

... And we'll take no more guff.

The proposal, delivered to the Capitol by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, mirrors previous White House deficit-reduction plans and satisfies Democrats’ demands that negotiations begin on terms dictated by the newly-reelected president.

The offer lacks any concessions to Republicans, most notably on the core issue of where to set tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. ...WaPo

The response from Republicans?  "Aw, gee."

After two weeks of talks between the White House and aides to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), it seemed to take Republicans by surprise. ...WaPo

They'd also be required to put down their popguns and quit making trouble.

Although the White House offer seemed to startle Republicans, it contains little that would be unfamiliar to anyone following the president’s recent public statements. The exception was his proposal on the federal debt limit. GOP aides said Obama is seeking to permanently enact procedures that were temporarily adopted in the summer of 2011 that allow the White House to unilaterally increase the debt ceiling unless two-thirds of lawmakers disapprove.

That process, initially proposed by McConnell, was not intended to become permanent. By trying to make it so, Obama is seeking to avoid another damaging battle over the debt ceiling that would again risk a national default. However, this change would also deprive Congress of its historic authority over federal borrowing....WaPo

Kah-boom!

Now, could we give the real cliff, not the Republicans' self-imposed downhill slide,  all of our attention?  Climate change is our most dangerous enemy.  Unless we deal with it we'll be in the kind of trouble we have trouble even trying to picture.  The crisis created by Republicans' spending habits deserve a sustained spanking but not center stage -- even as we ignore the real dangers ahead.

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Boehner?  Well, he was gobsmacked by the straightforward proposal Team Obama set out yesterday.

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Margaret Hartmann, at Daily Intel, has a nice summary of what all this amounts to.

... The proposal just shows that the president feels he has the upper hand and is willing to put pressure on the Republicans. In the Post Ezra Klein writes that Obama used to "offer plans that roughly tracked where he thought the compromise should end up," but after a few years in the White House he's learned that he shouldn't be "negotiating with himself."

It's obvious that the president didn't expect the GOP to happily sign off on his initial proposal, but he wants them to have to push for their unpopular demands — though, as Politico reported on Thursday, both sides have an idea of what the deal will probably look like. "There's the public choreography, then there is the real choreography," Rep. Rob Andrews tells the Wall Street Journal. "To reach a deal, it has to look like there was a lot of fighting before the deal was reached."...Daily Intel

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Taegan Goddard finds a great quote from The Economist:

By cynical tradition 'abroad' is where American presidents go to seek a legacy, after their domestic agendas have stalled. This is especially true of second-term presidents. As they lose momentum at home, the temptation is to head overseas in search of crises that only American clout can resolve.

At the outset of his second term, Barack Obama seems to be planning the opposite approach. Mr Obama and his team believe that his outstanding task is to secure a domestic legacy. Their fear is that foreign entanglements may threaten that goal. ...The Economist/Political Wire

But here's reality, thanks, in my view, to the weakness of a feckless Congress that's taking no responsibility for "fixing America":

Fresh crises will come. If America is pulled in deeply, it will be against all Mr Obama’s instincts. The president has plans; but they revolve around fixing America, not the world. ...The Economist