Happy new year, and welcome back to The Daily Felltoon, both staff and readers. Our staff thoroughly enjoyed our holiday break, and we hope that each of you had some time to relax, reflect, and look ahead to the following year. We hope you got some great gifts as did we, and we'd be remiss if we didn't congratulate our Webmaster on his new permanent, regular full-time job.
Of course, we hope that sitting and reflecting time didn't involve sitting in airport for 72 hours, waiting for bad weather to clear in some other city across the U.S. or Europe.
There was quite a bit accomplished during the last two weeks of 2010. The President and Democrats got extended unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans, and compromises for small businesses that will lead to new hiring this year. The Republicans got the Bush tax cuts for the rich extended, which seemed to be the only legislative accomplishment they were focused upon anyway. START was passed, DADT was repealed, and Congressional Democrats shamed Congressional Republicans into paying for health care for 9/11 responders (which was financed by eliminating large corporate tax breaks to companies who send jobs overseas).
As we all look ahead to this year, 2011, some very difficult topics seem to be inevitable as political battlegrounds this year. Some will even continue into 2012.
One of those topics we believe that is almost certain to blow up in the media is the proper role of government and taxes. Another is the absolutist positions of those on the far right, and to a growing degree, on the far left.
Absolutist positions on taxes - and on many other things - simply aren't going to be effective in politics at the local, state, or Federal levels this year. Truthfully, those kinds of attitudes never have been very effective, as we have pointed out over the last few years. Still, we're 100% certain that the propaganda promoted nearly ceaselessly by the far right and their corporate media outlets won't stop. The notion of "My taxes are too high, because they exist at all," simply won't work as a method to fix the issues we have with our governments at any level.
People procreate. People immigrate - legitimately. America has grown according to the Census, and the private sector still isn't living up to its responsibilities by creating enough jobs at home. For all of those reasons and more, the faulty idea that we can cut our collective way to prosperity will unfortunately be brought up time and again this year. In too many cases, those concepts of austerity financing will be proven wrong the hard way. Overall, sacrifices will probably be asked of all of us.
Yes, we think the economy will improve (no thanks to the tax cuts for the wealthy) as it has continued trending upward now for some time. And we think President Obama will BEGIN to bring some few troops home from Afghanistan, although we have a LONG way to go before our involvement in that corner of the world is done.
For this year, 2011, no matter what goes on in Washington or Nebraska or wherever you live, we hope that you and many others always keep in mind: we're still all in this together. It's also going to take all of us, pulling TOGETHER to get out of this economic mess.
It's a good start for a new year.
Let's get back to work.
