Much Ado About Taxes

"It's not how you won or lost. It's how you played the game."

-- Grantland Rice.

"Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing." -- Vince Lombardi

News item: Seven NFL coaches fired after a losing season. 

  Add the Fiscal Cliff story to those about the Mayan Calendar
and the Millennium Bug as impending disasters that didn't happen.
   The Mayan Calendar calculated mid-December, the Winter Solstice, as the end of a 5,125 year cycle, and the beginning of a new one. But fear-mongers took it to be the end of the world.
   The Millennium Bug supposedly would crash all computers at the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2000. It was never specified which time zone, whether New York City EST, London GMT, or Hong Kong on the other side of the International Date Line, where it's already tomorrow, or anywhere else on the planet.

   Congress sidestepped the fiscal molehill that could have brought many financial structures to their knees, mostly from fear. What became known as a "fiscal cliff" sent worries of imminent disaster ricocheting through the media and around the world, carrying monetary hysteria with it.
   It was the latest example of the politics of fear that has infected much of the media, as political activists on both sides stoked the fires of controversy to gain some undefined advantage at the expense of the opposition.
   The maneuvering had less to do with accomplishment than with advantage; less to do with getting something done than with making the other guy look bad; less to do with governing than with winning elections.

   The bottom line is this: Unless you make more than $400,000 yearly (and few of us do), very little changes.
   Except fees for your accountant.