Going over the Cliff

[ordnance11]

Rajvik wrote:

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You ask for citation, provided:

reference: San Jose Mercury News-http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world ... =inthenews

And this, expanded to the entirety of the nation, is why the Republicans, or at least the conservatives are willing to go to the mat to either delay or defund the ACA (Obamacare)

570k of 1.9milion, thats a little less than a quarter who are going to be subsidized by the rest of the state, and thats just those who actually buy insurance themselves now. What is it going to look like when the individual Mandate kicks in and you HAVE to buy the insurance. In all honestly they wont, they'll pay the fine and get the covered medical care and screw the systeme worse than it is now.

The same reason you buy car insurance. The cost of not doing so is not worth he risk. I also noted that there were 10 mandated benefits and the Bay area has no competition. It would had been $100.00  cheaper if they lived in Los Angeles. And if you're a 64 year old, you would had been paying 5 times as much as a 21 year old. Next year, it's 3 times as much. It's a win for the elderly. At least you're not going to be bankrupted by medical bills.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Black Aeronaut]

The government is bloated, I will grant that, but I don't think that it is a matter of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. (I will also stipulate that this is indeed an issue, but it is far from THE ISSUE at this time.)

The issue at hand is that you have two hands trying to wrestle each other into submission and it needs to stop, post haste.

Oh, fun fact about the American Auto Industry vs. the Japanese: our labor is actually cheaper than theirs. That's why Toyota Japan has been importing more and more of their vehicles from Toyota America. Don't believe me, go look it up. (As for why, donno for sure. Might have something to do with the fact that real estate and food come at a premium in Japan due to certain geographical and cultural quirks.)

Pester me not about labor unions, especially automotive. If they want living wages, two weeks paid vacation, full health coverage, retirement package, plus college tuition, then by god let's get it for them. The auto industry makes plenty of money anyhow by making disposable cars. I know, because I've seen (and even driven) a few vehicles that were declared as 'totaled' by auto insurance companies while I worked at an auto insurance auction yard. You'd be surprised how nice some of these 'totaled' cars are for just having the front or rear end mashed up a bit. Car dealers buy them, fix them up and sell 'em. It's like flipping houses for these people and they're raking it in hand-over-fist.

PS: Not particularly upset about this, just putting the info out there.

Other labor unions... Well, it's hit or miss really... but I'm pretty sure that your basic workmanship stuff is not something we should be head-hunting. I'm talking about your welders, steel fitters, pipe fitters, sandhogs and the like. These are people that spend years apprenticing (while making a lean living wage I might add) before they are certified as being competent to work on their own, and then even longer before they're allowed to supervise the work of others. I was on a jobsite in a cement plant in the middle of a shut-down recently, and there was quite a bit of this going on - lots of my fellow temps talking to the foremen and asking about apprenticeships. (Just being out there on the jobsite was quite an experience, let me tell you - nothing like working at the biggest cement plant in Texas to give you a new perspective.)

Are there crooked unions? Yes. But don't throw the baby out with the bath. It's pretty damn easy to tell when a particular union is crooked, and one of the first sign is ineffective workforce.

As for the ACA... I'll say it again - amend the damn thing and quit trying to kill it.

By the way, why does the GOP think it's such a great idea to levy a tax on medical devices? Many of them (not implants/prosthetics) aren't even purchased - they're rented! And if they intend to tax implanted devices and prosthetics? Uhm... can you say 'Medical Tourism'? It's already a real thing happening, and it's gonna get worse if the GOP/Tea Party don't reign themselves in.

[khagler]

I was amused to learn that this latest exercise in petty vindictiveness has spawned a new word: barrycade.

[Logan Darklighter]

More Shutdown theater vindictiveness.

They’re not going to pay any price. We all know it. Issa will haul the director and his deputies before the Oversight Committee and they’ll mouth the requisite perfunctory regret and warnings not to judge the whole department by the behavior of a few “overzealous” rangers. Maybe someone will receive a few weeks or months of “administrative leave,” i.e. paid vacation, a la Lois Lerner, but then he’ll be quietly reinstated when no one’s paying attention anymore. News outlets and bloggers will get a few days of content out of it when the hearings are being held and then that’ll be that. Nothing will change. No lessons will be learned. No scalps will be taken. That’s how it goes now. If anything, the White House will be more reluctant to fire someone over this than they were over the IRS scandal because ranger-enforced shutdown theater helps them spread the liberal message that closing the government is an unconscionable hardship.
No one’s going to pay for this. Even if it involves a ranger with a gun warning your grandma to get back in her hotel and away from the scenery.

The bus stopped along a road when a large herd of bison passed nearby, and seniors filed out to take photos. Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn’t “recreate.” The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren’t “recreating,” just taking photos.
“She responded and said, ‘Sir, you are recreating,’ and her tone became very aggressive,” Vaillancourt said.
The seniors quickly filed back onboard and the bus went to the Old Faithful Inn, the park’s premier lodge located adjacent to the park’s most famous site, Old Faithful geyser. That was as close as they could get to the famous site — barricades were erected around Old Faithful, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel, where armed rangers stayed at the door.
“They looked like Hulk Hogans, armed. They told us you can’t go outside,” she said. “Some of the Asians who were on the tour said, ‘Oh my God, are we under arrest?’ They felt like they were criminals.”

Supposedly, on their way out of the park, the tour guide wanted to pull over at a dude ranch inside the perimeter so that the seniors onboard could use the restrooms there — but couldn’t, because the park rangers told the dude ranch that its license would be revoked if they permitted it. So unbelievable is all this, even by the standards of NPS behavior over the past week, that I doubted whether it was true. But there’s corroborating evidence for at least some of it: The tour guide was interviewed by a different newspaper a few days ago and accused the Park Service of — wait for it — “Gestapo tactics.”

Hodgson said in a phone interview Monday that a ranger pulled up behind the bus and told him he would have to get everyone back on the bus — recreation in Yellowstone was not allowed.
“She told me you need to return to your hotel and stay there,” Hodgson said. “This is just Gestapo tactics. We paid a lot to get in. All these people wanted to do was take some pictures.”
Hodgson said the ranger told him he could be convicted of trespassing if he disobeyed.
“The national parks belong to the people,” he said. “This isn’t right.”

He didn’t mention armed rangers outside the hotel, but he was told that “his group would not be allowed to walk on any of the boardwalks located just outside their hotel, or visit any other geyser basins in the area.” All they could do, per Hodgson, was eat dinner in the dining room, which squares with the claim that rangers wouldn’t let guests inside leave until they were ready to leave the park altogether. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can,” said an anonymous ranger to Wesley Pruden last week. Mission accomplished.
The only redress here, I think, is for tourists to sue. They’d probably lose, but it’ll be useful to know as a matter of law that national parks belong to the National Park Service and not to the public. I’m curious as can be to see a judge explain how trespassing laws don’t apply to park visitors who are engaged in “First Amendment activities” but do apply to tourist photography, which, as a somewhat artistic endeavor, would seem to fall pretty squarely within the First Amendment. At the very least, the bad press from the suit would do some much-deserved damage to the agency’s reputation. Which, it seems, they’re increasingly worried about.

More trifling bullshit.

Driving down the George Washington Parkway outside Washington, D.C. today, I noticed that the two scenic overlooks that offer drivers the chance to admire the beauty of the Potomac River below are closed for the government shutdown. These overlooks are just cut-outs from the highway, providing a few parking spaces. That’s it. No little National Park Service kiosk. Nothing. It’s just a parking area that holds maybe 6 cars at a time.

To close them required someone to come and put up barricades, thus costing taxpayers money.

Is there anyone in the Obama administration with common sense?

Hoo boy. THAT’S certainly a question that nobody needs to bother themselves about answering.

Do they not see how petty and over-reaching this makes them look?

They don’t care; they intend to WIN, by hook or by crook, using any means fair, foul, annoying, or downright embarrassing. We, their lowly subjects, have displeased them, and they intend to make us suffer for it, to whatever niggling extent they possibly can. They’re shitweasels of the lowest imaginable order, contemptible to any intelligent, self-respecting person.

This is the real face of government; this is who they are, and what they are. To allow people like this control over - for that matter, any say in whatsoever, or even knowledge of - our individual health-care decisions would be the gravest mistake a supposedly free people could possibly make.

Your Democrat Socialist party, your pResident, your government.

One would not be altogether surprised to find the feds stringing yellow police tape along the Rio Grande, the 49th parallel, and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, if only to keep Americans in rather than anybody else out. Still, I would like to have been privy to the high-level discussions at which the government took the decision to install its Barrycades on open parkland. For anyone with a modicum of self-respect, it’s difficult to imagine how even the twerpiest of twerp bureaucrats would consent to stand at a crowd barrier and tell a group of elderly soldiers who’ve flown in from across the country that they’re forbidden to walk across a piece of grass and pay their respects. Yet, if any National Parks Service employee retained enough sense of his own humanity to balk at these instructions or other spiteful, petty closures of semi-wilderness fishing holes and the like, we’ve yet to hear about it.
The World War II Memorial exists thanks to some $200 million in private donations — plus $15 million or so from Washington: In other words, the feds paid for the grass. But the thug usurpers of the bureaucracy want to send a message: In today’s America, everything is the gift of the government, and exists only at the government’s pleasure, whether it’s your health insurance, your religious liberty, or the monument to your fallen comrades. The Barrycades are such a perfect embodiment of what James Piereson calls “punitive liberalism” they should be tied round Obama’s neck forever, in the way that “ketchup is a vegetable” got hung around Reagan-era Republicans. Alas, the court eunuchs of the Obama media cannot rouse themselves even on behalf of the nation’s elderly warriors.
Meanwhile, Republicans offered a bill to prevent the shutdown affecting experimental cancer trials for children. The Democrats rejected it. “But if you can help one child who has cancer,” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Harry Reid, “why wouldn’t you do it?”
“Why would we want to do that?” replied the Senate majority leader, denouncing Miss Bash’s question as “irresponsible.”

A slimy, crooked, lying little toe-rag like Reid has a lot of nerve saying that about anybody. But then, he has a lot of nerve even showing his face in public without a bag over his head or some kind of mask.

And yes - they really do think they own everything - 

The Monstrous hubris, in the service of pure spite, is breathtaking: 

Just before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was “closed” due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown.

The Park Service will also have rangers on duty to police the ban…of access to an ocean. The government will probably use more personnel and spend more resources to attempt to close the ocean, than it would in its normal course of business.

This is governing by temper-tantrum.

Still think these are reasonable people that can be bargained or negotiated with in good faith?

You ARE dependent on government for any and everything, by God, and if you dare to doubt it, they intend to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.

Think it can't get worse? These people have yet to begun to dig down to the depths of hell. Here's yet another Obama-Reid Shutdown story:

Joyce Spencer is 77-years-old and her husband Ralph is 80. They’ve been spending most of their time in the family ice cream store since going home isn’t an option.
The Spencers never expected to be forced out of their Lake Mead home, which they’ve owned since the 70s, but on Thursday, a park ranger said they had 24 hours to get out.
“I had to go to town today and buy Ralph undershirts and jeans because I forgot his pants,” Joyce Spencer told Action News.
The Stewart’s Point home sits on federal land, so even though the Spencers own their cabin outright, they’re not allowed in until the government reopens.
Park officials said property owners can visit only to retrieve belongings; they sent Action News a statement which reads in part, “Unfortunately overnight stays are not permitted until a budget is passed and the park can reopen.”

Yeah, and also “unfortunately,” soulless vampires like those at the Park Service who are perfectly willing to obey blatantly immoral orders from their masters on high are what most of this monstrous, abominable government is comprised of. Plenty more at Twitchy, including this gem:

If senior citizens in private homes on fed lands are thrown out of homes, then people in taxpayer owned homes should leave too.

Absolutely–like, for starters, Il Douche himself, whose bleeding heart has become an Iron Fist. 

[/url]

[url=http://ricochet.com/main-feed/When-The-Bleeding-Heart-Becomes-The-Iron-Fist]Welcome to liberal utopia, where barriers are not erected against terrorists or illegal aliens on our nation’s borders, but rather against citizens, and where wheelchair-bound veterans enroute to honor their comrades face tighter security than terrorists enroute to murder a US Ambassador. This is where up is down, wrong is right, illegality is celebrated as progress, and where Constitutionalism is derided as racist. No longer relegated to the fever swamps of academic fancy, utopia has acquired real estate and made known its demands.

“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…” the First Lady warned us, and she wasn’t just whistling Alinsky either. Under King Barack’s Reign of Error, your life is no longer your own, for you are now commanded to enter into private contracts by virtue of your simple existence on the planet. Why? Because our Sovereign and his fellow travelers are compassionate, of course. Their hearts bleed for you,…almost as much as your pocketbook will bleed for them.

Please note that when the people’s representatives actually represent their constituents, the majority of whom want nothing to do with the  wretched and wretchedly mis-named Affordable Care Act, it is the people who must be punished. Can you believe that men who conquered Nazi Germany’s barricades on the beach at Normandy 69 years ago actually faced barricades from their own damned government? Can you believe that Vietnam vets, many of whom were rebuked for their service,were removed from their memorial by the police? Do the men and women who are ordered to move against law abiding veterans have no soul?

The problem really is that it stopped being “their own damned government” a long time ago. 

As one member on Ricochet commented, this is no longer about Ted Cruz. It’s no longer about the animadversions of establishment Republicans who have only to see their political shadow before becoming alarmed and settling in for six more months of concessions to the statist. This is about an arrangement the President and his party mean to consummate with the American people; an illusory promise to take care of us in exchange for our abject obedience and subservience. But as the examples cited above show, it is only the subservience that is achieved.
From barricading memorials to the closing of a private inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway, from threatening Catholic military chaplains with arrest should they celebrate mass on Sunday to taking care of back pay for federal workers at the expense of everyone else, the bleeding heart has become, as it inevitably will, an iron fist.

Indeed it has. Glenn beautifully sums up the wonderful “achievements” possible under King Barry's regime in his usual pithy, straight-to-the-heart-of-it way:

There are two Americas, all right. There’s one that works — where new and creative things happen, where mistakes are corrected, and where excellence is rewarded. Then there’s Washington, where everything is pretty much the opposite. That has been particularly evident over the past week or so. One America can launch rockets. The other America can’t even launch a website.

But take heart, people; as always, the "useful idiots" leading the charge to tyranny are once again the first to be put up against the wall:

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”
Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level — the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn’t realize they would rise so much.
“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”

Pardon me for a moment while I tune up the World's Smallest Violin... A couple of caring-sharing morons find out firsthand how much it costs if it’s “free”– now how perfectly delicious is that? Stupidity should be painful, and in the case of homegrown halfwits like this bint, it’s entirely possible they may Darwinize themselves right out of existence before we ever have to get to more extreme measures to get them out of our affairs. Ace:

Oh My God. Yes, you thought yourself very virtuous, self-righteously declaring “Everyone should have health insurance!”

But you never expected to have to sacrifice anything except for mouthing that ego-pleasing slogan.

And you always put yourself morally above those who you thought would have to pay for all this — even though those people were the only ones who would be doing any sacrificing at all, in your mind.

And now you find out that You have to pay for your folly — and suddenly you’re not quite so self-righteous, are you?

The schadenfreude is rather small recompense given everything else going on. But I'll take my jollies where I can.  

[Dartz]

As a way of demonstrating to people how much they take the Government and its presence for granted, you can't argue with it.... OTOH, I'd also wonder if there isn't another motive. One that involves liability lawsuits. Nothing causes more idiocy than the mere whisper of a potential of a lawsuit in the event that someone has the potential to have an accident. Especially if the plaintiff's solicitor can make a case that their harm was compounded by a dangerously low level of staffing caused by deliberate budget cuts.

And in the example you offer of sticker-shock? I think the more pertinent issue is the fact that there's little to no competition in their market anyway. It's the same thing that happened here with car insurance. Two or three major companies providing it means premiums that at times can exceed the cost of the fine for not having insurance. It's a sign of a lack of competition more than anything - something which the article touches on.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Rod.H]

Imagine if the outcry if they decided to copy Australia's implementation, and have a public healthcare funding levy applied to tax's. Yep, from memory the levy increases if you've had to use x amount, but it also gets smaller or goes away if you've got some form of private health insurance. Then again there's sections of the American government (fueled by lobbiest money) that are trying to get us to eliminate our government supported public healthcare system and flat-fee subsidised prescription medication.

[robkelk]

More Shutdown theater vindictiveness.

I think you misspelled "financial prudence" there.

Imagine the outcry if somebody was hurt in a park that doesn't have any employees in it, delaying the injured person's extraction from the park, and thus driving the park's insurance rates through the roof. What would the fiscally-conservative say then?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rajvik]

Thats why you put up the sign "enter at own risk" at which point there can be no lawsuit and its all on the person who was hurts insurance or self

Logan, thank you for posting all thesem many of them are what the radio talk show i listen to have quoted over the last week that i've been wanting to find but either havent had the time or gumption
 

[khagler]

robkelk wrote:

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Logan Darklighter wrote:

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More Shutdown theater vindictiveness.

I think you misspelled "financial prudence" there.

Imagine the outcry if somebody was hurt in a park that doesn't have any employees in it, delaying the injured person's extraction from the park, and thus driving the park's insurance rates through the roof. What would the fiscally-conservative say then?

Most of the employees in National Parks are actually working for private companies that pay the government lots of money to operate the hotels, visitors centers, markets, etc. If the government were really shut down, there wouldn't be anyone to keep those companies from carrying on as usual and nobody would notice the difference. Which is the whole point of the barrycades, of course.

[ECSNorway]

Tell me, Rob, "financial prudence" in spending tens of thousands to keep people out of a stretch of open ocean? To put up barricades along public highways to "close" an empty field of dirt? To evict people from their LEGALLY OWNED HOME simply because it happens to be within the park?

I'm sorry, but there is no "financial prudence" here, this is pure and simple vindictiveness, spite, and malice.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[robkelk]

They're going to be paid anyway.

The whole point to a disruption is that people's lives are disrupted by it, to the point where they demand something be done to end the disruption.

In this particular case, it's long past time for one side to admit universal health care isn't going away, the other side to admit their implementation of universal health care is flawed, and both sides to compromise and come up with a solution. Your politicians' antics are pulling financial confidence down around the world, and that has an effect on my country... Please stop.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ECSNorway]

We'll be glad to stop as soon as the steaming pile of donkey feces that is Obamacare is no longer law.
Obama, as far as I can tell, has no interest in stopping, nor in compromise.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Logan Darklighter]

robkelk wrote:

---

They're going to be paid anyway.

The whole point to a disruption is that people's lives are disrupted by it, to the point where they demand something be done to end the disruption.

In this particular case, it's long past time for one side to admit universal health care isn't going away, the other side to admit their implementation of universal health care is flawed, and both sides to compromise and come up with a solution. Your politicians' antics are pulling financial confidence down around the world, and that has an effect on my country... Please stop.

So you approve of the tactics of closing down open-air monuments that were mostly privately funded in the first place. Of closing down and keeping out veterans from graveyards memorializing their bravery and throwing old people out of their homes? Of trying to restrict people from even parking on the side of a road to take pictures of a landmark at a distance? 

Anything and everything is reasonable as long as it hurts the right people, right? 

In this particular case, it's long past time for people with no skin in the game to stop thinking they know anything at all about my countries politics and trying to tell me and my side to surrender meekly to the jack-booted thugs currently running things here. 

[Bob Schroeck]

Logan, you're frothing and on approach to personal attacks. Dial the intensity back a bit.

Interestingly enough, CNN.com's headline as of the moment I write this is an article listing these incidents. These exact same incidents. Are there no others? Surely if this were a pattern of deliberate action to propagandize the degree of the shutdown, there should be more than just these; the stories should be coming in from all over. But it seems like there are only these few incidents, which mostly appear to be the kind of thing you can attribute to the usual kind of Frank Burns-style overzealous bozo you can find in just about any job.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ordnance11]

What I find interesting is the type of agencies the GOP is willing to restore:
Restore funding to FEMA. Note that no funding is given to the Small Business Administration or the U.S. Geological Service. For FEMA to work efficiently, you need the U.S. Geological Service to gauge the scope of a floor or an earthquake and the SBA to start loans for business to rebuild.
Restore funding to Head Start.  VA benefits. The most visible parts of the government.
And that would only count 84 percent of the government. So I guess you can call it both a plan to restore funding and leave the government unfunded.  So the separate funding gambit is both to take the heat off the GOP, since it takes the most visible portions of government out of the public spotlight. They should had thought of that much much earlier.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... nt/280408/
Now what really worries me is that some of the GOP are convinced that defaulting on the the national debt :
Senator wants managed catastrophe
Who is feeding him this drivel? Has he talked to a competent economist?  He had better have a stimulus bill somewhere in his back pocket, if he's talking like this. A much bigger one than what was enacted previously, if you don't want another full-blown recession.
Somebody posted a timeline of the GOP responses to Obamacare, which as pretty amusing to me:

Oct 2008: "You'll never get elected and pass healthcare."
Nov 2008: "We'll never let you pass healthcare."
Jan 2009: "We are going to shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare."
July 2009: "We will fight to the death every attempt you make to pass healthcare."
Dec 2009: "We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare."
March 2010: "We can't believe you just passed healthcare."
April 2010: "We are going to overturn healthcare."
Sept 2010: "We are going to repeal healthcare."
Jan 2011: "We are going to destroy healthcare."
Feb 2012: "We are going to elect a candidate who will immediately revoke healthcare."
June 2012: "We will go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare."
Aug 2012: "The American people will never re-elect you, because they don't want healthcare."
Oct 2012: "We can't wait to win the election and explode healthcare."
Nov 2012: "We can't believe you just got re-elected and that we can't repeal healthcare."
Feb 2013: "We're still going to vote to obliterate healthcare."
June 2013: "We can't believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare."
July 2013: "We're going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare."
Sept
2013: "We are going to leverage a government shutdown into defunding,
destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing
and ripping apart healthcare."
Oct 2013: "WHY AREN'T YOU NEGOTIATING???

__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[robkelk]

We'll be glad to stop as soon as the steaming pile of donkey feces that is Obamacare is no longer law.

Obama, as far as I can tell, has no interest in stopping, nor in compromise.

I've been told that the Dems have compromised - they've passed a budget bill that has everything the GOP asked for with the sole exception of repealing the ACA. "Compromise" and "capitulate" are completely different concepts.

(And I'm told the ACA was originally a GOP bill in the first place.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

... In this particular case, it's long past time for people with no skin in the game ...

Thanks to the globalization of finance and business, there are no such people on Earth.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

I'm worried about the mess going global just like it did the last time - just when we're starting to get over the last bloody time.

Edit: -- A day's worth of frustration at something else.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Logan Darklighter]

Saw what you posted before you edited it, Dartz. But I'm not offended. Shit, man. I forgot - you're actually here in the states trying to tour DC aren't you? 
Sorry for all of this. Man, talk about bad timing. And outside all the outrage, this is indeed damn embarrassing on an International level. As mentioned above, you're not the only one by far to be getting a vacation ruined. 

But just so you know who to blame - look straight up the mall at the White House. President Pissypants is the one laying down the direct orders to ruin your day. Those normally friendly Park Rangers looking rather uncomfortable at the barrycades at the monuments? Their marching orders came directly from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). And that office reports to and answers directly to the Office of the President. Throw the bastard a one-finger salute through the fence while you're there. You'll hardly be alone. 

Look on the bright side. You're actually present during a moment in history. One of the darker moments, sure. But at least you can later say - "No shite, there I was!"

[ECSNorway]

robkelk wrote:

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(And I'm told the ACA was originally a GOP bill in the first place.)

And as you have thus demonstrated that you have no clue what you are talking about, I will refrain from replying to the rest of your remarks..
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[robkelk]

robkelk wroteAnd I'm told the ACA was originally a GOP bill in the first place.)

And as you have thus demonstrated that you have no clue what you are talking about, I will refrain from replying to the rest of your remarks..

Please confine your comments to the topic, not the participants.

It's the rest of my remarks that are the meat of that post, and are the important point that needed to be made. Are you sure you don't want to reply to them?

As for the bit you did comment on, are you saying the Heritage Foundation's website is incorrect?
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... for-reform
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ordnance11]

If the result of a default is a Bear Sterns situation, then yes there is a good likelihood of a global recession.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Dartz]

Three weeks time, actually, with a little luck. Enough time that it might actually be over then (And I meant that as something of a joke - catastrophic world ending DOOM fallowed by something as insignificant as a single person's holiday. In the end, there was a real risk of somebody taking it seriously).

Either way, nobody is covering themselves in glory.

Anyway. A more polite version of what I posted - because I was busy retyping it when you posted.

Whether the ACA is a crock or not.... clearly enough people want it to happen to elect someone to high office running on a platform of making it happen. Maybe in a few years you can act smug and say 'I told you so' as the whole thing falls apart, maybe not. Sometimes you've got to let the people risk fucking up - that's democracy. Whatever happens, regardless of the merits of proposed balanced budgets and the like, acceding to any demands at this stage would set a dangerous precedent and validate the gun-to-the-economy tactics that ultimately endanger the economy as a whole going forward. It's the tactics that're appalling to me, as opposed to the message - I do get it on a level.

Especially when you consider that, right now, the US makes a net profit on each bond it issues. With inflation accounted for, the bondholder gets back less value than what they put in. The reason this happens is because -thus far - America has always paid. If that changes, then the national debt will become a problem.... right now, it's an easy-money racket.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Logan Darklighter]

As for the US going into default, there is zero chance of that. 
A post at Powerline blog explains in detail why this is so. And actually has the math to back it up. 

But there is no threat of default. Constitutionally, the federal government must pay its debts. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

I believe this provision is universally understood to mean that the federal government must pay its debt obligations, both principal and interest, even if that means prioritizing debt service over other government spending. So the question is, if Congress does not raise the current debt ceiling, will the federal government run out of money needed to pay its existing debts? The answer is clearly No. A reader supplies the math:

On average the federal government’s daily expenditures are about $16.7 billion; receipts are about $14 billion, implying an average daily borrowing requirement of about $2.7 billion. So the planned flow of revenues is now about $650 billion less than the planned flow of expenses…about $2.7 billion a [business] day, $650 billion annually.
So the “default” scenarios are bogus. Interest on the $16 trillion in debt is covered by a factor of about 10x by revenues! That puts the federal government deep into AAA land. Revenues would have to fall by a staggering 90% to jeopardize interest payments.

And, of course, retiring principal by “rolling over” maturing debt can never require an increase in the debt ceiling, since there is no net increase in the nation’s debt, even if the money used to repay the original principal is borrowed.
So what will actually happen if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling by approximately October 17? The government’s debt obligations will be paid, but reductions in other spending will start to become necessary. In effect, leaving the debt ceiling as is would function as a spending cut. This is why the Democrats hate the idea so much. They know there is zero chance of default, but they are horrified at the prospect that voters and taxpayers may find out that there is a relatively simple way to bring about spending reductions that would create, in effect, a balanced budget. Hence the hysteria.

Read the whole thing. It's worth it. Powerline is a right-wing blog, yes. But the guy who runs it is a lawyer and a really serious guy not prone to (or putting up with) conspiracy theories. 

[ordnance11]

But is he an economist? So far, I haven't heard of any economist telling us that a default won't have serious consequences. Besides, the treasury department stated that they hit the debt limit last May. October 17 is when extraordinary measures are no longer going to be enough.
After October 17, all bets are off
If the U.S. gets lucky, we get treated like Argentina. Which means we are no longer the world's reserve currency. Worse case scenario  is a 2009 financial meltdown scenario. You can see it already in the volatility of the Dow. It has been trending downward since last week. The closer it gets to the October 17 limit, the  odds are the trend will intensify.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell