Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Government: Sorry, We're Closed
theodp writes "CNN reports that the U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday after lawmakers in the House and the Senate could not agree on a spending bill to fund the government. Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. But employees deemed non-essential — close to 800,000 — will be furloughed, and most of those are supposed to be out of their offices within four hours of the start of business Tuesday."
Do they do ANYTHING for the actual good of the country?
All the news stories have been about "which political party should we blame."
You want to know who to blame? All of the twits who have been cheering on "their team" while this has been going on, instead of pressuring their representatives to do their job. The members of Congress -- in both major parties -- feel no pressure to actually resolve the situation, because they've managed to trick their supporters in the media into giving them a pass while they wasted time instead of actually trying to come up with a solution that has a chance of working.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
'Murica! Where the government closes when they can't talk it out due to childish behavior from different parties.
I love Slate's take on this. When you read it, substitute "Venezuela", "Uganda", or "Myanmar" for "America".
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
They're free to do whatever, as long as they're ready to return to work with only a day's notice. Then they get paid for all the time they were out of work once the budget's resolved. It's basically a paid vacation, except you don't get paid until it's over, and you can't really travel out-of-area. Source: Was furloughed during Clinton's reign.
The people who steal one third of my paycheck! Who will spy on me? Who will treat me with contempt? Who will give my money to people who don't work? Who will blow up those nasty foreigners with drones? Who will second-guess my personal choices?
And what about the cronies!!? How will they get their schemes funded? Won't someone please think of the cronies!!!?
If this happens in Australia (upper house repeatedly blocks bills from the lower house) we sack them all, and hold another election. It's called a double dissolution (because both houses are dissolved simultaneously).
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Do they receive other benefits? Bummer being sent home in the run-up to the holiday season.
It's worth mentioning that House and Senate representatives and President - and perhaps at least some of their staff - are considered "essential" and will get paid through the shut down.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This isn't true. There is no guarantee that furloughed workers will be paid for their time upon their return.
I was there for the last shutdown.
By statute, email was not sufficient for notification. Every employee had to show up to the office and be given a formal-on-paper memo telling them they were furloughed. Remember, by statute, the in-person delivery of a notice on paper was required. That meant that *every* field employee had to make there way back to the office the same morning to receive their paper. Special Agents were called off of stake-outs. Employees permamently assigned to work from home or from desks at non-government entities had to leave their normal workspace and come into the federal building that was, theoretically, their place of employment...even if they *never* set foot in that building under normal circumstances.
At the last shutdown, every federal building was packed. There wasn't room for all the people who were forced to show up all at the same time. Halls were lined with people standing around because they had no place to sit. Friends gathered in groups of 4 or 5 around the desk of the one guy in their group who actually had a desk.
All of this may have been changed in the meantime.
However, post-9/11 we used to discuss the prospect of another shutdown and always concluded the same. Congress would be stupid to do it. The mechanics of the process made every federal building in the nation an incredibly enticing, super-target-rich environment for any nut job with a bomb or a gun who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.
We tended to think that putting all government employees in central locations, metaphorically under a giant banner that said "All terrorists attack here. Multiple high-value targets present. High level of success guaranteed." was so stupid that even Congress wouldn't do it.
Of course, we might have been wrong about that.
A victory for the British Empire!
Well, I don't see any terrorists around, so it must be working!
It's just like the rock I keep on my nightstand to ward off tigers. Sure, it's not a recurring cost, like the war on terror, but it has a similar effect.
Proof for you naysayers: I've yet to be so much as scratched by a tiger in my sleep.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Italy has a government.
I wouldn't say laughing stock. Although the country I live in has national health care, and the budget gets passed every year. I broke my elbow earlier this year. I saw 3 doctors in a local clinic, 1 E.R. doctor in a major hospital, 2 E.R. orthopedic surgeons, had 4 x-rays (about 6 weeks from start to finish), 1 (non-E.R.) orthopedic surgeon, about 4 nurses, and 1 physiotherapist. I had a splint for a week, tensor bandages, gauze with medical grade polysporin, medical grade tylenol and advil. I saw the last orthopedic surgeon 4 times, the physiotherapist 7 times. At no point did anyone ask for money. I pay taxes. I don't claim to live in the richest country in the world, but *somehow* I went from losing 1/4 square inch of bone and about 6 square inches of skin and muscle (about 1/4 inch deep), to being able to lift about 80 pounds with arm/elbow without pain, no visible scarring, and about 99% of the range of motion that I had before, all in about 10 weeks (I have 2 weeks to go before they consider it completely healed). I know Americans get huffy when people in other countries say they can do things that Americans can't. If it was sports or technology, there would be a shouting match on the web. Well the country I live in can have national medical coverage, and apparently, you cannot. Its not so much of a boast. I think America would be better off with what my country has. But that causes shouting matches *within America*. All I can say is "if you knew what I know, saw what I see, you would want what I have". But there are people who live in your country with vested interests in keeping medical costs very expensive, and unfortunately some people have to die because of it, needlessly. I think some of it is that I don't buy health Insurance, but pay taxes to health care. It costs about $20 per month per person (about $240 per year). I make about $30 per hour. This doesn't break my bank. Somehow I didn't pay a nickel in hospital for a broken elbow, and no one sent me a bill. Yet it worked for me, and works for everyone else where I live. No other countries in the world with medical coverage like what I have are laughing at the US. They are perplexed, bewildered, even quizzical over how so many Americans could be sold so crappy a bill of goods. There are no medical insurance companies getting rich here. There is no 'denied coverage' here. There are no 'pre-existing conditions' here. We don't have 'Health Insurance', we have 'Health Care'. Obamacare isn't even half as good as what I have, and people (Americans) are shouting over it. Bizarre! All the hospitals/clinics I visited are less than 10 years old, 1 is 6 months old, the x-ray (medical imaging machines) were less than 1 year old, laser guided, computer controlled. Economies of scale could work in the US too.
Oh thank god this comment is marked as informative and not insightful.
Actually you will feel something. It'll be like boiling a frog. At first it'll just be a few rich folks getting hammered on the stock market, then it will be questioning the credit rating of the country, then there's the knock on effects to the economy of not just taking 700000 people out of the workforce, but government contracts and other spending which underpins many businesses all over the world will be on hold too. Long term expect another recession.
Ultimately if it continues you WILL feel something. Either that or you have some kind of inability to feel anything in which case I take it all back and your comment deserves the informative mod point it got.
In the corporate world, after every merger or takeover I've seen, non essential employees are shown the door. If we can do without for a day, why not a week, why not a month, let's go for all year. The worst thing will be having to fondle yourself at the airport.
And that works out really well for corporate mergers where immediately after the sum value of the two companies typically drops. Then there is what non-essential means in the corporate world vs the government. This is more like outsourcing you engineering, IT. It works at first and then after a few months everything turns to shit.
At some point you have to do a risk and cost benefit analysis. Sure I lock my door, but am I willing to spend >50% of my income on locks for my door?
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Hey, us Europeans may have a bunch of culture clashes when it comes to lawmaking, but we never had half the parliament take their ball and go home.
Avoiding the US centric partisan flamebait here; from the outside looking in what people should be furious about is why during the entire period of Obamacare being introduced to being written into law, being challenged, then to 3 years late is why no one pointing out that the real problem you have in america is the pricing of health services regardless of who is the one trying to pay for them.
You guys pay between twice to ten times as much for the same procedures or services as are paid in other countries (considering equal quality service). I'm not talking about going to mexico for back alley cosmetic surgery here, I mean proper care you find in places like Canada or the UK or Germany.
And I'm not talking about the cost to the patient either, I mean the actual amount paid out in the end to the providers of the services. Obamacare just says things need to be paid for, but leaves out the problem of your current costing and the fact that your premiums will rise in all categories to cover the difference in claims.
Your whole country is being taken for a ride and this drama is just another part of keeping the eyes away from the actual problem.
You guys both have it slightly wrong.
The last time this happened, everyone was split into two groups: "essential staff" was required to come to work, but for no pay because even in absence of a budget it was dangerous for them to not perform their duties (the guys who fix broken traffic lights, for example, and others). The other grou was "non essential" and sent home with no pay.
After the budget was resolved, everyone came back to work and was paid for those days. But the essential staff complained that although everyone got paid, the "non-essential staff" basically got a free vacation and were paid for it, while the 'essential staff' had to work for their money.
The economists agreed it was basically unfair. So while at some point the political folks can make a decision about whether to pay back-pay or not, there's no guarantee. In fact the fair thing to do is not pay back salary for the non-essential staff, since they did not perform their duties.
Point is: they have to decide what to do, and there's no guarantee anyone will be paid for their time, which sucks.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
You did not get what Obama wanted (a proper, public health care system like NHS), you got what Republicans wanted, called it "Obamacare" and now Republicans don't even want that being passed.
Don't you Americans read news or watch newspapers? I am shocked with the level of misinformation when it comes to your own laws.
Really? Air traffic control, we could leave that to the airlines, right? Or maybe you'd like 50 different collections of rules. How about NIH, anyone in your family get a really nasty disease lately? Surely your state will fund and coordinate that research. How about the CDC? You like plagues like salmonella raging across the land with no agency in charge of nailing down the culprit so more people don't die. How about EPA? What do you need clean air and water for. How about Social Security, Grandma can come and live with you, right? Medicare? You'll be happy to afford her medications so she'll live to ripe old age under your tender loving care. NTSB ring a bell? They are the folks that figure out how companies managed to kill of your mother by not paying attention to safety.
The list goes on, but shut it all down because they are "non-essential" and "counterproductive". Your motto must be, "I don't think, therefore I am not".
Add "dangerous" to that list.
Not just to stability in the ME and to US relationships with long-time allies.
More dangerous by orders of magnitude to US citizens' lives and freedom than the "terrists", or even any other hostile country, could possibly be.
Violent crime in the US, including gun crime, is at historic multi-decade lows (despite increased gun ownership, but I digress) according to official stats, yet the number of people killed by police (particularly unarmed people) and the number of para-military "SWAT" raids has steadily and rapidly increased over the last few decades, along with the prison population.
"National Security"? Ha!
*Real* national security would necessitate, in part, dismantling and/or massively-downsizing much of the myriad of current alphabet-soup domestic security/intelligence/enforcement agencies and departments, like DHS, TSA, and NSA for just a few examples, and either eliminating them outright, or at the least, stripping them of all but the barest minimum of powers and capabilities/infrastructure, like no more giant domestic data centers and "USS Enterprise bridge"-styled data/surveillance "command centers" at taxpayer expense to satisfy out-of-control and delusional sociopathic megalomaniacs with God-complexes, who also just happen to be US Generals.
Speaking of Gen. "Make it so!" Alexander, back in my day they used to send two big hospital orderlies with a net, a straight-jacket, and an ambulance for such people and placed them in mental institutions.
These days they hold high US political and/or government/military/intelligence positions.
I vote we simply wall-off all of Washington D.C. with all Federal government political/lobbying denizens inside, and make it a giant mental asylum ala "Escape From New York" and then throw a nationwide month-long block-party in celebration, using just a tiny fraction of the savings to the entire country.
"..And nothing of value was lost..."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There have been fewer votes on federal gun control (for *or* against) in the past decade than there have been attempts to kill the ACA ('Obamacare') in the past year. This, despite it being virtually identical to the plan proposed by Republicans while Bush was in office.
There have, likewise, been fewer votes on the death penalty, abortion access, segregation, pot use, and same-sex marriage *combined* (again, for or against) in the past decade, than attempts to repeal the ACA in the past year.
Democracy isn't about throwing a fit and refusing to do your damned job (passing a budget) because the *other guy* got something you didn't like.