This is no way to govern.

[LibertyBell7]

37. On most points, I agree...but there would have been a price for going over

First — yes. Absolutely. This is no way to govern. More on this later.

Second, the cost to going over the cliff: Roughly 2 million unemployed would have had their relief checks cut off starting today. Though estimates I've seen vary quite a bit, and it wouldn't have pulled the drain plug all at once, that's something in the ballpark of $70,000,000 that would not be funneled into grocery stores and/or to utilities in one month. And people would have grown hungry or cold in that time.

That's a cost.

Back to the governance problem:

In shorthand, I call all Rethugs and Blue Dog DINOs Corporazis, and they are economic terrorists intent on destroying democracy. They are waging war against our methods of governance and, until we who are not Corporazis recognize their intent (waging war), we cannot prevail. You have to name a thing before you can gain control over it.

From a past voice, we hear this perspective:

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

–Louis Brandeis
U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)

Military leaders tell us, "You don't negotiate with terrorists." And until these Corporazis are labeled by their tactics — including that they are systematically pulling apart our democratic republic (everything from making congress and the courts into dysfunctional messes on the federal level to voter suppression in the states) — we will be unable to staunch the bleeding wounds they are inflicting and turn the tide.

It's time to choose the red or the blue pill, to choose to wake up in the Matrix of their making and fight back, or continue to slumber until they have completed creating America, Inc., where corporate rights trump those of We The People every time.