The New "Deal"

So we’ve got a deal. (I guess. We'll see.)


And that’s good (I guess, we'll see) because I was planning out a “well, it was fun while lasted” -type post, lamenting our fall from our status as a great nation, and our new status as the trailer-park dead-beats of the world; basically the same kind of gun-toting, homophobic white-trash who don’t pay their bills that the Republicans rely on to get elected year in and year out. And I’m forced to wonder what the drama was all about. Apparently taxes aren’t going up – for anyone – and Social Security and Medicare are also safe - for now. A trillion in cuts over ten years is (apparently) planned, but I’ve heard that before. That’s theatre, nothing more. Seeing as how likely it is that some those cuts will have to implemented during a Republican Administration (either 2, 4 or 8 years from now) and given the Republicans propensity to complete forget about their fiscal principles of austerity and small government whenever they win the Presidency, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m also wondering what this new deficit commission will be able to do that the last 37 have not.

Whatever.

At the end of the day it was much ado about nothing on a tragically Shakespearean level. At the end of the day congress raised the debt ceiling, just like they did 11 times for Reagan, 7 times for Bush, and 74 times (if I'm counting right) since 1962 with nary a whimper. Not that the American public ever heard ANYTHING about ANY of those times – didn’t even know they HAPPENED – because, as Dick Cheney pointed out: Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter! (Yeah: WHEN YOU’RE A REPUBLICAN!)

And to think: Joe Lieberman was concerned that the cuts would affect defense too deeply!

*sigh*

That’s what you get when a Democrat thinks he’s a Republican. (Or is it the other way around?)

A Country facing default, Social Security and Medicare being threatened, deficits that are going out of control…

And he’s worried about defense spending that is currently double that of Russia, China, England and France COMBINED.

We’ll be safe, Joe. You great coward.

And what about the raw, naked, rampant, partisan, ROOTING FOR FAILURE on the part of the right here? I never put any amount of hypocrisy or unprincipled behavior past the right, but I truly never expected it would reach such absurdly transparent levels. And yet somehow? ONLY 60% of America is against the Republicans right now! I mean… THEY WERE LOSING SUPPORT OF BUSINESS LEADERS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! If BUSINESS LEADERS aren’t behind them, then WHO THE HELL IS?!

It’s insane.

My favorite – and one of the best examples of just how ignorant the average right-winger IS when it comes to all thins fiscal, monetary and economic – was probably Fox's Stuart Varney "Absolutely" agreeing with Andrew Napolitano that we don't deserve AAA Credit Rating as a nation.


Wow.

Way to hate your country there, Start! Can you IMAGINE what they’d be saying if a progressive had said ANYTHING even remotely like that?!

But here’s the thing…

A country’s credit rating is not based on its debt levels. Nor is it based on its economy. Nor is it based on their ability to balance a budget. All of those things (debt level, income, spending decisions) are what an INDIVIDUAL’s or a COMPANY’s credit rating is based on. But in a GOVERNEMENT’s credit rating, except in circumstances far more extreme than we’re facing now and likely will ever face, almost none of those things matter in the least. Why? Because Governments can do something that individuals and even companies CAN’T do when the cost of their debt gets too high.

RAISE TAXES.

Governments can RAISE TAXES! Individuals can’t do that! Companies can’t do that! And that’s why individuals and companies have to act very cautiously and very deliberately to maintain their good ratings. But governments? Can run deficits year an and year out, and have multi-years recessions and still have a AAA rating. And the reason is that, if they need to, they can RAISE TAXES to pay back their debts!

Now, in the mind of someone for whom that is simply unthinkable, I suppose I can see why they be panicking about our fiscal condition. But the only Government who DOESN’T deserve a AAA rating? Is one that is either unable or unwilling to raise taxes. If your population already pays an average 90% tax rate, and you’re still running up insane debts? FINE. YOU aren’t a AAA credit risk. If you raise taxes but (like Greece) have a national culture that simply doesn’t pay them anyway, as a point of pride, and in addition have lax enforcement existing of Tax laws? Then, yeah, you DEFINITELY don’t deserve a AAA rating. And, I guess, if you’re the kind of government that the average Fox viewer would be happy with – one that would never, under any circumstances, raising taxes including when their facing DEFAULT?

There’s no fucking way I’m buying your bonds!

Why would I?

You’d rather default than pay your bills? That’s not AAA! That’s TRAILER-PARK, DEAD-BEAT status!

But, maybe, just maybe, America will wise up to these hypocritical, self-righteous, uneducated, treasonous, traitorous, un-American SCUMBAGS on the Right is they keep routing for failure. It’s not likely, but I can dream, can’t I?

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(BTW… If I was more of conspiracy-minded person, I’d swear that this debt-ceiling “crisis” was cooked up just to bump the story Ruppert Murdoch’s criminal phone-hacking scandal off of the front page. Get us to forget about that. I don’t REALLY believe that, but it’s been a week or two since I’ve heard dick about it. Just sayin’.)