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?
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
That's weird... (Score:2, Insightful)
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:You know this makes America ... (Score:3, Insightful)
They say they'll shut it down but they NEVER DO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Quoting a post on the Daily Paul:
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.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:0, Insightful)
Blaming both parties means blaming nobody. Open your damn eyes.
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
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.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking in from the outside. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but the way the US political class appear to act is absolutely fucking pathetic.
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
My parents warned me about strangers offering candies. They never mean well.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
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:They say they'll shut it down but they NEVER DO (Score:4, Insightful)
Because what we really need is anarchy, right? No way that could end badly.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
War on it's own citizens
Re:The Blame Game (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit. I blame the ones who have manufactured this situation. You know that this isn't a "real" crisis, right? It's only a crisis because the Republicans in the house caused it. The blame is squarely on them.
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
While some congressmen need their salary, most don't. You generally have to be fairly monied to make it that far in politics, meaning that the pay isn't a big deal. Also the lack of pay is something of a hollow threat as in all cases I know of, they authorized pay for employees retroactively after the shutdown.
That aside, if they were furloughed, they'd be prohibited from working meaning prohibited from resolving the situation.
A more effective solution would be to force them to work. Something like in the event of a shutdown they are required to stay in Washington and be in session 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until it is resolved. I think that would be more likely to work.
However, it is all academic since congress would be the ones who'd have to make that law (barring an amendment) so it won't happen.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it's tempting to applaud your sentiment, and in general I think my friends and family are blind to the many wrongs -- including what I'd call unprosecuted war crimes in the form of double tap strikes -- of Democrats, this particular situation is entirely a recent invention of Republicans. One party using these procedures to try to repeal laws that they already failed to stop from passing is relatively rare historically, but is becoming extremely common amongst recent Republicans. It's a move utterly lacking legitimacy, which is why the only reasonable response is a polite "fuck off." Anything else damages the legislative branch; nearly all laws could be easily undermined.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it would limit it to happening once a year, when they're hammering out the budget.
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: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:The Blame Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Well what do you expect no one in either party wants to negotiate they want to make media spectacles for the 2014 elections. 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. Just about everyone on here will want to blame the Republicans but in reality it takes two tango and the Democrats don't want to negotiate they want to use the shut down as a political tool to improve there chances to take back the house in 2014 same with the Republicans and the Senate. We'd be better off with a slim majority republican house and senate so they can't override vetoes forcing them to negotiate with the president and dems there by making the government work as intended via checks and balances and no having one party with majorities in both chambers and the presidency is not a good thing as both parties have abused it everytime it happens.
Re:The Blame Game (Score:2, Insightful)
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:4, Insightful)
Never a truer word was spoken...
A country does not always get the government it needs, but it always gets the one it deserves....
The "people" need to stop pretending they are not to blame for this.
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.
Non Essential Employees (Score:3, 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.
Re:What happens to non-essential staff? (Score:1, Insightful)
*gasp*... You mean, leave the cushy government jobs that have to be maintained for life, because the role of the government is apparently to create government jobs for employment? That's crazy talk!
PS: Yes, it sucks for the individual, but maybe we should be axing "non-essential" government positions more often to avoid budget issues in the first place.
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: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."
I like an illustration of how bad this is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You know this makes America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Italy has a government.
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.
Agreed, but I will also blame gerrymandering (Score:4, Insightful)
for putting a band of priviliged whackos into power in the House of Representatives.
They aren't representative of this country, and exist as a legal loophole that allows gerrymandering to be practiced.
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:You know this makes America ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Italy is where it is due to fundamental incompetence and personal corruption as well as general apathy of the electorate.
The US is where it is due to institutionalized corruption, crony-capitalism and crippling cynicism and polarization of the electorate.
Both will get you a disaster but the problems in the US are, imho, worse because of the instituional rot. In Italy, opening up the windows and airing out the offices of the high and mighty will do a lot of good. In the US, this problem will not be fixed.
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:Third World Governance (Score:0, Insightful)
substitute "Venezuela", "Uganda", or "Myanmar" for "America".
"America"? Really? like the continent? man... that's, like, big.
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: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: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: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:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious but baffling that it's not done yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Any praise that I have of Clinton is highly qualified.
The Democrats are awful. They're willing to do things that are bad for the country so they can become millionaires.
But the Republicans are really crazy. They're willing to destroy the creditworthiness of treasury bills. They're basically willing to destroy the country and the legislative system because they don't want to follow a law that passed.
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:The Blame Game (Score:0, Insightful)
Okay. So I demand you give me $60 to cover the cost of the $120 dinner you already ate, and you say no. So I demand you give me $30, and you still say no. I was willing to bend, you weren't. Why won't you compromise with $30? I'll even be nice and drop it to $15. It's cut and dry that it's your fault we can't compromise and move on.
There, I fixed that for you. Republicans are trying to get the Democrats to even listen to them in the first place. It's sad that it's come to this, but when the Senate refuses to listen to the House at all - well, what else can they do?
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:The Blame Game (Score:3, Insightful)
Never a truer word was spoken...
A country does not always get the government it needs, but it always gets the one it deserves....
The "people" need to stop pretending they are not to blame for this.
The problem is that a large population of voters follows the hysteria that's been going on in US politics for some time. Just to remind you what's been going on the last few years:
...
Death panels
Obama was born in Kenya
Climate change isn't happening
Evolution is not a thing
Homosexuality is contagious
The people who subscribe to this vote for people who support their beliefs by means which at best can only be described as populistic. And this is a fraction of the GOP that holds the rest of the party hostage. They have a weak chief negotiator who fears for his post if he budges just one bit. The rest of the party also doesn't want to be "that guy". So negotiations are nearly impossible. And the major issue of contention is something that's been done by a majority of developed countries for decades, in some cases over a century.
The momentary shutdown is expected to cost more than Katrina. People can't pay their bills, contractors don't get payed, things go untended. This is already bad. If it indeed comes to a US credit default then the US will suffer for decades to come. All this over a bill that has been discussed in both houses, that's been drafted and redrafted to make it acceptable to be passed. It already is a reasonable compromise. And yet it gets blocked by a minority of a party that bullied the other bits of the party to vote against it. Meanwhile the rest of the world watches the US becoming a failed state.
This is insane and the result will be the GOP tearing itsself to pieces as in the following weeks members will not follow the party line dictated by a bunch of crazies. This is what you get when you embrace the lunatics to get some more seats in the vain hope to dominate the house. In reality they don't even have power over their own affairs.
Re:magnitude of the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, per the Keynesian mouthpiece Krugman's comments in the NYT, our national debt never is and never will be an issue because the next generation can choose not to pay it back.
There are all sorts of ways they can technically avoid default while being dishonest. For example, they could pay back the debt precisely as they promised while simultaneously enacting a 100% tax rate on all federal debt instruments. They could also massively inflate the currency, so they pay you back with worthless scrip. They could engage in forced loans of all large savings accounts (this tactic invented in Revolutionary France in the late 18th century).
The point being that the crash is coming; it's inevitable at this point. Your stored wealth is going to be boiled away by a malfeasant federal government.
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:4, Insightful)
Sorry that's the far right and the very far right. There is no "left" in American politics. Just the New GOP (aka Democrats) and the Old GOP (aka parody of itself).
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: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)
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, 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)
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, 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:Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Fucking idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Locking your doors won't keep out determined burglars, but do you leave your house unlocked when you're not there? Why do you even have locks?
We seem to be more in a position where the door has more locks than Maxwell Smart's front door, but the windows are wide open.
Fortunately, terrorists are just as obsessed with doors as the US Government.
Unless they start taking their cues from Kenya.
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
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
The USDA absolutely is unessential and should be abolished at once. The nation got along fine without a department of agriculture before it was created in 1862 by the Great Despot, and before it was elevated to cabinet status in 1889. The USDA does not grow one stalk of wheat, one ear of corn. (Don't bother finding some obscure lab somewhere growing a few bucks worth for scientific purposes and spending millions to do it; I'm talking about actual production).
The USDA provides food assistance dosmestically. That should obiously be the domain of welfare.
It sends food overseas as aid. That might be appropriate policy if the US ever got back on its feet and dealt with its own poverty and other gross domestic problems and negligences. Certainly it should stop at once and be reconsidered only when that time comes. Then the nation can decide whether this should be the domain of the US government, or charities.
From 2009 to 2011, the budget for USDA inflated by 20%. Funny; in the same period my budget grew by 0%, and the same for most people. Only Federal spending and the wealth of Federal cronies grew during (and since) this period. The budget of $132 billion (estimated, 2011 - god only knows what it is today; nobody else seems to know) should be immediately cut to whatever is really necessary rock bottom for the food safety and inspection program, and the ridiculous cabinet status terminated. My guess is a couple of billion.
Re:Whole Federal Gov is non essential (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The mechanics were (are?) interesting. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I wouldn't exactly call a building full of bureaucrats "high value" - especially since they've all just been designated non-essential. Going after the nearest packed stadium would probably provoke more terror, especially since more people go to stadiums that work for the federal government.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
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 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)
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)
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, 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:4, 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.
...and that Supreme Court ruling...
Most of the developed western countries have something like universal healthcare. And yet for some reason this is a huge problem in the US. Obama seems to be hell-bent to drag the US into the twentieth century. Kicking and screaming. And even has to be considered a progress. The current discussion(which is very much over and resolved) is so ninetieth century it's not even funny anymore.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:2, 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.
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.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Incorrect. If the Politicians had any integrity, they roll out stuff like Obamacare in a small test area, and IT WOULD BE ALLOWED based on the experimental nature of science, not rejected out of hand because it flies in the face of some bullshit untested ideological hypotheses about health care spending. Then it would be evaluated against control groups. Modifications would be made if needed as it was rolled out to more and more people -- Or stopped.
Rolling out a huge nation wide change without any evidence it will work is fucking moronic. Opposing said changes without any evidence of their harm after the fact is equally moronic. Fire Congress, no Scientist would agree to be ruled thus.
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)
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:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Provide national health care and otherwise allow no distinction between employees based on the number of hours worked (except for breaks over the course of a day and overtime of course but that should apply the same way to everyone).
Also provide federal protection from termination or sanction for refusing to work the shift of another employee.
That shit will help people and it targets some of the worst practices of the chronically worst employers.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Romney already did what you're suggesting. It worked well in Massachusetts.
Yes, that's right - Obamacare was based on Romneycare.
Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly. The Republican Bill does not just do partial funding of ongoing business of government--it bundles funding in with a delay in the Affordable Care Act and a repeal of a portion of the Act (the medical device tax). Neither of these have anything to do with funding the ongoing business of government.
Note that no Congressional action is necessary to fund Obamacare--it was previously funded by an Act of Congress, and its funding will continue.
Re: Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Government shutdown is not free--it increases costs, adding to the debt burden. It also creates business uncertainty, slowing the growth of the economy, which reduces tax receipts, further adding to the debt burden.
In fact, current projections (at least prior to this nonsense) showed that the debt was under control. And the demands that the Republicans are making as a price of funding the ongoing business would further increase the debt.
Re:I like an illustration of how bad this is (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if people stopped the "both parties are just as bad" false equivalence bullshit.
Correction: The Republican party shut off the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
The Republicans shut down the government; the government did not shut itself down. Only one Republican voted "no".
They want the President neutralized. His only "victory", passing Bob Dole's idea of national health care (insurance by private companies in fenced markets), is baneful and hurts their very souls to behold. They will kill people to negate that minor win.
This isn't a government malfunctioning. This is a coup. The second one in six years. This, ladies and germs, is a test of national memory. Can we remember what happened only a couple of years back, at least, if we can't remember Gingrich doing this in the 90s?
As for Jon Stewart and all the other False Equivalency pundits: NO, this is not a failure of "Congress". Congress is furious, except for the representatives of the Confederacy still trying to win the Civil War.
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Re:Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
You might have a point, if people knew where funding bills start. They don't, and campaigns do not remind people.
Further, Fox did a study where people were asked if they supported ACA. Half the people saw it called Obamacare, half Affordable Care Act. All things being equal, people were in favour of affordable care and opposed to Obamacare.
People don't understand what they are for or against today, or why. Regardless of where it originates.
Re: Fucking idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
While those incidents are certainly iconic, remember that there are a lot of "fervent anti-gay advocates" in the US. The null hypothesis is that the proportion of homophobes who are homosexual is no different from the proportion of homosexual people the general population. At the moment, there is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis.
Re: Republican idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Strangely, neither party, once in power, actually reduces spending.
I'm just going to assume that you have no idea what is actually going on. Clinton balanced the budget and reduced spending. Actually started paying down the National Debt. Idiot Bush raised the deficit and started spending money like a lottery winner and exploded the deficit again. After that idiot ran out of time in office, the deficit started shrinking again under President Obama. The Democrats actually try and reduce spending, get it under control, and then the Republicans mess it all up again, then another Democrat has to come in and fix it again.
As for the current debacle, the Republicans are acting like petulant children who didn't get their way, and are trying to hold their breath until they can make the president look bad. Some of these idiots were actually reelected on a platform of making the president bad. It's shameful and despicable. The idiot Republicans would actually flush the entire country down the toilet if they thought it might get more of them reelected. They are an embarrassment.
And I'm sick of having to pay high insurance premiums because uninsured poor people go to the emergency department (their only means of seeing a doctor when something happens), then when they can't pay their exorbitant bills, the hospitals charge everybody else more money to cover those costs. I'd rather see the money spent on getting everybody covered. We already spend more money per person on so called healthcare than any country that actually provides universal coverage.
Seriously, just make it a federal crime to tell a lie on the house or senate floor, and start throwing these morons in jail. Then maybe something useful can actually get done.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:magnitude of the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, you're just lying about Krugman. He only says long term budget issues should not affect our short term policy goals.
This Is Not A Crisis [nytimes.com]