WTF just happened today with this tax deal? Do you think it is a good deal? Bad deal? Love it, hate it? Running as a write-in against Obama in the primary?
I'll tell you how I feel... I feel like it's a progressive "Health Care Town Hall" moment. The kind of moment when we should be storming the field offices (peacefully) and making a stink. The pig Republicans are cramming the tax cut for the rich down our throats. The corporatist Dems just meekly going along, with President Obama leading the way. This is idiotic. I want screaming and disruption like we haven’t seen since the Town Halls of Health Care reform fame... but much much worse. I want people shackled to the White House fence and sit ins and die ins and any other kind of ins you can think of. And I want them to understand they need to stop giving the future of our country away to the super-rich elite! Make a compromise, but at least give us a fucking fig leaf like letting tax cuts expire for those with income over 10 million? Some small token that they are serious about the deficit. And make them show there is an iota of fairness left in our economy where those who have an outsized share of the benefits they reap from America would pony up a little extra to help out the nation in tough times.
And then I think, well, all the goodies we're getting, more stimulus and tax cuts for the little people. And maybe, just maybe, if we're good boys and girls and don't cause a stink, the royalty in the US Senate might deem it worthy of a few days of their work to right an incredible, blatant injustice to sexual/gender minorities who for YEARS have been serving in the US Military, first under a complete ban and more recently under a give-up-your-honor-if-you-want-to-serve-your-nation DADT policy. And we know that history is knocking on gay & lesbian rights in the courts... both on DADT and marriage. And this could be a defining moment in that history, an irreversible step forward that forever changes the debate. Congress could do the right thing.
And then I flip back again, to anger at feeling like I’m being bought off on GLBT rights. The price is being quiet, denying my instincts to scream in the streets about this theft from our futures that is a tax extension compromise. And what if I allow my silence to be bought, and they play Lucy once again and pull the football out from in front of us? Sell out the future with nothing in exchange?
Conflicted, to say the least. So, there’s the poll... tell me what you think.
UPDATE 1: Oops, I should have put an option in the poll for... "Maybe. I could support this if they at least let the tax cuts expire for incomes over 1 million or 5 million... something, anything to prove they are serious about the deficit."