New York Times, The Art of Tax War, by Nancy Folbre (University of Mssachusetts, Department of Economics):

As Sun Tzu observed about 2,500 years ago, “All warfare is based on deception.”

The highly charged partisan debate over the future of the Bush tax cuts (scheduled to expire at the end of December) is a kind of war. Whether you term it a class war depends on what you mean by class, but it is certainly a war between the very rich (the top 2 percent of income earners) and a host of other individuals allied with them, against everybody else who gives a darn.

Battlefield success will be largely determined by the outcomes in the coming Congressional elections. A key issue in these races will be public perceptions of President Obama’s proposal to let expire the federal income-tax cuts put in place by the Bush administration for the very rich, while maintaining those tax cuts – and others implemented by his administration – for everybody else. …

On the battlefield, in the fog of war, it is often difficult to know exactly what is happening, and why. But those resisting change have the most to gain from fog – or even from blowing smoke – because uncertainty often works in favor of the status quo.

In my view, Citizens for Tax Justice, which describes itself as an advocacy group that strives “to give ordinary people a greater voice” against the “armies of special interest lobbyists for corporations and the wealthy,” offers the most specific and well-documented analysis of the two competing approaches to the Bush tax cuts, those of President Obama and the Congressional Republicans. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention from the news media.

I’m not sure whose fault that is, and if Sun Tzu were alive today, I’m not sure whom he would be working for. But it’s pretty clear that the Republicans would offer him a higher salary.

Tax Lawyer's Blog, Smoke and Fog: Another Saintly Pro-Taxer Accuses Anti-Taxers of Lying, by Peter Pappas:

Nancy Folbre, Professor of Economics at the  University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the latest in a long line of tax-the-rich intellectuals to assume that anyone who thinks that tax increases are bad for the economy is up to no good. …

For Ms. Folbre the tax debate is a battle of good (the people who give a darn) versus evil (the rich and their cronies). You are either with her or against her. And if you’re against her she thinks you’re a liar.