That $*#@&>! Tea Party!

Unless that Tea Party crowd comes to its senses this week, hundreds of thousands of people -- including firefighters, police officers and school teachers -- will lose their jobs.  Our armed forces will take a heavy hit. Many social programs will be slammed.  State governments will suffer.  Much more.

And there will be a domino effect.  People without work spend less at the grocery, drug store, theater or shopping mall, so businesses lay off workers.  If people don’t buy, manufacturers don’t manufacture, resulting in more layoffs, resulting in less buying, et cetera ad infinitum.

All so that the very rich among us will get to keep their money in stocks and bonds and offshore banks and wherever else they stash it, while the rest of us, the middle class and poor, will absorb the entire hit.  

Somehow this all makes sense to Tea Partiers, even though virtually every economist in the nation says the only way we are going to get our fiscal house in order is to cut spending and raise taxes -- for now on the rich, but later on the middle class as well. 

In one sense it does make sense.  Most Tea Party congressmen are themselves quite wealthy, and they represent skillfully gerrymandered districts where they are safe from political competition.

But in every other sense, it is nonsense. 

To recap: America is on the verge of facing sharp declines in education, police protection, fire protection, military readiness and job security, all to keep the very rich from paying more taxes, even though there is no other way to fiscal sanity.

If there is a Tea Partier out there who wants to defend this madness, I would love to hear it.

-Skip