The latter battle is considerably obscured behind layers of political warfare back and forth over the past two years and more. But make no mistake, while the Democrats simply want some rather limited tax increases - returning to the Clinton-era rates for a tiny sliver of high-income Americans - what Republicans are after is a systematic dismantling of the welfare state, turning public programmes like Social Security and Medicare into private programmes, with the federal government staying on as the collection agency only.
And thus, the "grand bargain" that President Obama is so obsessed with will inevitably mean taking the first few steps down the road to dismantling the welfare state that Republicans have already mapped out. That is what's really at stake in the battle over the so-called "fiscal cliff".
There is a distinct parallel here with the gun safety debate, which also pits a small minority - the gun industry lobby and its front group, the NRA - against the vast majority of the American people. The parallel between these two political battles is anything but superficial. In fact, they can be grouped in terms of six broad points of similarity, as described below, all of which have their origins in the fact that they pit the interests of the oligarchs against the well-being of the people as a whole. Here then, are the points of similarity in how these battles are played out:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/20131195115777478.html
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."