Going over the Cliff

[khagler]

Recently I encountered the perfect illustration of US politics. They even got the team colors right!

[robkelk]

Factoid of the day: It is the (Democrat-controlled) Senate, not the (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives or the (Democrat-controlled) White House that has voted down every single budget bill submitted since Obama took office.

If you want to blame someone for the Sequester, now you have your culprit.

So now you know who to vote against...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rajvik]

BA its very simple why the republicans are against it. We look to those who have instituted it and it NOT work worth a flip because that is what could and in the US, very likely to happen. To those who have "Socialized Medicine" and it works we ask, "What did you do to make it work?" we look at those and go "It wont fly in the US because the liberals will cry every -ism in existance" so we dont try and when we're forced to try we try and defund it to stop it
 

[Black Aeronaut]

robkelk wrote:

---

Back to the "sequestration" thing...

Have you folks ever considered adopting the parliamentary rules for budgets? Specifically, the one that says voting down a budget is legally equivalent to voting "no confidence" in the current government, thus dissolving the session and forcing an immediate general election?

If only we could get something like that to fly.  Of course, an amendment like that would die a swift death because a lot of these people make careers out of being senators and representatives.  Anything that may jeopardize their careers would be nuked from orbit.

Bob Schroeck wrote:

---

BA,
part of it pure obstructionism -- there are vast swaths of the
Republican Party who would rather sink the country than allow a
Democratic president have any lasting positive legacy.

Part of it is a genuine and sincere difference in belief about the role
and scope of government in the lives of citizens (admittedly, cranked up
to 11 and wandering slightly off the scale at points, but still...).

And another part of it is tinfoil hat-level reactionaryism, fearing that
once the US joins every other industrial nation in having national
health care, the jackbooted thugs of the United Nations will come out of
the holes they've been lurking in all these years to take away their
guns and their Bibles, and impose Godless Communism(TM) and the NWO on
the oppressed rich white men who are the only true backbone of America.
Because a man is only free if he has a gun, a Bible, and a chance to go
bankrupt if his medical bills get too large.

No particular Republican in the House embodies all three of these, but
from what I can tell, a large number embrace at least two...

.... Yeah, methinks that there's three kinds of Senator/Representative: 1) the reasonable sort, which is very much in the minority; 2) the sort that has been around waaayyy to long and lost in the dreams of America's Old Glory; and 3) the sort that are entirely too new to this job and got elected only because there was a silent majority in their region that didn't show up at the polls.

Foxboy wrote:

---

Sequestration was a bluff of the "They can't POSSIBLY be that stupid as to let it happen!" variety.

Sadly, like many, Obama found that they COULD be that stupid.

+1

ECSNorway wrote:

---

Factoid
of the day: It is the (Democrat-controlled) Senate, not the
(Republican-controlled) House of Representatives or the
(Democrat-controlled) White House that has voted down every single
budget bill submitted since Obama took office.

If you want to blame someone for the Sequester, now you have your culprit.

IIRC, wasn't the reason because the Republican-penned budgets had absolutely no concessions for what the Democrats wanted?  Seriously.  Republicans, and even a good number of Democrats, are treating words like 'compromise' like vile filthy taboos.

Rajvik wrote:

---

BA its
very simple why the republicans are against it. We look to those who
have instituted it and it NOT work worth a flip because that is what
could and in the US, very likely to happen. To those who have
"Socialized Medicine" and it works we ask, "What did you do to make it
work?" we look at those and go "It wont fly in the US because the
liberals will cry every -ism in existance" so we dont try and when we're
forced to try we try and defund it to stop it

Look, it worked in Vermont of all places, so I'm pretty damn sure that it would work for the other 49 states with a bit of tweaking.  And I'm pretty sure the only reason why Mitt Romney was dead-set against it was A) a Democrat penned the bill and B) it wasn't going to be called Romney-Care.  Romney didn't pen the bill.  This was not going to be a feather in the cap for the Republicans. 
Therefore, they want demolish the Affordable Care Act just so they can pen their own bill, and ramrod that sucker through the House.  The Senate will simply shrugg, go, "We tried," and sign off on it simply because there's sensible people there that know that Americans need some sort of healthcare bill.
And all simply to justify their usefulness to the public at large.  "Huzzah!  We saved American Healthcare!  All hail the GOP!" etc.
And if you don't believe me, go corner the nearest Republican who'll give you a straight answer.
Oh, I'll caveat that they (mostly tea party members) think that we honestly need to be protected from ourselves, to keep ourselves from becoming more like those communist Euros or some BS like that.  But it's that sort of thinking that gets you into the hot water in the first place.  We went with a federalist government in hopes that we can find that happy-middle.  I'm thinking more and more that the only way we can really get anything done these days would be if we went for direct democracy and and made certain that everyone was fully clued in - not the half-truths and outright lies some politicians prefer.

[ordnance11]

Ted Cruz, the solon from Texas (boy, I feel sorry for you BA) has began a filibuster to prevent debate over the house bill. Which will end in 30 hours and then the saneate will debate it, strip the defund language from it and then send it back to the house. Where the Speaker now has to get a majority of the GOP to go for a clean bill. This is going to be interesting. Can he persuade enough Tea baggers to vote common sense over purity? If not, then he will have to go to the Democrats for cover. Would Pelosi give it to him? And what would be the cost to Boehmer for it? He's done that a couple fo times already and it may cost him the speakership, if not his seat in the next cycle.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[ECSNorway]

Ord, I'll appreciate it if you did not use the term "teabaggers". It is just as offensive as waving a Confederate flag and calling black people "niggers".
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Rajvik]

thank you ECS for saying that i was getting tired of biting my tongue, Ordinance, all i can say is prepare for a shutdown, i welcome it.
 

[Black Aeronaut]

The sad thing is that I don't see the implosion of the Republican Party coming from this. I was listening to the radio today and it turns out this isn't the first time there's been a government shutdown. Apparently it happened somewhere in the middle of the 1990's (a time when I was not quite politically savvy enough to pick up on it and why it was happening).

[ordnance11]

BA, the the way it has started is this:

1. The political groups under the term "Tea Party" was funded and organized by folks with deep pockets. Like the Koch brothers. Let's be clear on this. It was not a street movement like the Occupy Wall Street movement that came out at roughly the same time. Had it been other than the situation that existed in 2008-2010, it would had taken them a long time to get to where they are now.

2. Having been able to take over or at least influence heavily the party machinery at the district and and state level, they consolidated their hold on power by gerrymandering their districts to make them safe. Looks what is happening now in Texas.

3. Then they decided to target others in the GOP who they deem to be insufficiently pure and knock them out of the primaries. Which is easy to do since it is hard to motivate your average voter to vote in a primary.

4. Put the fear into more pragmatic politicians into hewing to their line or have the same happen to them. Keep on repeating as needed. Look at Cheney's daughter running against her dad's friend. Her premise for running is that he's not conservative enough.

So to quote an article:
"During the periodic budget fits that have seized Washington for the last
several years, President Obama and his team have made a consistent
claim about negotiating with Republicans. No matter what the president
tries, or whom he negotiates with, the White House can never make
progress because congressional Republicans are controlled by a
hard-right faction that refuses to compromise or accept anything less
than total victory. According to Obama, that is what killed the famous
“grand bargain” talks with House Speaker John Boehner in the summer of
2011, and it's what killed the so-called Supper Club negotiations on the
budget this summer with Republican senators. Now the GOP is handing the
president more evidence for his claim. Republicans, including staunch
conservatives, admit that a small band of ultrapure conservatives have
forced the larger congressional GOP membership into a witless act of
blundering self-destruction. "
The 1995 shutdown is different from this looming one for a couple of reasons:
1. The economy was in much better shape in 1995 than it is now.
2. There were supplemental spending bills for specific agencies in place before the 1995 shutdown hit that were passed. No such measure is currently done. The impact is not going to be immediately felt, but the costs will be higher the longer a shutdown continues. The Tea *ahem* Party may think it's safe because they come from "safe districts", but the rest of the GOP isn't.The last time this happened, the GOP lost seats in congress. I am willing to bet that majority of the country will blame the GOP for a shutdown or default if it comes to pass.
BA, I was dis interested in politics until I got my current job. Which I should mention was a job I got in 2010 when the economy was really bad. I had to become politically aware to see how it would affect my job. I am willing to bet the same thing happened to Rob. 
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[robkelk]

Nah, I've been politically aware for decades; my mother used to volunteer for a political party which I won't name here. I'm a civil servant of the old school - I don't take sides.

But I'm a Canadian, so I'm not completely up on all the ins and outs of the US system... hence my questions.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[khagler]

ordnance11 wrote:

---

 It was not a street movement like the Occupy Wall Street movement that came out at roughly the same time.

(Lots of generic Team Blue propaganda omitted.)
This sentence got my attention because I haven't seen it before. Is the notion that the Tea Party protests began at the same time as Occupy Wall Street your own invention, or is that a new piece of Team Blue propaganda I hadn't heard before?

[ECSNorway]

It was not a street movement like the Occupy Wall Street movement that came out at roughly the same time.

Ord, you owe me a keyboard. I saw this and laughed so hard I spewed soda all over it.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Logan Darklighter]

ordnance11 wrote:

---

1. The political groups under the term "Tea Party" was funded and organized by folks with deep pockets. Like the Koch brothers. Let's be clear on this. It was not a street movement like the Occupy Wall Street movement that came out at roughly the same time. Had it been other than the situation that existed in 2008-2010, it would had taken them a long time to get to where they are now.

The only thing this statement warrants as a response is the following:
http://www.youtube.com/v/_n5E7feJHw0&ve ... tube_gdata

[Foxboy]

My big problem with the "true believers" of the Occupy movement is that they were heavily inspired by the strongly anti-capitalist Canadian magazine "Adbusters."

The problem is that Grass-Roots common-sense-slash-moderate organizations aren't as sexy to the media as the radical tinfoil hats like the "Taxed Enough Already" Party and Occupy "Random Financial Sector."

And no matter how legitimate some of the claims of the Tea Party are, they're still tinfoil hats in how they go about acting on them.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[RMH999]

*raises eyebrow* Yes, the Tea party did exist before 2009.

Let's take the WayBack Machine back to 2002... To the first Tea Party website sponsored by the Citizens for a Sound Economy, funded by the Koch Brothers as part of their anti-regulation goals. The website was taken down in 2011, but the URL is still owned by Freedomworks (an offshoot of CSE).

Here's the PDF file from the researchers who were looking at a the formation of the Tea Party and comparing the connections and links to the Anti-Tobacco regulation groups of the 1980's... you know, the ones that lied for 40 years and threw lots of money to create such astroturf groups? They have a lot of experience to draw on there.

RMH
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
- Albert Einstein

[Rajvik]

heh, Occupy a street movement, thats laughable. ok, maybe some of the "sympathetic" ones around the country were more street level than others. THE one however is reliably "rumored" to have been the work of George Soros, whose house was bypassed by the "Protestors" for other "Capitalist Pigs"

Now honestly i dont quite believe that Soros was behind the Occupy movement, however considering how quickly it fell apart i dont dismiss it either. Likewise i highly doubt the Koch brothers were behind the formation of the TEA party. Were they likely behind a few groups local to them, probably, but the entire nation wide movement, I HIGHLY doubt it.
 

[Bob Schroeck]

...among other things, the Republicans want to link sinking Net Neutrality to a debt ceiling deal.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Foxboy]

Oh, Register... "And a Pony!" You droll fellows.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I liked that.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Rajvik]

well since the honorable senator from Nevada wont take a CR with an amendment, why dont we republicans just hand him that last ballanced budget we kicked up to the Senate
 

[robkelk]

You folks are far too deep in debt to get away with a balanced budget. Either cut absolutely everything and pay down the bills you've been piling up over the last few decades, or go whole-hog and run the debt up so far that it's too big to fail. A merely "balanced" budget is fence-sitting.

(Of course, paring everything to the bone and then some will cause massive problems in the short- and middle-term. Running the debt way up will only be a problem in the long-term... and not even then as long as you can still get wheelbarrows to carry around your $1,000,000 bills in.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ordnance11]

Rob, a government is not like a family. There some things a government does at minimum that families do not have:

1. A defense budget -

2. Social Security - You paid into it, and it's expected you will have to get something back out of it.

3. Services like Air traffic control

4. Embassies

5. Environmental protection

6. Workplace protection

7. Disease prevention, monitoring and control - like the CDC - Center for Disease Control or the Poison Control Center

So...which functions you would like to eliminate/gut? And sign a statement that you will take the blame for all the consequences that would ensue?
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Foxboy]

There's also the fact that austerity measures DO NOT WORK. Visibly. Just look at Greece and Ireland.

That way leads to the tinfoil hat folks demanding a return to a gold or silver standard.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rod.H]

You mean they're not all ready? But then I've also seen LaRouchites calling for a restoration of Glass-Steagall and for similar implementation in other countries.

[robkelk]

Rob, a government is not like a family. There some things a government does at minimum that families do not have:

1. A defense budget -

2. Social Security - You paid into it, and it's expected you will have to get something back out of it.

3. Services like Air traffic control

4. Embassies

5. Environmental protection

6. Workplace protection

7. Disease prevention, monitoring and control - like the CDC - Center for Disease Control or the Poison Control Center

So...which functions you would like to eliminate/gut? And sign a statement that you will take the blame for all the consequences that would ensue?

One could argue that "locks on the doors" counts as defense, "keeping the water running and the sewer lines clear" counts as environmental protection, and so on. Anyway.

The IMF would have you cut all of these and more, based on their austerity measures elsewhere. From what news reports leak out of the USA, it appears that the Republicans - or at least the Republicans who make the most noise - agree with this position. Yes, Foxboy has already replied to this, but what does that matter as long as the money's being paid back to the banks who hold the notes? (What? "Default on the loans?" Won't somebody think of the bankers?)

As for taking responsibility for the consequences, when was the last time any politician in any party in North America did that?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012