Where Is This World?

This continues somewhat from my previous blog entry, since this debt debacle is ongoing, and since I like to be informed and would hope that my friends prefer to be as well.

Last Friday, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the rating of the United States treasury bonds from the top level AAA to AA+ (the U.S. rating remained the same with the other top two agencies, Moody's and Fitch, though that is, of course, subject to change). Predictably, this morning the stock market took a substantial dive, and anybody who was paying attention and knows anything about it pissed their pants a little, and people started getting even more panicky about a possible second recession (I didn't realize we had got out of the first one). Immediately, any conservative able to put together a complete sentence--there are scant few, I know--screamed that this earthquake and the subsequent shockwaves were because of the debt. To be sure, most reasonable people of any political stripe would agree that the U.S. is in far too deep, that we owe too much money to far too many countries (especially China, and I know I wouldn't want to owe China a damn Canadian penny). On the radio, I heard Bill Cunningham point out (correctly, I checked) that for every dollar the U.S. government spends, forty-three cents of it is borrowed money. That's sick, that is unquestionably out of control. There is plenty that can be responsibly done to remedy that, and there is no shortage of people to blame for it. However, as bad as the debt situation is, and despite what Republican talking heads would have you believe, it is not what caused the downgrade and the negative forecast that came with it. Don't believe me? Okay, let's go ask John Chambers, the deputy head of the Sovereign Debt Ratings Group at S&P, the guy largely responsible for the downgrade. Oh, wait, we don't have to, because Anderson Cooper at CNN already did (and I'm glad it was him, he's about the most unbiased guy working for any of the major news outlets right now). Cooper asked Chambers point blank why the S&P decided to downgrade the United States' credit rating, and Chambers replied, in no uncertain terms, that the level of debt incurred was not nearly as concerning as the unprecedented inability of our political parties to work together for the good of the country, as they seem more concerned with playing their game of political brinkmanship, seeing how far they can push each other or. Even worse, we also have the Tea Partiers seeing how far they can force the rest of the Republican Party to go and generally being completely unwilling to act in the reasonable and responsible manner that it is in no way too much to expect our elected officials to behave.

Oh, wait, didn't I read somewhere last week, before the downgrade, that the real problem we were having was the unwillingness or inability of our lawmakers to meaningfully work together? No, that's not right, I didn't read it...I fucking wrote it, right here! This is all about our political parties (all inclusive, to varying degrees) being more interested in claiming victories than accomplishing what the American people have elected them to do. One might suppose that two major political parties would, at this point, put some of their childish bickering aside and realize that it is now absolutely incumbent upon them to work cohesively to do what needs to be done, rather than what they think might be most politically advantageous. I fear that this would really be to expect far too much, even still. Doesn't it speak volumes about our politicians that they cannot realize that the best way to further their careers would be to act in accordance with the wishes of the people who voted for them in the first place?

I'm dubious about our ability to get back to the relatively secure and comfortable place we haven't been in as a country since Bill Clinton was in the White House. It's clear what needs to be done, but I think the disparity in ideas about how to do it is too great, and is being kept that way intentionally by some. We do need to bring the debt down drastically, but doing it the Tea Party way, by cutting spending on things like Medicare, Medicaid, and education, while refusing to levy greater taxes on corporations and the wealthy, is wildly irresponsible, if not downright stupid. Doing that would place an unfair burden on those least able to absorb it, particularly people of my generation, as well as my son's. We need to spend money in some places, the right places, because government jobs are jobs we desperately need. People who don't have jobs are people who aren't paying taxes or contributing to an economy that badly needs people with disposable income, or any income at all. No, cutting spending indiscriminately is not the answer. The spending we need to cut is that which is wasteful and unproductive. Jobs fall under neither category. You know what is wasteful and unproductive? Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we're not winning, and wouldn't accomplish anything if we won them anyway. Want some more? Any Senator, Representative, Governor, President, or government appointee who already has a net worth in excess of, let's say a million dollars aside from their salary as an elected official, should not be eligible to receive that salary. I haven't got the time to check it, but I would be thoroughly shocked if that did not save combined state and federal governments untold millions of dollars. That's part of the problem anyway, having that many wealthy elected officials does not make for a very representative government. Oh, to live in a world where people earn what they deserve and deserve what they earn.