Monday, September 30, 2013

Let the Government Shut Down

Let the damn federal government shut down, I say. It's happened many times before and we're all still alive. Besides, if the federal government can't make it on the $2.2 trillion a year it takes in without borrowing out the wazoo, screw 'em. 

Barack the Terrible and his merry band of leftists have been busy trying to scare the crap out of everyone about the horrors that will befall all of us if the government shuts down. Barry bitterly complains about partisanship on the one hand while he claims Republicans want to "burn down the economy" by allowing the government to shut down. Other of the Democrat partisan political hacks have said worse. That stupid old bastard Harry Reid calls the Republicans "anarchists". Barbara Mikulski, the senate troll from Maryland blames the government shutdown that has not yet occurred on "the teabaggers" -- a vulgar and childish term I thought the leftists had gotten past. At any rate, Barbara the troll probably has the balls and the motivation to use them in the vulgar way intended by the term. If anyone on the Republican side had engaged in the types of partisan attacks Barry's buddies actually engage in, we wouldn't hear the end of it. But Barry's buddies are the worst partisans of all and that goes virtually unreported in the media.



The media also don't report that the president who calls Republicans and Tea Party types who are in favor of fiscal sanity "extremists" was mentored by a Communist, launched his political career in the home of a domestic terrorist and spent 20 years in a church where the preacher preached leftist hate speech like "God damn America". The complicit media give Barack the Terrible cover to accuse Republicans of making partisan attacks and wanting to shut down the government. In reality, the only people who actually want to shut down the government are Barack the Terrible and his cabal of leftist thugs. They talk about it all the time. Barry falls all over himself to kiss the ass of the Ayatollah's puppet but flatly refuses to negotiate with House Republicans who, constitutionally, hold the power of the purse, on the plan they have put forward to fund the government and save us all from Obamacare or at least postpone it.  .

Remember the last time the government shut down? Wait a minute, you don't? I'll give you a hint. It was December 1995. Yes, 1995 was in the age of the Internet so you can actually link to news articles from the period.

What happened on December 16, 1995? Well, this is what happened on Dec. 16, 1995. You'll probably remember this if you are 40 or older:

First of all, the world didn't end, the sun came up in the morning every day right on schedule. The economy didn't plunge into of never-ending death spiral. Ordinary average Americans got up in the morning; they made coffee, they had breakfast, they went off to work, they went to the store, they bought gas, they went home, they went to their kids' sporting events or dance recitals, they went Christmas shopping (this is way back when it was okay to call it Christmas) -- in short, they were utterly unaffected by the three-week government shutdown.

As you will find out if you click the link above, there were Americans who were affected by the government shutdown -- Americans who were unfortunate enough to work for what was even back then the bloated federal government. For most Americans, the government shutdown was either a non-event or the best thing that ever happened to them. Unless you were a government employee or trying to get into a national park, you would never have known the government was shut down. And all the government employees got back pay after the shutdown. Getting a huge check after the three-week layoff beats the hell out of being out of work permanently in the Obama economy never to get a check for years and quit the job market out of sheer discouragement.

What did the Republicans get out of the last government shutdown? They got welfare reform that cut the welfare roles drastically, by limiting the amount of time one could remain on welfare. Millions of Americans who weren't otherwise inclined decided that working was better than starving and went out and found jobs and everyone benefited: The taxpayer by not having to pay to support millions of deadbeats and the deadbeats themselves from finding out that work actually pays and it feels good to be pulling your own weight.  After seventeen years, Barack the Terrible killed this reform with an executive order and the number of welfare recipients has been soaring ever since.

This time, Republicans are presented with the same type of bargain. The majority of Americans instinctively know Obamacare is a lousy law: Many of them have first-hand experience with drastic premium increases due to Obamacare mandates or loss of coverage altogether due to their employer's inability to cover sharply rising premium costs. Many young people are finding out what the scam is: That this whole scheme is to be funded by their payment of huge premiums on policies they will barely use so that this ponzi scheme can redistribute their money to old folks and people with pre-existing conditions. Every other day we find out that another portion of this massive resdistributionist scam is being delayed because the logistics aren't working out. Groups that formerly backed the plan (even boasted about "helping to write it") are finding out that it will tax their their health plans out of existence. Now is the perfect time for Republicans to stand fast against this scam. People oppose it by a huge margin, 90% of people will be utterly unaffected by the shutdown and we have an opportunity to save the country from the scourge of Obamacare for decades to come.

Let the federal government go into partial government shut down: Republicans and the rest of us have a hell of a lot more to gain than we have to lose.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Um, so I assume you realize that you complained about others using "childish terms" in the exact same paragraph that you yourself are using childish terms. Barak the Terrible? Describing senators you don't like as being stupid and tolls? Please. That's how 1st graders talk on the playground.

Look, I'm no fan of Obamacare. It is a terribly written piece of legislation. But it isn't the end of freedom. It isn't tyranny. It isn't a scam. It hasn't even led to drastic premium increases, as you claimed, nor is really opposed by "huge margins" once you really look at the objective polling.

The major issue with the government is the one you yourself started pointing out:

"if the federal government can't make it on the $2.2 trillion a year it takes in without borrowing out the wazoo, screw 'em. "

EXACTLY! And the last spending bill proposed by the Republicans in the House, do you know how much of that $2.2 trillion they cut?

$0.

Not a penny. Republicans are taking this stand that you laud as being so noble while leaving every penny of wasteful spend in place. Being happy about that is hardly a "rational conservative opinion."

Conservasteve said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Conservasteve said...

Um, I'm just a guy with a snarky, snide sarcastic opinion, Karen, I'm not the president of the United States, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate or even a U.S. senator from Maryland. I'm simply giving my opinion on three people who have proven themselves to be undeserving of any respect whatsoever. These three supposedly respectable representatives of two of the four branches of the federal government regularly voice their contempt for me and approx. 50% of the electorate. They deserve nothing less in return. If you don't like my snarky, snide, sarcastic opinion, you are free not to read it.

Secondly, at least my descriptors bear some resemblance to the truth. Barack IS terrible: Everything he's touched in the last five years has turned to crap. And isn't Harry Reid the perfect embodiment of an old bastard? He's barely coherent, but as long as they can prop him up at the podium, spittle dripping down his chin, and execute everything Barry (this is what he used to call himself before he turned into a pompous-ass leftist windbag) wants, the leftists think it's all good. No disrespect to any old person except the old bastard Harry Reid is intended.

As far as Mikulski goes, what else can you call her but a troll? She's a squat, fat, insufferable old woman that brands every member of political movement she doesn't approve of a vulgar sex term. Troll doesn't just literally fit her to a T, it figuratively fits her to a T as well. What else can you call a spiteful little troll but a troll?

Conservasteve said...

Finally, you claim that you're "no fan of Obamacare" but you apparently aren't paying attention to the way it is raising costs for all of us. And you must have your head in the sand if you haven't seen the multiple testimonials and news articles about how people all over the country are seeing rate hikes. Then there are the people who have been thrown into part-time jobs or lost their jobs due to uncertainty over the health care mandate. Do you honestly think that the fact that 77% of the jobs created this year have been PT has nothing to do with Obamacare mandates?

And if you are concerned about government spending, you can't just pooh-pooh any effort to defund the most onerous entitlement program of all the oneroous entitlement programs? You just don't make any sense.

Unknown said...

I'll take your last point first. You write:

"if you are concerned about government spending, you can't just pooh-pooh any effort to defund the most onerous entitlement program of all the oneroous entitlement programs?"

Yesterday, House Republicans offered to pay for every dollar of Obamacare in exchange for a one year delay in the individual mandate.

In other words, in the lead up to the shutdown, the Republicans didn't offer a dime of spending reduction other than Obamacare. And then they offered to completely fund Obamacare.

I'd say their latest efforts at reigning in spending rather pooh-poohs itself.


On your other points:

"Do you honestly think that the fact that 77% of the jobs created this year have been PT has nothing to do with Obamacare mandates?"

I definitely think it has something to do with the mandates (which is but one reason why I don't like the law). It also has to do with coming out of a recession, which is typically a time PT hiring is disproportionally greater. That's made worse by this recovery being very weak, which is definitely in part (but not in full) President Obama's fault.


"you must have your head in the sand if you haven't seen the multiple testimonials and news articles about how people all over the country are seeing rate hikes."

People all over the country are indeed seeing rate hikes. I've seen it with my own sand-free eyes. I've also seen how rates have gone up every year for I-don't-know-how-long.

So it seems to me that you can't completely blame Obamacare for the rise in health insurance premiums when 1) It hasn't even been fully implemented yet and 2) The skyrocketing rise in premiums pre-date Obama being in office.

For what it is worth, last year premiums were up 4.1%, which was significantly more than inflation but was actually the smallest increase in 15 years.


"I'm just a guy with a snarky, snide sarcastic opinion"

I'm pretty sure you have to be at least a little bit clever to qualify as either snarky or snide. Making fun of a senator's height and weight . . . coming up with a nickname as lame as "Barack the Terrible" . . . that's just being childish.

Which is totally fine. You can just be a guy with a childish opinion. Except that in your blog tag line you describe yourself as "rational." And except that, while being childish, you chide others for being childish.

I totally agree with you that our elected representatives should be held to a higher standard than you (or I).

At the same time, in having this blog of yours, you have the opportunity to raise the level of public discourse. Instead, it seems you've managed to find a way to lower it still further.


Conservasteve said...

Thanks for the comments, Karen but I'm not necessarily interested in raising the discourse -- I'm interested in getting my opinion out there in a way that catches the reader's attention. I could do a boring opinion piece but I prefer to let people know how I really feel about old bastard Harry Reid, RINO John Boehner and Barack the Terrible.

As far as the insurance premium increases go, I'll grant you that they were rising before Obamacare but you'll see that there is a direct correlation between premium increases and government involvement in health care dating to the 60s when Medicare and Medicaid started. the new government takeover of the health care system is making it drastically worse.

Unknown said...

Well, I'd submit that it is possible to be opinionated and interesting and snarky AND raise the level of discourse. You are, of course, under absolutely no obligation to do any of those. But you look silly taking the low road while simultaneously complaining about others taking the low road -- that's my central point.


I agree, there's certainly some correlation between health costs and government involvement. But if you look internationally, the US has by a huge margin the highest health costs in the world. But we are nowhere near the top in terms of the level of government involvement. So there's clearly some other issue. Whatever that is, I think we can agree Obamacare isn't the answer.