US government shutdown hilarity

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think it should be completely socialized like every other developed country does

Switzerland's not a developed country, by those standards.  In fact, the situation over here is similar to ACA.  You must have medical insurance, it is against the law to not have it.  You can be on the hook for anything from $300 a month to $2500, depending on what you want.

I'm lucky, in that I get in on a subsidised plan with the school, whereby the costs are around $80 a month, which means anything over $100 for the year I don't pay for.  But that's a special rate, normally reserved for foreign students and similar.

But then, Switzerland is run by giant banking corporations like UBS and Credit Suisse.  De facto, if not de jure.  And there's lots of money to be made in mandatory insurance.

That is the one major problem I have with PPACA, as well as the healthcare reform that Gov. Romney signed here and we've had in place before "Obamacare" for years. And, as I gather, the same problem that you have with it. Compulsory purchasing. Socialism, it is not. Thank you for that correction. In the future I will amend it to almost every developed country.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

So what happens to people who can't purchase it? Denied treatment in emergency rooms? Charged with some kind of stupid crime?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So what happens to people who can't purchase it? Denied treatment in emergency rooms? Charged with some kind of stupid crime?

If it's anything like the MA model, and I understand that it is, you get fined on tax day, but you have state sponsored options.

MA is 97% insured now, thanks to Romneycare (well, really, Kennedycare). Truth be told, I was uninsured even though I was eligible through work, until the law was passed. The law passing led to me going from 0 hours to at least this many hours, on request. Of course, the economy was more robust then, and I could request a 32 hour work week.

Twid,
20 hours now. BUT! Still insured.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I will also note that in 2008 my through work insurance was about $16 a week for health, dental and vision, and then suddenly when the baggers got into Congress it jumped up to $87. Also, suddenly I wasn't able to be officially at 32 hours anymore. Nor 25.

Twid,
paycheck is through Federal research grants.

[Cain]

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[Cain]

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[Nephew Twiddleton]

So what happens to people who can't purchase it? Denied treatment in emergency rooms? Charged with some kind of stupid crime?

You have to have it.  If you don't purchase one, the Canton authorities will choose one for you, and take the money from you.  If the costs exceed 8% of your income, the government will subsidize it....eventually.  Once you fill out all the forms.

Ah, misunderstood to whom that was addressed.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/01/on_the_eve_of_the_government_shutdown_the_pentagon_spent_billions_on_weapons

The Pentagon pumped billions of dollars into contractors' bank accounts on the eve of the U.S. government's shutdown that saw 400,000 Defense Department employees furloughed.

All told, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts yesterday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month.

Here are some of the more interesting purchases from Monday's dollar-dump.

Again, the only part of the government that seems to work, despite the crisis, is the Pentagon.  And I wont be the only one to take note of that.

Yep.

Finnish hand grenades bit too. And radar base.

Mandatory health insurance bad, military spending non-negotiable.

[hirley0]

I'm calling his ear, but I'm calling it.

I went onto the market hoping to pick up some bargains that I can buy on the dip and sell off after this mess stabilises except:

THERE WAS NO DIP. The market literally does not care that this happened, it's business as usual. Just shows that the government has no impact whatsoever on big business.

Reply #98 on: October 04, 2013,  at 02:37:56 am
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,20156.msg1300417.html#msg1300417

What i did : at Safeway { the food store across J St from the bank)
I left the bank about 9:11 due to some delay in process
and the long story tellers were on thier way in:

found some "DATES" in BULK and deposited 6 {2 for each gal{teller @ bank
returned to bank to withdraw Oct $2bills {by the bundel {{aka strap {{SSbs
reduced Savings to Min {$2c) & tried to deactivate my online banking
LoC&LoCc 3:33&1/3 am pdT  ^ above pending ^
it took about an hour | as the 3 transactions were interupted often by
the long winded story tellers who arrived {in the AM hours ? Will i go2
Gold

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/07/20856722-obama-to-boehner-hold-a-vote-call-a-vote-right-now-lets-see-what-happens?lite

Obama taunts rubes.  Details at 11.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/07/20856722-obama-to-boehner-hold-a-vote-call-a-vote-right-now-lets-see-what-happens?lite

Obama taunts rubes.  Details at 11.

Damn.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/07/20856722-obama-to-boehner-hold-a-vote-call-a-vote-right-now-lets-see-what-happens?lite

Obama taunts rubes.  Details at 11.

Damn.

Yeah, it's funny, but the fucking around has pretty much come to an end.  Both sides are playing chicken with default at stake.

And our means of government, at this time, cannot survive a default.  I'm thinking Argentina in 1947 or so.

[LMNO]

It still stuns me to hear the Republicans say, "The shutdown is Obama's fault.  He made us do it."

Yeah, "Now look at what you made me do."

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I was at the grocery store earlier and the woman bagging groceries was asking if we'd heard anything about the social security checks, because she heard from one of the other customers earlier that they were going to be delayed. Tried to steer her in the direction of "the hell is wrong with those assholes in Washington?" nicely, but she just wouldn't have any of it. The connection between the dipshits taking away her friend's SS check and the actual stress of the check going away just wasn't there. The fuck.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

You know, I try not to get all SRSBSNS about politics anymore. Because, really, who isn't these days? And there's nothing really new to be said. All the talking points and various views are on full obscene display everywhere you look. Nobody's very far away from telling you what for at any given moment. Everyone, on all the sides, has decided who it is they're going to hate from now on, and that's that. Nobody's going to change their mind. Nobody's going to admit they are wrong or they went too far. And that is all as it should be, because something something Eris or Discord or something.

But it seems to me that there are millions of people who are missing what this whole "Government Shutdown" is actually about. Unlike in the 90's, when there was a serious dispute about funding and debts and programs, this present predicament in Washington has nothing to do with that. Now, you may get the idea from watching the Teevee machine that this is somehow about Obamacare. It is not. Obamacare is the smokescreen. What they are really fighting about right now is not how much money to give who or when, or how much to borrow. They are fighting about the very nature of the government process in DC.

First, the back-story.

You see, the hillbillies from the Tea Party done got some smarts. They found the biggest, most glaring weak spot in the whole idea of American democracy, and they are fucking that hole like the mad, cock-centric patriarchal dinosaurs that they are. They have discovered that you can use the built-in checks and balances of government to completely destroy the system. By throwing their awful wrenches into the works, they have exploited a fundamental flaw, and who knows what will happen if they get away with it.

According to the way things are supposed to work, Congress has the power to provide funding for the government. So, with the Tea Party wrapped around Congress like a hungry boa constrictor, it's reasonable to expect funding for some things to get dropped. That's just the nature of the beast. But here's the problem: they have latched on to Obamacare and demand its defunding in spite of the fact that laws providing funds for it have already been passed and enacted. This is not a line-item on this year's budget. It is already in motion and already funded.

They HATE Obamacare. They HATE HATE HATE it, for whatever reason, and that's their right. More power to 'em. They can go on with their bad teabagging selves and hate that shit until there's nothing left. Unfortunately for them, there's not enough of them in the right places to legally repeal it. They should know, because they've tried -- impotently -- over FORTY TIMES. And failed. In any normally functioning democracy, they'd notice at some point that they do not have the votes required to repeal it, and give up until the next election. But these assholes? NO. See, they cannot count, on account of being backwater ignoramuses who think public schools are the Devil and fancy book-learnin' is for sissies. So what do they do?

The Power Play:

They make repealing a law they do not have the power to repeal legally, a condition for doing their job, which is funding the government. "Either we get our way, or we're taking our ball and going home!" they shout like the sore-losing second-grade-level bullies they are. Nevermind democracy, nevermind being a "nation of laws." Just give us what we want, or we'll go WAA WAA WAA all over the poor, all over women, all over the gays, and all over the sick and the starving. They have been robbed of the whites-only, men-only America they grew up in, and they're willing to throw out the entire Government to get that back.

BUILD THE DANG FENCE!
DEPORT THE BROWNIES!
AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!
GIT YER GUVERMENT OFFA MY MEDICARE!

And if they succeed in this, they will set the precedent that you don't NEED votes to win a fight in government. You just have to YELL REALLY LOUD and STOMP YOUR FEET REAL HARD, and puff up like kids with mumps who are too poor to see a doctor. If you have enough votes to HALT something, it's the same thing as having enough to PASS something. And American government will become -- even more than it already is -- a playground where the super rich just stand in each other's way all the time to stop anything from ever getting done.

Idiots, the lot of them. And they don't care. They don't care how WRONG they are, as long as they're LOUDER. They don't care how laws are supposed to be passed. They'll wave their Chinese-manufactured flags and play their god-awful Country Music and puke "Love America Or Git Out" all over everything, but when it comes right down to it, they are threatened by democracy. They will cheat and lie to sidestep the legislative process whenever they can smell their own impending obsolescence. America is changing, and they're going to fight that change just like they always have. Just like they fought Abolition and Women's Suffrage; just like they fought (and continue to fight) Civil Rights. They don't know how to do anything but fight and spit and curse. Luckily, they don't HAVE TO know how to go extinct -- that will come to them naturally, but never soon enough.