"The Downgrading of America" by Jim Hightower

[in_cog_ni_to]

As Lily Tomlin noted, "No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up."

Many of us view the deficit ceiling brouhaha between the Obama White House and the laissez-fairy extremists in the Republican House as some combination of farce and fiasco. So much political playacting around a made-up deficit "crisis" in order to avoid dealing with the real deficit that's crushing America's middle class and draining the lifeblood from our economy: the jobs deficit.

But wait — before I could work out my anger over that fiasco, here came an even more incredible farce. Last Friday, a Wall Street credit rating firm, Standard & Poor's, thrust itself onto the national stage by arrogantly, recklessly and wrongly downgrading the sovereign credit status of the United States of America from AAA to AA+.

Lest you think that this is an unimpeachable judgment by solid financial experts with no private agenda, you might recall that S&P geniuses had bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subprime-mortgage investment packages that turned out to be, in Wall Street's lingo, "toxic waste." These packages precipitated the financial crash of 2008. Thanks, S&P!<snip>

<snip>
Specifically, this document is part and parcel of the push by right-wing corporatists to force Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid onto the killing floor.<snip>



http://www.nationofchange.org/downgrading-america-1312988971

[Fantastic Anarchist]

1. Happy to K&R n/t

[CrispyQ]

2. K&R for Hightower.

This plutocratic power play is a defining issue of our time. It's also potentially a unifying issue for a new progressive populism. The real spectrum in our country is not right to left, it's top to bottom — and the vast majority of people know that they're being pushed farther and farther down from those few at the top who control practically all of the money and power (excuse that redundancy) in our society.

-emphasis added


Regarding Lily, didn't she also say, "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse."? Love her!