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Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

forbes.com

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Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#111

Post by quanticle »

cantrevealname wrote: post #87
jbooth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One facet of the 'shutdown' is that they're not authorized to hand out federal money to states anymore. The states and municipalities are feeling it for every day that this stupid theatre persists.

If what the state government is doing is useful and wanted, then the state should tax more and the federal government should tax less. This is yet another inefficiency of federal government to act as a middleman.

One of the roles of the federal government is to redistribute funds from states that have populations to tax to states that don't. It's difficult to "tax more", if there's no one to tax (e.g. Montana).

It's no coincidence that the most rural, most Republican states are massive consumers of federal funds (via farm subsidies and transportation subsidies, mainly) and the most urban, most Democratic states are net producers of federal funds.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#112

Post by drill_sarge »

zalzane wrote: post #108
hellcow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state and local governments gave sufficient notice, private businesses would snap up the new market opportunities. Everything worthwhile would continue as usual, albeit with less waste.

Yes, because privatization worked so well for the prison system.

I also recall something about private tax debt collectors who basically took peoples homes. Some things should not be privatized or "optimized" for maximum efficiency.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#113

Post by ubernostrum »

beedogs wrote: post #30

How do the Republicans reckon they'll come out ahead after this? It'll be a GOP bloodbath in 2014.

They feel pretty confident, because they gerrymandered the hell out of the country's electoral map in the 2010 redistricting. That's how they currently have a majority in the House: there is a significant overall preference among the voters for Democrats, but the electoral map has been drawn so as to concentrate Republican voters and break up blocs of Democratic voters, ensuring that they will have enough "safe" districts to retain control of the House at least until the 2020 redistricting.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#114

Post by davidw »

ThomPete wrote: post #69
throwaway420 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying for me what opinions I'm allowed to have.

Claiming that taxes are evil or good is hardly HN material. You are entitled to your opinion but please focus on factual matters, not just opinion pieces. I am sure we all have ours.

This whole article is not HN material, really. You can see why, too: most of the comments are extremely predictable, and predictably bad.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#115

Post by jarek »

robomartin wrote: post #57

I've actually had time over the past few weeks to spend time watching the various duscussions in the Senate. In other words, I chose to go to the source and take the time to understand rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figu…

> a president who isn't even qualified to run a cookie baking operation

Obama's at 811,417,118.8 Cps in Cookie Clicker - what have you done that's so great?

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#116

Post by ubernostrum »

shmerl wrote: post #94

Can anyone please, explain briefly what are the downsides and practical problems that ACA will cause?

Since the basics of the ACA are identical to plans Republicans put forth multiple times over the past few decades, the downside is Republicans will be caught in the trap of being violently against something that was both A) their idea originally and B) has been shown to be quite popular among voters once they learn what it actually does.

Thus the Republican party has committed to stopping implementation at all costs.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#117

Post by tedunangst »

icambron wrote: post #66
chaz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hours before the shutdown, Obama signed a bill that granted an exception to the military, ensuring it will continue to operate and troops will be paid: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/government-shutdown-se...

Which is also in the article: >But 1.4 million uniformed members of the military will stay on the job and will be paid, thanks to a last-minute bill unanimously passed by both houses and signed by Obama on Monday night. Which goes to show that no matter how dysfunctional our government becomes it will go to any length to ensure that it's still capable of killing lots of people.

Someone else might rephrase that as "no matter how dysfunctional our government becomes it will go to any length to ensure that those people who are asked to die in its name still receive the token remuneration promised them."

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#118

Post by MaulingMonkey »

robomartin wrote: post #57

I've actually had time over the past few weeks to spend time watching the various duscussions in the Senate. In other words, I chose to go to the source and take the time to understand rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figu…

I apologize if this is inflammatory, but: "I guess when you have a president who isn't even qualified to run a cookie baking operation" -- this is where you lost all my interest, hyperbole or not.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#119

Post by vacri »

throwaway420 wrote: post #61
vacri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they stop taxing us? Taxes are not evil, bad, or wrong. Excessive taxes are something you can argue about, but the mere existence of them is not evidence of evil.

Thanks for clarifying for me what opinions I'm allowed to have.

It appears that you don't think I should be allowed to share opinions of my own. This is curious, given your clear opposition to the trappings of oppression.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#120

Post by scottjad »

So like 1% of the Federal government (by spending, just making this number up) is going to be closed.

National parks, EPA, WIC, and Housing and Urban Dev.

99% of the federal government (by spending) will remain open, including:

US Military, Food stamps, Unemployment benefits, Social Security benefits, TSA, air traffic control, border patrol, Federal Reserve, and the Post Office.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/09/30/227884483...

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