I haven’t spoken out yet about this government shutdown. I was actually undecided about whether or not it was the correct course of action. We still have the debt ceiling debate to get through, not to mention the toxic – perhaps nuclear – fallout that will inevitably ensue amongst the “low information voters”…
“Low information voters?” In my mind that’s just a nice way of saying lazy. If you are a “low information voter” then you’re part of the problem that America now faces. Why in hell are you a “low information voter” in the first place? Can you not read a little news on the Internet, or turn on your TV and watch the news every now and then? Is your life so filled up with Facebook and Halo and Angry Birds that you cannot spare a few minutes a day to learn the details of what YOUR government is up to?
An active, full-time Army Reservist buddy of mine that runs an Army Reserve schoolhouse back east confided in me today…
“It was real strange all active Army here today without the civilians. We finished all our work by 1115 hours and then screwed off the rest of the day! I hate to say this but I don’t miss our civilians. All S1 actions are moving faster, we cleared a back log of actions that where over 1 year behind and after 3 days without the civilians we are caught up. OMG! It’s Friday we are having a BBQ and doing nothing. The commander congratulated us that we had just completed 1 year of work in 3 days so it’s time to rest.”
I know that more than a few of you that are reading this are DA or other government civilians that are probably currently on furlough, so I do know that there is a huge impact for you personally. Got it. I know you’re a great bunch of hard-working guys and gals that earn your money and provide serious value added to the Department of Defense or other government agencies every day, so don’t hate me for saying this, but overall, across America most Americans are looking around and saying “government shutdown… what’s the big deal?”
Of course if our government remains unfunded for long enough it will eventually take its toll and be felt by most Americans in many more obvious ways, but the fact remains that much of what government claims to do for us – spends our tax dollars on – is total bullshit, and the truth of that is borne out by the fact that we are hardly noticing the absence of most of that crap.
In order to try to convince America that they cannot possibly cut back on government the Obama administration is having to search out opportunities to make this shutdown something painful… something that Americans can actually feel. It’s ridiculous!
Here’s a perfect example…
… ya! They’ve shut down national monuments and cordoned them off with police tape like they’re crime scenes, when these places were previously open 24/7/365 with no federal employees working there at all! No gate, no admission fees, just a large open-air monument that people freely walked through! But Obama has directed that these be closed knowing full well that a bunch of 90+ year old WWII vets were heading in to see them who would probably be missing their last chance to see these in their lifetimes!
Ya, ya – federal employees are needed to clean these places up, empty the trash, scrub off graffiti, and make sure homeless people don’t move in, but you get the idea… and the American people are starting to get the idea too.
The real truth is that our government is huge. It’s a bloated monstrosity that oozes and bleeds our tax dollars at every seam. It’s wasteful and does a huge number of things we simply don’t actually need.
Our tax dollars fund an endless stream of the most useless shit imaginable…
http://posey.house.gov/wasteful-spending/
Significant percentages of government employees in every department and agency perform no real function whatsoever. They show up at work, occupy a desk… and do absolutely nothing! At least nothing that equates to anything close to a full-time job! In fact very often their presence is actually counterproductive because they are, in effect, little more than bottlenecks to what might otherwise be a streamlined process – just another desk through which the paperwork of government must pass.
Yet the Democrats cannot bring themselves to cut even a single government employee – let alone a single useless or non-productive department or agency. In fact since coming into power in 2008 they are spreading our tax dollars around to the unworthy at a rate never before seen.
And now with ObamaCare we are going to – already have in many cases – hire tens of thousands more government employees for the IRS to “oversee” this program (that is to make sure you’re paying up) and thousands more to serve as “Navigators” to help us all understand this latest government debacle.
We haven’t passed a budget since 2007 even though for at least 2008 and 2009 the Dems controlled the entire damn government!
Our national debt has doubled!
Watch this video of a 03 Jul 08 speech wherein then Senator and Presidential candidate Obama calls raising the debt ceiling on the then 6 trillion dollar debt “unpatriotic”, and talks about the “credit card of China”… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqMbD6MNf5U
… and of course now, 5 years later, we’re at 16+ trillion dollars AND RISING – AND HE WANTS MORE FREAKIN’ MONEY!!!
Government shutdown? Ya. Bring it. I’m all for it. There must eventually be pain for at least some if we ever hope to wake America up. Hopefully this will force the Dems to compromise. If not then it will give voters something to think about during the next election cycle as they evaluate the success of ObamaCare…
Fewer doctors that will accept Medicare and ObamaCare because it’s simply too costly for them to operate under such constraints… they don’t have to play ya know.
Hourly workers cut back on hours as small business move employees to part-time to avoid having to join in this debacle.
Corporations and unions dropping health care altogether, forcing their employees onto the ObamaCare exchanges (remember Obama promising us all we could keep our doctors and current health insurance plans?)
Premiums up for most middle-income families (remember Obama promising that health insurance premiums would actually go down for middle-income earners?)
The tax returns of millions of young Americans being withheld to cover penalties for those that ignore the requirement to sign up for this new plan. See, these are some of the millions that will now be insured by ObamaCare, but there’s no free lunch! If you don’t sign up then that $500 tax return you expect each year – the one that normally buys you a set of new tires… the one you hope and pray for each year – that will be taken by the IRS to pay for your ObamaCare unless you’ve signed up and paid the monthly bill.
Or maybe ObamaCare turns out to be a great plan, and none of this comes to pass, and I’m wrong about all of this, and voters will re-elect their Democratic Party representatives all over again, and the Republican Party will utterly fail and cease to exist.
I don’t expect this government shutdown to last much longer. Eventually the Republicans will give up with the hope that they’ve drawn enough attention to the problem that voters will actually remember this for the next 13 months leading up to the next election.
But one thing is certain; the effects of ObamaCare will have been felt quite clearly one way or another by the time Americans head to their polling places in November of 2014. The Republican party will either have been proven right, and hopefully regain control of the government, or they will have been revealed as utterly wrong and will all but cease to exist as a party.
“Low information voters” my ass! If you don’t know what the hell this government shutdown is about then you’re just lazy!
It the United States Government were a family they’d have been evicted long ago, and they’d be on the freeway offramp with a sign reading “Will Interfere With Every Aspect of Your Life in Exchange For 30% of Your Income”
