1. The reelection of Obama to a second term. Whether you think the reelection of Obama was a great success or a great disaster, I choose this as the number one story because I never dreamed he would be reelected because the unemployment figures were too high and, though there was a glacially slow economic recovery, it was not nearly fast enough. I had even written an article called Best One-Term President Ever? back in August of 2010 from which I never changed my mind (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2010/08/best-one-term-president-ever.html). Also whether you like it or not, Obamacare is preserved, a genuinely major piece of legistation (if unwieldy) that many presidents tried to get but couldn't. But the comeback kid came back again. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/obama-reelection)
2. The Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, CT, Massacre. I give this a high occurrence in December of 2012 a high rating because the massacre of 20 first graders seems to have caught the public attention greater than other mass murders like that at Columbine in Aurora, CO, in April of 1999 or even the Aurora movie theater massacre earlier in 2012 during July. Of course, the massacre of six school officials in addition to the first graders adds a little to the concern, also. As a result of this massacre, it seems there might actually be some legislation to curb the use of semi-automatic weapons. The two most likely seem to be , reducing the size of magazines in the rifles and pistols to 10 bullets and background checks of gun purchasers. I would actually limit magazines to 6 bullets in view of our Wild West heritage famous for the six gun. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook,_Connecticut)
3. Hurricane Sandy This category 1 storm of October, 1012, that devastated northeastern U.S., is notable not only for its damage, but also the resistance of the House of Representatives to act on helping restore the area, something that had become informally mandated in our code. This lack to act has northeastern politicians screaming bloody murder, even at their own political party. The storm had a triple whammy in not only the wind speed, but it occurred at high tide at the time of the month for highest tides. The storm also lasted longer because it was "blocked" by a high pressure ridge to the north. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy). A discussion seems to have been started over whether the Federal government should get involved in the reconstruction of devastated areas (They didn't for the famous San Francisco earthquake of April, 1906, for example, or more recently for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March of 1989 in Alaska), whether any funds provided for such reconstruction should be offset in other parts of the budget, or whether special funds should be appropriated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy)
(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/america-in-2012-as-told-in-charts/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130101)
5. The Debt Ceiling Crisis Certainly one of the top five news stories of 2011 was the Debt Ceiling Compromise of July 31. Raising the debt ceiling is really not news. It has been done dozens of times, but there were some aspects of this that made it rise near the top. As a result nearly a trillon dollars of cuts to the Federal budget were enacted.
6. The Fiscal Cliff A big part of the "fiscal cliff" was the Sequester in which $500 billion would be taken from the DoD budget and $500 billion from the non-defense discretionary budget over the next 10 years, and the second was the formation of a Super Committee (actually enacted by the Budget control Act of 2011) to come to a better compromise. If they didn't the Sequester would take effect. It was thought that the Sequester would be viewed so bad by both Democrats and Republicans that surely the Super Committee would come up with something better. My guess was that they wouldn't. That the Sequester would be so distasteful to both parities that they would assume that it wouldn't happen. Something was passed that neither party intended to let happen and so far it hasn't as the date that it was to take effect passed on January 1, 2013. That is the state of America today. Supposedly the date of the Sequester was kicked down the road a couple of months by the "Fiscal cliff" negotiations, but a Sequester kicked down the road once can be kicked down the road again. My personal feelings are that the Sequester should have been allowed to take effect for the first year as the "fiscal cliff" is really not a cliff but a slope and could have been changed later if desired. In fact the Sequester is not large enough to solve the Federal deficit problem by itself. After much hemming and hawing, the fiscal cliff was largely solved by maintaining or somewhat modifying the Bush tax cuts those earning less than $400 thousand or $450 thousand for couples, and through raising revenues by termination of the Social Security Tax Holiday and terminating "temporary" tax cuts of those earning more than $400 thousand or $450 thousand for couples returning the rate from 35% to where it was in the 1990s of 39.6% . This is pretty much a non-story and is only made so by the intransigence of certain political irresponsibility's. The president won some but the Republicans won more. The president campaigned on the level of tax cut termination to be $250 thousand and not $400 thousand. He also wanted the inheritance tax to have an exemption of $3 million but settled on $5 million in the Bush tax cuts but got a rate of 40% for any excess rather than 35%. Probably the key part of the compromise was kicking the can down the road on the Sequester.
7. Others I'll stop with the above but some other big events that I consider second tier were the The cruise ship Costa Concordia running aground, London Olympics, The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the French elections, the Facebook IPO that was ill received after it got top dollar. For a blow by blow listing of world's events in 2012 see: http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/2012.
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