Everywhere you turn these days it seems that dividends are making the news. Companies are declaring them and raising them, yield-hungry investors are clamoring for them, and all the while politicians are eying them like never before as fat targets for new taxes. Yes, the lowly little dividend has found itself at the center of the fiscal cliff battle. So for this installment of Investing 101, we take a look at how potential policy changes might affect your portfolio.

The backdrop for this renewed attention is, of course, the country's dire fiscal outlook and President Obama's proposal to raise taxes to close the gap. As Jeremy Schwartz, director of research at WisdomTree Investments (WETF), points out in the attached video, on January 1 a decade of preferential 15% tax rates is set to end, rising to 20% for capital gains, while dividends would be taxed as ordinary income again.

"Since the President enacted a 0.9% Medicare payroll tax, plus another 3.8% to fund Obamacare," Schwartz says, "the highest tax on dividends is set to go up to 43% under that scenario for the highest income earners."

Conventional wisdom suggests that nearly tripling the top tax rate for dividends would lower after-tax returns, thus reducing the overall demand for dividend-paying stocks. However, Schwartz says there "are number of mitigating factors" that would reduce the actual impact — namely the fact that nearly 50% of dividend-paying stocks are held in s0-called "tax insensitive accounts," such as IRAs, pension funds, endowments and non-profits. He also thinks that any sell-off in these stocks would likely be short-lived, as it "could motivate these investors" to scoop up bargains.

Arianna Huffington has four — count 'em — four Blackberries.

That may not be so surprising. After all as the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group she runs one of the largest Web companies in the world. It includes such notable news and opinion web sites as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Endgadget, Mapquest, and Patch to name a few.

But what may surprise you is that when Huffington wakes up, she doesn't immediately check her e-mails. Rather, she does yoga and meditates. "I really feel it makes a big difference when I start the day in a centered place," she said on "Off the Cuff."

RELATED: How Pepsi's CEO Mixes Work and the Yankees

Online gamer Zynga (ZNGA) took a beating today on news that they would no longer have as cozy a relationship with Facebook (FB). Business with the social media goliath made up roughly 80% of Zynga's revenue over the past several months, meaning this latest development will be troublesome for the already struggling company.

Eric Jackson, founder of Ironfire Capital, says that Zynga supporters are trying to put a positive spin on the news noting it "opens them up to look at other partners. I don't see this as anything but a negative for Zynga and a small positive for Facebook as well."

Related: For "Gifts" to Win, Facebook Must Play Nice With Retailers

If Jackson is right, is there any bullish case to be made for the San Francisco based gamer? "It's trading at its net cash," he points out, "so maybe they'll dream up another hit... It's a hits business and Farmville may be popular today but it's probably gonna be out of fashion six months."

Another possible, though risky expectation, is that Washington could soon legalize online gambling in the U.S. at which point Zynga would be well positioned to take a significant portion of the market share. But as Jackson points out, "why would you tie up your money on a hope and a prayer."

On the other side of the deal sits Facebook. It would appear that Zuckerberg and company are interested in expanding their own gaming footprint, particularly on mobile. The company's most recent earnings call featured plenty of talk minimizing Zynga and maximizing the idea of new gaming partnerships. "They're throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and they're hoping that some of it will stick," says Jackson.

Lawmakers in Washington appear to be making little to no progress in avoiding the impending so-called fiscal cliff.  House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday the negotiations are "almost nowhere." On Thursday Boehner rejected a proposal from the Obama administration saying that the Democrats need to "get serious about real spending cuts."

President Obama's offer continues to call for higher taxes on the wealthy and an extension of the payroll tax cut.   But Republicans say they will not agree to a plan that raises taxes.

As the country continues to head toward the fiscal cliff, this Just Explain It helps to make sense of what it is.

On December 31^st, most of us would like to be thinking about a prosperous new year ahead…drinking bubbly and singing Auld Lang Syne with friends.  But there's a chance we could be singing a different tune if President Obama and Congress don't agree on measures to avoid the fiscal cliff.

First, let me explain what the fiscal cliff is.

The fiscal

A major story in Friday's New York Times confirmed something that most Americans understand, which is that today's tax rates are low compared with tax rates in the early 1980s.

They're also low when you compare the United States to other developed countries.

And they're low when you include state and local taxes, which the New York Times study did.

The reality of this, of course, hasn't stopped a lot of Americans from complaining that taxes are way too high and, therefore, that government spending must be cut.

Related: Obama Wins 2012 Election: Why You're Taxes Are Going Up

But the problem says Ben White, the chief economic correspondent at Politico, is that Americans also like the benefits that they get from the government. And if the country is going to have any chance of ever balancing its budget, taxes are going to have to go up.

(Most economists agree that spending growth will also have to be reined in, and Republicans are right that most of the growth is coming from social

President Obama presented his opening offer for fiscal cliff negotiations on Thursday. The offer calls for $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, home mortgage refinancing and the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Republicans have yet to place a counteroffer but have said they will accept $800 billion in tax increases -- a far cry from Obama's proposal.

Many fear that the spread between what Republicans and Democrats want in a fiscal cliff deal is too wide to overcome by the end of this year.

Ben White, chief economic correspondent for Politico, says Americans should not worry about what's going on in Washington.

"We'll get a deal," he tells The Daily Ticker. "We're far apart now but give it a couple of weeks. As we get closer to Christmas people will come to the table and sign off on something. We're not going to go off the cliff."

Related: Ignore GDP and the Fiscal Cliff, U.S. Is Already in Recession: ECRI's Achuthan

Obama doesn't expect

By Michael Santoli

The current welling up of nostalgia for Alfred Hitchcock evidenced by a cable movie and theatrical release makes it only natural to label the "fiscal cliff" the stock market's MacGuffin — Hitchcock's name for a plot device that animates a story but in the end doesn't really matter for how it turns out.

Related: 'Be Careful What You Wish for' Regarding Fiscal Cliff: Jim Rickards

On the surface, the cliff drama seems all that matters in the short term, stock indexes hinging tick by tick on every grunt and chirp out of Washington relating to negotiations over a budget deal that might head off automatic tax hikes and spending cuts Jan. 1. The past two days the S&P; 500 index (^GSPC) yo-yo'd the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in market value over minutes with every inference from every phrase in midday politicians news briefings. It's been enough to give anyone vertigo.

Traumatic Episodes: Then and Now

The market is acting as if most active traders are operating by the muscle memory developed during a couple of prior traumatic episodes when stocks were held hostage by maddening Washington standoffs, the initial failure in Congress of the TARP bank bailout bill in 2008, and last year's prolonged impasse over raising the nation's borrowing limit.

Then, as now, the majority of financial players saw the obvious and proper outcome being a compromise that would let Wall Street breathe easier and move forward, only to be driven to disgust by the typical partisan intransigence. The markets reacted with tantrums and eventually the "obvious" outcome emerged, but not before a major (2008) or mini (2011) market meltdown.

Familiar as it all must seem, though, the immediate stakes in the cliff episode aren't as high, and because the prospect of a nasty fight has been out there as the biggest economic story of the season its impact wouldn't come as a surprise. The clock was ticking fast on the survival of huge swaths of the banking system in '08, and last year the government's ability to finance itself went down to the wire.