Thank you for spending another year at MarkMaynard.com

As your host, I feel as though I’m expected to mark the end of the year by saying something insightful about all of the horrendous shit we’ve lived through these past twelve months, and how, having survived it all, we’re better positioned to move forward into 2013, kicking ass and bringing about positive, progressive change. Unfortunately, though, I’m not feeling it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m demoralized… I think there is potential to make progress… but I just don’t have it in me right now to synthesize everything that’s sloshing around in my tiny brain pan, and present anything approaching a coherent plan for 2013. So, instead, I’m just going to share a single link, which I hope will bring you a little fleeting joy this cold winter night.

Happy New Year.

The link, for those of you who haven’t already clicked it, will transport you to my favorite online radio station, Radio Dismuke.

We can plan the revolution tomorrow. Tonight, let’s sit back, in the dark, sipping our drinks, and enjoying the beautiful music of our great grandparents… as they dreamed of the New Deal.

Something better is on the horizon, my friends.

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11 Comments

  1. Elf
    Posted December 31, 2012 at 11:24 pm | Permalink

    We need to start a local progressive gun club. Nothing will bring about a ban on assault weapons faster than people like us buying them.

  2. anonymous
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 7:00 am | Permalink

    My thoughts this evening are with all of the people out there who have no friends or family to celebrate the holiday with. I know from personal experience how difficult it can be, and I just want to say that I’m thinking of you all. The world can be a cold and cruel place sometimes. Where there’s life, though, there’s potential for change, and hope for something better. Never forget that. Happy New Year.

  3. anonymous
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 7:32 am | Permalink

    And if you have a job that allows you to stay home on New Year’s Day, enjoy it.

    “For most Americans, Christmas week represents about half of the time off we will enjoy all year long. Compared with Australians (at least 4 weeks off, plus 10 public holidays), Brazilians (22 days of paid leave with a 33 percent salary vacation bonus) and the French (at least 5 weeks off and as many as 9 for many public employees), we are seriously bereft. … [T]he United States is the only OECD country that does not require employers to provide even a day of paid leave to its employees.”

    http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/enjoy-the-years-vacation-1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

  4. Meta
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 8:04 am | Permalink

    It’s not exactly the second coming of the New Deal, but the “fiscal cliff” was averted last night. There are many that say the Democrats gave up too much, but I suppose it’s still something to be thankful for, in the same sense that someone who loses as arm in a thrasher should be thankful for not being pulled into the machine completely.

    The Senate approved a bipartisan agreement early Tuesday morning to let income taxes rise sharply for the first time in two decades, fulfilling President Obama’s promise to raise taxes on the rich and avoiding the worst effects of the “fiscal cliff.” The agreement, brokered by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), passed 89 to 8 in a highly unusual New Year’s morning vote. It now heads to the House, where leaders have not guaranteed passage but top officials believe it could win passage in the next few days.

    The agreement primarily targets taxpayers who earn more than $450,000 per year, raising their rates for wages and investment profits. At the same time, the deal would protect more than 100 million households earning less than $250,000 a year from income tax increases scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

    The deal came together barely three hours before the midnight deadline, after negotiators cleared two final hurdles involving the estate tax and automatic spending cuts set to affect the Pentagon and other federal agencies this week.

    Republicans gave in on the spending cuts, known as sequestration, by agreeing to a two-month delay in budget reductions that would be paid for in part with new tax revenue, a condition they had resisted. And the White House made a major concession on the estate tax, agreeing to terms that would permit estates worth as much as $15 million to escape taxation by the end of the decade, Democrats said.

    As Biden rushed to the Capitol to brief Senate Democrats on the deal, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) laid plans for a vote shortly after midnight, when taxes were set to rise for virtually every American.

    “I think we’ll get a very good vote tonight,” a beaming Biden said as he emerged from the meeting with Democrats after nearly two hours. “But happy new year and I’ll see you all maybe tomorrow.”

    Upon Senate ­passage, the measure would go to the House, where Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pledged to bring it to a vote in the coming days. “Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members — and the American people — have been able to review the legislation,” Boehner and other GOP leaders said in a written statement.

    Senior aides predicted the measure would pass the House with bipartisan support. But Boehner’s decision to delay the vote meant the nation would tumble over the cliff at least briefly.

    In addition to dealing with the fiscal crisis, the measure would extend federal farm policies through September, averting an estimated doubling of milk prices. The deal also nixed a set pay raise for members of Congress.

    During a midday event at the White House, Obama praised the emerging agreement even though it would raise only about $600 billion over the next decade by White House estimates — far less than the $1.6 trillion the president had initially sought to extract from the nation’s richest households.

    The agreement “would further reduce the deficit by asking the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to pay higher taxes for the first time in two decades. . . . So that’s progress,” Obama said.

    Read more:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/fiscal-cliff/biden-mcconnell-continue-cliff-talks-as-clock-winds-down/2012/12/31/66c044e2-534d-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html?hpid=z1

  5. Alice Krum
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 11:17 am | Permalink

    Speaking of young, bright people with weapons, have you seen this story out of New York yet?

    “‘They’re well-to-do junkies not terrorists’: Top doctor’s daughter who gave birth after her arrest ‘for weapons and explosives’ is ‘heroin addict’ who had no plans for bomb plot”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255609/Morgan-Gliedman-Aaron-Greene-junkies-terrorists-police-say.html

  6. Steve
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 1:56 pm | Permalink

    I don’t want to detail your beautiful conversation, but I woke up this morning with an incredible hankering for a handjob, and, as I’m new to town, I thought that ask. So who gives the best handjobs in town?

  7. Eel
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 4:11 pm | Permalink

    By “detail” do you mean “derail”?

    As for the best handjobs in town, the local landscape changed considerably with the closing of Ave Maria. No one, in their absence, has stepped up to take a leadership position. Hopefully that will change in 2013.

  8. Posted January 1, 2013 at 7:05 pm | Permalink

    We ended up staying in, listening to guys playing 100 year old Edison wax cylinders, and playing charades by firelight. A new tradition has been born.

  9. Whitmer
    Posted January 1, 2013 at 10:03 pm | Permalink

    I received this from Gretchen Whitmer and thought that you might find it of interest.

    Friends –

    Let’s face it, 2012 was a year full of frustrations inside Michigan’s Capitol. We saw our Speaker of the House admit to playing a role in an election rigging scandal. We watched as our Governor lied to Michigan’s public and locked them out of the Capitol as he pushed through his politically fueled agenda. And we spoke out in protest time and time again as legislation was passed that took money away from middle-class families, kids and our communities to give it away instead to those already at the top.

    Yet as difficult a year as 2012 was, ringing in the new year today provides us with an opportunity to focus on hope once again and discuss the positive action that Michigan must now take to make 2013 the beginning of a real change for our state and our families.

    I believe we can turn Michigan around by reinvesting in what makes us great and that starts with our kids.

    My Democratic colleagues and I have put forward a plan, the Michigan 2020 Plan, that would move Michigan to the head of the class by giving each and every high school graduate the opportunity to attend college and have it paid for in its entirety. It’s a plan economists, educators, parents and students all agree is the right plan to bring jobs to our state and provide a better future for our next generation. It’s a plan we can, and must, take action on.

    I believe we can support our middle-class families by creating fair tax policies, not ones that give handouts to those at the top.

    We can grow, not cut, the programs that get our unemployed and underemployed workers retrained and back on their feet so that they can find new jobs and new opportunities for themselves and their families.

    I believe we can open our doors to graduates and young professionals by fostering the redevelopment going on in our urban areas and creating the atmosphere they look for when deciding where to work, live and start their own families.

    We can foster an environment that welcomes the gay and transgender communities here to our state instead of inventing new reasons for them to leave.

    And we can make it perfectly clear that there are opportunities here in Michigan that don’t exist anywhere else in the world for people, all people, to succeed in their own personal pursuit of happiness.

    We can do all of these things, but only if we have the courage and the strength of character to make it happen.

    I hope that Governor Snyder uses the New Year to think long and hard about what’s happened in Michigan’s Capitol over the past two years and spend some time talking, and more important, listening to the people he represents.

    They are asking us to be leaders. They are asking us to be bold. They are asking us to make Michigan a place we can all be proud of again.

    The voices of those I’ve had an opportunity to speak with in recent weeks would suggest that the Governor has been anything but that.

    I believe we can do better. Let’s make 2013 the year we demand better!

    Sincerely,
    Gretchen Whitmer
    Michigan Senate Democratic Leader

  10. X
    Posted January 2, 2013 at 2:22 pm | Permalink

    There hasn’t been a decent handjob in this state since Manhole disbanded.

  11. anon
    Posted January 10, 2013 at 10:30 am | Permalink

    Ypsilanti’s consultant recommends subverting the Affordable Care Act:

    “SEMCOG noted that union negotiations may be required to permit such use of employees and cautioned the city to be careful to limit hours to less than 30 per week to avoid mandatory benefits outlined in the Affordable Patient Care Act. The Affordable Patient Care Act interpretation is evolving,” Boerger said. “As things are maturing, that criteria changes. Bottom line is if they can supplement existing employees with part time and keep them under the threshold, then the costs are significantly lower.”

    http://annarbor.com/news/ypsilanti/semcog-2m-in-additional-cuts-revenue-enhancements-needed-to-get-city-on-solid-financial-footing/

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