But I do wonder about it. And so in the short term, meaning right now, I'm wondering about where we'll be a month from now, as we try to navigate this slippery path along the top of the so-called fiscal cliff. It's a difficult scenario to imagine all those programs getting slashed and just about everyone's taxes going up.
The hard truth is, as the New York Times reported today, most Americans pay far less in total taxes (federal, state and local) nowadays than they would have paid in 1980.
So far, both sides, despite the election results are grasping on to the positions they've always held. Will there be a compromise? Will the Bush-era tax cuts expire on everyone but those making more than $250,000 a year (or, just over qualifying income for rent-stabilization apartments in New York – just sayin')? Will crucial programs that provide safety nets for so many be slashed?
I'm not good, as I say, at predicting the future. So I won't. But I will predict that it will be an interesting month coming up.
We'll have the latest from the muddy top of the fiscal cliff, tonight at 11.
Also at 11, we'll have the latest on the disaster that is still Sandy nearly 5 weeks after it happened. FEMA today acknowledging that it's a bit stumped about what to do with all these homeless people – asking for "maritime" housing units. So lemme get this right FEMA wants to house people on the water? The same water that got people into this crisis in the first place?
Oy.
And we're at the funeral of the late great but troubled boxing champ Hector "Macho" Camacho. The wake is tonight, the funeral tomorrow at a church in East Harlem. Camacho with a sordid past of drug and alcohol and thievin' problems was shot in Puerto Rico. A sad ending to a strange life.
We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Meteorologist Lee Goldberg's weekend AccuWeather forecast, and Rob Powers with the night's sports. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.
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