The US has lost its "AAA" credit rating

Boo hoo. Here's Reuters' report:

The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's on Friday in an unprecedented reversal of fortune for the world's largest economy.

S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government's budget deficits and rising debt burden. The move is likely to raise borrowing costs eventually for the American government, companies and consumers.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," S&P said in a statement.

Probably this is bad for the economy in the short run, but overall, I think there's something healthy about this. It shows that there are checks and balances working on the government from outside. For instance:

Obama administration officials grew increasingly frustrated with the rating agency through the debt limit debate and have accused S&P of changing the goal posts in its downgrade warnings, sources familiar with talks between the administration and the ratings firm have said.

It's nice to know that government still has to answer to people outside of itself.

Unfortunately, this fiscal crisis (as crises tend to do) has had a perverse effect on our political process. In truth, it ought to be during times of plenty that we seek to restore fiscal sanity. It ought to be when the economy is booming that the government seeks to eliminate waste and make difficult long-term budget decisions, which are even more costly to make during a recession. Tragically, it's only now that the private sector is doing poorly and unemployment is high that people are just scared and angry enough to think about fiscal responsibility. It shouldn't take a crisis to make us think about these issues.

Perhaps Alex Tabarrok's "Unbalanced Budget Amendment" is the right idea: make government get a surplus during times of plenty, precisely so that we can go into debt during a recession. Does this not accord with our basic sense of morality? In times of plenty, save for the future; in times of need, be generous with what you have. Now it seems like we have the opposite: government spends a lot when the nation is prosperous, and then it tightens up when things are most desperate!

It will be the undoing of our democracy if we can't figure out how to regulate government's behavior so that it doesn't behave in such an adolescent fashion.

Myth busted: Planned Parenthood and federal funding

Kirsten Powers at The Daily Beast has a devastating op-ed concerning Planned Parenthood's federal funding. (It's worth noting this web site isn't exactly right-wing journalism.) She points to studies showing that Planned Parenthood's strategy of providing cheaper birth control doesn't actually lead to fewer abortions.

Over this time period [2000-2011], the U.S. government has funneled billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, in large part because the organization claims to provide services to avoid unplanned pregnancies – a laudable goal. Yet despite a robust budget—Planned Parenthood reported a total annual revenue of $1.1 billion in its last financial filing—the organization has done absolutely nothing to change the fundamental dynamics of the United States’ abortion rate.

Asked about the “Contraception” study, the Guttmacher numbers and why no women were saying they got abortions due to lack of access to contraception, a Planned Parenthood spokesman emailed this Orwellian response: “I think the biggest barrier is access to affordable contraception.” Huh?

Powers goes on to say:

It’s unclear whether Planned Parenthood officials simply don’t understand statistics or are so accustomed to having their claims unquestioned that they think if they repeat them often enough, the facts will disappear.

I suspect the latter.

This quote pretty much sums it up:

To preserve its federal subsidy, Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up. This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.

That's what some of us have been saying for years, but it turns out Orwellian propaganda really does work.

Government imitates Arrested Development

From The Washington Times:

"Republicans wanted more tax cuts. Democrats wanted more spending. They got both in the tax-cut deal President Obama struck with the GOP, and it's the federal budget that will take the hit.

Just 10 days after Mr. Obama's deficit commission sounded an alarm over the long-term health of the government's finances, the Senate is slated to vote Monday on a tax cut and spending package that will add $857 billion to the federal deficit in the upcoming years, likely setting a new records for red ink."

Wow, that's a new one. Republicans wanted to tax less, Democrats wanted to spend more. So their brilliant compromise is to do both.

It reminds me of that scene on Arrested Development season one when Maeby convinces George Michael that they can just throw away one banana for each dollar they take from the cash register:

Maeby: I can’t believe I volunteered for this. This is my stupidest rebellion ever. (taking money from the register) Hey, you want to go play skee-ball?

George Michael: Well, this is the cash drawer. My dad’s going to come by at the end of the weekend and the number of bananas has to match the amount of money in here.

Maeby: Oh, so it all has to even out?

George Michael: Exactly.

Maeby: Easy. Banana... (throws a banana into a garbage bin...) Buck. (and takes a buck from the register) Banana... Take a buck. (doing it again as George Michael just watches)

Oh, but not to worry. The government knows what it's doing:

"Republicans and Democrats who support the deal point out that the country's short-term economic problems are paramount, and argue that without economic growth, the long-term budget picture would look gloomier still."

Because, as we all know, short-term happiness is the most important key to long-term success.

Numbers

One of the most profound thing about numbers is how absolute they are. That is, they are absolute in their relationship to one another. "Two plus two is always four" is kind of a standard thing people say when they want to make a reference to the fact that certain truths are absolute.

I believe that by meditating on certain numbers we can better understand the world we live in. With our minds we can pierce through the chaos and confusion of a world where words often fail to have absolute meaning, and reach for a world of fact and reason. It is here that we will find liberty.

So what numbers am I meditating on?

• 730 billion - that's 730,000,000,000 - the number of dollars the federal government will spend on Social Security in 2011
• 491 billion - that's 491,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend on Medicare
• 297 billion - that's 297,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend on Medicaid
• 549 billion - that's 549,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend on the Department of Defense
• 719 billion - that's 719,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend on national security, including defense plus other agencies
• 3.834 trillion - that's 3,834,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend total
• 1.267 trillion - that's 1,267,000,000,000 - the number of dollars they will spend over-budget, that is, the deficit they expect to accrue for the year 2011.
• 15.299 trillion - that's 15,299,000,000,000 - the expected GDP of the United States in the year 2011
• 10.498 trillion - that's 10,498,000,000,000 - the anticipated public debt owed by the United States in the year 2011.

Contemplate these numbers with me. What might they say about the world we live in?

Government Literally Wastes Billions of Dollars

Check it out:

Obama to Sign Law Limiting $110 Billion in Erroneous Government Payments

President Barack Obama will sign legislation today to limit erroneous payments by the government and announce a new goal of reducing improper payments by $50 billion before 2012, a White House official said.

The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act will help limit improper payments to individuals, organizations and contractors, according to the administration official. The White House said that in 2009 a record of almost $110 billion was paid by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reasons.

So does anyone honestly still wonder why some of us have problems with the government spending so much in order to try to "boost" the economy?

A Bit Clunky

Now apparently some environmentalists aren't so sure about this whole "Cash for Clunkers" business. Fox News (who else?) reports on some of the potential screw-ups:

"Disposing of old products, a step required by most incentive and rebate programs, also has environmental costs," Gwen Ottinger, a researcher at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's Center for Contemporary History and Policy in Philadelphia, wrote in an opinion article published in The Washington Post on Tuesday.

"It takes energy to shred and recycle metals; plastic components often cannot be recycled and end up as landfill cover; and the engine fluids, refrigerants and other chemicals essential to operating products end up as hazardous wastes," she wrote.

...

"Cash for clunkers is a historic mistake for America because it misapplies billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize more fuel inefficient cars that are bad for our dependence on foreign oil and bad for the environment," said Edwin Black, author of "The Plan: How to Save America When the Oil Stops -- or the Day Before."

Black told FOXNews.com that lawmakers had the right idea to get more fuel efficient vehicles on the road but executed it poorly. He said it's too early to say how many vehicles purchased get 18 to 20 mpg rather than 30 to 35 mpg.

So basically a lot of cars are just getting scrapped--and when I mean scrapped, I mean, "the government is advising car dealers to replace a trade-in's engine oil with a lethal sodium silicate solution and run the engine to ruin it before giving to selling the car to a scrap dealer."

Meanwhile, we don't even know for sure if people are actually buying more efficient cars. So this doesn't make good environmental sense or economic sense. We're basically just trying to push a failing U.S. automobile industry (using tax money) and wasting a whole lot of usable materials.

If you were hoping to buy a new car one of these days, well then, good for you. Here, I'll help you pay for it. Right around when I get my next paycheck--those taxes they withhold should do the trick.

I guess it just gets to me a little to see things go to waste. Anyone who knows me knows I always eat everything on my plate, I drive a car that gets at least 35 miles a gallon, and I pretty much never spend anything that wasn't already in my budget.

So why shouldn't I complain when the government is wasting tons of resources, and spending tons of money that will ultimately come from the American people? Does anyone even care how much $2,000,000,000 is anymore?

No, we do not need to just do something to help our economy and the environment. If we're going to do something, let's put some careful thought into what we're doing and not shove a ton of legislation through in a matter of months.

*sigh* The problem is that so many people who are in panic mode will take what they can get, and trust the government even with poor planning. In the long run, of course, this is absolutely a terrible attitude. But politics is always based on the short-term. Maybe that makes politics inherently flawed; I don't know.

Oh, well, what are you gonna do, blog about it?