U.S. Politics - shut down, fed up, chime in

[Shryke]

Conservatives (and liberals, but conservatives especially) have a tendency to over-estimate the conservativeness of their district on many issues. A few of them go so far as to rate their district something like +20 points on whatever scale the study I'm half-remembering uses, which was more conservative than the reddest district in the country. I'll try to find the study and will post it back here, but it really isn't out of the question that Cruz honestly thinks that a significant portion of the public is with him.

You are correct, it's 20% more conservative for conservative politicians:

Breaking down misperceptions by the leanings of legislators reveals further imbalances:

• The typical conservative legislator overestimates his or her district’s conservatism by a whopping 20 percentage points. Indeed, he or she believes the district is even more conservative than the most right-leaning district in the entire country.

Liberals also think their constituents’ views are more conservative than they really are, but are typically only off by about five percentage points.

Most conservative legislators believe their positions on same-sex marriage and health care command majority support in their districts—but only two-fifths are correct. In contrast, liberal legislators usually share views with constituents, but one in five does not know it.

http://www.democracyjournal.org/arguments/2013/09/politicians-think-american-voters-are-more-conservative-than-they-really-are.php

[Sturn]

Someone give me another explanation, if possible.

Government parks closed that have no ticket booths and are open 24 hours normally, sometimes without staff. They put up barricades and manned the barricades to keep people from getting in. Someone had to do that. Isn't that more work then just letting people in? I understand the need to close parks that require a staff, but some are being closed and barricaded that are open 24 hours and not manned for all of that period. Obviously it was ok to visit without any warm bodies present before. Why are they suddenly off limits without staff now?

Government information websites with, "sorry we're closed" signs. It takes nothing to leave these sites up. It takes actually more work (someone taking it off line, typing up a we're closed message) then just leaving it up there. I understand messages about the site not being updated, but why the hell is the NASA site being taken offline, for example?

Someone explain why this is being done other then for political fodder?

[Shryke]

I think this is right on point, except that Ted Cruz may well have managed to both pillage the party and extract no value. Fact is, this shutdown will end. Perhaps not today, and perhaps not tomorrow, but at some point the Republicans will either 1) cave or 2) cut some kind of deal. Cruz spent the weeks leading up to the shutdown railing against 2, and therefore making 1 even more likely. Should the politics of this little adventure go against the GOP - and it's easy to imagine that they will - Cruz will long be remembered as the guy who helped tank the party's image. That won't matter with the teabaggers, or course - they're crazy people who don't care about trifling details like the public's view of the party - but the party elite will keep it in mind when making donations and offering support for Cruz's presidential campaign.

The thing is, I think those people are doing in some ways what they should be doing. They are directly representing the party and the people who vote for them. It's just said people and party are fucking crazysauce.

The Teahadists are so extreme because the only thing they fear is getting primaried from the right. They are pretty much one and all representing intensely conservative-voting districts. They are either afraid of or the result of big conservative donors and low-level activists pushing the teahadist agenda and voting in line with that. That's why they won't back down. Because they are responding to the people who vote for them. Specifically, republican primary voters (who are madmen) and regular election republican voters who approve that choice enough to still vote GOP in November. And if they don't respond to those voters, the Koch's will throw their money behind another man, the primary voters will line up and Ted Cruz 2: The Revenge will gladly steal their job.

This is essentially Boehner's problem and what DG's article points out to some extent. The money isn't coming through the party anymore and Boehner is too weak and chickenshit to whip his people in line with committee appointments and such and so they just don't listen to him if they don't really want to. But he's still trying to hang on to his job anyway, so he plays along and rides that tiger. And thus we end up here.

And they aren't gonna back down because they have the support from their party voters and donors for the most part. And because, well, they think they are winning:

“It’s getting better for us,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho. “The moment where Republicans are least popular is right when the government shuts down. But when the president continues to say he’s unwilling to negotiate with the American people, when Harry Reid says he won’t even take things to conference, I don’t think the American people are going to take that too kindly.”

Representative Jeff Duncan, Republican of South Carolina, also did not flinch.

“We feel strongly enough” to hold the line, he said. “I was elected in 2010. I feel Obamacare is shutting down America.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/us/politics/a-committed-group-of-conservatives-outflanks-the-house-leadership.html?hp&_r=1&

[Merentha]

Well, if any of those websites have any kind of functionality at all, its much easier and less misleading to throw a very simple "hey we're closed" message instead of having to go through and change (for example) all of the visiting hour times, the contact info, any form of payment whatevers, and so on. I haven't been to the NASA sight, so I don't know what kind of information they have on it, but I imagine they have to have something that would require modifying the webpage, which is definitely more work than a few minutes of a new redirect screen.

National parks are usually staffed by at least some kind of park ranger/police person who does drive around. At least, I think so, though there are probably a few that don't have it. Put it this way: if they let people in, I am positive someone would get injured and make the claim that that injury wouldn't have happened if there had been some kind of ranger service, and therefore sue the federal govt.

[Commodore]

Ace has a post comparing the barricades at the WWI vs WWII Memorials

What's the difference?

Simple, really: There are Honor Flights of vets scheduled to see the latter but not the former.

Thus this isn't about "maintenance" or "saving money" or CPR, as the Park Service claimed yesterday. (That they had staff trained in CPR administration, who were not actually at the site, but I guess theoretically if someone stopped breathing they could take a cab and get there in 20 minutes or something.)

This is about the fact that a lot of people are coming to see the WWII Memorial, and the Administration wishes to hurt them.

Very few people are coming to see the WWI Memorial (sadly), and thus suddenly these worries about "CPR" and "maintenance" (of concrete) and "funding" no longer apply.

They thought this would play out with lots of sympathetic footage of WWII vets not being able to see the memorial and blaming the shutdown.

Many of these vets will never get another chance to see this, and the administration went out of it's way to expend additional resources to restrict them. Really sick stuff.

[Shryke]

Someone give me another explanation, if possible.

Government parks closed that have no ticket booths and are open 24 hours normally, sometimes without staff. They put up barricades and manned the barricades to keep people from getting in. Someone had to do that. Isn't that more work then just letting people in? I understand the need to close parks that require a staff, but some are being closed and barricaded that are open 24 hours and not manned for all of that period. Obviously it was ok to visit without any warm bodies present before. Why are they suddenly off limits without staff now?

Government information websites with, "sorry we're closed" signs. It takes nothing to leave these sites up. It takes actually more work (someone taking it off line, typing up a we're closed message) then just leaving it up there. I understand messages about the site not being updated, but why the hell is the NASA site being taken offline, for example?

Someone explain why this is being done other then for political fodder?

Because there are no unmanned parks. There's still cleaning crews and maintenance and such.

Ace has a post comparing the barricades at the WWI vs WWII Memorials

They thought this would play out with lots of sympathetic footage of WWII vets not being able to see the memorial and blaming the shutdown.

Many of these vets will never get another chance to see this, and the administration went out of it's way to expend additional resources to restrict them. Really sick stuff.

Or, you know, since people aren't allowed in either one they blockade the one they KNOW people are going to try and enter.

[Corvinus85]

Can someone please explain to me how this works, please?

Why does conflict over funding one program immediately stop the funding of other institutions, agencies or programs? I know money doesn't grow on trees (though considering the bank bailouts, it's quite possible that it does), but how did it come to the system "working" in this manner?

[Angalin]

I'm sure that even Shryke agreed recently that posters in the US politics threads knew to toe the line between disagreement and personal attacks. Please, demonstrate some of this finesse for me, political posters. I'd like to see it, because I just got rid of a whole bunch of posts that went over that line.

I think the truth is more complicated. I think teabaggers like Cruz do care about their public image, but are True Believers in the idea that the public is, collectively, with them.

EDIT: I keep trying to find a better descriptor than "teabaggers" since it bothers people, but I run into two obstacles. One is that it's absurd to object to a label you made for yourself; the other is that I simply can't find a better word. I don't want to call them "tea partiers" or any similar phrase, because I resent the attempt to co-opt a piece of shared American history for the use of a fringe group. It's an attempt to borrow legitimacy from the rest of us.

Those of us who enjoy tea with a slice of lemon and finely-textured shortbread at 4pm would like to reserve the phrase "tea partiers" for our own use. How about TP supporters as shorthand for Tea Party pols?

[Frog Eater]

Someone give me another explanation, if possible.

Government parks closed that have no ticket booths and are open 24 hours normally, sometimes without staff. They put up barricades and manned the barricades to keep people from getting in. Someone had to do that. Isn't that more work then just letting people in? I understand the need to close parks that require a staff, but some are being closed and barricaded that are open 24 hours and not manned for all of that period. Obviously it was ok to visit without any warm bodies present before. Why are they suddenly off limits without staff now?

Government information websites with, "sorry we're closed" signs. It takes nothing to leave these sites up. It takes actually more work (someone taking it off line, typing up a we're closed message) then just leaving it up there. I understand messages about the site not being updated, but why the hell is the NASA site being taken offline, for example?

Someone explain why this is being done other then for political fodder?

I've been to several national parks, and there were park rangers at all of them. if no park rangers, what if you get lost or hurt on the hiking trails?

[Shryke]

Can someone please explain to me how this works, please?

Why does conflict over funding one program immediately stop the funding of other institutions, agencies or programs? I know money doesn't grow on trees (though considering the bank bailouts, it's quite possible that it does), but how did it come to the system "working" in this manner?

It happens when the GOP who control the House refuse to pass funding for anything unless that program is defunded.

ie - when one party takes the entire federal government hostage in order to stop funding for a program they don't like but can't actually repeal

[DanteGabriel]

Can someone please explain to me how this works, please?

Why does conflict over funding one program immediately stop the funding of other institutions, agencies or programs? I know money doesn't grow on trees (though considering the bank bailouts, it's quite possible that it does), but how did it come to the system "working" in this manner?

To build on what Shryke said, it's partially because the chickenhearted Speaker of the House, Republican John Boehner, is refusing to allow the chamber to vote on funding resolutions unless they de-fund the ACA. Boehner is afraid of being challenged from the right -- he seems to fear that the radical right Tea Party wing of his party will either remove him from the Speakership or fund a challenger to campaign against him next year in his primary election.

This shutdown is happening because John Boehner lacks the spine or skill to stand up to the caucus he is putatively the leader of.

[Shryke]

Speaking of Boehner, here he is on the issues of this day:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-republican-party-cannot-stand-by-and-let-obama,34074/

[Sci-2]

Those of us who enjoy tea with a slice of lemon and finely-textured shortbread at 4pm would like to reserve the phrase "tea partiers" for our own use. How about TP supporters as shorthand for Tea Party pols?

That makes me think Terra started a revolution.

[Corvinus85]

It happens when the GOP who control the House refuse to pass funding for anything unless that program is defunded.

ie - when one party takes the entire federal government hostage in order to stop funding for a program they don't like but can't actually repeal

This is utter nonsense. To have one thing stalling the government, and keeping hundreds of thousands of people without jobs on purpose is ludicrous, and should be considered criminal. Wouldn't it be better to have funding of each program/agency approved individually, rather than all together?

[Fez]

This is utter nonsense. To have one thing stalling the government, and keeping hundreds of thousands of people without jobs on purpose is ludicrous, and should be considered criminal. Wouldn't it be better to have funding of each program/agency approved individually, rather than all together?

They actually are supposed to be funded somewhat individually, in 12 different appropriations bills. When Congress doesn't get things done on time, that's when it gets rolled into one big bill.

Anyway, it seems like no one in the House GOP is ready to buck leadership yet (at least on the non-far right side). There was a procedural vote* today about brining up a clean CR and it failed 230-194. Now granted, if Democrats start winning procedural votes that means Pelosi is effectively the Speaker again, and no House GOPs want that; but still, this is the only way for a clean CR to come to floor unless Boehner brings it there.

*Essentially House Dems offered an amendment to one of these mini-budget bills the House GOP is using as its strategy right now that would've replaced the bill with a clean CR.

[Angalin]

That makes me think Terra started a revolution.

If he hasn't yet, he should get on that pronto.

[Shryke]

I refuse to impugn Terra Prime by associating the short form for his name with such terrible people.

Teabagger, Teahadist or Teapist are perfectly adaquate to the task at hand imo.

[williamjm]

Teahadis? Teahadists?

The Tealeban?

[SkynJay]

Teahadist gets my vote. Can we stop the thread and all vote on this right now?

[The Real Will]

To build on what Shryke said, it's partially because the chickenhearted Speaker of the House, Republican John Boehner, is refusing to allow the chamber to vote on funding resolutions unless they de-fund the ACA. Boehner is afraid of being challenged from the right -- he seems to fear that the radical right Tea Party wing of his party will either remove him from the Speakership or fund a challenger to campaign against him next year in his primary election.

This shutdown is happening because John Boehner lacks the spine or skill to stand up to the caucus he is putatively the leader of.

You know, this is exactly how the Democrats should be framing the issue. The Speaker of the House will not let the house vote on funding for the government unless they defund the ACA. It makes Boehner sound like he's personally throwing a tantrum and shutting down the entire government, and has the advantage of being technically true.