The Nature of Things

Whenever one turns on the television or radio these days or looks at a newspaper, one is hit in the face with stories of the "fiscal cliff," that totally phony fiscal crisis that was manufactured by Republicans during the last budget negotiations. They didn't want to face up to the work that needed to be done so they inserted a time bomb into the agreement. The time bomb would go off on January 1, 2013. Taxes would be raised on everybody and military and discretionary spending would be automatically cut by drastic amounts through a process called sequestration. This would be a forced austerity program. It would definitely cut the deficit, but it would probably also plunge the country's economy into a recession, because austerity at this particular time is the last thing we need. Of course, the Republicans never intended for any of this to actually take effect. They were confident that they would win big in this year's election and then they could just rescind ever...