Who else is ready for some cliff diving?

Who else is ready for some cliff diving?

I was wondering if this was a sentiment shared by others of my ilk. All this talk of fiscal cliffs seems to be a bit overdone. Maybe it’s just election fatigue and crisis fatigue setting in, but I find myself struggling to work up any great amount of anxiety over the doom and gloom being projected by media outlets of all stripes, liberal and conservative.

I was wondering if my feelings were isolated. I haven’t seen much in the way of people rooting for going off the cliff on the liberal side, and the folks of the more conservative stripe that seem to be rooting for it seem to be more worried about their own personal finances, and the finances of their biggest contributors. That’s when I found this random comment on a Daily Kos article about the cliff.

It’s quite simple. Go over the big bad scary “cliff” on Jan 1, letting all the tax cuts expire, and all the sequestration kick in. Then on Jan 2 propose legislation to reinstate the tax cuts for all under $250k and triple dog dare the gutless Repugs to vote against it. Then invoke the 14th Amendment in order to step around these Repug children on the raising the debt ceiling. And finally, then look these losers in the eye and tell them we’re 1000% willing to leave all the sequestrations in place, but if they want to negotiate a fair deal to our liking we’re willing, and ask them if they think we’re bluffing.

This is verbatim what they would do if the shoe was on the other foot. It’s about time Dems grow a pair and accept who they’re dealing with and do what’s necessary to lead the country to a better place.

A kindred spirit! Don’t think I could say it better myself so I won’t even try!

I feel many of those folks crying the loudest now got us into this mess in the first place, with their irresponsible lending practices, unpaid for wars and tax cuts and deregulation of banks to where our economy and much of the world was brought to the brink of collapse. I don’t think they remember that just before Obama came into office people were seriously discussing a total collapse of the banking system, of credit, lending and maybe even money and the stock market was plummeting in what seemed like a bottomless free-fall. Those were some relatively anxious times that we managed to pull up from by allowing all the “temporary” tax cuts for all income levels to remain in place.

In the meantime, many of our wealthiest folks have done very well, recovered much of their investments and then some. Meanwhile unemployment has leveled off at around 8%, several percent higher than is healthy. Republican governors seemed to try to go out of their way to slash budgets to artificially and prematurely create unemployed public sector workers to try and make our employment numbers look worse than they were while creating additional tax cuts and incentives to wealthy individuals and corporations (theoretically to create new jobs which never materialized and which most governors, especially my own governor “Jindal” who refuses to hold those who were granted tax breaks to their commitments while he slashes Medicare, Medicaid, and Education dollars in the billions from the budget.)

I don’t see the downside for Obama going over the “cliff” if Republican’s refuse to give in on his modest tax increase he campaigned on. It’s actually could be a bit of handicap, Republicans could give him the few percent increase and get all sorts of gut wrenching concessions from the President on spending cuts while preserving much of their defense budget if the Tea Party and Grover Norquist would let them. Republicans could then campaign on restoring the tax cut, fill their coffers full of money from people hoping to make it back from tax cuts, and they would have achieved their spending cuts in the meantime. However their own party has hamstrung them on this issue. They are caught between Obama and some hard asses that won’t concede and inch.

When Boehner even offered a slight fictitious revenue increase of around 800 billion dollars over 10 years based on eliminating popular (though unnamed) deductions and closing loopholes (that also went unnamed) while simultaneously lower tax rates Jim DeMint of South Carolina cried foul, then promptly resigned to join a “think tank” for at least quintuple his Senate salary (based on the previous post holder’s salary.) By being so publicly uncompromising and confrontational, Tea Partiers are doing more long term damage to their own causes than a dozen liberal senators could ever hope to achieve. They are showing the public they are unreasonable and thereby pinning any negative repercussions on the Republican’s that allow them to run rampant, brandishing the elephant standard.

A long time ago, in another life perhaps, I tried my hand at selling cars. I was not very good at it, and my career was very short-lived, but I did learn a decent lesson or two from the experience that has served me well ever since when it comes to negotiations. My first week I had a crazy, salty, old dog as a mentor. He taught me how to ask probing, leading questions (to figure out what people could pay, how serious they were, what their finances might look like) how to look at trade-ins (showing me it was important to highlight all the negative scuffs, scratches and faded upholstery making concerned, clucking, tsking noises so as to prepare people for the low ball prices we would offer for their trade-in.) When it came to negotiation time, he told me there was one, all important rule.

“After you make the offer or counter offer, shut the ^%&% up. Whoever speaks first, loses kid.”

That’s harder to do than you might think. Many people can’t handle silence though. When left to their own devices they often start babbling, rationalizing their offer, telling you its fair, that they looked prices up online, that another dealer offered them the same price earlier in the week. Once they open up and reveal their position they give you insight and they start bargaining with themselves. Before too long they start looking for a lifeline, for any sign that you are listening, that they aren’t wasting their time, that they aren’t crazy. Then you can offer them a deal, and often they will take it, or something close to it just to get out of the negotiation. The first time I did this is didn’t work out too well though, we just kinda stared at each other and sat in uncomfortable silence and my mentor had to eventually step in and take over before things got too weird. There’s more of an art to negotiation silence than you might think. J

However what the Tea Partiers are doing to Boehner is quite likely going to prove very counterproductive to their stated goals of lower taxes and reduced spending.  They are revealing his hand, making it difficult to bluff.   (To continue on with the poker analogy they are also refusing to play the strong hands they’ve been dealt, hoping for a Royal Flush and consequently will allow Obama to blind them out.)  They are speaking first, sinking the negotiations before they can even get started and painting bright red bull’s-eyes on their own heads. With a fresh four year term behind me, a relatively stable economy, a moderately keyed in and informed electorate and grass roots campaign messengers waiting in the wings to flex their organizational muscles one last time I’d reckon Obama feels he has all the time in the world to allow the Republicans to hang themselves, just as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock did in their recent rape comment aborted Senatorial runs.

So let’s call this bluff folks. Let’s jump off this overhyped imaginary cliff! Let all the temporary tax cuts expire. Then introduce some permanent middle class and below tax cuts.

Then Boehner can try and tackle spending reform without any hostages.

If I was Harry Reid I’d also eliminate the phone in filibuster for good measure. Make those Republican’s talk – that seem to work out much better for us than it has for them.

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Tagged: economy, Jindal

Posted in: economy, elections, jindal, politics