2013 has begun!

On behalf of the team at NPI, I’d like to wish all of our read­ers, donors, and vol­un­teers a hap­py, healthy, and pros­per­ous new year.

2013 holds spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for us, because it is NPI’s tenth year. We’ll be cel­e­brat­ing this remark­able mile­stone that you’ve helped make pos­si­ble all year long — online, at our Spring Fundrais­ing Gala in April, at Net­roots Nation in June, and at our Tenth Anniver­sary Bash on Thurs­day, August 22nd. (Mark your calendars!)

I rang in the new year with rev­ellers on Queen Anne, as I have for many years run­ning. Here’s a snap­shot which shows the view I and many oth­ers enjoyed of the annu­al fire­works show at the Space Needle:

Seat­tle rings in the new year with a fire­works show at the Space Nee­dle. (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

New Year’s is often asso­ci­at­ed with new begin­nings. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate in pol­i­tics because the con­se­quences of elec­tions usu­al­ly come to pass in ear­ly to mid-Jan­u­ary, when new­ly-elect­ed office­hold­ers take their oaths and for­mal­ly assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for gov­ern­ing their jurisdictions.

Notably, in Wash­ing­ton, Jay Inslee, Bob Fer­gu­son, Kim Wyman, and Troy Kel­ley will be join­ing the exec­u­tive depart­ment as gov­er­nor, attor­ney gen­er­al, sec­re­tary of state, and audi­tor, respec­tive­ly. The 2013 Leg­is­la­ture will con­vene the same week. At the fed­er­al lev­el, new mem­bers of Con­gress will take their seats just two days from now. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s sec­ond inau­gur­al will be held on Jan­u­ary 21st; he will be pri­vate­ly sworn in for his sec­ond term the day before.

A host of prob­lems awaits our new and return­ing elect­ed offi­cials. Years of pro­cras­ti­na­tion and fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty have left our state and coun­try in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion. Instead of invest­ing to keep our pub­lic ser­vices strong dur­ing dif­fi­cult times, we’ve been cut­ting… and cut­ting… and cutting.

One cycle of aus­ter­i­ty begets anoth­er, but we haven’t learned that les­son. Instead of tack­ling our giant infra­struc­ture deficit and restor­ing bad­ly need­ed fund­ing to our first respon­ders, parks, uni­ver­si­ties, col­leges, and schools, we’re argu­ing over which of the Bush tax cuts should be extend­ed and the order in which our remain­ing pub­lic ser­vices should go on the chop­ping block.

His­to­ry tells us that what the right wing wants to do — shred ser­vices and enact more tax cuts (par­tic­u­lar­ly for the wealthy) — is not a pre­scrip­tion for pros­per­i­ty. The truth is, it takes invest­ment to build a strong coun­try and a strong state. We are ben­e­fit­ing right now from the invest­ments that pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of tax­pay­ers made with their tax dol­lars. But we’re not doing our part to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions will have a healthy Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca to inherit.

Stub­born prob­lems are only insur­mount­able or unsolv­able if we believe them to be. Often, we pre­tend that things that are man­made are out­side of our con­trol, when in real­i­ty, that’s not the case. Take the so-called fis­cal cliff (the top entry in the list of Ban­ished Words for 2013). There is no actu­al cliff; the phrase evokes a metaphor.

But it’s a bad metaphor.

What does the phrase fis­cal cliff bring to mind? When we hear the word cliff, we think of a ver­ti­cal, or near­ly ver­ti­cal, rock face. Most of us have seen some pret­ty impres­sive cliffs, or at least pic­tures of cliffs. A cliff is a dan­ger­ous place for a per­son to be, because a stum­ble could result in a fall, lead­ing to seri­ous injury or death. A derived word, cliffhang­er, brings to mind “the image of some­one left hang­ing from a cliff, there­by hav­ing an uncer­tain fate”, as Wik­tionary defines it.

Cliffs are not made by human beings. The forces that cre­at­ed the Earth we know and inhab­it today are not with­in our control.

Our finances, how­ev­er, are com­plete­ly under our control.

Past Con­gress­es enact­ed tax cuts sched­uled to end with the arrival of 2013, approved unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits also sched­uled to end with the arrival of 2013, and decid­ed that auto­mat­ic reduc­tions in expen­di­tures would go into effect by a cer­tain date in 2013. Our prob­lems are entire­ly of our own mak­ing. That’s why we at NPI use the phrase man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis instead of “fis­cal cliff”. Man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis evokes a much more appro­pri­ate and accu­rate image in our minds.

Jan­u­ary 1st, 2013 began an hour and a half ago. When the clock struck twelve, a num­ber of pre­vi­ous acts of Con­gress took effect (or, con­verse­ly, expired).

But no life-threat­en­ing calami­ty befell our nation at that point. We did not teeter off of some cliff and into a chasm when the clock struck twelve. The date sim­ply changed, and in many places, the air was filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of explod­ing fire­works. Con­gress can still choose to extend (or not extend) cer­tain tax cuts, alter the fed­er­al bud­get, and adjust the nation’s statu­to­ry bor­row­ing lim­it at any time. It did not lose any of its pow­ers when the new year arrived.

Of course, what Con­gress ulti­mate­ly does — or fails to do — mat­ters. The House and Sen­ate can­not dither indef­i­nite­ly; if they do, the con­se­quences of pre­vi­ous­ly-approved leg­is­la­tion will begin to take effect. As pro­gres­sives, we should be advo­cat­ing for Con­gress to adopt a course of action that rais­es Amer­i­ca’s qual­i­ty of life — a course of action con­sist­ing of pol­i­cy direc­tions built on the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues. It is our job as pro­gres­sives to explain what that course is and what we are for, not sim­ply what are stand against. We have to coher­ent­ly com­mu­ni­cate what we are about; no one is going to tell our sto­ry for us.

If we want to mean­ing­ful­ly improve the nation­al dia­logue, we have to learn how to reframe. Refram­ing requires dis­ci­pline; it’s hard to do. We at NPI are admit­ted­ly stick­lers for refram­ing, but that is because we can­not go on offense with­out refram­ing. The lan­guage we use should reflect our deeply-held con­vic­tions. The metaphors we employ should be cho­sen with care.

We should avoid tak­ing any cues from the tra­di­tion­al media, because the tra­di­tion­al media is fre­quent­ly wrong. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing news and infor­ma­tion about the economy.

If you read only one book in 2013, read Don’t Buy It: The Trou­ble with Talk­ing Non­sense about the Econ­o­my, by Anat Shenker-Oso­rio, pub­lished in late 2012. As the author writes in the book’s preface:

Dur­ing my career explor­ing the range of ways peo­ple under­stand com­plex polit­i­cal issues, I’ve seen one thing over and [over] again: when we’re using the wrong metaphor, we’re send­ing the wrong mes­sage. When we frame our argu­ments with lan­guage that sug­gest the econ­o­my is a deity, or even a less­er liv­ing thing, we make our favored eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy solu­tions inco­her­ent in the process. In fact, we pave the way for con­ser­v­a­tive argu­ments about slash­ing bud­gets and elim­i­nat­ing ser­vices as the one true path to eco­nom­ic success.

Don’t Buy It is a thought-pro­vok­ing, eye-open­ing book that builds on the work of George Lakoff and oth­er refram­ing pio­neers. Read Don’t Buy It, and you’ll appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of dis­card­ing bad metaphors like “fis­cal cliff”.

When we use the wrong metaphor, we send the wrong mes­sage. That’s a les­son we all need to take to heart in this new year.