U.S. Government: Sorry, We're Closed 1532
theodp writes "CNN reports that the U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday after lawmakers in the House and the Senate could not agree on a spending bill to fund the government. Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. But employees deemed non-essential — close to 800,000 — will be furloughed, and most of those are supposed to be out of their offices within four hours of the start of business Tuesday."
Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they do ANYTHING for the actual good of the country?
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
War on Afganistan
War on Iraq
War on terror
War on drugs
War on swear words
War on nudity
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
War on it's own citizens
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
War on it's own citizens
War on mis-use of apostrophe's (sic)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
make install
not war
Re:sudo (Score:5, Funny)
Do you REALLY want to grant root access to the clowns in charge of the US ????
Hell, they make 1-week cram-course MCSE's look good, in comparison. . . .
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
There is one profession older than warrior and it _is_ more profitable. In fact prostitution probably has one of the highest returns on investment.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
War on common sense - I think we actually won that one...
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it would limit it to happening once a year, when they're hammering out the budget.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no middle ground anymore theres the far left and the far right and a giant gulf in the middle with a few real centrists mixed in..
Far left? Far right? Which country are you exactly living in? You're mixing your political terms, you have to parties that are far right and bickering over who gets to have the scepter of power.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true... in the sense that a hostage crisis requires a hostage taker, a hostage, and a police force.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, why should they? The negotiations happened when the ACA was passed in a legitimate democratic act. What the Republicans are doing now is trying to hold a gun to the countries head in an entirely undemocratic move to kill the ACA. In other words, they are terrorists, and the President shouldn't negotiate with terrorists.
Once they put on their big-boy pants and pick up their toys, perhaps they can get back to the task in hand and pass the budget.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
What "far left" positions has the Democratic party taken? The Affordable Care Act is essentially what the Republicans were proposing for health care reform 20 years ago.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans are a day late and a dollar short on ACA. So many companies have already opted to drop coverage for part timers starting 1/1/2014 that if they delay implementations of it now they will basically screw them over even more so than ACA already has by getting companies to make part time jobs actually part time jobs instead of part time jobs with full time hours.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
the democrats aren't listening to the people. The republicans are
Well, you're half right.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
The people elected Obama when a central part of his campaign was 'Obamacare'. They re-elected him. If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so; instead they are using the budget and the massive harm not passing it causes the country to try and hold a gun to Obama's head. They have a legitimate means to try and change things, but because doing that is too hard they'd rather sacrifice the US economy for political point scoring.
Would republican voters be happy if the next Republican president couldn't do anything the Democrats didn't like because the democrat led house or senate wouldn't pass a budget without demanding it be removed? Does anyone who has really thought about this want the budget to become a political nuclear weapon?
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so
They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.
What is it called after you attempt the same thing fourty-two times [google.com] ?
I think I'll have to try this new tea party bargaining method. See I have the keys to the office. I can refuse to let anyone in the building unless *I* get a raise and they agree to get rid of the healthy snacks in the vending machines.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of tacking completely unrelated issues together on an up-or-down vote basis is one of the ugliest facets of the US legislative process. You take a bill, name it "The Homeless Puppies and Kittens Act", put in a token support for animal shelters, then festoon it with pork-barrel riders such as Interstate Highways to nowhere, covert espionage on citizens, etc., etc., etc. like lampreys on a whale. Now no one can vote against wasteful spending or violations of basic rights because if they do, they "hate puppies and kittens". And the puppies and kittens are hostages.
If the Republican Party had any integrity, they'd stop attaching Obamacare to the budgetary process, get the darn thing passed, then do an honest frontal assault on Obamacare. But then, they can't win that, so intelligent people would regroup, plan for a more opportune time, and spend their resources on something that actually did the country some good, building some political capital that they could use for the next attack. But then again, intelligent and Congress never did go too well together.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
I find your two paragraphs in disagreement with each other.
Instead of funding everything at once, the Republicans in the House passed a bill funding some things but not others, so that what is more generally agreed upon can continue to work while the rest would need its own separate spending authorization. From your first paragraph, this would seem to be a step in the right direction.
And yet, your second paragraph turns around criticizes the Republicans for NOT bundling all things. You suggest they should bundle everything then coming back later with a separate bill to remove some of them.
That's just whitewash. The bill being held hostage is to pay for things already funded. "Killing" a law by de-funding it is what you do when you cannot get the law repealed by more honest means.
Re:Trying the same thing over and over (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been fewer votes on federal gun control (for *or* against) in the past decade than there have been attempts to kill the ACA ('Obamacare') in the past year. This, despite it being virtually identical to the plan proposed by Republicans while Bush was in office.
There have, likewise, been fewer votes on the death penalty, abortion access, segregation, pot use, and same-sex marriage *combined* (again, for or against) in the past decade, than attempts to repeal the ACA in the past year.
Democracy isn't about throwing a fit and refusing to do your damned job (passing a budget) because the *other guy* got something you didn't like.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
He said that was totally different and of course wrong.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one am happy that someone is willing to stand up and say current behaviors are driving our country toward an inevitable debt burden we can never hope to repay, regardless of whether the message is popular.
The party out of the White House always says this. The Democrats abhorred the outrageous spending on military actions and Medicare expansion during the Bush years. The Republicans abhorred the outrageous spending on social programs during the Clinton years. "We spend to much and are dooming our children to poverty and economic collapse," has been a rallying cry since at least Reagan.
Strangely, neither party, once in power, actually reduces spending. Neither party is especially interested in changing those programs that actually affect the budget. What we currently get from the GOP is "We need to cut $1000B from the $600B discretionary budget, so we can afford to reduce revenues by $200B."
This tactic, of claiming the party in-power is destroying the country, while continuing exactly those same behaviors when the tables turn, is the partisan rhetoric that polarizes the people and prevents any rational compromise to solve actual problems.
Re: Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Utterly wrong on nearly all counts. After WWII federal spending as a percentage of GDP was 16%. During the next 50 years federal spending increased a measly 3%... Then Dubya:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7M6Qk22TGko/UDMQywXhifI/AAAAAAAARVM/AUKK51HNBPM/s640/Governemnt+Spending+as+Percent+of+GDP+-+Federal.png
If you want the true underlying reason for the deficit look no further than two unfunded wars and drastic cuts in revenues, largely to the mega wealthy.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone who has really thought about this want the budget to become a political nuclear weapon?
Yes it absolutely should be.
I look forward to next February, when we can expect a cadre of politicians demanding that the NSA be defunded or they won't pass a CR. Followed, doubtless in March by demands that the Smithsonian be divested or they won't pay military salaries, and in April that NASA be defunded or they won't send out social security checks.
Most of us think that, once you've passed a law, it's law. A segment of House republicans seem to think that you can cancel the law by refusing to pay for it, in exactly the same way they effectively cancelled the Dodd-Frank financial reform law by blocking appointment of the necessary administrators. If they think they really think the people want ACA repealed, then they should organize and get the votes to repeal it, not find sneaky ways to allow it to be 'technically the law, but we have no way to enforce or implement it."
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Your electoral system gave the GOP a majority when they got notably less votes than the 'minority' Democrats. If I was a Republican I'd be embarrassed by the fact that my party was claiming to be the majority when they majority of voters in a democratic country didn't voted for the opposition.
ACA had to be passed into law and was. Republicans had the chance to stop it then and they have had the chance to stop it at any time since then. The budget should not be a matter of party politics because anything being funded should already have been accepted by the three branches of government.
If the Republicans manage to this without the public siding against them (which I'm dubious about) then just wait till the situation is reversed and the Democrats realise they can use this to get what they want on gun control, abortion, welfare etc by doing the same thing.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
They also re-elected a GOP majority in the House where funding bills start.
The House is gerrymandered. It does not accurately represent the will of the people, but rather represents the cumulative will of the parties in control of the states. If I remember correctly, between 95% and 98% of Congressional seats are predetermined by gerrymandering.
Furthermore, you already wrote "Polls show half the country thought the law was already fully in effect until last week or so and the majority don't understand their obligations or the most perfunctory effects the law will have on them" so clearly this can't be the will of the people, if half of them have no idea what the law is or will do. I'm not sure how this could conceivably be seen as anything other than the political obsession of a minority of congress.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
So what's your point. If you can't do something properly you should do whatever it takes instead? You can't ask someone you don't know 41 times to give you $1000 and if they refuse the 41st time tell them they need to give you the money or you'll key their car and then claim they are being unreasonable.
There's a democratic president who got elected on a platform including this bill, there's a democratic senate and the majority of voters voted for democratic congresspeople. The Republicans can't do this legitimately because the voters chose not to give them the power to run the country so they're using economic vandalism to try and get their way instead.
Re: Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
While the people did elect Obama a second time they also elected a majority republican congress at the same time. The people did vote for a divided government, although I do wonder how many people were voting against Romney instead of voting for Obama.Considering that Obama got a higher percentage of the vote than the democrats did in congress (looks to be about 3%) it would seem likely that people were voting against Romney.
You should be aware that the Democrats won the congressional popular vote by around 50.7% to 49.3%, but because of gerrymandering (the practice of dividing congressional districts to subvert the will of the public), they have fewer seats in congress than the Republicans.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Task: Fund the government
House bill: Fund the government and defund ACA
Senate bill: Fund the government
House bill: Fund the government and delay ACA
Senate bill: Fund the government
The Senate (aka Democrats) seems to have no issues achieving said task. It is the House (aka Republicans) that continues to muddy the waters.
If their constituents really want ACA gone, that is fine. But this task is neither the time nor the place. The House just put 800,000 workers temporarily out of a job. You think those 800,000 people are going to care about ACA when they don't get a paycheck this month?
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Oddly enough there is middle ground, the only problem is the democrats aren't listening to the people.
A majority of the house of representatives could have passed a funding bill to keep the government going. But this bill won't see the floor. Why?
Because the "Majority of the majority" [wikipedia.org] doesn't support it. There's your "will of the people", it's second to the will of the majority party. There is no more compromise (Oh? 230/435 congress persons want to pass a bill? Pity only 70 of those are in our party. No vote for you!).
So now our house of representatives can no longer represent the people. Only the whims of the majority party.
This is why the government is shut down. The majority party refused to allow vote on a budget that had *majority* support in the house, just because it wasn't the bill their party wanted.
And this is the overall issue. Representation in government has been co-opted by the political parties. They no longer represent the people in their districts, only their parties agenda.
Read more about the Hastert rule and find out where the fault really lies and stop spreading talking points [wikipedia.org].
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Um....Obamacare was the single largest issue during the campaign.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Do they do ANYTHING for the actual good of the country?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
$1 to buy in. All those who guess how many days this lasts (including weekends) get to split 84% of the pot.
Hey... the house has to have a cut. That's the way Wall Street does it.
Wait... no, it isn't. I get a fee of 5% of the dollar as it goes in, 16% of the overall pot, then 5% of the remainder when it's paid out.
There. That's better. If you want a cheaper deal, next time ask for a "no load" pool.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If they actually stay shut down, as in no longer having a fear of being arrested for not paying a fee for growing organic food, no longer worried about being arrested for working without hiring designated bureaucrats, there will be plenty of jobs, rather it's getting hired somewhere else because the costs overhead of supporting the government is gone, or the regulations keeping them from working for themselves are gone.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, those Fortune 100 companies paid good money for those laws and regulations!
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
Luckily, NSA and TSA are not considered non-essential government services?
Apparently USDA is considered non-essential. They've already pulled the plug on the site:
"Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available.
We sincerely regret this inconvenience.
After funding has been restored, please allow some time for this website to
become available again."
www.usda.gov
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't cost nothing. It costs very very little but that isn't the same thing...
I'm guessing it cost more to pay the I.T. guy to build this 'closed' page and set up the forwarding links than it cost to pay to just leave the functioning site and servers up.
Come to think of it - they paid the IT guy AND are keeping the server up: just to keep this stupid 'closed' page up.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't the food safety and inspection program funded by user fees from the agricultural/packing industry?
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whole Federal Gov is non essential (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Air traffic control, we could leave that to the airlines, right? Or maybe you'd like 50 different collections of rules. How about NIH, anyone in your family get a really nasty disease lately? Surely your state will fund and coordinate that research. How about the CDC? You like plagues like salmonella raging across the land with no agency in charge of nailing down the culprit so more people don't die. How about EPA? What do you need clean air and water for. How about Social Security, Grandma can come and live with you, right? Medicare? You'll be happy to afford her medications so she'll live to ripe old age under your tender loving care. NTSB ring a bell? They are the folks that figure out how companies managed to kill of your mother by not paying attention to safety.
The list goes on, but shut it all down because they are "non-essential" and "counterproductive". Your motto must be, "I don't think, therefore I am not".
Re:Whole Federal Gov is non essential (Score:5, Insightful)
Add "dangerous" to that list.
Not just to stability in the ME and to US relationships with long-time allies.
More dangerous by orders of magnitude to US citizens' lives and freedom than the "terrists", or even any other hostile country, could possibly be.
Violent crime in the US, including gun crime, is at historic multi-decade lows (despite increased gun ownership, but I digress) according to official stats, yet the number of people killed by police (particularly unarmed people) and the number of para-military "SWAT" raids has steadily and rapidly increased over the last few decades, along with the prison population.
"National Security"? Ha!
*Real* national security would necessitate, in part, dismantling and/or massively-downsizing much of the myriad of current alphabet-soup domestic security/intelligence/enforcement agencies and departments, like DHS, TSA, and NSA for just a few examples, and either eliminating them outright, or at the least, stripping them of all but the barest minimum of powers and capabilities/infrastructure, like no more giant domestic data centers and "USS Enterprise bridge"-styled data/surveillance "command centers" at taxpayer expense to satisfy out-of-control and delusional sociopathic megalomaniacs with God-complexes, who also just happen to be US Generals.
Speaking of Gen. "Make it so!" Alexander, back in my day they used to send two big hospital orderlies with a net, a straight-jacket, and an ambulance for such people and placed them in mental institutions.
These days they hold high US political and/or government/military/intelligence positions.
I vote we simply wall-off all of Washington D.C. with all Federal government political/lobbying denizens inside, and make it a giant mental asylum ala "Escape From New York" and then throw a nationwide month-long block-party in celebration, using just a tiny fraction of the savings to the entire country.
"..And nothing of value was lost..."
Strat
The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
All the news stories have been about "which political party should we blame."
You want to know who to blame? All of the twits who have been cheering on "their team" while this has been going on, instead of pressuring their representatives to do their job. The members of Congress -- in both major parties -- feel no pressure to actually resolve the situation, because they've managed to trick their supporters in the media into giving them a pass while they wasted time instead of actually trying to come up with a solution that has a chance of working.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Informative)
Are you kidding me? Let me summarize the situation:
* The Senate passes a bill to continue federal funding as required
* The House passes a bill that also kills Obamacare completely
* The Senate rejects it
* The House passes a bill that delays Obamacare for a year, kills the medical device tax, and kills women's contraception coverage
* The Senate rejects it
* The House passes a bill that kills the individual mandate (the only thing that would make Obamacare work)
* The Senate rejects it
* The government shuts down
Here's the strategy of the Republicans: shut down the government and then threaten to default (this happens on Oct 17th if the debt ceiling isn't raised). The government shutdown is simply a way for the Republicans to show that they are serious. It is an annoyance, but it is not an economic calamity. But the debt ceiling is. If the government defaults, everything is going to hell. So far the Republicans have just shot one hostage. Now they are threatening to kill them all.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Informative)
The government shutdown is simply a way for the Republicans to show that they are serious. It is an annoyance, but it is not an economic calamity. But the debt ceiling is. If the government defaults, everything is going to hell. So far the Republicans have just shot one hostage. Now they are threatening to kill them all.
Here's a few articles by Paul Krugman which go into those ideas in more detail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/krugman-rebels-without-a-clue.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/opinion/krugman-the-crazy-party.html [nytimes.com]
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/default-notes/ [nytimes.com]
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
The government shutdown is simply a way for the Republicans to undermine democracy.
FTFY. They lost the big game, and like sore losers turned vandals, they're trashing the equipment and the field.
Just like they did the last time we had a Democrat for president.
It's their standard strategy these days. One of their big-name "thinkers" was caught on tape recommending it.
But the voters who insist on voting against their own economic interests are to blame. Yo, 98% of Republican voters, that means you. Stop propping up the super wealthy. They are actively preventing any hope of realizing your own economic dreams.
When your party platform is plutocracy, you have to operate by convincing the masses to vote against their own economic self-interests. So since ~1960 the Republican party has increasingly relied on racism, religious intolerance, fear mongering, etc. to win elections. I.e., appealing to our worst nature rather than our better nature.
Now the inmates are running the asylum. And Angry White Retirees are simultaneously outraged by the existence of entitlements and terrified that Those Damn Democrats (tm) are going to take away their social security and medical benefits.
That's what a few decades of hate-wing radio and a propaganda outlet posing as a news outlet do for a country.
The good news is that the Republican party is about to explode. The bad news is that there is going to be a lot of collateral damage when it finally does.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
All the news stories have been about "which political party should we blame."
You want to know who to blame? All of the twits who have been cheering on "their team" while this has been going on, instead of pressuring their representatives to do their job. The members of Congress -- in both major parties -- feel no pressure to actually resolve the situation, because they've managed to trick their supporters in the media into giving them a pass while they wasted time instead of actually trying to come up with a solution that has a chance of working.
"Sure he shouldn't have strapped a bomb to his chest. But the hostage negotiator should have worked harder to get him the money in the vault, so really they're both to blame for the explosion."
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Interesting)
All the news stories have been about "which political party should we blame."
You want to know who to blame? All of the twits who have been cheering on "their team" while this has been going on, instead of pressuring their representatives to do their job. The members of Congress -- in both major parties -- feel no pressure to actually resolve the situation, because they've managed to trick their supporters in the media into giving them a pass while they wasted time instead of actually trying to come up with a solution that has a chance of working.
There was a survey on CNN yesterday. They asked which party is acting like a spoiled child:
* Obama 47%
* Democrats 58%
* Republicans 69%
In other news, a Danish TV station I was watching yesterday had one of those round table discussions where everybody was scratching their heads over this strange situation. One of the panelists cited a survey that found that Congress has a 10% approval rating which it amused him to contrast with the fact that apparently socialism/communism has an 11% approval rating with the US public. If those percentages are correct, that last one is surprising. I figured the approval rating for socialism in the USA would be hardly measurable.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Informative)
That's just B.S. The house wasn't sending a budget bill to the senate, they were trying to subvert the democratic process by transforming an appropriations bill into a way to attack Obamacare.
They've tried 50 times to vote it out, and since that hasn't worked they've just gone ahead and tried to backdoor it.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? No this was a vote about the debt ceiling, not about Obama Care. Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times without this kind of BS.
The very thought that the Republicans would play chicken at all with an economy that is trying to come back from a collapse is fucking totally ridiculous.
The people voted Obama back in to office with Romney running against Obama Care, they lost! and since then have tried everything they can to stop it, threating to shutdown the government was just another way of them not wanting to admit they lost the election and therefore do not get to overturn the presidents landmark Health care bill.
This was nothing more than Republicans hoping they could force the president to overturn Obama Care by holding the economy hostage, pure and simple. I do not see how any rational person would see this any other way. They should have voted to raise the debt ceiling for no other reason than that's what they are there for.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
The R's are desperate to stop ObamaCare. If it was going to be a train wreck they would just let it go and reap the political benefits. They realize that once enough people start actually benefiting from it it will become politically impossible to do away with just like Social Security and Medicare. dfw
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Informative)
You're an idiot, you know that? The House of Representatives represents the will of the people. The people want to get rid of Obamacare.
You realise that in the last election:
Or, to put it another way, in 2012:
So, in terms of popular vote, the Democrats go a (very slim) majority in two of the three elections, the Republicans didn't manage it in one. In the election where the Republicans did best (the Presidential race, 47.2%), they didn't get as much of the vote as the Democrats did in the election where they did the worst (House, 48.3%). Neither party got anywhere close to the percentage of the vote that enables someone who doesn't lie for a living to claim to have a mandate from the people.
Now, I realise the state of mathematical education is pretty poor in the USA, but being able to tell which of two numbers is bigger than the other is surely something that is covered.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republicans are holding the budget hostage as a last resort to prevent a law that legally passed from taking hold (The Affordable HealthCare Act). They've been bitching and moaning for years about it, and now that its time for the majority of the law to go into effect, they decide that if they can't get their way (defunding the law) then NOBODY can have a budget
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming both parties means blaming nobody. Open your damn eyes.
That's what Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate and NYT columnist says. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/krugman-rebels-without-a-clue.html [nytimes.com] He calls it "false equivalence."
Its purpose is to make people feel cynical and hopeless, so that they won't participate in politics and the plutocrats with the big money can take over.
The Democrats are pretty bad. The Republicans are fucking lunatics who are willing to destroy the country in order to serve their Koch brothers billionaires. They're even willing to destroy themselves, because they don't understand what they're doing. They're like the guy who saws off the tree limb he's sitting on.
Re:Agreed, but I will also blame gerrymandering (Score:5, Informative)
Most of us did NOT vote for them. Republicans won the House with a minority of votes because of gerrymandered districts.
What a great way to run a country... (Score:5, Insightful)
'Murica! Where the government closes when they can't talk it out due to childish behavior from different parties.
Third World Governance (Score:5, Interesting)
I love Slate's [slate.com] take on this. When you read it, substitute "Venezuela", "Uganda", or "Myanmar" for "America".
Lawmakers should be considered non-essential (Score:5, Insightful)
If lawmakers of both houses were considered non-essential we wouldn't have a shut down right now.
It's all fun and games as long as you can play with someone else's income.
Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
The people who steal one third of my paycheck! Who will spy on me? Who will treat me with contempt? Who will give my money to people who don't work? Who will blow up those nasty foreigners with drones? Who will second-guess my personal choices?
And what about the cronies!!? How will they get their schemes funded? Won't someone please think of the cronies!!!?
Looking in from the outside. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but the way the US political class appear to act is absolutely fucking pathetic.
Re:Looking in from the outside. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but the way the US political class appear to act is absolutely fucking pathetic.
Thanks for this insightful outside perspective; our beer goggles must be deceiving us.
Re:Looking in from the outside. (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for this insightful outside perspective; our beer goggles must be deceiving us.
Apparently, because you keep election these fuckers.
How Australia handles this (Score:5, Interesting)
If this happens in Australia (upper house repeatedly blocks bills from the lower house) we sack them all, and hold another election. It's called a double dissolution [wikipedia.org] (because both houses are dissolved simultaneously).
Re:How Australia handles this (Score:5, Interesting)
We also have section 54 in our constitution, which prohibits bills for appropriation of funds to run the annual business of government from dealing with any other matter. This seems to be the weak point in US law that is repeatedly exploited; holding funds for normal running to ransom over unrelated items.
The mechanics were (are?) interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
I was there for the last shutdown.
By statute, email was not sufficient for notification. Every employee had to show up to the office and be given a formal-on-paper memo telling them they were furloughed. Remember, by statute, the in-person delivery of a notice on paper was required. That meant that *every* field employee had to make there way back to the office the same morning to receive their paper. Special Agents were called off of stake-outs. Employees permamently assigned to work from home or from desks at non-government entities had to leave their normal workspace and come into the federal building that was, theoretically, their place of employment...even if they *never* set foot in that building under normal circumstances.
At the last shutdown, every federal building was packed. There wasn't room for all the people who were forced to show up all at the same time. Halls were lined with people standing around because they had no place to sit. Friends gathered in groups of 4 or 5 around the desk of the one guy in their group who actually had a desk.
All of this may have been changed in the meantime.
However, post-9/11 we used to discuss the prospect of another shutdown and always concluded the same. Congress would be stupid to do it. The mechanics of the process made every federal building in the nation an incredibly enticing, super-target-rich environment for any nut job with a bomb or a gun who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.
We tended to think that putting all government employees in central locations, metaphorically under a giant banner that said "All terrorists attack here. Multiple high-value targets present. High level of success guaranteed." was so stupid that even Congress wouldn't do it.
Of course, we might have been wrong about that.
Victory! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't Worry (Score:5, Funny)
2. OSHA, on the other hand, will stop inspecting your refineries, so some of your human resources employees may need to work a little harder to replace losses due to on-the-job mortality and morbidity.
If the #1 and #2 above do not apply to you, please ignore this post, it's not your government that shut down.
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't true. There is no guarantee that furloughed workers will be paid for their time upon their return.
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:5, Informative)
I was under the impression from comments in the news that it's not guaranteed that you get back-paid?
I don't know the details but perhaps in the Clinton era shut down they simply opted to? It doesn't mean they will this time from what I understand.
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:5, Informative)
You guys both have it slightly wrong.
The last time this happened, everyone was split into two groups: "essential staff" was required to come to work, but for no pay because even in absence of a budget it was dangerous for them to not perform their duties (the guys who fix broken traffic lights, for example, and others). The other grou was "non essential" and sent home with no pay.
After the budget was resolved, everyone came back to work and was paid for those days. But the essential staff complained that although everyone got paid, the "non-essential staff" basically got a free vacation and were paid for it, while the 'essential staff' had to work for their money.
The economists agreed it was basically unfair. So while at some point the political folks can make a decision about whether to pay back-pay or not, there's no guarantee. In fact the fair thing to do is not pay back salary for the non-essential staff, since they did not perform their duties.
Point is: they have to decide what to do, and there's no guarantee anyone will be paid for their time, which sucks.
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they receive other benefits? Bummer being sent home in the run-up to the holiday season.
It's worth mentioning that House and Senate representatives and President - and perhaps at least some of their staff - are considered "essential" and will get paid through the shut down.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
Are you suggesting that preventing terrorism is not essential?
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I don't see any terrorists around, so it must be working!
It's just like the rock I keep on my nightstand to ward off tigers. Sure, it's not a recurring cost, like the war on terror, but it has a similar effect.
Proof for you naysayers: I've yet to be so much as scratched by a tiger in my sleep.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a locked door sure, but I don't have a 10 inch thick armored steel plated vault door installed in my house either.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say laughing stock. Although the country I live in has national health care, and the budget gets passed every year. I broke my elbow earlier this year. I saw 3 doctors in a local clinic, 1 E.R. doctor in a major hospital, 2 E.R. orthopedic surgeons, had 4 x-rays (about 6 weeks from start to finish), 1 (non-E.R.) orthopedic surgeon, about 4 nurses, and 1 physiotherapist. I had a splint for a week, tensor bandages, gauze with medical grade polysporin, medical grade tylenol and advil. I saw the last orthopedic surgeon 4 times, the physiotherapist 7 times. At no point did anyone ask for money. I pay taxes. I don't claim to live in the richest country in the world, but *somehow* I went from losing 1/4 square inch of bone and about 6 square inches of skin and muscle (about 1/4 inch deep), to being able to lift about 80 pounds with arm/elbow without pain, no visible scarring, and about 99% of the range of motion that I had before, all in about 10 weeks (I have 2 weeks to go before they consider it completely healed). I know Americans get huffy when people in other countries say they can do things that Americans can't. If it was sports or technology, there would be a shouting match on the web. Well the country I live in can have national medical coverage, and apparently, you cannot. Its not so much of a boast. I think America would be better off with what my country has. But that causes shouting matches *within America*. All I can say is "if you knew what I know, saw what I see, you would want what I have". But there are people who live in your country with vested interests in keeping medical costs very expensive, and unfortunately some people have to die because of it, needlessly. I think some of it is that I don't buy health Insurance, but pay taxes to health care. It costs about $20 per month per person (about $240 per year). I make about $30 per hour. This doesn't break my bank. Somehow I didn't pay a nickel in hospital for a broken elbow, and no one sent me a bill. Yet it worked for me, and works for everyone else where I live. No other countries in the world with medical coverage like what I have are laughing at the US. They are perplexed, bewildered, even quizzical over how so many Americans could be sold so crappy a bill of goods. There are no medical insurance companies getting rich here. There is no 'denied coverage' here. There are no 'pre-existing conditions' here. We don't have 'Health Insurance', we have 'Health Care'. Obamacare isn't even half as good as what I have, and people (Americans) are shouting over it. Bizarre! All the hospitals/clinics I visited are less than 10 years old, 1 is 6 months old, the x-ray (medical imaging machines) were less than 1 year old, laser guided, computer controlled. Economies of scale could work in the US too.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Avoiding the US centric partisan flamebait here; from the outside looking in what people should be furious about is why during the entire period of Obamacare being introduced to being written into law, being challenged, then to 3 years late is why no one pointing out that the real problem you have in america is the pricing of health services regardless of who is the one trying to pay for them.
You guys pay between twice to ten times as much for the same procedures or services as are paid in other countries (considering equal quality service). I'm not talking about going to mexico for back alley cosmetic surgery here, I mean proper care you find in places like Canada or the UK or Germany.
And I'm not talking about the cost to the patient either, I mean the actual amount paid out in the end to the providers of the services. Obamacare just says things need to be paid for, but leaves out the problem of your current costing and the fact that your premiums will rise in all categories to cover the difference in claims.
Your whole country is being taken for a ride and this drama is just another part of keeping the eyes away from the actual problem.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Interesting)
You did not get what Obama wanted (a proper, public health care system like NHS), you got what Republicans wanted, called it "Obamacare" and now Republicans don't even want that being passed.
Don't you Americans read news or watch newspapers? I am shocked with the level of misinformation when it comes to your own laws.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
My parents warned me about strangers offering candies. They never mean well.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Funny)
Halloween must have sucked for you when you were a kid.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Italy has a government.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, us Europeans may have a bunch of culture clashes when it comes to lawmaking, but we never had half the parliament take their ball and go home.
Re:Hang on to your wallets! (Score:5, Interesting)
When are they *not* coming for more money?
You are not old enough to remember a time when you could go to a local government-funded university, like City College or U California, and get a college education basically free, without going $40,000 into debt.
Sometimes the government collects taxes and uses it to pay for government services that are worth far more to the taxpayer than the cost of the taxes; sometimes government wastes the money.
It's the job of an intelligent citizen to figure out which is which, not to cynically demonize government and shut it all down.
Re:Hang on to your wallets! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the job of an intelligent citizen to figure out which is which, not to cynically demonize government and shut it all down.
When you find some of those, let's start a country together. Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this one with a vast number of people who have absolutely no conception of what government does and very firm opinions about how it should do it.
Re:Obvious but baffling that it's not done yet (Score:5, Informative)
Well, looking at the US deficit and debt, one could argue that the Tea Party might be loonies but at least it isn't their policy to spend their grandchildren's earnings.
It wasn't Bill Clinton's policy to spend his grandchildren's earnings either. He left office with the budget in balance.
It was George W. Bush's policy to spend that surplus on tax breaks for his billionaire friends, and then spend $3 trillion for a war in Iraq for the purpose of (what was it again?), most of which went to his no-bid contractors like Halliburton. Bush left us in debt that your grandchildren will be paying for.
The Tea Party is funded by the same loonies that got those no-bid contracts.
Re:Non-Essential Employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there is a whole class of work items which can be postponed, but you still want to be done eventually - purchasing (for example, buying equipment and supplies for troops on deployment - sustainment won't happen, so you only get whats stockpiled right now), training positions (you do want those essential people to be on top of their game, right?), cleaning jobs (offices and government buildings need to be cleaned, the public traipsing through the DMV are a messy bunch), assistants to the essential personnel (for example typists and secretaries, who take a lot of workload off the essential personnel so they can get on with something more important than actually typing out that letter, putting it in the envelope and posting it).
Not to mention all the museum and library staff, a lot of them are in the "non-essential" class as well...
The non-essentials include people and positions which make the work of the essentials easier and more fluid, and sustainable in the long term.
There is also a lot of cruft, I will grant you that, but equally there is a lot of good that will be missed.
Re:That's weird... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh thank god this comment is marked as informative and not insightful.
Actually you will feel something. It'll be like boiling a frog. At first it'll just be a few rich folks getting hammered on the stock market, then it will be questioning the credit rating of the country, then there's the knock on effects to the economy of not just taking 700000 people out of the workforce, but government contracts and other spending which underpins many businesses all over the world will be on hold too. Long term expect another recession.
Ultimately if it continues you WILL feel something. Either that or you have some kind of inability to feel anything in which case I take it all back and your comment deserves the informative mod point it got.
Re:That's weird... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you will feel something. It'll be like boiling a frog.
No, it won't. [snopes.com]
Re:Non Essential Employees (Score:5, Insightful)
In the corporate world, after every merger or takeover I've seen, non essential employees are shown the door. If we can do without for a day, why not a week, why not a month, let's go for all year. The worst thing will be having to fondle yourself at the airport.
And that works out really well for corporate mergers where immediately after the sum value of the two companies typically drops. Then there is what non-essential means in the corporate world vs the government. This is more like outsourcing you engineering, IT. It works at first and then after a few months everything turns to shit.
Re:Non Essential Employees (Score:5, Informative)