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US government shutdown hilarity

Started by Cain, September 30, 2013, 07:17:51 PM

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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Faust on September 30, 2013, 11:00:56 PM
I really don't understand how it could have ever come to this. Not the stupid hostage situation that gets wheeled out every six months or so with debt ceilings and new tax years.

But a system evolved and was built up around this, allowing this... Supporting it, putting the infrastructure in place that it could happen. What the hell happened?

HERPADERP happened.  It's the product that does exactly what it says on the label.
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Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Faust on September 30, 2013, 11:00:56 PM
I really don't understand how it could have ever come to this. Not the stupid hostage situation that gets wheeled out every six months or so with debt ceilings and new tax years.

But a system evolved and was built up around this, allowing this... Supporting it, putting the infrastructure in place that it could happen. What the hell happened?

Well, we'll find out eventually. Either it's a giant unplanned clusterfuck, or someone has something to gain.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Q. G. Pennyworth

I haven't been watching the news, have they let it shut down?

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

Quote from: Sad Sack on September 30, 2013, 11:16:13 PM
I haven't been watching the news, have they let it shut down?

I think they're still in the dick-measuring stage. Not quite to the flounce stage yet. I think the deadline is midnight tonight?
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"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

AFK

It's pretty much impossible at this point for the shutdown to be avoided.  Now it's just a matter of bow long they'll let it go.
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Be Kind, Please RWHNd on September 30, 2013, 11:37:55 PM
It's pretty much impossible at this point for the shutdown to be avoided.  Now it's just a matter of bow long they'll let it go.

Yeah, that will make things interesting.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
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Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

tyrannosaurus vex

The problem is Congressional redistricting laws. It's legal (and standard practice -- on both sides of the isle) to draw district boundaries in such a way that the majority party can count on pretty much permanent majority status. This starts at the state level, where the maps are actually drawn, which in turn filters up to the national level from there. You can (mostly) predict with reasonable certainty which direction any given district is going to go with their vote. The only offices that can't be predicted are executive offices, because everyone votes for those offices regardless of their district. This is why Presidential elections are the only elections anyone gives any shits about anymore, and gubernatorial elections to a lesser degree.

If Congressional districts were required by law to be something resembling a geometric shape, then the people who are elected in those districts would be forced to compromise in order to keep getting reelected. But since the districts are drawn in a way that reflects increasing political polarization, compromise (especially in Washington) becomes dangerous for reelection prospects. It's safer to let people starve and die of treatable illness, because those people aren't in your district.

The problem is exacerbated by the downward spiral this puts on the people most effected by these policies, because the less you feel your government cares about you, the less likely you are to participate in it. So you have entire towns now who more or less sit out every election, further marginalizing them in electoral and governing processes. Add to that a media culture of xenophobia, "stranger danger," barely disguised racism, and misguided nationalism, and you produce exactly what we have in Washington: a bunch of big assholes elected by smaller assholes with a tangible mandate to become even bigger assholes.

The historical approaches to changing government's behavior -- community organizing -- is nullified by these electoral districts, too. If you manage to pull off an electoral upset, your district will be split, reshaped, or even completely eliminated by people who fear for their own reelection. What might be a sizable community of people united in their desire to change the government will be fragmented and tacked on to larger communities so their votes can be diluted and ignored. And these maps are being drawn constantly. I think they used to do it more or less along with the census, but now they're revised every year so as to keep up with shifting demographics and population densities in almost real time.

At least in some states, these maps are subject to the approval of the Justice Department before they can go into effect. LOL NEVERMIND, Supreme Court 2013 took that away, too.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Faust on September 30, 2013, 11:00:56 PM
I really don't understand how it could have ever come to this. Not the stupid hostage situation that gets wheeled out every six months or so with debt ceilings and new tax years.

But a system evolved and was built up around this, allowing this... Supporting it, putting the infrastructure in place that it could happen. What the hell happened?

The executive branch interpreted Congress as damage and routed around it. The NSA spies on everything, Federal Reserve writes banks blank checks to manipulate markets, the CIA assassinates American teenagers or whoever else they feel like, local police departments turn into standing armies, the military drops bombs wherever it wants - and none of that is even remotely accountable to Congress. Congress no longer needs to do anything ever to ensure important people get a steady stream of money and power, except to be controversial to generate funding for news stations and permanent campaign consultants.

The fascist wet dream is to have leaders who can make Difficult Decisions without having to compromise their principles for electability. We have that now, and our elected leaders are exactly as ineffectual as they have to be to keep the machine spinning.

Cain hid some good summaries back in the Random News Stories thread:
Quote from: Cain on August 21, 2013, 11:53:28 AM
And some Mike Lofgren and Joseph Britt, both former aides to Republican senators, on the American "deep state".

Lofgren:

QuoteYour posts go some way in explaining the current political situation, but by no means do they go the whole way. A more complete explanation has to acknowledge the paradox of the contemporary American state. On the procedural level that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly gridlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s; that is true. The objective of the GOP is, obviously, to render the executive branch powerless, at least until a Republican president is elected (and voter suppression laws in the GOP-controlled states are clearly intended to accomplish that result). As a consequence, Obama cannot get anything done; he cannot even get the most innocuous appointees in office.

Yet he can assassinate American citizens without due processes (Holder's sophistry to the contrary, judicial process is due process); can detain prisoners indefinitely without charge; conduct surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant; and engage in unprecedented -- at least since the McCarthy era -- witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called insider threat program). At home, this it is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal law enforcement agencies and their willing handmaidens at the state and local level. Abroad, Obama can start wars at will and pretty much engage in any other activity whatever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, to include just recently forcing down a plane containing a head of state. And not a peep from congressional Republicans, with the exception of an ineffectual gadfly like Rand Paul. Democrats, with the exception of a few like Ron Wyden, are not troubled, either -- even to the extent of permitting obvious perjured congressional testimony by certain executive branch officials.

Clearly there is government, and then there is government. The former is the tip of the iceberg that the public who watches C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part is the Deep State, which operates on its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power. The Deep State is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies, key nodes of the judiciary (like FISC, the Eastern District of Virginia, and the Southern District of Manhattan); cleared contractors, Silicon Valley (whose cooperation is critical), and Wall Street.

This combination of procedural impotence on the one hand and unaccountable government by fiat on the other is clearly paradoxical, but any honest observer of the American state must attempt to come to grips with it. I will note in conclusion that in order for the Senate to pass major "social" legislation like immigration reform, it was necessary to grant an additional $38-billion tribute to Deep State elements, i.e., military and homeland security contractors. Clearly the GOP wanted it, but the Democrats didn't object; the $38 billion had been an internal "wish list" of the Deep State node called the Department of Homeland Security.

And Britt:

QuoteFirst:  with respect to how the federal government functions, the level of continuity over the last dozen years or so doesn't get nearly enough attention.  In the Bush as in the Obama administration, Executive Branch agencies had little policy autonomy -- except for the security services, DoD and the intelligence agencies, who operated with little oversight even from within the administration in spite of major policy failures.

Republicans in Congress didn't defend the Bush administration so much as they repeated verbatim what they were told to say on national security affairs.  Meanwhile, other federal agencies dealt with a White House hypersensitive about political message discipline by undertaking as few potentially controversial initiatives as possible -- something that hasn't changed all that much under Barack Obama.

Second:  the absolute primacy of the permanent campaign industry in the policy making process gets rather taken for granted by many commentators.   Organized interest groups have traditionally been thought to exercise outsized influence within the two national parties, especially the Democratic Party.  One thing that's changed in recent years is the emergence of the people who do campaigns for a living as a powerful and effectively organized interest group themselves.

It is the pollsters, "strategists," and other campaign operatives, after all,  who are the chief beneficiaries of the continual fundraising that Senators and Congressmen now do.  Not only do these electioneering hands now work on campaign business full-time, but they have also gotten used to a standard of living requiring high and predictable levels of income.

The influence of campaign primacy on policy flows outward from Capitol Hill and the White House, enveloping agencies engaged in work that might offend any monied interest.  The military and intelligence agencies tend not to do work of this kind; their budgets, increased substantially after 9/11, tend therefore to receive little scrutiny, and their senior officials are normally treated with deference.

Is campaign primacy worse than it has ever been?  I'd say it is.  The very transparency celebrated by some in the media (because, among other things, it takes some of the hard work out of political reporting) makes it harder to do politically controversial business out of the view of rent-seeking monied interests.  Advocacy of causes with no potential to support the permanent campaign infrastructure -- from reducing unemployment to preparing for climate change to adhering to regular order on appropriations bills in Congress -- is effectively deterred.  The influence of campaign primacy on tax policy can't be overestimated.

The root cause of the latest crisis in Washington is that, for the party that came up short in the last election, the campaign never ended.  There is nothing but the campaign for Congressional Republicans -- and mostly for Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as well, with the difference that they feel they have to at least look as if they want the government to function.
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Cain

#23
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Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Cain on October 01, 2013, 05:44:39 AM
Here we GOOOOOOOOOOO

QuoteThe US government has begun a partial shutdown after the Republican-led House of Representatives refused to approve a budget for next year.

A midnight deadline passed without agreement despite an 11th-hour appeal by President Barack Obama.

More than 700,000 US government workers face unpaid leave with no guarantee of back pay once the deadlock is over.

Republicans have insisted on delaying President Obama's health care reforms as a condition for passing the budget.

With less than one hour to go before midnight, the Republican-led House called for a bipartisan committee with the Senate to try to thrash out a deal, but Democrats said it was too late to avoid a shutdown.

The White House's budget office began notifying federal agencies to begin an "orderly shutdown" as midnight approached.

The Senate is to meet again at 09:30 (13:30 GMT) on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Yep, now the fun part begins.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.

I feel like it's a holiday of some kind.
Weevil-Infested Badfun Wrongsex Referee From The 9th Earth
Slick and Deranged Wombat of Manhood Questioning
Hulking Dormouse of Lust and DESPAIR™
Gatling Geyser of Rainbow AIDS

"The only way we can ever change anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy." - Akala  'Find No Enemy'.

Cain

#26
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Pæs

Do they stop killing smudgy people until the government comes back online?

Cain

#28
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Mesozoic Mister Nigel

This is the New American Way of handling policy disputes. Fuck Democracy, throw a tantrum.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."