Welcome to the seventh annual homage (which sounds so much nicer than "blatant ripoff," don't you think?) to the television show The McLaughlin Group, since they have the most extensive year-end award category list of anyone around. Since "extensive" is my middle name (well, not really, although I do tend to wander off into the parenthetical wilderness at times, do I not?), such a long list fits right in here.

Before we begin, we have a few quick things to run down that can't be ignored. The first is the fact that this may be our last column, due to TEOTWAWKI (or, to the less savvy, "the end of the world as we know it"). My only thought, should it be my final one, is that perhaps the Mayans were fans of the band Rush -- look right there in the date... 12/21/12! Heh. Today is a good day to dig out a short story Arthur C. Clarke wrote almost 60 years ago, "The Nine Billion Names Of God," especially if you've never read it before.

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Instead of a column today, I'll be working hard reviewing 2012 for tomorrow's big year-end awards column (see previous "Program Note" if you'd like to offer up nominees).

Rather than reading a column from my keyboard today, though, you can hear the interview I did this morning on the Uprising! show on KPFK radio (part of the Pacifica Network) in Los Angeles. For all the folks who were unable to hear me while driving to work this morning on L.A.'s freeways, you can hear the show at the Uprising Radio webpage (click on "Listen to this Segment" to hear the whole interview). You can also hear the interview from the Uprising Radio Facebook page, or at the KPFK site (click on "Play" or "Download" for the "Uprising! -- 12/20/12" list item).

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I realize that watching the fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington has been likened to stylized Kabuki theater more than once by pundits far and wide, but I'm going to push this metaphor for all it is worth today. You might even say I'm going to push it right over a cliff, but that would be a horrendous metaphor mixture indeed.

We, the audience, sit here watching the last bits of Act III of The Great Fiscal Cliff Tragicomedy. We'll start with a quick recap of the action you may have missed (because you were standing in line at the bar, or perhaps parking your car).

In Act I, or "The Laughably Short Memory of the Media," the Media Chorus announces loudly and with great alarum that the nation is on the very brink of the Fiscal Cliff. Garments are rent, on air, and bewailings abound. Ignored in all of this thunderous noise is the fact that the Media Chorus has been completely and utterly ignoring this issue all year long during the presidential campaign. Not one peep was heard before Election Day about Fiscal Cliffery, but now it is the most important and dire issue the universe has ever thrown at our fair country. What will happen to our upstanding citizens? Will we go "over the cliff" or not? Will a global economic depression begin one minute after midnight on New Year's? One question, in the midst of all the apocalyptic rhetoric, is never asked: If this is such a honking big deal, then why did the media not discuss it once during the election?

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It's going to be a light week here at the site, folks. But it'll be a week of quality if not quantity. For two reasons. We have an announcement to make for the first, and an invitation for nominations for the second.

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We're all talking about the same thing today. We are, indeed, having a "national conversation." The subject is tragic, which is why it has everyone so focused. Another shooting rampage, another town consumed by grief, all played out on the nation's television screens. But precisely because everyone's talking about it, I find that I don't have much to add to the main discussion. All I have are a few fragments that are mostly peripheral in nature, and mostly to do with the news media.

To begin with, I have to add my voice to the rising chorus demanding a little "media control" (I'll leave the gun control arguments to others, at least for today). While I'm a First Amendment enthusiast myself, I can't see any valid reason for any media outlet to interview a 6-year-old after such a tragedy. None. No valid editorial or journalistic reason whatsoever. The public's vaunted "right to know" doesn't even begin to cover it. Stop interviewing small children -- even with their parents' permission. It's exploitative and it's not journalism. It is rank sensationalism. So stop it. Getting a seven-year-old to express his feelings on camera should become a thing of the past in American journalism -- like the public naming of rape victims, for example. Ethical standards change and get better over time. This is one area that needs some immediate attention.

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The end times are upon us! Maya Rudolph said so, right?

What's that? Mayans? Not Maya Rudolph? Man, I've got to start paying closer attention to these things. I'm still trying to figure out what sort of omen it is that Paul McCartney performed with Nirvana on 12/12/12, personally. Maybe not the end times, but certainly the strange times.

Ahem. I would say "all kidding aside" but we've got so much silliness at the top of the program this week that it wouldn't be strictly accurate. Because no matter what happens with that whole Mayan thing, this will indeed be the last of these columns of 2012. For the next two weeks we will instead be running our annual two-part homage to the McLaughlin Awards, and stating our picks in all the categories, as we cast our eyes backwards over the year that was. Feel free to offer up your own suggestions for the "best" and "worst" of 2012 in the comments, as we've got a lot of categories to fill! For now, though, we'll just have to wish everyone a "Merry Cliffmas!" and watch how the whole fiscal fight works out for the next two weeks along with everyone else.

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Two stories on taxes caught my eye today, so this column will really just point you to these two bits of news, with only a few peripheral comments. Just to prepare you in advance.

Earlier this week, I suggested some reasonable ways to restore a modicum of fairness to the tax code. One of the responses I got asked about the dollar amounts some of these taxes might bring in -- in other words, challenging me to make a stronger case by adding "...which will bring in X billion dollars in revenue over the next ten years" to the taxes I was calling for.

Well, ask and ye shall receive, at least on one of them. Adding a small transactions tax to speculative financial transactions (0.25 percent is the figure most often suggested) could raise quite a bit of money, it turns out.

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Is John Boehner just worried about his leadership position? Is he really putting his own re-election as Speaker of the House before all else?

Democrats are beginning to use this line of attack against Boehner, much to the delight of their base. If Boehner is seen as nothing more than self-serving in the fiscal cliff showdown, it's certainly not going to do either him or his party any good with the voting public. This won't immediately matter to Boehner (if the charge is true), because the election for the speakership doesn't involve the voters but rather the incoming House members.

Since nobody can see into the mind of Boehner but Boehner himself, it's kind of pointless to dwell on his inner motivations here. But it is worth taking a look at the options he has available to him, and consider whether any of these would help or hurt his chances of retaining control of his party in the House. Of course, this is all sheer speculation, and we're not even going to offer any odds, but here are Boehner's major possible routes out of the fiscal cliff discussions, in chronological order.

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The news that the Supreme Court will be taking up two important gay marriage cases was expected, but nonetheless created a burst of commentary. But I can't help but wonder if people are getting the cases slightly backwards. In short, I think the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) case is going to prove to be more important than the Proposition 8 case from California.

Before I begin, I must admit that I haven't taken the time to read each of the case's legal filings, so I'm depending on how others have described the cases for facts. If I get any of the details or nuances wrong, I apologize in advance. Also, I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on the internet. With legal caveats in place, let's move on.

Most of the focus so far, in the commentary I've seen or read, has been on the Proposition 8 case from California. This is a sort of reverse-twist case, and is unique. But people looking for sweeping rulings from this case from the Supremes are likely to be disappointed because, in my opinion, a narrow ruling is much more likely. In the DOMA case, however, most people are almost dismissive of it, since it is such a narrow challenge to the DOMA law. But I think a much more sweeping ruling is likely in this one.

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Due to the political courageousness of President Obama (there is simply no other way to put it), the folks inside the Beltway are finally having a serious discussion about taxing the rich. Obama is not only strongly fighting for higher tax rates on the higher-income earners, but he was the one who put the subject front and center in the election season -- when he could easily have punted it to a non-election year.

But the "tax the rich" policies so far being discussed (at least the ones that leak out to the public) are laughably timid and tame, when you really examine the big picture. So far, what is making Republicans howl is President Obama's plan to end the Bush tax cuts on the top two marginal income tax rates, which would raise them from 33 percent to 36 percent, and from 35 to 39.6 percent. Seen one way, that's impressive, since tax rates haven't gone up in such a fashion since President Clinton's first year in office. But seen another, it's not all that radical at all.

Consider the fact that nothing Obama is doing is going to "fix" the problem of Warren Buffett paying a lower tax rate than his secretary -- a problem Obama has repeatedly said he'd like to tackle. On "entitlements reform," only a few lonely voices crying in the wilderness are suggesting ending the most regressive federal tax around, by scrapping the cap on income for Social Security payroll taxes. Also seemingly forgotten in this debate is the proposal for a "millionaires' tax" or a "transactions tax." The real measure of whether Democrats and Republicans are both selling smoke and mirrors is whether they permanently fix the Alternative Minimum Tax -- again, a subject which has barely been mentioned.

If we're really going to get serious about taxing the rich, why not... well... tax the rich? Chances for changing the tax code for upper-income folks don't come around all that often (it's been twenty years since the last one, remember), so why not push not only for higher rates, but to fix some of the most glaring ways our tax code favors those with monstrous incomes. Let's take a look at a few of these ideas, one by one.

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