I love it when the press invents a term that doesn’t actually describe what’s happening. The “fiscal cliff” is just the latest example. Do you remember “mop up operation” during the Viet Nam war? Or the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”?
It’s entirely possible that what we’re watching in Washington right now is a fiscal mop up incident disguised as a cliff operation. Another way to say this is that the rich will inevitably come out ahead, and the middle classes and the poor are going over the edge. And this is hardly a histrionic statement–the proposed cuts to social programs that the Obama administration have placed on the table will inevitably be exceeded whether there is a deal or not. The name of the game is really darker than “the fiscal cliff”–especially since the “cliff” doesn’t really exist but the poor will in fact go under the bus.
Patricia Wright’s excellent article “The Fiscal Cliff Impacts People with Disabilities” pinpoints how proposed cuts to IDEA and Medicaid will impact education for children with special needs. Even job programs for people with disabilities in the department of defense are at risk.
This is not a fiscal cliff: it’s a “defund education and send them into the streets to beg” “Les Miserables” Redux. That is, of course just me being uncharacteristically polite. Here’s an excellent snippet from a fine article by Steve Vogel
In the end it probably doesn’t matter what we call it–this is just cruelty, aided and abetted by irresponsible mainstream reporting.
Planet of the Blind 