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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (744185)	10/4/2013 7:43:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576611

Well, you do have a point there, when the supreme court becomes an arm of the progressive activists, it does show that this country may have crossed the tipping point You all are just nuts. There are more conservatives on the Court than liberals. You can't accept that you all have become extremists.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (744185)	10/4/2013 8:12:18 PM
From: FJB	1 Recommendation Recommended By joseffy Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1576611

Shutdown Theater of the Absurd Bill Clinton long ago perfected the art of "shutdown theater," also known as the Washington Monument Strategy, in which a government shutdown is designed to hit the tourists first—for example, by shutting down the Washington Monument—in order to maximize its visible impact and stampede the public into demanding that House Republicans surrender. This time, history is repeating itself as farce, with the Obama administration ordering the "shutdown" of public facilities where there is nothing to shut down. Shutdown theater has become shutdown theater of the absurd. Consider the obstruction of the unstaffed, open-air WWII Memorial—a "shutdown" that required federal workers to erect barricades around the monuments where none had been before. After the barricades were overrun by WWII veterans, they were then wired shut. "On Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II memorial in Washington, DC. One NPS employee was operating a forklift. There usually aren't any NPS employees working at the World War II memorial.... "The barriers are still at the memorial, and they've been reinforced. This morning, I walked by the memorial and noticed that wires had been used to tie the fences together." Get that? Because federal workers cannot work, federal workers are at work, strengthening barricades to a site that requires no workers to remain open. Similarly, the administration has been ordering the shutdown of public parks that receive no federal funds and could have remained open. The employees of one such park are staying on the job as an act of civil disobedience. The administration has also refused to let the state government of Arizona pay to keep Grand Canyon open. Now there's a statement of the warped metaphysics of shutdown theater: the conceit that even the existence of nature is dependent on federal funding. Without it, the Grand Canyon will close up. But this shutdown theater is all just a colorful distraction from the real issue: the fact that the overwhelming majority of government is not shut down by the shutdown. Paul Roderick Gregory runs the numbers. "Eighty cents out of every federal non-defense dollar represents a transfer from taxpayer to recipient. Entitlement transfers do not require annual Congressional approval. They can be changed only by entitlement reform, which is not on the table. We cannot, therefore 'shut down' a federal government whose primary business is income redistribution. "The entitlement checks and interest payments must go out the door, government shutdown or no government shutdown. The Social Security, unemployment compensation, disability, Medicare, and Medicaid checks go out automatically like the Ever Ready Energizer Bunny." By his calculation, at most 13% of government spending is affected by the "shutdown." Here's the conclusion he draws. "The government shutdown makes clear that our federal government is no longer in the business of providing for the national defense, the legal system, collecting taxes, and other traditional government functions. Its primary activity has become redistribution through transfer payments." But let's look at this from another perspective. Welfare-state spending keeps going because it is permanently authorized and requires no special congressional approval. That means that most government spending is outside the normal process of congressional budgeting and appropriations. The money comes in and goes out automatically, with no need for any ongoing authorization and review by Congress. This sheds light on the specific issue behind the current shutdown. House Republicans refused to pass a funding bill unless it included a delay in the implementation of ObamaCare. That explains why Democrats are willing to let government get shut down. If they refuse the Republican bill, funding for ObamaCare goes ahead anyway, because it's part of the permanent welfare state that keeps going on autopilot. So looked at from the perspective of the budget process, the issue is this: House Republicans are trying to bring ObamaCare back within the realm of congressional appropriations—and Democrats are trying to keep it outside of the sphere of congressional appropriations, along with the rest of the welfare state and the overwhelming majority of federal spending. When the framers of the Constitution required that revenue bills originate in the House, they intended to keep taxes and spending under control by making them dependent on annual approval by the branch of government that was most dependent on popular support. What we are seeing right now is that the vast mechanism of the welfare state has been constructed outside of this process. To be sure, Congress could vote to reform or dismantle any particular welfare state program, but that's a much higher bar to clear than the rest of the budget, which requires the regular, affirmative approval of Congress. So altering welfare state programs or reducing their spending is much more difficult. What this implies is that the size and scope of government is now largely on autopilot and is not actually affected by regular congressional votes. So all of the current conflict over whether Congress will pass a budget or a funding resolution masks the fact that Congress and its budget have been made largely irrelevant to the question of the size and power of government. That is the real absurdity behind the shutdown theater of the absurd.