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U.S. Government shutdown - how does it work ?


eugene

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wtf is this thing really ? this seems like a really bizzare mechanism to me, so a party of religious, neo-liberal retards hate obama so much that they are willing to put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in order to prove their point ? and why does such capability even exist, isn't elections a more sensible way to settle this ? weird stuff.

would be interested in hearing americans' views on this.

 

joshuatx, pls.

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I have to say, i dont want Obamacare to take place, the reality is that its going to fuck me and everyone who makes less than 40k a year in the ass.

 

I'm more than okay with Universal Healthcare where everyone chips in (they should take 5-10 dollars from everyone paycheck) but forcing you to buy insurance its going to make my budget even tighter, and i dont do it i get fined .. what the fuck man

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I have to say, i dont want Obamacare to take place, the reality is that its going to fuck me and everyone who makes less than 40k a year in the ass.

 

I'm more than okay with Universal Healthcare where everyone chips in (they should take 5-10 dollars from everyone paycheck) but forcing you to buy insurance its going to make my budget even tighter, and i dont do it i get fined .. what the fuck man

 

 

my understanding is that people making up to 137% of the poverty level will now get free healthcare under medicaid, and those making up to 400% of the poverty level (around 50k/yr) will get tax credits paid immediately to the insurer which reduce the monthly cost by around 90% (to something like 30-50 dollars). i learned that from the latest out there radio podcast episode (i think he gets to that part around 11 or 12 minutes in).

 

 

 

and yeah its abhorent that so-called representatives are holding the government, and its employees, hostage in order to acquire their legislative goals. a lot of these legislators are proud of this methodology, as rachel maddow chillingly details in this segment.

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well the cheapest thing i can get is 25 dollars a week which doesn't cover anything so if pretty much useless, and i know 25 dollars isnt that much but thats 25 dollars less i can use.

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in that podcast he says he'll be able to get a "cadillac plan" for 30 bucks a month. im no expert, but that dude does lots of research, and that's a particularly motivated episode because his mom died last month, suffering in her last months because she didn't have insurance.

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one way to interpret the extreme republican obstructionism under obama, including the repeated threats to shutdown the government, is that they are willfully trying to harm the economy and the country itself so obama and the democrats won't look as good (to the masses that don't pay close attention). they got our credit rating downgraded with the debt ceiling crisis in july 2011, and with each one of their shutdown threats (maddow lists a half dozen of them from the last few years in the segment linked above) the stock market is weakened. in november 2014 their horrible strategy should properly backfire on them.

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Gow' dam gubmentz be takin' da walla frazzle massle, and da dayum inngrents be comin' over takin' all err jyoubz, and that ain't even sayin' nuthin' 'bout da dayum aliens of arrya 51 fuckin' lizard wazzla frazzle be all surveillance and wattnot, NSA be up in der n' can't even go tah wal mart without a fuuukyin gubmentz be all on my tail 'bout the razzle massle, fuckin' wat da fuuuyk, cuz den ya gawt all da traiturrrz like snowdayn foywkin' gaylord up da buttsekz, an' dat ain't even talkin' 'bout condaleeza septemburr nine 'leven fuckin' Muzlim Injyunz from Iranaq fowkin' all spreadin' rap myusic to traaah t' rape my daughter Mary Jay Lou Bowb, fuckin' arrya 51 and dem librralz be all wal mart wazzle frassle, so basically if'da gubmentz be shuttin' down, den das cuz the African Muslim commie USSR Chinese 'Bama care be all up in MY cuntry and takin' my gunz cuz I protect MY rights as a 'Markahn fuckin' razzle frassle.

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Tea Party GOP members of the House and Senate, a minority within the Republican party, are to blame. They tried to eliminate budget funding for the provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act, then tried to delay it's enactment for a year, then tried eliminating just the "Individual Mandate" section of Obamacare, all through amendments. All the while, the Senate voted against these and in the end the budget was delayed to death. Most Republicans, have said that a government shutdown over yet another repeal attempt is absolutely a bad decision. Texas Senator John Cornyn for example said it was like burning a house down to get rid of a rat infestation. I shit you not, he will likely lose his next primary election for not trying to repeal it.

 

Obamacare is a pretty meh law, but it passed and the GOP never tried to offer a serious alternative. In fact ironically many in the Tea Party said Obamacare would harm Medicare and Social Security, which are the same fucking programs that conservatives and libertarians cite as some of the worst legislation ever passed in history. They have tried over thirty times to repeal it and still want to defund it even after the Supreme Court upheld it. Some GOP states, like Arizona and Florida, have actually gone ahead with implementing Obamacare, since rationally it will only do harm by delaying it. On the other hand, Rick Perry in Texas is doing his absolute best to prevent it from being implemented here, in fact in a super passive aggressive motion he ordered all Insurance navigators (insurance coverage advisers) to have 40 ADDITIONAL hours of training instead of the mandated 20. By the way, Rick Perry and other Texas Republicans passed a law this year shortening concealed handgun training from 10-15 hours to 4-6 hours only. Priorities, am I right?

 

The only thing they agreed on was paying members of the US military, whereas hundreds of thousands of Federal workers (actually probably millions, I know 140,000 in Texas alone are affected) are going to get IOUs indefinitely. I hope to god this is short. It cost us 1.6 billion in the 90s. Speaking of, the exact same type of shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 made Newt Gingrich a hero for conservatives - again the issue was social program spending. No one with half a brain actually thinks these save money, it's just political middle fingers from one party to the president. They occurred in the Reagan administration, but were far shorter.

 

America doesn't have single-payer healthcare system, we have inflated and loosely regulated insurance coverage and inefficient coverage for the poor (but not the working poor) and old (but it's pretty shoddy and doesn't cover inflated prescription prices). I and every other taxpaying citizen literally pays more into a system than any citizen of any other country WITHOUT EVEN GETTING HEALTHCARE COVERAGE. And the money for me, in theory, in social security and medicare coverage when I turn 65 is projected to run out. Obamacare has only fixed some problems within the insurance aspect, reasonable things like allowing those with preexisting conditions to get healthcare insurance instead of legally denied. Despite these facts, republicans, especially tea party republicans, insist that Obamacare is a major intrusion on my rights, my freedoms, and that our healthcare system is the best in the world, whereas other systems are socialist nightmares of bureaucratic oppression. Millions of people, including otherwise reasonable and intelligent friends and family members of mine, actually buy into this bullshit. It's remarkable and insanely frustrating. Our country is mostly run by childish, passive aggressive bullies paid off by lobbyists...and people still pick an arbitrary side and cheer them on.

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Also, this is all about GOP primary politics, which in states like Texas, are far more contentious than the actual elections. There have been many long-serving, decent GOP congressmen and congresswomen who were forced to retire or who lost primary elections since 2010. The reason the "Tea Party" Republicans won in 2010 was because Obamacare passed.

 

GOP candidates, many of whom are corrupt, career politicians, took the "Tea Party" movement (which is adverse to long-serving politicians and spending) and turned it into a label for themselves to win office. Many of them actually want to pass more government laws infringing on our rights in the form of social laws, anti-LGBT legislation, and and anti-women's health legislation. Democrats are corrupt too, and ironically heinous shit done by Obama, like keeping us in Afghanistan, all of the surveillance programs, etc has been seemingly excused by liberal Dems in the meantime. The political climate is ripe for the corrupt and deceitful, and anyone wanting to keep a low-profile and serve the people is going to have a hard fucking time getting elected and/or staying in office.

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Guest the dave colonel

If Democrats want to get the 20% of federal workers who are out of work b/c of the shutdown back to work, they simply have to agree to a 1-year delay in the authoritarian individual mandate to buy health insurance. This mandate is extremely unpopular and the Republicans just want to delay it a year.........how is it that Democrats are the ones presented as reasonable by the media here?

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Thanks, I'm just kind of venting more than anything. I can't even imagine being a federal worker during all of this. I hope the resolve it soon, not linger for 3 weeks as it did in 1995. The big concern is the debt ceiling cap debate is coming up in two weeks, it has more skepticism from moderate GOP member it's even more contentious than Obamacare.

 

Also, you can't go to National Parks or the Smithsonian right now as they are closed and that's just a disgrace. As my wife joked, they work it like "you can't see the Grand Crayon" on the news, as if someone will be there yelling "DON'T LOOK AT IT!"

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If Democrats want to get the 20% of federal workers who are out of work b/c of the shutdown back to work, they simply have to agree to a 1-year delay in the authoritarian individual mandate to buy health insurance. This mandate is extremely unpopular and the Republicans just want to delay it a year.........how is it that Democrats are the ones presented as reasonable by the media here?

 

50% of the public is not "extremely unpopular" especially when both sides of public opinion are ignorant and oblivious to basic facts. The Senate, including that annoying opportunist Ted Cruz, passed the bill unanimously. The majority of Republicans actually wanted to pass it, even after trying to repeal parts of the bill and pass a 1 year delay. The minority of their ranks killed it anyway.

 

Dems aren't reasonable. Congress isn't reasonable. But you know, the Dems didn't pull this shit in 2006 or 2008 either, especially over an actually egregious thing like the war in Iraq. The status quo before Obamacare is the most expensive, corrupt, inefficient healthcare system in the world being unchanged. A sect of Republicans and a lot of misinformation are keeping people convinced that Obamacare needs to go, so they can win elections and keep their insurance lobbyist donors happy. Despite being passed like every other bill legally upheld by the Supreme Court, they insist on repealing this law. Not the patriot act, or bringing our troops home, or cutting corrupt spending and fixing tax loopholes for the rich, but trying to eliminate a law that will help poor, hard-working people pay for fucking health insurance they would otherwise be arbitrarily denied. So yeah, if there's a contest on who is fucking unreasonable, Tea Party Republicans win by a longshot.

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Guest the dave colonel

Dems aren't reasonable. Congress isn't reasonable. But you know, the Dems didn't pull this shit in 2006 or 2008 either, especially over an actually egregious thing like the war in Iraq. The status quo before Obamacare is the most expensive, corrupt, inefficient healthcare system in the world being unchanged. A sect of Republicans and a lot of misinformation are keeping people convinced that Obamacare needs to go, so they can win elections and keep their insurance lobbyist donors happy. Despite being passed like every other bill legally upheld by the Supreme Court, they insist on repealing this law. Not the patriot act, or bringing our troops home, or cutting corrupt spending and fixing tax loopholes for the rich, but trying to eliminate a law that will help poor, hard-working people pay for fucking health insurance they would otherwise be arbitrarily denied. So yeah, if there's a contest on who is fucking unreasonable, Tea Party Republicans win by a longshot.

 

You are passing off shrill MSNBC talking points as your own....and getting them wrong. 50% don't support the mandate, only like 20% do. Obamacare as a whole is supported by maybe 40%, but the mandate (which the Pubs would like to delay) is extremely unpopular. Oh but the American public are prolly just dumb, right?

 

The Dems should have "pulled this shit" over something egregious like the war in Iraq. And the Patriot Act. And the wars Obama has started and kept going. But congress is disfunctional, unreasonable, and typically just votes with power. Don't blame the Republicans for finally bucking this trend and standing up to authoritarian laws passed with big pharma money.

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great posts as always josh.

 

It disheartens me to see this happen again and to a far worse degree than before. The Republican party certainly shares the brunt of the guilt on this one; Im obviously no fan of Obama or his lukewarm administration, but this is completely ridiculous to hurt the economy and layoff hundreds of thousands of people just to give a few Tea Party heads continual talking points. This the greatest and consequently worst example of how political maneuvering has taken complete primacy over absolutely ANYTHING of substance.

 

I'm gonna sound like a dick for this, but Im gonna say it again, I don't think the Obama admin or the Dems are completely innocent in this debacle either, and this stretches all the way back to when Obama got in with a Democratic super-majority from approx. 2008-2009. That was the time to put the foot down, give a big "fuck you" to the radical Republicans and big up the mentally stable ones and push through a healthcare bill of real consequence. The second his administration started talking about "going to the other side of the aisle", it opened the door for Tea Partiers to join the discussion. If they were told to fuck off right at the beginning, it would have yielded the exact same results in the subsequent Senatorial election, but at least we'd have a real fucking healthcare bill and a huge debt off the shoulders of the American public.

 

It's because of that, all the other shit I've harped on about, and this just now that really makes me think of Obama as a Carter-equivalent as a president. Hear me out, Im not saying hes "the worst president that ever ran this country", because I can easily think of worse presidents on a number of accounts. But Carter was a weak president. He was ineffective. He didn't play hardball, and his enemies capitalized on it. The Dems could have run the Reps. over in his 1st term; instead they made capitulation after capitulation to extremist wings of the Republican party. The Republican party in turn figures "hey, this is the direction our constituency is going". They mistook overall economic frustration within the US as a complete mandate for social conservatism and they start letting in Tea Partiers in the 2010 senatorial elections.

 

Yeah, so feel free to disagree. But at this point in time I really can't say that there is an innocent political party in this whole mess.

 

Also, very interesting and quick rundown of US healthcare expenses...though I wish he would cite his graphs/tabulations:

 

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josh, i figure you'd be the best one to ask about this: I am still not completely clear on what exactly the positives are for Obamacare. I've read a few pages of the 1800+ whatever bill, but in my position along with a lot of other people with a huge amount of student debt and low-paying internships or jobs, being forced to buy health insurance makes everything a hell of a lot worse. In fact, is there anyone in the US, including the actual writers of the bill that know what the fuck is in there?

 

 

actually, not sure if there is an obvious bias, but looking at this site right now: http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-pros-and-cons.php

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That's the thing that sucks about the Tea Party - the core ethos, especially when it first came around, was sincere. There are a plethora of things that those who self-identify as Tea Party I agree with. Hell, Ted Cruz actually flat-out bucked his own party to defend Snowden. He's an opportunist sure, but that took some balls. I appreciate that.

 

I actually thought the individual mandate repeal was reasonable - it's something that Obama passed despite it being made ineffective when (if I recall correctly) they eliminated the government insurance option from the Affordable Care Act. That's why it's weak. I admit, once the Dems in the Senate just started denying ANY effort. I will agree with Dave Colonel that it made the Dems look unreasonable. Personally, knowing politics, it's probably the Senate as a whole asserting that they are the upper chamber. A lot of ridiculous non-partisan bullshit like seniority plays into these debates too.

 

Personally I wished they reformed the fuck out of insurance providers (the preexisting condition issue was the only good thing about Obamacare I can readily cite) and they would scrap Medicare/Medicaid and use the base of its funds for a single-payer healthcare system. The video above gets at the core of why I feel that way.

 

I agree with Obama being a huge disappointment. He's indecisive. He doesn't "stand" for anything. I'm amazed at the few delusional people I know who still cheer him on (most of my liberal friends have openly cited him as being a letdown.) My dad said, and I agree with this, that his lack of decision making with Afghanistan is literally costing soldiers lives - he won't remove them but he won't send in more troops either, so our forces are just fighting with minimum assets. You can hate W Bush for many things but I will assert that W wouldn't even run a war that stupidly.

 

Short of saying I regret voting for Obama in 2012 I will say this: I wouldn't vote for him again and wouldn't in retrospect. The lesser of two evils argument isn't even valid to me anymore. It's green or libertarian in 2016 for me, for president anyway. Only local and state make an immediate difference on my life. (I voted McCain in 2008 - long fucking story and my ideology was different, let's just say I voted for Ron Paul in the primaries that year)

 

 

Dems aren't reasonable. Congress isn't reasonable. But you know, the Dems didn't pull this shit in 2006 or 2008 either, especially over an actually egregious thing like the war in Iraq. The status quo before Obamacare is the most expensive, corrupt, inefficient healthcare system in the world being unchanged. A sect of Republicans and a lot of misinformation are keeping people convinced that Obamacare needs to go, so they can win elections and keep their insurance lobbyist donors happy. Despite being passed like every other bill legally upheld by the Supreme Court, they insist on repealing this law. Not the patriot act, or bringing our troops home, or cutting corrupt spending and fixing tax loopholes for the rich, but trying to eliminate a law that will help poor, hard-working people pay for fucking health insurance they would otherwise be arbitrarily denied. So yeah, if there's a contest on who is fucking unreasonable, Tea Party Republicans win by a longshot.

 

You are passing off shrill MSNBC talking points as your own....and getting them wrong. 50% don't support the mandate, only like 20% do. Obamacare as a whole is supported by maybe 40%, but the mandate (which the Pubs would like to delay) is extremely unpopular. Oh but the American public are prolly just dumb, right?

 

The Dems should have "pulled this shit" over something egregious like the war in Iraq. And the Patriot Act. And the wars Obama has started and kept going. But congress is disfunctional, unreasonable, and typically just votes with power. Don't blame the Republicans for finally bucking this trend and standing up to authoritarian laws passed with big pharma money.

 

 

We're probably disagree on things far less than I have assumed. You got the brunt of my angry ranting, sorry. I really have to say that I don't think the timing of this is very reasonable. That said, and perhaps you'll agree with this, the spin the Dems have put on this is quite snarky and bullyish itself. They've pat their back for passing Obamacare but most have done little to actually work out the details and implement it in a constructive way. They are acting out for political points just as much as the GOP. And yes, it did pass in a way that wasn't very transparent.

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I think I can agree solidly with all that.

 

 

I'm done trying to say positive things about the Tea Party movement, because it just isn't what it was originally. If anything the positive aspects we would agree on are populist grassroots activism at its most fundamental form, but those ideas were thrown out in favor of catering to batshit crazy conspiracy theorists or high school libertarians.

 

To me it's like saying the Democratic party is the same one that endorsed slavery and segregation.

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