Driven to the brink of their sanity by the constant warnings from politicians over what would happen if we went over the fiscal cliff thousands of Americans have gone ahead and jumped over the brink of the fiscal cliff on their own.
Still reeling from a long, difficult election year, they had just begun to recover from campaign shock only to almost immediately be whapped with the threat of economic disaster.
This, added to the stress caused by a long lasting recession has plunged the minds of the average American into the psycho range. Given the current American tendency to follow the leader like sheep has given them lemming-like suicidal tendencies.
The constant bickering and back and forth trysts between the Democrats and Republicans have kept the nation on a bed of nails as they jousted over the issue. The Democrats, putting up a good face for their lower income constituents, continued pretending to be the champions for the underdog.
The Republicans, always shills for the rich and few, bluffed hard to pretend that whatever was good for the champagne set was good for the poor also put on an act worthy of The Ringling Brothers Circus. Apparently the mass bungee-less jumping by their morbid minded constituents did not phase the legislators as they kept on with their endless checkers match.
A verdict from the Presidency finally changed all that. A decree from Obama stated that if the problem were not taken care of by the 3rd day of January that the increase in taxpayers taxes would be taken out of the Senators and Legislators benefits and pay packages. The bill was then written, approved, voted, approved and put into action in a record 14 ½ minutes.
This stratagem will become a regular feature of Congress in the future.
I wish we had gone over the cliff. I feel the president would have had more leverage. I feel the deal reached was a weak-tea half-measure at best.