US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages

I've read a pretty good explanation of it here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/11/how-can-go...

Yet, I still cannot understand how it is legal to make people work without pay based on an Attorney General's thoughts on it in the 1980s.

Amazing.

Its why the US Democratic party isn't seen as just objectively better than Republicans even in intellectual circles. They don't actually represent abject moralistic improvement or they would push such an agenda when they had power, even if it wasn't guaranteed to succeed. They should be pressing it even now, when they have only half of congress and don't hold the presidency, to paint their opponents as against policies most of the citizens agree with.

But they don't propose them because a majority are bought and paid for by the same interests that sponsor Republicans. Talk on campaign trails about fair elections or fixing flaws in democracy or the execution of the government are cheap. When they actually are in power and make no attempt on that front you see their true colors and who their true constituents are.

For all their flaws, at least Republicans constantly brought bills to repeal the ACA to a vote over and over for years under Obama. It was only once it actually had a chance of passing under Trump that they stopped doing it knowing it would self-sabotage their reelection campaigns if rednecks suddenly lost their healthcare in many states. But that doesn't justify the "blue team" never bringing the policies they campaign on to a vote even if they have no chance on passing, because that is the whole reason many people turn out to vote for them in the first place.

Its part of why Bernie is so popular. He has a track record of constantly pushing in committee single payer healthcare and similar policies like increased minimum wage. Even when he knows he has no chance of even reaching a vote with his legislation he still tries because its his job to do so and its what he owed his electorate for what he promised when they voted for him. Hes not alone in it, but hes absolutely in a minority of ethical congressmen willing to do so.

I'm not saying it's temperance that keeps the US together (except for the first 8 years) but rather tradition. Long standing institutions tend to amass legitimacy over time.

It's not so much that we have a larger country these days as that we have ideologically distinct parties. We had real ideological distinctions between the Democractic Republicans and the Federalists in the old days and in addition to what you mention there were people considering a military coup if the election of 1800 went the wrong way. Thankfully the Federalists imploded and for a long time parties were mostly patronage machines, though you did have the pro-science, pro-religion, pro-treating other races with respect party versus the pro-freedom, pro-small government, pro-treating other religions with respect party as sort of vague ideologies. Except for the bit where they polarized over slavery and we immediately had a civil war. After progressive reforms made patronage less of an issue the two parties were both still ideologically mixed until the South defected to the Republicans and things have been polarizing ever since.

Right now we're in a situation where the most conservative Democrat in Congress is more liberal than the most liberal Republican, a situation that is basically unprecedented. I don't expect the current system to break soon, hundreds of years of tradition is pretty resilient, but if the current level of partisan divide and constitutional hardball continues it will break down eventually.

Theoretically you could end up in a loop where the people vote in Party A in a minority government, then Parties B+C oppose a budget bill, an election is held, Party A is re-elected into a minority government, and Parties B+C oppose a budget bill, and so on.

But it's important to recognize that blocking a budget is a risky manoeuvre. In all likelihood the above cycle would never happen more than once or twice because people find elections irritating. If people think you called an election frivolously then voters will punish you at the polls; in the above example people would eventually get pissed off at B and C and break the cycle by giving A a majority so that they can pass their budget without opposition support.

The important thing is that in the Westminster system (e.g. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) if Parliament loses the ability to pass important bills then it results in an election. It keeps the opposition parties honest insofar that they have to be confident that they would actually gain in the polls in order for them to force an election by blocking the government. They can't just block things without repercussions.