(freshrant.com) Hear ye! Hear ye! Thee Party we knoweth as Tea!
Standard and Poor's could not have been clearer in recognizing you for your role in the first ever AAA rating downgrade of the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
"We have changed our assumption on this [ability to solve US fiscal difficulties] because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the [Budget Control Act Amendment of 2011] act."
S&P continues, "The political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed."
Less stable? Less effective? Less predictable? The S&P has got you pegged to a Tea!
First downgrade in U.S. history? Tea Party: 1. America: Less than Zero.
To understand the Tea Party is to understand a movement brewed in the passions of low information voters. Their lack of basic economic understanding and scientific reasoning is only matched by their limitless capacity for cognitive dissonance.
How else could Barack Obama have been a long-time member of a Chicago Christian church led by a radical preacher while simultaneously being a Kenyan Muslim anti-colonialist who pals around with terrorists?
How else could there be such a thing as a natural history museum where men and dinosaurs coexist in Flintstonian harmony? Build it and they will come! Yabadab They Do!
Or who else would make lame global warming jokes at the first hint of a snow flake while ignoring more than 3,000 high temperature records broken across the country in the last month in the midst of a withering drought?
Lest we forget, it was irate Tea Party members who held signs during last summer's heated health care debates demanding the government "Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare."
This is the one and same Tea Party that did not betray a hint of petticoat during massive government spending under Bush and his willing Republican congress. But elect the nation's first black president, all the while harrumphing any whisper of racism while claiming to be a multiracial movement represented by both parties, and the Tea Party elects dozens of angry white men to congress last fall on exclusively Republican Party tickets.
It was this Tea Party caucus that allowed the debt ceiling crisis to be precipitated by a debt ceiling denial crisis.
Led by outspoken Tea party leaders including Michele Bachmann and the congressional Tea for Two family firm of Paul & Son, low information voters have voted into office a debt-defying, anarchist-tinged, low information congress. And just as nakedly as these congressional simpletons in the Tea Party caucus brazenly proclaimed there was no danger in not raising the debt ceiling, this same cast of characters are now just as brazenly blaming Barack Obama for our new long-term sovereign credit rating that places us in the same AA negative watch category as Belgium, a country that has surpassed war-torn Iraq's world record for having a caretaker government capable of only executing emergency business. Sound familiar?
David Beers, S&P Global Head of Sovereign Ratings mentioned how the political process impacted S&P's downgrade decision, "The political process as it comes to grips with the fiscal policy issues we think in and of itself creates a lot uncertainty, which we think itself is an issue in terms of the rating of the U.S. government."
John Chambers, Head of Standard & Poor's Sovereign Rating Committee, added in no uncertain terms how the downgrade could have been avoided, "The first you could have done is raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner so that much of this debate had been avoided to begin with as it had done 60 or 70 times since 1960 without that much debate."
What gives the current political climate an added diabolical flavor is the congressional band of Tea Party deniers of the debt ceiling crisis are largely sponsored by millionaires and billionaires whose financial interests are best served by the expansion of a low information electorate steeped in denial. Denial of global climate change that advocates withdrawal of tax breaks for oil companies allowing obscenely profitable polluting industries to continue unabated. Denial of reasonable banking regulation and enforcement that might prevent future financial meltdowns. Denial of higher tax rates that the highest income earners might pay a percentage of income at least equal to that during the Clinton administration. Denial that voter ID laws that are being enacted in seven Republican controlled states will prevent voting by the elderly, students and minorities that typically vote Democratic. And on and on and on.
Largely overlooked in discussion of the S&P report is not how to get our AAA rating back. That in a minute. The S&P report tells us what we must do to merely get our current AA+ rating off the negative watch list.
"If the recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction--independently or coupled with other initiatives, such as the lapsing of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners--lead to fiscal consolidation measures beyond the minimum mandated, and we believe they are likely to slow the deterioration of the government's debt dynamics, the long-term rating could stabilize at 'AA+'."
Recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction? Other initiatives? The Bush tax cuts repealed? These guys haven't met Michele Bachmann.
And then some S&P spokesman bearing salt for fresh wounds tells us it has taken anywhere from 9 to 18 years for countries to regain their AAA rating.
Apparently trying to get back on the My Way Or The Highway on ramp is nothing like the slip and slide off ramp marked "Stupid".
Wondering how those freeway on ramps will be holding up in 2029.