The Brink

A divided government that seems stuck in perpetual gridlock, took the US economy to the brink of default, only to be saved by a last-minute agreement last week. 
Apparently this was not enough for Standard & Poors (S&P), the debt rating agency which was not capable of warning about impending problems with Lehman Brothers, or with the mortgage debt crisis a couple of years ago.  
S&P downgraded US debt from AAA to AA+ and the stock market which had been having one bad day after another for the past two weeks, had an absolutely horrendous day today.  Over the last couple of weeks, the stock market has declined by a figure that is closing-in on 20%. 

Meanwhile, the President has a mere 42% approval rating and Congress has a dismal 14% approval rating! 
The polls notwithstanding, it should be immediately obvious to even the most casual observer that the citizens of the US do not think any of the politicians are doing anywhere near an acceptable job.

I think it is clear we are not simply approaching the brink of disaster; we are teetering on the very edge.  The question before us now is: can any one of the political geniuses figure-out how to keep us from tumbling over that edge? 

Shutdown

It has been all over the news the last few days.
The deadline of midnight tonight (Friday, April 8, 2011) looms over the political landscape, as a Federal government shutdown becomes a possibility. 
In a game of political "Brinksmanship" the Republican-controlled Congress is pushing the Democrat-controlled White House to either make drastic budget cuts, or face the prospect of not getting a mid-year budget passed by the deadline, which will shut down the government.

There are an estimated 800,000 Federal workers who may not go to work on Monday and who face the prospect of going without a paycheck.
- Do you need a passport?  Sorry, those Federal workers who process passports are likely going to be considered "non-essential" personnel and they will be sent home if the government shuts down.
- Do you feel like visiting a national monument, or one of the national parks?  Sorry, the same goes for the folks who work there.
- April 15 is the deadline for Americans to file their 2010 Federal, State (and for some of us Local) tax returns.  If you are scheduled to receive a tax refund and you filed your return electronically, you will likely receive a credit to your account, but if you mailed-in your tax return, you could be waiting for that refund check for a long time.

Politicians are trying to score points for their parties, refusing to compromise, all the while weighing how their actions today will affect their re-election campaigns in the future. 
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people are holding their breaths, hoping for an avoidance of a government shutdown, quite literally at the eleventh hour. 
Is this what they call a Democracy? 

I think back to the comedian Johnny Carson and the following line which is attributed to him:
"Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties."