A "protection racket" is where a group of people puts you at risk of disaster — and then generously offers to sell you protection against that very risk, usually at a very high price.
Well the Blackmailers have done it again. They have gotten Obama to give them 98% of what they want. No revenue increases, and draconian cuts to almost every program. Our infrastructure will continue to crumble, our schools will continue to fall behind other nations, our police and firemen will not be able to respond, the prisoners will be released, We will not be able to compete for all of the green jobs because we won't be able to afford research. We will no longer be the innovators we will be dependent for our clean energy from China, just as we have been dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia. All of this will slow down the economy and cost millions of jobs.
What does the regular citizen get out of the deal? They may be able to avoid the even worse disaster of defaulting on the debt that the Republicans caused in the first place. Default would have meant higher interest rates for everyone, and it would have increased the national debt by hundreds of billions.
The problem is even if the Republicans get their way, and win the next election they will have boxed themselves in. Having promised to never raise taxes they will not be able to balance the budget for 64 years and they add $6 trillion to the debt, because they insist on raising military spending even though the military doesn't want the increases. The Republicans are owned by the military Industrial Complex, and will have to raise the debt ceiling many more times.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archive...I say the deal May have saved us from default, but that is still not certain.
The Tea Party is still convinced that default would be a good thing because it would mean that Obama would be considered a failure. Even if Obama has given them more than they ever dreamed of, they still might not vote to extend the debt ceiling.
They think another economic failure would be good for them and their corporate masters. Look at what happened last time they destroyed the economy. The big corporations were able to gobble up their competition, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The banks and the other corporations are now making record profits.
If the economy is destroyed again, they will be able to use that disaster to sell off all of the nations assets. They can sell the Grand Canyon for the mineral rights and all of the other parks. They call it Disaster Capitalism. They use disasters to push through their radical agenda while everyone is in shock from the disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_D...In this case they created a totally artificial crisis from what should have been routine book keeping. Then they used that crisis to hold America hostage, threatening to blow the economy up unless they got their way.
Now we have two big questions:
1. Even after they got their way will the terrorists still blew up the economy?
2. If the terrorists sign the deal and collect their ransom, when will they hold us hostage again?