I'm not sure if you understand what "good faith" is. Good faith is both sides agreeing to concede certain points for the general good.
The GOP is saying "we want to avoid the cliff with spending cuts & spending cuts only. Deal with it."
I'm amazed that anyone can consider that to be equitable or reasonable. The GOP is going to get burned on this one - bad.
The thing that you don't seem to be getting through your thick head is, tax increases only generate increased revenue on paper. When we raise taxes, a lot of things start to happen, and they are all bad for economic growth, which means, you are collecting a higher rate in taxes on less money, ergo: you get less revenue. In order to compensate for the lost revenues due to your tax increase, we will ultimately have to make even more cuts in spending. We should be actually reducing tax rates to increase tax revenues, but on paper, that looks like it would result in less revenue, because you simple minds can't comprehend we don't live in a vacuum. Reductions in the top marginal rates have historically always produced more tax revenues. So with the fiscal cliff problem, if the idea is to generate revenue to balance the budget, we need to be cutting taxes, not raising them.
Before you start squealing, this is something that even Obama himself understands, he said so in 2008. He was asked the direct question about historically, increasing taxes produced less revenue, and you know what he said? It didn't matter, this was about leveling the playing field for all Americans, and redistributing wealth. If we are going to be "equitable and reasonable" it starts with being honest about what is equitable and then being reasonable about that.
Let's imagine a scenario using Damo's board. Let's say Damo decides that we all need to be paying "our fair share" here, and he implements a system of "taxation" on posting. He starts by announcing that all posts will be taxed .05 and all threads .10, across the board. What would be the result of such a policy? Would we have just as many posts and threads as we've had historically, or would we have fewer posts and threads? I'm guessing fewer. Let's say that after the first year of this policy, Damo has made a certain amount of money from 100 regular posters, who haven't minded paying the tax in order to speak their minds. Damo gets to figuring, if he raises his tax X amount, he should be getting X times 100 next year, from these same posters. So he increases the tax rates, in anticipation of a windfall. But what do you suppose happens when he announces the new tax rates? Well, even more people check out and say to hell with this, I can go post elsewhere for free! Now Damo is collecting more per post and thread, but he has considerably fewer people posting. He needs more revenue, so he again increases his tax rate, and it now costs $10 to post a thread and $5 per post. Where are the posters? What happened to the vibrant community we once knew and loved? They are gone, probably for good, because Damo didn't understand you can't tax your way to prosperity. And this is what happens when we increase top marginal tax rates. The people who are in this income bracket are not those who have no choice, or people who must suck it up and just pay whatever the government says, they have plenty of wealth already, so they check out. You can't tax incomes that no longer exist, and their wealth is sitting in some secure investment fund that you can't touch.
Liberals talk about the "greedy rich" when it is the liberal who is the most greedy of all, your greed prompts you to think you can 'punish' the wealthy with higher tax rates, and you'll get all that beautiful money to do all kinds of cool liberal stuff with... but it won't happen. You'll end up with less money and a dilapidated economy. Who does that hurt? Here's a clue... not the WEALTHY!
