I am shocked this hasn't happened sooner. It speaks to the lack of agency the average person has even in a government job. Politics and money grant agency for people, but most Americans have limited access to either.
US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
541–550 of 612 posts
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#542I 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.…
Most democracies run a parliamentary system, where the head of government has to have the support of parliament. There's no separation between government/executive from parliament. The point being that if a prime minister can't reach an agreement with parliament on some core issue (like annual budgets), they cease being the PM. Usually this means a new election. The US's checks and balances means that parliament and…
Well don't look too hard at the UK right now. :) We have a government and PM that is effectively stuck there (thanks to the coalition's broken Fixed Term Parliaments Act) but unable to bring legislation through. They even lost a vote on the last finance bill, and the huge Brexit defeat. Either would normally have brought the government down.
Belgium famously managed with no government for well over a year, without apparently making big decisions like finance or defence changes.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
No country is without it's issues. Not excusing what's going on though. With that out of the way, what substantive arguments can you make that leads you to think this is anything like the fall of Rome?
It's not my favorite analogy. Probably something closer to the government of early modern Poland: so paralyzed by dysfunction that it couldn't effectively govern or respond to novel threats.
I've wondered if public dialog about societal change might be improved by having a richer set of exemplars, to serve as context and landmarks in discussion.
When exploring design objectives with a client, one often provides a set of proposals, whose differences then serve as a vocabulary for discussion. Almost a basis vector set. Public dialog often leaves me with the impression of a client with an inadequate set, an impoverished vocabulary, struggling to both clearly understand and express their opportunities and desires.
For governance and society, even just current US States are variously diverse. So we might discuss whether we want aspect X of the federal government or national society, to look more like those of this state or that state, with a bit from some other. Current countries and societies provide even larger breath, and history even more.
But the goal here isn't models, merely vocabulary. Not "if we do this, then these experiences suggest these results". Such extrapolations between highly complex systems are almost silly. Though experiences can suggest possibilities. But my focus here is more on creating vocabulary. For example, I recall a story of "you don't call the police in , because they will just show up in force, smash things and people unrelated to the problem, and then leave, having done nothing but additional harm". For vocabulary, it doesn't matter whether that's true, or typical, or happens only under specific conditions, or is different now, or whatever. It's merely a tag, to facilitate discussion and reflection like "Hmm, it seems there are a few situations of that in the US too! What is the shape of such cases? Does it vary among municipalities? Why? What does the space of shapes look like? What are the class, cultural, political, and professional contexts?", etc.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
The President makes budget requests to Congress before the budget committees plan and submit their appropriations bills. The perfectly good funding plan did not include the budget requests the President made. Whether you agree with his politics or not is immaterial. It is not 100% his decision.
And the Congress is by no means required to give the President everything he asks for. The perfectly good funding plan was given to Trump by his allies when they controlled both houses, it was the most favorable plan he could ever possibly get. It even had some wall funding in it. It was 100% his decision to veto it, and 100% his stupid fault for thinking that he could get more concessions from his enemies than he co…
I commend you for being motivated but this doesn't match the actual facts.
President Trump has not vetoed a single bill during his term of office thus far. Go look this up if you do not believe me. Please see spurcell93's sibling comment to yours in this thread.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this country was actually run like a business, the CEO would be fired by now.
In a real business, the finance department and the CEO wouldn't be locking horns over what to use company money for and it would never block payroll.
> In a real business, the finance department and the CEO wouldn't be locking horns over what to use company money for and it would never block payroll.
(1) Congress is more like a board of directors than a finance department.
(2) Internal issues would never be allowed to block payroll except in the most extreme cases in a normal business because there is an external actor, the government, which will impose severe consequences for that. A business operating in an environment without that external force would not be unlikely to delay payroll.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, my dad was deciding between two engineering jobs; one for the US Department of Commerce and another in the private sector for a big aerospace contractor. The private sector one paid more, I remember, but my mother brought up to my dad something interesting: You're less likely to get laid off, and you'll always have more job security, with the stable paycheck provided by a government job. It's weird…
If this country was actually run like a business, the CEO would be fired by now.
If this country was actually run like a business with that much debt, a good CEO would reduce it in size. IMO that is exactly whats happening.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
>they had the house and senate in 2008-2010 and chose not to go about abolishing the electoral college They had absolutely no way to do that. That would require a constitutional amendment. (There's another way around it where enough states agree to award electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, but that also requires action by the states).
Short of another convention, the amendment has to start in Congress. So they could have brought it up but chose not to. The interstate compact, on the other hand, has enough signers that it is at least plausibly going to be successful. Though there will be lots of legal challenges if it ever gets used, it's not clear they're allowed to do such a thing.
>So they could have brought it up but chose not to
They couldn't have. It requires 2/3 of both houses. Democrats never had anywhere near that many seats.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#548Why can't the ATC adopt a funding model like the USPS so they don't have this problem in the future relying on appropriations. Can they basically charge airlines and other traffic for their services to fund the operations. I'm mostly curious if this is actually realistic.
Is there anything stopping the airlines from agreeing to pay ATC salaries temporarily in order to avoid flight disruption?
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
The specific power being used here is the presidential veto, which is an important power of the president which is checked by the legislature being able to overrule a veto if they get enough votes. In more calm times they could just pass legislation that would end the concept of government shut downs by funding at the previous rate in the event of a failure to agree to new funding levels. Neither side wants that beca…
Its not nearly an equal cudgel. Generally the democrats want federal institutions to be in operation while Republicans want to disrupt and defund them. This correlates to 9 of 10 shutdowns (one in Bill Clintons term I'd consider him causing it) being propagated by Republicans on either side of negotiations, often with intent to defund some part of the government with the appropriations bills. Of course, I wouldn't he…
> Of course, I wouldn't hesitate to blame Democrats - they had the house and senate in 2008-2010 and chose not to go about abolishing the electoral college
A majority in the House and Senate isn't even enough to propose an amendment to do that, much less to actually do it.
Re: US shutdown: Flight delays caused by staff shortages
#550On February 7th, myself and my co-workers are supposed to travel half way across the country for a major sales-call/meeting. But if the shutdown is still happening, there is no amount of money that would tempt me to get on that plane. Stuff like this worries me: " The delays come one day after a stark warning was issued by air industry unions about the risk to public safety. "In our risk averse industry, we cannot ev…
I am travelling internationally on the 1st and I cannot avoid my trip. Will only be nervous until we cross the US airspace. Moreover, I worry about the upcoming superbowl weekend and the mayhem the airport delays will bring.