Math made easy: (Obama + Fiscal Cliff = we ALL lose)

This just in: 42% of Americans are idiots.

Whoa, that’s just a tad harsh, you say? Give me a couple minutes and I’ll explain what I mean.

Lost among the election results and the sex-scandal aspect of Benghazi is a very real disaster: the Fiscal Cliff is coming. If you aren’t up to speed on that term, let me explain quickly. “Fiscal Cliff” refers to a 1-2 combination of HUGE tax increases and deep spending cuts:

1. The tax increases would roll back our current tax rates (aka: the “Bush Tax cuts”) which have been around for a decade, having been passed in 2001 & 2003.
2. The spending cuts will gut the defense budget, and are the result of the budget sequestration deal negotiated in 2011.

President Obama has started his why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along olive branch of bipartisanship by doubling the amount of money he wants in higher taxes. This is reaching across the aisle, Chicago-style.

From zerohedge.com:

If the Fiscal Cliff negotiations are supposed to result in a bipartisan compromise, it is safe that the initial shots fired so far are about as extreme as can possibly be.

As per our previous assessment of the status quo, with the GOP firmly against any tax hike, many were expecting the first olive branch to come from the generous victor – Barack Obama. Yet on the contrary, the WSJ reports, Obama’s gambit will be to ask for double what the preliminary negotiations from the “debt deficit” summer of 2011 indicated would be the Democrats demand for tax revenue increase.

To wit: “President Barack Obama will begin budget negotiations with congressional leaders Friday by calling for $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenue over the next decade, far more than Republicans are likely to accept and double the $800 billion discussed in talks with GOP leaders during the summer of 2011. Mr. Obama, in a meeting Tuesday with union leaders and other liberal activists, also pledged to hang tough in seeking tax increases on wealthy Americans.”

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Now this can be viewed a couple of ways. The logical view could simply be this is Obama staking out an extreme position, in order to be able to arrive where he really wants to be. However, the logical view may not be the likely view here.

That’s because there is a growing call for the Democrats to simply …let the country go over the Cliff.

The thinking goes that if that happens, and the taxes go up & spending gets slashed, that it will end up being a net ‘win’ for Democrats because the Republican Congress will get the blame for it.

Now where would an idea like that?

Probably from here:

“When [Pew Research] asked who would be to blame if a deal is not reached, the majority said Congressional Republicans. Of those polled, 53% said they blame Congressional Republicans and only 29% would blame the President.

The rest either blame both (10%), neither (2%), and 7% said they don’t know.”

Oh, come on! How can that possibly be the case? Are that many people in the country ignorant of what is going on with this?

Like you need to even ask:

“The poll discovered that many Americans say they do not fully understand the consequences of the tax and spending measures taking effect.

According to Pew only about quarter (26%) say they understand very well what would happen if the automatic spending cuts and tax increases were to go into effect in January; 32% say they understand the effect of these changes fairly well. About four-in-ten (42%) say they understand the impact of these measures not too well (23%) or not at all well (17%).”

You know what we call that 42% who say they don’t understand what will happen if these measures go into effect?

Obama’s core voters.

We can’t tax and spend our way to prosperity, kids. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. If you raise taxes, you get less revenue.

And no matter who gets the blame for crashing the economy, we’ll all be experiencing its effects.

Voted for Obama. Is now looking for a different sort of ‘change’.

I have no idea if we’ll go over the Cliff; I’m not terribly optimistic, given what we’ve seen. However, I do know President Genius is wedded to his vigilante economics viewpoint and is determined to make things ‘fair’, no matter the result. So in the interest of explaining the painfully obvious once again, let me remind everyone just how ridiculous “tax the rich” is as an economic philosophy by including the video below.

Hmmm… maybe if we somehow attached a sex scandal to this, more folks would watch it?