Tag: Opinion

The folks running around yelling about deficits are confident that their serious demeanor, powerful positions, and financial backing will prevent anyone from scrutinizing the substance of their claims. Thus far their confidence has been warranted, as nearly all the voices in major news outlets have accepted their assertions at face value.

However any careful look at their claims quickly reveals that they do not hold water. The basic story in their deficit story is that we have not been saving enough to afford the retirement of the baby boom cohort. The story is that by increasing saving, we would be able to make ourselves rich enough to afford the retirement of the baby boomers. (We’ll ignore the impact of the downturn for the moment – just like the deficit hawks.)

Robert Kuttner: Better Late Than Never

President Obama has belatedly grasped that holding firm on tax increases for the top 2 percent, and defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid against needless cuts, is good politics and good policy. As his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner put it on Fox News Sunday, “Why does it make sense for the country to force tax increases on all Americans, because a small group of Republicans want to extend tax rates for 2 percent of Americans, why does that make any sense? There’s no reason why it should happen.” [..]

The risk is that when the negotiations finally get to the end game, and Republicans are forced accept the tax deal, Obama may succumb to pressure to cut Social Security and Medicare, so that he can say that he, too, gave ground on issues that were difficult for his party. The risk is that he will listen to his inner bipartisan.

That would be a huge mistake. The Republicans have been unmasked for who they are. The best thing Obama can do is to continue to hold the high ground of this debate. The Republican position is entirely at odds with the vast majority of voters. If Obama doesn’t fold a winning hand, eventually the Republicans will have to come to him.

Eugene Robinson: Is this the planet we want to leave behind?

You might not have noticed that another round of U.N. climate talks is under way, this time in Doha, Qatar. You also might not have noticed that we’re barreling toward a “world . . . of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions.” Here in Washington, we’re too busy to pay attention to such trifles.

We’re too busy arguing about who gets credit or blame for teeny-weeny changes in the tax code. Meanwhile, evidence mounts that the legacy we pass along to future generations will be a parboiled planet.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: In Fiscal Cliff Talks, Republicans Have Nowhere to Run

Right-wingers are in an uproar over the White House’s budget offer, which John Boehner says left him “flabbergasted.” Outraged pundits like Joe Scarborough, Charles Krauthammer, and Newt Gingrich are saying that Republicans should “walk away” from negotiations.  Boehner has come close to that position himself, saying of the talks: “We’re nowhere.”

With all due respect, Sir: Speak for yourself.

Democrats are somewhere – somewhere very specific. They’re where the voters are, with a program that includes short-term stimulus spending and relatively modest tax increases for higher levels of income.  And yet the Republicans are threatening to run from the will of the electorate, a will that was expressed very clearly this November.

But where, in the words of the old song, are they gonna run to?

What does the drama in Washington over the “fiscal cliff” have to do with strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza?

Everything.

Jobs are slowly returning to America, but most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that seven out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains. That’s why the median wage keeps dropping, especially for the 80 percent of the workforce that’s paid by the hour.

It also part of the reason why the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to 15 percent in 2011. More than 46 million Americans now live below the poverty line.

Ralph Nader: The Gift of a Sustainable Economy

As the end of the year approaches, so does the biggest consumer rush of the year, as millions flock to the stores and online vendors for the latest TVs, gadgets, trendy toys, clothes and more. The Friday after Thanksgiving, now popularly known as “Black Friday” has, in recent years, been hyped beyond the bounds of decency by marketers hoping to motivate thousands of people across the country to line up outside of stores in the wee hours of the morning in hope of securing discounts on big ticket items. One could even make the case that Thanksgiving is now overshadowed by the next-day shopping extravaganza — in some communities, stores even opened on Thursday night, so intrepid shoppers could leave their holiday festivities and get right to it. And don’t forget about “Cyber Monday” just days later, for those inclined to get their deals online.

The holidays, once considered a sacred time for family and celebration, have been hijacked by big companies sending out a message to the American people, playing on an endless loop from as early as November 1st all the way to the New Year: “Buy, buy, buy!” Think of all of those products that millions of Americans are purchasing as gifts for their friends and family. Where were they manufactured? Who profits from their sale? What happens to them when they break or become obsolete?

George Zornick: Why Raising the Eligibility Age is the ‘Single Worst Idea’ for Medicare Reform

Most of what’s happening now in the fiscal cliff saga is just posturing-each side is trying to appear open to compromise while at the same time assuring its base that sacred principles will be respected.

But this morning, Politico reported what could be the early contours of an actual deal that’s taking shape behind the scenes. There’s a huge caveat to this story, written by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, because it couldn’t be any more vaguely sourced. Allen and VandeHei refer only to “top officials,” “veterans of this budget fight,” and so on, so it’s impossible to discern who is feeding them this information and why.

But assuming for a moment it’s true, there are some details sure to give progressives indigestion. In exchange for Republicans agreeing to tax increases-including rate hikes-on the top two percent of earners, this is what is allegedly being talked about for entitlement reform: [..]

John Nichols: Sorry, Erskine, America Rejected Simpson-Bowles

Erskine Bowles, who is sort of a Democrat, met Wednesday with House Speaker John Boehner to help Republicans promote proposals to cut entitlements, as part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

This is the right place for Bowles, who has long maintained a mutual-admiration society with House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. The former Clinton White House chief of staff has always been in the corporate conservative camp when it comes to debates about preserving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It’s good that he and Boehner have found one another. Let the Republicans advocate for the cuts proposed by Bowles and his former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, his Republican co-conductor on the train wreck that produced the so-called “Simpson-Bowles” deficit reduction plan.

After all, despite the media hype, Simposon-Bowles has always been a non-starter with the American people.

What’s the best way to pressure Republicans into agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class while ending them for the wealthy?

The president evidently believes it’s to scare average Americans about how much additional taxes they’ll pay if the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule at the end of the year. He plans to barnstorm around the country, sounding the alarm. [..]

So rather than stoking middle-class fears about the cliff, the White House ought to be doing the opposite — reassuring most Americans they can survive the fall. To utilize his trump card effectively, Obama needs to convince Republicans that the middle class is willing to jump.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: If Fighting for the Majority Is ‘Radical,’ Call Me Radical

An extremist Web site called WorldNetDaily says that the Campaign For America’s Future, where I am a Senior Fellow, is “radical.” They’re worked up about our Wage Class War Web site, which documents 2012’s successful class-based political campaigns and promotes this winning strategy in future elections.

In the hallucinogenic haze that is today’s far right, apparently it’s “radical” to promote ideas and policies supported by most American voters — including, in many cases, most Republicans.

Agreeing with Republican voters isn’t really radical, of course. So who, exactly, thinks “Wage Class War” is unreasonable?

E. J. Dionne: Ignore Grover (and Learn From Him)

Here’s the first lesson from the early skirmishing over ways to avoid the fiscal cliff: Democrats and liberals have to stop elevating Grover Norquist, the anti-government crusader who wields his no-tax pledge as a nuclear weapon, into the role of a political Superman.

Pretending that Norquist is more powerful than he is allows Republicans to win acclaim they haven’t earned yet. Without making a single substantive concession, they get loads of praise just for saying they are willing to ignore those old pledges to Grover. You can give him props as a PR genius. Like Ke$ha or Beyonce, he is widely known here by only one name. But kudos for an openness to compromise should be reserved for Republicans who put forward concrete proposals to raise taxes.

The corollary is that progressives should be unafraid to draw their own red lines. If you doubt this is a good idea, just look at how effective Norquist has been. Outside pressure from both sides is essential for a balanced deal.

Joe Baker: Don’t Cut Medicare Benefits — Tackle Drug Prices

As the approach of the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” nears, many advocates nationwide are making this message clear: Medicare benefit cuts are not an option. In a letter to the president and Congress, AARP states, “As we move forward, it is clear that older Americans want the focus of the debate to be on reducing overall health costs and not simply targeting Medicare and Medicaid for budget cuts.” Just days after the election, a collective of the largest and most powerful progressive voices ran a Washington Post advertisement to the president and Congress that included, “No cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security benefits or shifting costs to beneficiaries or the states,” as one of five guiding principles for reducing the federal deficit. Medicare Rights Center joined 146 national organizations in support of this very same message. [..]

The federal government already negotiates with pharmaceutical companies for drug rebates in the Medicaid program. Up until the creation of Medicare Part D — Medicare prescription drug coverage offered by private plans — these Medicaid rebates applied to those dually eligible for the Medicare and Medicaid program. A 2011 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that the cost of the top 100 drugs for dually eligible beneficiaries was 30 percent higher under Medicare than it would have been were Medicaid rebates still applicable.

I’m trying to remain optimistic that the President and congressional Democrats will hold their ground over the next month as we approach the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

But leading those negotiations for the White House is outgoing Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner, whom Monday’s Wall Street Journal described as a “pragmatic deal maker” because of “his long relationship with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, for whom balancing the budget was a priority over other Democratic touchstones.” [..]

If “pragmatic deal maker,” as the Journal describes Geithner, means someone who believes any deal with Republicans is better than no deal, and deficit reduction is more important than job creation, we could be in for a difficult December.

Jon Nichols: Don’t Eliminate the Filibuster, Restore It

Historically, the filibuster existed as a protection against the silencing of the minority. Under the rules of the Senate, a member or group of members who did not have the votes to prevent approval of a piece of legislation could demand to be heard in opposition. Ideally, the traditional theory went, this avenue of dissent could prevent a rush to judgment.

But, in recent years, the filibuster has not been used to raise voices of dissent. Instead, it has been used to block votes on critical pieces of legislation, to make it harder for the president to advance even the most popular proposals and to undermine the basic premises of the principle of advice and consent.

What to do? Bring back the filibuster as it has historically been understood.

Amy Goodman: Our Climate Future and the Doha Summit

The annual United Nations climate summit has convened, this year in Doha, the capital of the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, on the Arabian Peninsula. Dubbed “COP 18,” an army of bureaucrats, business people and environmentalists are gathered ostensibly to limit global greenhouse-gas emissions to a level that scientists say will contain the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit), and perhaps stave off global climate catastrophe. If past meetings are any indication, national self-interest on the part of the world’s largest polluters, paramount among them the United States, will trump global consensus.

“We want our children to live in an America … that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet,” President Barack Obama proclaimed in his victory speech on Nov. 6 this year, just over a week after Superstorm Sandy devastated New York City and much of New Jersey, killing more than 100 people. These are fine aspirations. The problem is, action is needed now to avert the very scenario that President Obama has said he wants to avoid. The United States, which remains the greatest polluter in world history, stands as one of the biggest impediments to a rational global program to stem global warming.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal Is Wall Street’s Latest Scam

It’s like a Woodstock for plutocrats, or an Avengers for the avaricious: The CEOs of America’s largest corporations have banded together to lecture us on the importance of debt reduction. And despite their lack of qualifications and their very obvious self-interest, the media can’t get enough of them.

Why? They’re not experts in economic policy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many of them got where they are by persuading people to buy overpriced crap that’s bad for them. So a better way to look at this seemingly endless PR campaign would be to say: There they go again.

And yet their cynical campaign continues to capture national venues like 60 Minutes and conduct local blitzes in areas like Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Reporters are even hounding Warren Buffett — a CEO with much deeper economic knowledge — with the words of a less-informed and more self-interested colleague.

Think of it as Wall Street’s latest scam. If you liked toxic investments and the 2008 financial crisis, you’ll love their deficit deal.

(Yes, that Cherie Blair. TMC)

All over the world, the infrastructure of justice is failing women. In some cases, it is the laws themselves that legitimise discrimination – whether on property rights, freedom of movement or women’s control over their own bodies. In many more societies, however, the problems stem from a justice system which fails to recognise the informal and often unconscious bias against women. [..]

It is not enough to put the right laws in place to root out discrimination, important as this is. We also have to find the commitment, knowledge and resources to enforce them fairly. And crucially, we need to change attitudes, though that can be harder to bring about than changes in the law. Yet one often leads to the other and both are needed to deliver real change throughout society.

So what is working? It is important to note the progress around the world and how it is being achieved.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Governor Cuomo’s Choice

Democrats are still celebrating big Election Day victories, and not just in the White House. The party took back many state legislative seats seized by Tea Partiers in 2010, and added to majorities in already blue states. In California and Illinois, Democrats achieved legislative super-majorities, removing some of the last obstacles to enacting a progressive agenda in two of our largest states. [..]

Which brings us to the current conundrum. One would have thought that a Democratic governor would have worked hard to reverse the Tea Party’s 2010 gains in his state. You’d think he’d be working even harder to ensure that no renegade legislators “flip” to the GOP. You would hope that a governor with his eyes on the White House would prefer to cooperate with the diverse progressive legislators of the Democratic/Working Families Party majority rather than the all-white, nearly all-male moderate-to-conservative GOP minority.

Annette Bernhardt and Dorian Warren: The Missing Living Wage Agenda

Now that the election is over, our hope is that we can finally move beyond the vacuous invocations of an imaginary middle class where everyone is in the same boat. It’s time to get real about the concrete policies needed to take on the multiple inequalities that run deep through the U.S. labor market. And we’re not talking about the “skills mismatch,” another red herring routinely flung into this debate by both sides (including by President Obama as recently as the last week of the campaign).

What we’re talking about is a broad, multi-year agenda to give America’s workers a living wage and voice on the job and to take on the continuing exclusion of workers of color, immigrants, and women from good jobs. The media may have discovered inequality last year with the surprise emergence of Occupy Wall Street, but in truth, there is a 30-year backlog of policies to fix the extreme maldistribution of wages and opportunity in the labor market.

Isabeau Doucet: Canada, The Surprise ‘Pariah’ of the Kyoto Protocol

Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only nation to reject the first one

Of all the delegations in the room in Doha, the Canadians adopt the lowest profile. Some question whether they should be there at all: The country’s first and only Green party MP, Elizabeth May, said: “Having Canada in the room negotiating to weaken the second Kyoto, when we have already signalled that not only will we not be participating in taking on new targets in the second period but we’re legally withdrawn from the protocol, should make us pariahs.”

“I can’t imagine how anybody would want us in the room.”

Canada’s current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 23% over the country’s Kyoto protocol target, and federal government estimates place Canada 28.8% over the target by 2014. Canada is the only country to have repudiated Kyoto, the sole legally binding international policy tool to date to deal with the emissions, and ranks just behind the US and Australia in the table of worst global emitters per capita.

This is because of Canada’s size, its cold climate and its resource-based economy, especially the energy-intensive, carbon-emissions-heavy oil boiled from large swaths of bitumen know as the Alberta tar sands.

If the President’s strategy is to hold his ground and demand from Republicans tax increases on the wealthy, presumably his strongest bargaining position would be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule come January – causing taxes to rise automatically, especially on the wealthy.

So you’d think part of that strategy would be reassure the rest of the public that the fiscal cliff isn’t so bad or so steep, and that at the start of January Democrats will introduce in Congress a middle-class tax cut whose effect is to prevent taxes from rising for most people (thereby forcing Republicans to vote for a tax cut for the middle class or hold it hostage to a tax cut for the wealthy as well).

Eugene Robinson: Cracks in the Anti-Tax Wall

Maybe the fever is breaking. Maybe the delirium is lifting. Maybe Republicans are finally asking themselves: What were we thinking when we put an absurdly unrealistic pledge to a Washington lobbyist ahead of our duty to the American people?

I said maybe. So far, the renunciations of Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” amount to a trickle, not a flood. But we’re seeing the first signs in years that on the question of taxation-one of the fundamental responsibilities of government-the GOP may be starting to recover its senses.

Dean Baker: If the Budget Debate Had a Nate Silver

At this point almost everyone has heard of Nate Silver, the New York Times polling analyst who had all the pundits looking stupid on election night. Silver managed to call every state exactly right. He ignored the gibberish about momentum or voters’ moods and simply focused on the data given by the various polls taken in the final weeks of the campaign.

While Silver’s work has likely permanently transformed election coverage, it is interesting to think about a similar analysis being applied elsewhere — for example, the debate over the budget. Suppose that we had someone focused on actual data involved in the budget debate instead of the silly rhetoric coming from the Republicans and Democrats. [..]

Unfortunately, there is no one like Nate Silver in the budget debates who can force the participants to look at logic and evidence. For the foreseeable future the budget debate will be dominated by the Karl Roves of both political parties. This is too bad, because the Karl Roves in the budget debate don’t just want to mislead us about Governor Romney’s election prospects; they want to take away our Social Security and Medicare.

Frank Bruni: Is Grover Finally Over?

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina dissed Norquist on ABC’s “This Week,” saying that “when you’re $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Representative Peter King of New York also stressed that the country’s current fiscal woes trumped vows made in less debt-ridden times, and over on “Fox News Sunday,” Senator John McCain signaled a receptiveness to new revenue, another dagger to Norquist’s dark heart. [..]

There’s no place for absolutists and absolutism in a democracy, which is designed for give-and-take, for compromise. That’s one of the lessons of “Lincoln,” which moviegoers are thronging to and intellectuals are swooning for precisely because it illuminates and validates the intrinsic and purposeful messiness of our system. It exalts flexibility. It venerates pragmatism.

And I hope that Republicans and Democrats alike will keep those principles in mind as we approach the so-called fiscal cliff. Norquist certainly hasn’t, but then he bears no responsibility for governing and is concerned less with voters and their welfare than with those of us in the news media, who have been too quick to summon him, rewarding his staged and reliable vividness.

As President Obama gets closer to making his deal with the Republicans on the budget, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the fiscal cliff is an artificially contrived trap. Were it not for the two Bush wars and the two Bush tax cuts and the House Republican games of brinksmanship with the routine extension of the debt ceiling, there would be no “fiscal cliff.”

Rather, there would be a normal, relatively short-term increase in the deficit resulting from a deep recession and the drop in government revenues that it produces. When the economy recovered, the deficit would return to sustainable levels. In the meantime, these deficits are necessary and useful to maintain public spending as a tonic to the economy.

In addition, there are two entirely extraneous questions that do not belong in this debate — whether Social Security requires any long-term adjustment to assure its solvency, and if so, what kind; and how to restrain the long-term growth in Medicare spending.

Warren E. Buffett: A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

SUPPOSE that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. “This is a good one,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.”

Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist.

Between 1951 and 1954, when the capital gains rate was 25 percent and marginal rates on dividends reached 91 percent in extreme cases, I sold securities and did pretty well. In the years from 1956 to 1969, the top marginal rate fell modestly, but was still a lofty 70 percent – and the tax rate on capital gains inched up to 27.5 percent. I was managing funds for investors then. Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered.

Leslie Savan: The $250,000 Question: Poll Shows Obama’s Tax Plan Is Widely Misunderstood

For the last four years, President Obama has been pushing his plan to raise tax rates on people’s income over $250,000, but a new poll indicates that most people still don’t understand one of the plan’s most basic concepts. [..]

Here’s the Obama plan in brief. The Bush tax cuts would be extended for households with an annual income under $250,000 (or $200,000 for individuals), but the tax cuts would expire on any income above $250,000. That means, for example, if you make $300,000, your tax rate would rise a few percentage points, to the Clinton-era rates, but only on the portion above $250,000; in this case, only on $50,000. Bottom line: no one-not a billionaire, not someone making $251,000-would have to pay more taxes on that first $250,000.

There’s a widespread misconception, however, and it’s causing a lot of unnecessary fear. It’s the faulty belief that if your income is above $250,000, you’d have to pay the higher rates on all your income, as if you were suddenly being moved entirely into a higher tax bracket. That is wrong.

Benjamin Strauss and Robert Kopp: Rising Seas, Vanishing Coastlines

The oceans have risen and fallen throughout Earth’s history, following the planet’s natural temperature cycles. Twenty thousand years ago, what is now New York City was at the edge of a giant ice sheet, and the sea was roughly 400 feet lower. But as the last ice age thawed, the sea rose to where it is today.

Now we are in a new warming phase, and the oceans are rising again after thousands of years of stability. As scientists who study sea level change and storm surge, we fear that Hurricane Sandy gave only a modest preview of the dangers to come, as we continue to power our global economy by burning fuels that pollute the air with heat-trapping gases.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Those are the opening words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and they seem eerily prescient today because once again this country finds itself increasingly divided and pondering the future of this great union and the very ideas of liberty and equality for all.

The gap is growing between liberals and conservatives, the rich and the not rich, intergenerational privilege and new-immigrant power, patriarchy and gender equality, the expanders of liberty and the withholders of it. And that gap, which has geographic contours – the densely populated coastal states versus the less densely populated states of the Rocky Mountains, Mississippi Delta and Great Plains – threatens the very concept of a United States and is pushing conservatives, left quaking after this month’s election, to extremes.

Stephen Rohde: Will President Obama Restore the Rule of Law During His Second Term?

Progressives, civil libertarians, faith leaders and Democrats by and large held their noses during the 2012 presidential campaign regarding the president’s abject failure to restore the Rule of Law and worse yet his dangerous expansion of unilateral executive power, fearing far worse if the right-wing of the Republican Party took over the White House and, in addition to implementing other catastrophic policies, secured the power to solidify a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for generations to come.

But that disaster has been avoided. And now everyone who cares about the future of the Constitution must organize, advocate and demand that President Obama spend a considerable share of his political capital to fulfill his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

For if he is excused by the rest of us from his solemn duty, we should tremble over the prospect that the unrestrained executive powers, born in the Bush administration, to subject citizens and non-citizens alike to ever widening abuses, including unwarranted surveillance, indefinite detention, torture and targeted killings, which have since gone unchecked and indeed have taken root and been cultivated during the Obama administration, will spread and grow even stronger in future administrations, blossoming with poisonous thorns and unbreakable branches, choking off constitutional rights, suffocating dissent and strangling democracy.

Ana Marie Cox: Republicans’ choice: fantasy follies or reality-based relevance

The GOP’s electoral future hangs on whether it prefers the ‘conservative entertainment complex’ to America as it finds it

Republicans’ belief in the feel-good Fox News fantasies of what “real America” wanted and believed helped them lose the election. Would Romney have lost if his base didn’t stubbornly insist that polls were rigged, that almost half the country was looking for a handout (and the other half was angry about it), and that government exists only to coddle or sabotage (not so much the “Nanny state” as Mommie Dearest)? The “conservative entertainment complex”, as columnist David Frum put it, promulgated a view of the American electorate that wasn’t just objectively false, in terms of polled support, but to which they objected. That is, they didn’t just get wrong how much support Romney had; they told a story about American voters that Americans themselves didn’t believe.

You can’t win an election by appealing solely to a class you’ve arbitrarily designated as the “makers” – there are too many of us who don’t believe getting back from your government is “taking”. And when it comes to civil rights, you can’t woo voters with a description of a future they’re not part of. Ultimately, we didn’t want to be the kind of country Mitt Romney and the Republican party told us we were.

Jan Lee: Black Friday: Deciphering the Importance of Buy Nothing Day

For many Americans, Black Friday is a special but important part of the holiday season. A time in which the warm, appreciative glow of a family Thanksgiving is replaced by insatiable deals at midnight store openings; when hot turkey sandwiches, hot coffee and cold pie are savored all the more for the comfort they provide during long shopping lines, brutal crowds and desperate searches for those key items on the Christmas list. It’s a time that comes but once a year for both the consumer and the store owner, who each know that a profitable Black Friday may determine the financial outcome of the rest of the holiday season.

But for a small but growing sector of the population, Black Friday represents a different vision of holiday symbolism: a time to buy nothing.

It’s a time for visiting friends, renewing ties and regaining one’s perspective. It’s a time symbolized by pot-luck dinners, reflective discussions about sustainable living and the beneficial prospects of investing in a sharing economy.