Tax increase for the 0.7%. Or is it the 77%?

The New York Times summarized the fiscal cliff deal in an article celebrating "the most progressive [tax code] since 1979," that brought "tax increases on the incomes of a small sliver of the richest Americans":

The last-minute deal struck by the departing 112th Congress raised taxes on a handful of the highest-earning Americans, with about 99.3 percent of households experiencing no change in their income taxes.

The author of the article, Annie Lowrey, repeats her thesis:

The result is a tax code that squeezes hundreds of billions of dollars more from the very well off - about $600 billion more over 10 years - while leaving the tax burden on everyone else mostly as it was.

Ms. Lowrey's source is the Tax Policy Center, the very same think tank quoted by Bloomberg (hardly a right wing source) in an article titled, "Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households," which reports:

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of yesterday.

Technically, Ms. Lowrey is not lying since she specifies "income taxes" in the first quote, and qualifies the second statement with the word "mostly." But it's striking that in her zeal to revel in squeezing that "small sliver" of "the very well off," Ms. Lowrey never mentions the salient fact that merits a headline at Bloomberg.

One other amusing lie appeared as a photo caption in the New York Times article: "House Speaker John A. Boehner and President Obama worked together to avert a fiscal crisis at the start of the year." Yeah, right.

For a different interpretation see Fred Barnes's "The President Who Wants it All" or Peggy Noonan's column this week which concludes:

The president intends to consistently beat his opponents and leave them looking bad, or, failing that, to lose to them sometimes and then make them look bad. That's how he does politics.