It is time for people in Washington to acknowledge it is impossible to get a truly simplified tax code in this current political climate. It is simply inconsistent with the other driving ideological preferences in Washington, which includes the idea of very low federal “spending”, low taxes, and a Congress that plays an active role in setting policy. It is possible to fulfill two or three of these goals at once, but not all four.

President Obama’s new budget is a prefect example of how a truly simple tax code is incompatible with the top goals of the two parties. The overview calls for making the “tax code more simple and fair” by closing tax loopholes. Yet, just a few lines later it calls for multiple new tax incentives to promote several proposals.

While Washington debates cutting Social Security and Medicare the facts are in on the “recovery” – it’s a bust. Not only has unemployment remained historically high – 7.7% officially, 23% by the old metrics – but poverty has spiked to historic highs.

The presidential election is over but the Obama campaign operation hasn’t been shut down. It still exists in a more limited form, actively engaging in public outreach and encouraging constituent lobbying. What the Obama campaign is specifically pushing for at this moment, however, offers a telling insight into the thinking of the administration about the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Almost every “proposal” from Mitt Romney on important issues is vague and lacking in real details that they are almost impossible to actually evaluate. But despite the lack of details, the Tax Policy Center has done their best to try to analyze the impact of Romney’s tax plan based on the few elements Romney has said are in it. Their finding is that there is no way Romney can fulfill his plan to lower the tax rates in a revenue neutral manner which wouldn’t result in the rich paying less and the middle class paying more.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has put hard numbers to Nancy Pelosi’s shift on the Bush tax cuts. So now we know specifically that raising the dividing line on the tax cuts from $250,000 to $1 million gives back $366 billion in revenue over a ten-year time frame. This is in line with Citizens for Tax Justice’s calculations of 43% less revenue from the shift. CTJ also pointed out that half of that revenue would go to millionaires, since they would get a tax break on all of their earnings from $250,000 to $1 million. So that results in a $183 billion gift to millionaires.

In 1961, President Eisenhower delivered his now famous farewell address, in which he warned the American people of the dangerous rise of a powerful “military industrial complex” in this country.

Last year, for the 50th anniversary of this prophetic speech, many of the leading thinkers and activists on U.S. militarism and war-making came together for a conference to take stock of how this complex has evolved and what can be done to reign it in. For those who weren’t able to attend, author and activist David Swanson has just published The Military Industrial Complex at 50, an edited collection of the insightful and inspiring remarks that were delivered at this timely event, in addition to several other complimentary essays.

An article in today’s New York Times tells us about two new reports, one from the Rockefeller Institute (RI), the other from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which together tell us about the fiscal health of state and local governments. The RI report gives us data on the amount of tax revenues state and local governments have been collecting — they’re up in many states — while the CBPP report tells us what the states have been doing on the spending side to balance their budgets.

A report today reminds us Newt Gingrich was responsible for securing passage of the huge unpaid for Medicare Drug Act of 2003 that added hundreds of billions to federal debt. Now he’s proposing a massive tax cut that would reward the rich and create over a trillion dollars in annual deficits.

This book is a fast and easy read so you will absorb a ton of well-researched factual knowledge without losing your horse, crawling through the desert, or emptying your canteen. It’s a fun, easy way to learn and understand a whole lot of important information that banksters would prefer you never know and delivered in a way that exposes the hypocrisy of many of the proposed “cures” for our current economic woes. It really is a terrific learning tool and delivers information in a form that even Members of Congress should be able to understand.

David Brooks is really upset: We may have a lost decade because he is sitting there being right, standing in the middle, and the two extremes who control public debate won’t agree with him. But one side did the math, the other didn’t, and neither did Brooks.