The 1st Thread For 2013 on 1/2/13: We Truly Do Hate Funding Our Government

From 1912 to 2008, the years featuring the percentage of income the top bracket in America had to pay. 

The election and what turned out to be the inevitable Fiscal C (Cliff, Curve, Crap, whatever your preferred "C" word of choice) debacle was a real legitimate chance to see whether the nation's lawmakers, starting with President Obama and Vice President Biden, was truly adamant about funding their nation properly after a decade of irresponsible, dangerous tax cuts to wealthy people.

When I mean by lawmakers, I mean just Democratic figures making the argument that we need to go the truly opposite direction of fearing/loathing taxing, because we know the nutcases on the other side are opposed to funding any government.

It was suppose to at least usher in the clearly rational argument that the best functional democracy operates not under idiotic anti-progressive spending cuts that bring America the austerity pain that Europe is having, but fully functional revenue from those who easily survive needed tax increases.

Instead, it's not only that the $250K threshold was bypassed uncourageously by Obama and Biden for $450K based on the final Senate deal with McConnell, but the fact that the old Clinton rate for the highest bracket will be permanent for a while is what makes this yet another centrist disappointment (and let's not even talk about the wealthy estate tax idiotically staying alive).

We are left with scrambling to take money from one good program and put it in the other since our rates on the top are still too low, since we are still left with a country still idiotic enough to vote for Republicans hell bent on just ruining the middle class and a chance at a functioning democracy.

"No new taxes" is the mantra that has been used for decades, with Republicans always using it to scare Democrats and Democrats never being able (or willingly to even bother) to show the importance of sensible taxation so smart public programs can stay strong.

Reagan dramatically reduced taxes on the rich while screwing the middle class with sneaky tax increases and a starting effort to end Social Security with the payroll tax cut in 1986. Cheney & Bush added to that with the loopholes to make their already government smashing 35% rate even lower for those with accountants good at their job. These people never want a functional government, and someone needs to make the factual statement that the best government is not a poor one.

Obama clearly didn't even bother to advocate strongly for that however. And him being concerned over our vapid, centrist media framing him as being just as unreasonable as the nutcases on the other sides leads him to always say "deficit reducing" and "making smart cuts" when we have a much larger revenue problem than we have a spending one.

The only spending we seriously have a problem with is NOT Medicare, but on our ridiculous defense. If we didn't allocate all this money to meaningless protection all around the world that ballon in our "war against terror," then we would never have yearning to "urgency reform" Medicare.

We are restricted to continue yearning for Medicare reform from "true centrist like Obama" and deceiving centrists (Simpson/Bowles, No Labels, the rest) because of their inability to show courage and say how those Clinton level rates aren't sufficient enough to make up for the damage that has been done by the Bush era tax cuts.

This was a chance to make that the key narrative. But instead, it was all just a desire to get rid of it real quick at the lowest possible scale and never even think about a further increase in the near future.

This country seems like it will never advocate for common sensical funding of our public roads, schools, and maybe be a modern country and have a sensible public healthcare system for those not in the military or extremely poor or up in age.

Because this country doesn't advocate for how smart taxation for the best society can only come with giving it the right amount of tax size to actually do just that.