181–190 of 612 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some banks may be giving out loans, but they aren't going to be for everyone. Not everyone is 100% guaranteed to be able to return to their job after the shutdown. Banks know that.
They are guaranteed backpay though, so that should work as collateral.
Bearing in mind that ~40% of american's could not come up with $400 to cover emergencies, this is going to become more prevalent in the next few days / weeks as people will simply not be able to afford gas to get to their unpaid work. I read an article today discussing how TSA workers in HI are living in their cars in the airport parking lot as they cannot afford to commute. The FBI just cancelled its internship prog…
On the other hand, he thinks an average individual’s response to missing paychecks should be to seek a low interest loan against a government guarantee. That’s comically out of touch. I’ve been working in finance my entire life and I’d have a tough time working through the loan application process.
That’s the type of advice you’d hear a private wealth manager give to his wealthy client. Wealthy people are often asset rich but cash poor so they’ll take out bank loans to finance short term cash flow needs. No doubt Wilbur Ross has availed himself to these services and is shocked that government employees haven’t taken advantage of such conveniences.
I’m glad to see this. The shutdown has been too “business as usual” for most Americans, while others are expected to work without pay, which is ridiculous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Members of the Coast Guard are not allowed to quit. They are under UCMJ rules. EDIT: For those that don't know the Coast Guard is not part of the Department of Defense. They are under DHS and are not getting paid and are not allowed to quit.
The USCG may not be part of DOD, but it's still part of the US Armed Forces. The US Supreme Court has historically deemed conscription to not constitute involuntary servitude as banned by the 13th Amendment. I suspect the same logic would apply here.
There'll be a lot of angry people if the same thing happens in Atlanta over Super Bowl weekend.
Interestingly the law that created the TSA expressly allows private security checks if they follow published TSA guidelines. It's just that the TSA has refused to publish any written guidelines. So it's entirely possible that airports could just bring in their own security checks.
I hope not too off topic, but I'm puzzled by shutdowns. Every other country I can think of has a system where if the finance is not agreed, the previous budget just continues. The budget sets the yearly amount for each department and it runs on until another budget changes how much everyone gets. Sometimes a new department gets created, sometimes something is abolished. Everyone gets their salary and services run on.…
The practical politics of it is that there is one party that's become ideologically opposed to all non-military Federal spending. From their point of view the automatic shutdown is a feature.
At the risk of introducing a political topic into this supposedly apolitical subject, why shouldn't any president simply make demands and then shut down the government until his/her political opponents cave? Seemingly this strategy will not work ever again for either party if proper steps are taken. It seems like a terrible abuse of executive power.
In any specific case, blame is more likely to fall on the side that demands anything out of the ordinary.
From an outside perspective, it sounds like the destructive stalemates currently causing havoc in parliament & Congress are quite similar.
Everything is political machinations. The issues at hand (brexits & border walls) are popular/opinionated with the public, but most politicians don't feel as strongly about these issues.
They are equally happy if things go well, and they get credit or they go bad, and the other side gets blamed. I know politics always has.. politics, but I don't remember it ever being so explicit.
A mental exercise I often go to is imagining a secret ballot. I suspect that the votes would be totally different, if the ballot was secret.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Canada it triggers a new election
I had to refresh my memory on how this works up here, but generally our parliamentary system is designed to refresh itself when it becomes dysfunctional: https://globalnews.ca/news/3568037/vote-of-no-confidence-can... I don't know how it might work in the American system with the "balance of powers" or if it might be abused but generally our unstable minority governments resolve to a more stable majority after a few…
And before that time you get parties that have to work together to keep things moving, forcing compromise, and giving the less represented groups more power for a time.