Both Sides Now w/ Huffington & Matalin: Deal? Deficits? Wiki-news? Best of 2010?

By Mark Green

Despite big Senate majorities in favor of 9/11 first responders, gays in the military, the DREAM Act and continued jobless benefits, all these popular proposals failed when 42 Republican senators publicly said that nothing was more important than first giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires -- or what President Obama called their "holy grail."
For this week's show we eat our spinach and talk about things economic, given the fight over the Obama-GOP tax deal and over last week's Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission's final report and vote -- and then we discuss the intersection of diplomacy, secrecy and transparency (for this weekend's hour show, listen below).

*On Tax Deal: While the women identically criticize the "compromise" as a "capitulation," they do so for exactly opposite reasons. Mary objects to its liberal "pork-u-lus" aspects and lack of any serious economic plan for growth; Arianna thinks that its ideas are too small bore and laments its narrow focus on taxes rather than economic growth. But if your "North Star" is helping the struggling middle-class with money and jobs, she asked, why would you oppose a plan, however imperfect, which does have a stimulus for the economy equal to last year's and tax cuts for the middle-class? Answer: just continuing the status quo hasn't, and won't, create nearly enough jobs for the 27 million un- and -under-employed.

*On Deficit Commission: Mary says that she'd have joined Senators Coburn and Durbin in agreeing with this starting proposal -- 2/3 spending cuts to 1/3 tax increases -- while Arianna thinks the problem itself is modest and long-term. But why was there a Deficit Commission before a Jobs Commission anyway, asks Arianna, adding that "there aren't enough austerity measures to shrink deficit and maintain essential services." Yet they both laud the White House's leaked interest in a tax overhaul that could reduce special interest loopholes, "which is where policy is made," according to Arianna.

*On Wiki-news: The women had fundamentally different approaches on whether the core issue with the game-changing WikiLeaks disclosures and subsequent Hack-Attack is freedom of the press or, in Mary's phrases, "cyber-terrorism" and "techno-anarchism." Responds Arianna, "if Julian Assange is a cyber-terrorist, then so are the New York Times and Der Spiegel." They then bicker on whether WikiLeaks is similar to or fundamentally different from major newspapers.

*On Quick-Takes: Edwards death; GITMO detainees; loud commercials; Supreme Court and class actions. And what were top books and films of 2010? In sum, Mary luvs any film with Robert Downey Jr. while Arianna loves Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathetic Civilization and Waiting for "Superman". As for your humble host, I recommend The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick and, for films, The Social Network and a movie about a very-'60s social network, Saint Misbehain' , about the adventures and good deeds of Wavy Gravy.

Mark Green is the creator and host of Both Sides Now, which is powered by the American Federation of Teachers.

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