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US Geological Survey Unable To Provide Indonesia Tsunami Data Due To Government Shutdown (huffingtonpost.com.au)
An underwater landslide caused by activity from the Anak Krakatau volcano is being blamed for a tsunami that struck Indonesia late Saturday, killing at least 222 people and injuring more than 800 others. Normally, the U.S. Geological Survey would report on such events and provide any necessary data it had to the public. But it can't due to America's partial government shutdown, which began Saturday after President Donald Trump refused to sign legislation that didn't include funding for his southern border wall. From a report: The USGS website is dormant as of Sunday, except for a notice at the top. "Due to a lapse in appropriations, the majority of USGS websites may not be up to date and may not reflect current conditions," the note reads. "Websites displaying real-time data, such as Earthquake and Water and information needed for public health and safety will be updated with limited support." According to the government shutdown contingency plan, the USGS will retain just 75 of its estimated 8,032 employees, or 0.9 percent. "The USGS will suspend the majority of its activities with the exception of those functions to protect life and property," the plan states. The document also claims that 450 employees will be "on call" for natural disasters, but it's unclear if that process has been enacted, as the USGS website says the agency is not "able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted."
It's a shame that this far right tantrum us wasting money and will keep government employees from being paid on time. Furloughed workers will get back pay for them not to work during the shutdown. The shutdown will probably extend into January, and employees who are working will have their paycheck delayed. Meanwhile, many very useful but non-essential services aren't being provided at all. Shame on the far right.
Schumer offered Trump 25 billion dollars for the wall in exchange for DACA. They shook hands and agreed. Then Trump went back on his word and fussed about family reunification and the diversity visa lottery. CBP doesn't even want a wall in most places. This is the work of a few crybabies on the far right who walked away from a good deal and now want to appease the base. Grow up, snowflakes. You turned down money for the wall. This is your fault.
Here you go. Nobodies stopping you from paying for it.
FAIL. None of your links point to an actual Democrat saying anything of the sort. Just more Republicunts like you claiming Democrats want an open border without actual quotes. Go kill yourself, you're too fucking stupid to live on this planet.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Why aren't the Trump-loving libertarians opposing this on the fact that it will be the US taxpayer paying for the wall when their dear leader promised them the Mexicans would pay for it?
Could it be libertarians are just a bunch of hypocritical cunts?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You are a lying sack of shit.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
You mean that when US citizens buy Mexican goods they would pay a tax? In which case you really do need to understand something: those people who are paying are not from Mexico. They are what is known as "Americans". For clarity: people from the USA.
This is NOT anywhere near "Mexico is paying for the wall". It is "Trump wants a tax on US citizens so the US can pay for a wall".
Hang on. You must be kidding. Trump said 25 times he wanted a shutdown and now you are hanging it on the Democrats?
With logic like that, some aspects of US voter behaviour become closer to some sort of explanation. This will help historians in years to come, for when they look back and try to make sense of the incomprehensible.
I rock climb/cave and have a few hundred dollars of climbing gear and could scale any wall the government built with only a few minutes planning.
I hate fat people.
Regardless of whether you blame Trump or the DNC for the shutdown, what astounds me is that it is permitted to happen at all.
The solution to this would be to enact some legislation that automatically funds major departments at (say) 95% of the previously agreed budget until a new budget is agreed.
Even if that is not acceptable, some employees are expected to work without a paycheck - again legislation should be enacted that 'essential' employees (e.g. emergency services) are automatically funded.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's not. Indonesia's disaster is mostly their own making and there's no one to blame but themselves.
But if we already have the data, then we should try to make that available. It contributes to our political leverage and global economic stability, and our own understanding of tsunamis is improved by gathering data from all across the world.
WHY would you fund something that from the cost/benefit perspective surely must be one of the dumbest ideas any US government has ever had?
Ezekiel 23:20
Because the US is already monitoring worldwide for its own protection purposes. The US is rich, and monitoring is a tiny fraction of its GDP. Indonesia is poor, and cannot afford its own worldwide monitoring system.
Only a complete dick would hold out on passing information to a poor neighbour when it costs them essentially nothing and it could save lives.
Do you even care that a wall won't actually be that effective at preventing most illegal immigration? Most illegal immigrants don't jump the Rio Grande, they come on legal visas and just overstay them. How is a wall going to prevent that?
Aren't you interested in solutions that actually work? I think you like the idea of the Wall more than you actually care about illegal immigrants.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Hey guess what? If it were not for Trump the government would still be fully up (only.a tiny part is really shut down) - at the same time it is ALSO true that if even ten Democrats agreed to fund the wall, the government would be fully up as well.
Fund the wall? The same wall that he promised that the Mexicans would pay for? That wouldn't cost taxpayers anything? What a nice way to keep your campaign promises. But then again, he has never been much for keeping any kinds of promises has he?
Why would any sane human being (Democrats, Republicans or whatever) agree to fund one mans lunatic vanity project? Show me a 20-foot wall and I will show you a 21-foot ladder. That wall is not going to help very much, other than be a huge waste of taxpayer money and pocket lining for opportunist (or worse, corrupt) construction companies.
Speaking of the unstoppable juggernaut of government, aren't you a bit worried about it trying to piss away billions of your dollars on something known not to work? I mean China built a wall far bigger and better than the one Trump wants, and that wasn't very effective...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, cleaning up after the Great Recession caused by Bush should have taken, what, a few bil?
Trump will start giving us over 1 Trillion dollar deficits for the as long as the eye can see because those nice corporations and rich people were being taxed too much. Then the Republicans in Congress, passing the bill while shining their halos, declared that it will pay for itself through increase economic activity. How's that working for ya? Even at over 3% growth, it didn't do that. Now growth back down to 2.5 and likely to go lower. It is almost as though the tax cut never happened, except for those pesky deficits.
An opportunity to employ some cheap migrant labour?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
But that "tiny part that is shut down" should not include emergency notification of global disasters. Imagine if the 2004 megatsunami had occurred during a US shutdown? The Indian Ocian had no Pacific-style warning system of its own.
Hey, you! I told you to build it from *that* side!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Okay... I'm going to play devil's advocate here... but allow me to present what I think may be a twisted logic reasoning that could show how Mexicans are ultimately paying for the wall.
The tariffs will increase costs for Americans, true... but this increased cost could, in general, translate to reduced demand for imports, which in turn would force the nations from which the tariffs are being applied to have to lay off workers that produce those goods, thereby indirectly harming that nation's economy.
That's the best guess I can take at this... and I expect there's problems with it, but I imagine that those problems are probably based on a reality about foreign trade that Trump, for whatever reason, simply doesn't happen to believe in.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Republicans control both houses of Congress (until the 3rd), and there is a Republican President. The two houses did come together and put together a bill to continue funding the government into the new year, when there would be a new Congress to take over. Unfortunately, the President (a Republican, note) said loud and clear that he would not sign it.
Paul Ryan (another Republican) could have sent the bill to the floor anyway for a vote, but decided not to. Note that he easily had the votes to override a Presidential veto (the Democrats were in favor of the bill) but he did not want to challenge the President. This is either easier or harder to understand in light of his impending retirement depending on what you think of his character.
If you think this is the Democrats flexing their muscles, you have an entirely unrealistic view of that party's competence and skill.
This is the Legislative branch ceding too much power to the Executive branch and then refusing to stand up to a populist strong-man.
And "Criminal charges of manslaughter"? Are you serious? You do know that the government shutdown did not cause the tsunami, right?
Technology has changed. Cameras and sensors got cheap. Drones got cheap.
Better analytics mean we know that the value of a wall at controlling the border is less than other alternatives. Texas sent the national guard to police the border at a cost of $120k per illegal immigrant caught. Statistically we know those illegals would have caused less trouble than their native counterparts, so we know we didn't save any money on crime prevention. We could have given every American put out of work a full, 4 year ride to college with money to support their families for the cost of keeping those illegals out.
And while we're on the subject, if you want to keep illegals out there's a much, much better solution: STOP DESTABILIZING THEIR GODDAMNED COUNTRIES FOR CHEAP FRUIT AND OIL.
Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn't shout, but come'on. In Brazil our CIA just executed a plan to kick a progressive chief executive out of her position and put a far right one in it's place. This isn't conspiracy, it's pretty well documented we were involved. You don't think that's going to have consequences? Why did we do it? Oil. She would have spend the oil profits on her country, and we can't have that.
If you want to stop the flow of "migrant caravans" you have to stop screwing with Mexico and South America's economies. Yes, that means the price of oil will go up ever so slightly, and it means you're going to have to vote for left wing candidates who oppose CIA intervention for the sake of American Mega Corps. For some that's maybe too bitter a pill to swallow. But if you actually want your jobs back (or maybe just a "whiter" America, yes, for some people that's the goal and it's naive to pretend it's not) that's how you do it.
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As I read this it seems like all they are missing from USGS is post incident reporting. I'm not saying that is unimportant, but there wasn't going to be any tsunami warning from USGS anyway. This was a non-tectonic landslide in a confined region. It's much like the September wave, I think: small, fast, and local.
They actually HAVE a local warning system for exactly this type of event, but it has been poorly managed and funded.
Great recession was largely caused by Clinton who forced Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to lend to subprime borrowers in the first place.
My math skills say the Republicans currently have majorities in both the House and Senate. Or are you using some new math no one knows about.
There's a piece of Senate math you don't know about.
It takes 60%, not 50%+, to break a filibuster. (Down from 75%, down from "you can't break it until the other side ALL falls asleep at once".)
There are some issues where a filibuster is not allowed. Appropriation bills are explicitly NOT one of them.
The Republicans could exercise the "Nuclear Option" and change the rules. But they don't want to do that, because it would be used against them the next time THEY are in the minority.
Right now they've got 51 senators plus the Vice president's tie-breaker. So if they could get it to a vote it would pass. But they're nowhere near the 60 they'd need to bring it to a vote. They need 9 Democrats.
They picked up a couple in the midterms, but are still nowhere near 60. Meanwhile the Democrats picked up a bunch in the house and will have a majority there. So waiting for next year is a bad idea.
Trump promised, when signing last year's appropriation, to not do that again this year. He's sticking to that, at least so far. So 17% of the government gets a paid vacation until 6 senate Democrats vote for wall funding, the clock run out on this congress (which is being held in session by another of the presidential powers), or Trump flinches.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Part of me would like to see the shutdown last exactly as long as it would take to balance the budget and pay off the national debt. What an interesting experiment THAT would be.... Of course, that can't happen (for pretty obvious reasons).
I really do wish we had a Constitutional Amendment that required a balanced budget or it just cuts all spending across the board, automatically, until it is balanced. Of course, that does nothing for the $21 *TRILLION* debt (which cost us $310 BILLION to service in 2018 alone, $2.6 TRILLION over the last 10 years), but at least it is a start. In the mean time, raise taxes, stop spending (my preference), or some combination of both!