They are no longer described as "the rich" or "the wealthy" but as the highest earners, an important change in terms of populist rhetoric. Obama might even draw that line next.

Now he can point out that the highest earners in any given year might not actually represent "the affluent" at all. America’s wealthiest people have more ways than you can shake a stick at...ask John Kerry, who was saving a bundle in taxes just by where he chose to berth his newest yacht. No, I am not making this up.

Not my fault, said the president, I drew a really firm line in the sand on this one.

Uh, Tom...the tax cut bill was going to expire without anything needing to be voted upon, and the Republicans did NOT have enough votes to prevent that from happening,

Moreover, the Republicans do not have enough votes to pass this new revision...the Democrats are going to have to pass it or else it won’t fly.

Which is why we’re suddenly reading about how it’s really some sort of job-creation bill, and a "plan that will help nearly all" and other good things about it...the Democrats are going to have to justify their votes somehow now. Well, Tom is quite a comedian when he wants to be:

You are to be forgiven if "Casablanca" springs to mind with Mr Friedman playing the role of Captain Renault, the police inspector who proclaimed himself to be shocked, shocked, to discover gambling was going on. I think the most cynical quote here is Tom’s, myself...either that or he really is the naïve bumbler that he sometimes seems to be, particularly when he advocates raising gasoline taxes for Americans as a way to keep petrodollars out of the hands of terrorist sheiks.

"Fungible" appears to be another word he does not recognize, not to mention that China and India will happily buy oil from those people if the price is right. Which it will be as America taxes what remains of its industry to a halt.

Cynically stunned, that is, because Republicans have been complaining very loudly for years about how poor a job was being done in the nation’s schools, blaming those people actually running those schools at the same time that Democrats were doing everything they could to protect them. They are unionized, you understand, and unions like to vote in blocks...in fact, their members don’t even have to fill out their ballots in order to have their votes cast for them. And the trial lawyers, who are not suffering from the effects of the recession, know how to add their numbers very well.

Why, when students fail, don’t we turn to the teachers for an explanation? Who else but the teachers can—and should—fix whatever is broken? NB: my daughter is a teacher and my wife is an unpaid teacher’s assistant.

My plan would include having Op-ed columnists write truthfully rather than cynically. How many times have you read recently that tax cuts for the middle class will boost the economy because those people will go right out and spend the money? Hey, have you read recently how unemployment benefits do the same thing? Ask Nancy Pelosi, uncontradicted by Mr Friedman.

Well, how about the agonized complaint that "the wealthy" won’t immediately spend their tax cut money to help boost the economy, instead they are going to...are you ready for this shocker?...put it in the bank and save it! So Tom actually advocates saving more, just not by the people with the money to actually do so...he’d rather see those savings go to additional income taxes which would somehow, well, solve all of the problems Tom complained about needing fixing.

Why, when the choice is between either needing more savings or needing more taxes do liberals choose more taxes and then say they are shocked, shocked do you hear, when economic growth does not recover?

Nor do we "borrow money from China" when the Treasury puts T-bills and T-bonds on the investment market, since they are open for purchase to all comers. Tom might even have a few in his own portfolio...lots of people do, including pension funds, retirement plans, and so on. If the Chinese have money to invest in America then where did they get it from?

Mr Friedman will praise to the skies the Chinese "green" energy efforts and how this will save the planet from destructive warming, yet fail to mention that those Chinese are building more coal-fired power plants producing more and more carbon dioxide every year, even if they do boast "clean" technology while doing so, and openly admit that they aren’t planning on damaging THEIR economy by making any ridiculous promises to cut CO2 levels back to where they were in the past.

They aren’t cynical about that part, even if they did try to keep it quiet during the recent Olympic Games held there that they had to shut down—temporarily—enough polluting industries to enable the athletes to perform without suffering permanent inhalation damages. Those industries were re-started after the foreign visitors left.

Tom loves China and their government’s ability to do things like that when necessary, and he’d gladly do the same to America’s remaining conventional power plants if he could, saving the planet while destroying the American economy...or maybe just crippling it enough through taxation so that his taxpayer-subsidized green energy technology investments could become economically competitive as a result.

Well, there’s the beginning of my plan...let’s begin with some honest and non-cynical reporting to begin with, that ought to be a start.

You will note the faux economic theory. While spending at Target or Sam’s Club helps the economy, he says the amount that the rich spend on horses, say, does not. If you are a horse breeder or work at a plant producing horse feed or even bridles, boots, saddles, any of the things horses (and, similarly, yachts) you don’t fit Cohen’s picture of a deserving member of the economy.

Well, Cohen says, it would be better if the government taxed away the money the rich would have otherwise saved. If you aren’t really a capitalist at heart then you don’t really know where capital comes from, I suppose,. On alternate weeks Mr Cohen complains about the banks not lending to the deserving middle class borrower, but he presumes that banks can merely print money if they need more, or else borrow it from the Fed (apparently unaware that it is composed of private banks) or somewhere, somehow, he doesn’t know, but they ought to be lending more of it.

It has not occurred to Mr Cohen, as he wonders where the "good" manufacturing jobs went that "the economy" consists of more than sales of Chinese manufactured goods at Target and Sam’s Club, who won’t be hiring any of the hundreds of thousands of jobless he wants unemployment extended to cover (and never end? or at least not until the economy recovers?), that economic expansion requires capital in order to hire and expand, and capital comes from savers and investors...you know, the rich.

Up above Mr Cohen noted that the rich already have so much and the budget is in deficit and the national debt is growing...why shouldn’t their taxes go back up to where they were if not doing so adds $1 trillion to the deficit? Doesn’t not raising their taxes even further, an additional one or two percent, maybe even five, since they can afford it, "add" another trillion or two, then?

Of course it does, since by Cohen’s logic the deficit does not come as a result of spending but as a result of not collecting enough taxes from the rich.

I wonder what he would suggest if we continued to hike those taxes on those friends of his, taking more and more away every year with every hike...and yet the budget was still in deficit and the national debt still growing?

Which leads to the logical question: how much can the government tax people, especially the rich who can afford it, in order to ensure there will never again be another budget deficit?

Now I have no rich friends to hear complain about faux equality, nor am I among them myself, so in that sense I have no dog in this hunt...or maybe I should say horse in this race. (Just as well, as the middle class will have no horse races to attend with the rich unable to buy additional horses, or breed them.)

Just the same, I can see that a capitalist society requires capital in order to function and grow, create businesses and jobs and produce economic goods. And I can see that the government can continue to take away those capital savings from the rich in the form of ever-higher taxes, even until the rich are no better off than the middle-class job seekers, and yet doing that will never guarantee the avoidance of a budget deficit.

I don’t find Tom Friedman very often correct, but when he points out that one of America’s economic problems has been the low savings rate which has not created enough capital accumulation to put to productive economic use then I have to say that he has a point.

Mr Cohen represents the best of current public economic thinking...spend all that you can now, don’t save anything for the future. The banks will only pay you as little interest as they can while loaning your money out to someone who wants to build a factory or some other kind of business, maybe manufacture solar cells or something, and that money will be far better taxed away and spent by the government in order to ensure there will never be another budget deficit.

Which obviously tells you how important he believes the threat to be to the world, if they don't measure up to the level of a vote on university tuition fees.

Now, it seems, Ruth had belatedly discovered how little the Democrats have been bitching about.

In less-honest times they call it $1 trillion by calculating it for ten years and round it up. I say why not calculate them for 100 years and make the number look truly gigantic?

Yes, it is...and Democrats are probably more interested in reelecting him then crafting a bipartisan tax deal, too. But if you truly believe, as a clear majority of the country say is the case in poll after poll, that Obama is leading the country in the wrong direction, then defeating him ought to be the goal of all of those voters, independents and Democrats alike. What, should they sacrifice four more years of going the wrong way in return for some bipartisan tax cuts? Is that really sensible?