By Design or By Default: A Credit Downgrade Nobody Noticed and the Vote That Decides Texas

Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk with news that had sat in plain sight for a year while almost no one reported it. Every major credit rating agency has now pushed the federal government out of its top tier. Moody's stripped Washington of its triple-A rating, the European agency Scope cut the United States to double-A minus citing a sustained deterioration in public finances and a weakening of governance standards, and Fitch warned that years of fiscal malpractice keep federal debt well above other double-A sovereigns. Miller's point was less about the ratings than the silence around them. Markets are reacting even where headlines are not: gold and silver keep climbing, foreign governments are repatriating gold and edging away from the dollar as the world reserve currency, and confidence in the United States as a reliable institution is draining away.

From there he made the case he has pressed for years. Texas will become a self-governing independent nation either by design or by default. By design means an orderly exit while Texas still stands as the eighth largest economy in the world. By default means waiting until the federal system buckles and dragging Texas down with it, whether through economic collapse, harder tyranny, or balkanization. Everything moves slowly until it doesn't, he warned, because the decline accelerates at the end. Borrowing from Ernest Renan, who called a nation a daily plebiscite, Miller argued that building one is itself a daily referendum, voted through our actions and inactions every day.

He also returned to a distinction he says most people get wrong: nation, state, and country are not the same thing. Because Americans use the words interchangeably, they assume states are mere administrative subdivisions of the federal system. But the Declaration made the colonies independent states on par with Great Britain, and the Montevideo Convention defines exactly what a state is under international law. Texas carries the name and meets the criteria. Miller closed by teasing post-primary information he could not yet share, except to say it confirmed what the TNM has always claimed: put independence to a vote and it wins, and not by a little.

Questions answered in this episode

• When is your next in-person appearance? Nothing is firm yet, but something is in the works, likely tied to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• How do you see the Cornyn versus Paxton runoff going, and what are actual Texans saying? Polling has been broken since Brexit and 2016 and the recent primaries proved it again, so Miller sees the race as Paxton's to lose despite Cornyn vastly outspending him, with the wild card being how afraid voters are of losing to Talarico.
• With the system this corrupt, who is the least corruptible and least likely to protect criminals? The real battle is between the Texan people and an entrenched political establishment, a corrupt electorate produces corrupt representatives, and the way through is to hold ground and out-organize, not just vote harder.
• Are you suggesting voting should be a privilege instead of a right? Miller argued voting is suffrage, historically treated as a privilege and a civil duty rather than a fundamental right, since it can be extended to new groups and stripped from individuals in a way true rights cannot.
• Why doesn't the Texas Scorecard cover the TNM, given that majority support for independence is newsworthy? Miller said they have offered coverage before if there is news to send, and he committed to reaching out to put it to the test.