I’m cranky. Very cranky. I’m cranky about some school/kid stuff that I’m not going to blog about. I’m cranky, because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I’m cranky, because this shutdown is still going on.
People voted for Obama. Twice. Healthcare was front in center in his campaign. More voters want this legislation than don’t want it.
I think there is something to be said about bubbles, but I don’t think that critique of American politics applies here. This isn’t a Democrat v. Republican/North v. South/Elite v. Non-elite thing. This is a Democratic and Republican  v. a small segment of Republican thing. I think everybody understands the fears about the implementation of this law. I think even supporters of this law have major concerns. BUT we want it anyway. It’s a law. Let’s enact it.
As a former pol sci professor, I have a certain fondness of Washington eccentricities. The filibuster is a JOY to teach in class. But this shutdown is a filibuster gone bad. It’s obstructionist and evil. The son of a good friend is on a respirator in a coma at a Washington hospital. He needs the NIH to do something I don’t understand with his blood. He needs this help RIGHT NOW. There are women on WIC who need formula for their children.
In the Federalist Papers, Madison talks a lot about the potential for a minority faction to destroy the government. He built in all sorts of safety measures to make sure that wouldn’t happen. But here we are….
Apt. 11d 
I think that this piece by Douthat is about the best spin you can put on the Tea Party wing’s behavior. And I don’t think it works because when you go to war over providing health care but not something like farm subsidies, it’s pretty clear that the idea isn’t “shrink the government” but “shrink the part of the government that helps poorer people.”
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I wish you lived closer to these schools: http://www.yaleschool.com/campuses/ My friend raves about her daughter’s school.
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As long as one side persists in the belief that its opponents are unreasonable and evil, rather than people just as well-educated, just as intelligent, and just as moral as you, compromise and agreement will be very difficult.
It’s time to stop saying that the other side is racist and that they have no other motivation than hurting people. (See Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Drum, respectively.) How can you ever reach an agreement when you start with those premises?
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It isn’t just one side that says the Tea Party is being unreasonable. Ready to the end of the piece I linked. He’s on your side and thinks the right wing of the Republican party is being foolish.
And after about the 700th time with the birth certificate thing, I decided that there is no other explanation that fits the facts other than a whole bunch of people on the other side are racist. It’s hardly the case that everybody opposed to Obamacare is racist and those in favor aren’t. I know some really racist people who voted for Obama. But it takes a deliberate avoidance of the news to miss the fact that large number of people are opposed to Obama because he’s black.
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But what if one side is really racist and doesn’t really care if they hurt people? I’m tired of certain discourse being beyond the pale just because it hurts some delicate fee-fees. Sometimes things need to be called what they are.
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As long as one side persists in the belief that its opponents are unreasonable and evil, rather than people just as well-educated, just as intelligent, and just as moral as you, compromise and agreement will be very difficult.
So the “one side” here is supposed to be Democrats/progressives/liberals? Because the Republicans/conservatives/Tea Partiers have displayed such good will and openness to compromise in the past?
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Sometimes you reach a point where you can no longer be polite to those you disagree with. I reached that point when I discovered (yesterday) that in Mississippi nondisabled adults can’t receive medicaid unless they make less than approximately 3,000$ per year. And that is only if they have dependent children–otherwise there is no medicaid for them at all. How anyone can defend that is beyond me. It is evil.
Click to access 7993-03.pdf
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Mississippi is chock-full of poor people. Median household income is $37k. Why should we expect a state that poor to have lavishly funded Medicaid? Heavy social funding is easy when you have high median household incomes and barely any poor people to pay for.
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Medicaid is funded by a combination of federal and state dollars in a structure specifically designed to address that issue. The federal contribution ranges from 50% in the wealthiest states to over 80% in the poorest states. Mississippi gets around 80% in most years. The state government of Mississippi is deliberately forgoing the opportunity to let the rest of the country pay for health coverage for some of their poorest citizens.
I’m willing to say that it is not a defensible position to take on the part of anybody with basic compassion.
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I had no idea it varied so much from year to year.See here for the figures.
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What is there to compromise on? A law has been passed, signed, and upheld as constitutional by the supreme court. Threatening to blow up the US economy because a law–passed by a majority of congress people and signed by a democratically elected president–is going to be implemented isn’t something one compromises on. The nicest way to put it is the Tea Party is throwing a tantrum. You don’t give a 2 year old what they want when they scream and threaten to hold their breath. A less nice way to put it, is in the words of a former president, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
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McCain is on the other side, FFS. There was a compromise, but what he see in the House now is an attempt to block compromise and dictate.
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McCain has always been the Republican that hates Republicans. That’s his schtick.
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At least my dad and cousins are making out like bandits on the corn prices.
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I’ve been hearing about this too — A friends family got a reunion trip to Hawaii out of the windfall from corn prices. Kind of fun, and frankly I’m not finding at as hard to begrudge as the windfall the monopoly hip manufacturers get out of their business practices.
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My husband just canceled a planned Columbus Day weekend vacation to Utah and Arizona where he was planning to photograph the national parks.
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My kiddo told me that their fledgling MS newspaper is going to try to write a Shutdown story — on how the Kindergartners, who do a salmon project every year can’t visit the locks (and fish ladders) ’cause they are closed because of the shutdown. It was the talk of the first grade.
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They put up little barriers on the fish ladders to keep out the salmon.
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“As long as one side persists in the belief that its opponents are unreasonable and evil, rather than people just as well-educated, just as intelligent, and just as moral as you, compromise and agreement will be very difficult.”
The point I saw Sully as making (and which I thought should have gone further) is that back in the 1860s, the architects of the secession thought they were just as well-educated, intelligent, and moral as Lincoln and the opponents of slavery. Sully’s point (and man, do I hate agreeing with him ever) is that one faction seems to see the presidency and the laws that have been passed as part of our democratic process as *illegitimate* and are acting in a way that demonstrates that belief, and those actions are, in essence, a second Civil War. And it’s a second Civil War that’s being fought by pretty much the same groups of people who fought the first one. And we all know what a duck looks, walks, and quacks like.
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In the Federalist Papers, Madison talks a lot about the potential for a minority faction to destroy the government. He built in all sorts of safety measures to make sure that wouldn’t happen.
I think that’s turned out to not be true, or at least he misunderstood the problem and so failed at making a very good system. It turns out that the way our government is organized isn’t a very good one. The general tendency is to tend towards gridlock and eventually unilateral rule of some sort. This has long been avoided in the US, but largely through informal norms and means that have now broken down, not because the system is a good one. I doubt there is an easy way to fix this now. There is some useful discussion of this basic problem here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/10/juan_linz_dies_yale_political_scientist_explains_why_government_by_crisis.html
But others have looked at it, too, and the claims seem pretty robust.
None of this, of course, makes it reasonable to stop the government in defense of the principle that poor people should not have health care. That’s obviously a vicious view, and really the least unattractive view that can be attributed to the Tea Party faction. But, as depressing as it is (because it’s not clear what can be done) I think it’s important to see that the basic flaws in the system of government go very deep.
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Matt, thanks for posting that link. That was a really interesting piece. I see so many people who seem to crave the compromises that one would get from a parliamentary system, but we are in a different kind of institution that has led to party purity. The people don’t *want* a Hastert Rule, really.
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In response to the two substantive complaints in the original post:
1) Those evil racist republicans passed a bill that would have funded the NIH during the shut down.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/326243-house-sends-three-spending-bills-to-the-senate
Harry Reid’s response is “Why would we want to do that?”
2) WIC is still being paid. And if the contingency funds for that run out, I’m sure the House would be happy to pass a bill funding that as well.
It seems to me that it is Obama and the Senate who is being extreme here. If they were willing to compromise on Obamacare, the shutdown would end today.
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Funding the government bit by bit to get past the hostage taking element of the Tea Party is the same as allowing one house of Congress to write new law all by itself. Obamacare was the result of lengthy negotiation and compromise. Trying to block in the way the House Republicans are going about it is pretty much the exact opposite of compromise. It’s insisting on letting one group dictate.
And I doubt your point about WIC, given that that last thing the Republicans actually got through Congress successfully was a massive cut in the food stamp program.
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I’m pretty sure that if the NIH funding is to become reality, the Senate would have to pass the bill and the President would have to sign it. How is that letting one house of congress write new law? The Democrats are the ones saying “I won’t allow a bill to pass that achieves something we both agree on, because I need that as leverage to make you pass the stuff we don’t agree on.” I believe you were saying something about hostage-taking just now. How does that analogy work again?
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Isn’t it pretty much like releasing hostages one by one after having taken an entire city/mall/college hostage? You let the sick people go and then maybe the kids and women, and you do it to buy time.
But you’re still taking hostages. And you’re still holding hostages. And if people die, it’s the fault of the terrorists who took the hostages not the police who stormed the mall.
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Funding the NIH or any other branch only is exactly like letting one house write new law, a new law defunding the entire rest of the government. And Obama has repeatedly promised to veto any partial funding bill.
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bj – The analogy seems very forced. In this case you would have the police saying “No, you may not release those hostages, even though they need immediate medical care, because if we let you do that, it might improve your image to the public”. What a draconian police state your analogy must live in!
MH – You seem to be begging the question in a very strange way. We don’t have to pass laws to defund our government. We have to pass laws to fund our government. And the House did just that, except the Democrats in the Senate voted it down.
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Technically, the shutdown is the Hastert Rule gone bad. But only political scientists like us would note the difference – 😉
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I don’t think you can blame the Hastert Rule. Boehner has violated that rule three times already this year, twice on very public issues (Hurricane Sandy Relief and the Violence Against Women Act). You need to explain why he won’t violate it now.
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You could consider that he couldn’t get a majority of his own party to support hurricane relief or the violence against women act as evidence that they have no motivation other than hurting people, but that would apparently be impeding compromise.
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MH, they’re not motivated to hurt people. How can you be so unfeeling and unempathetic?
They just don’t give a fuck about other people, which is their Ayn Rand-given right as a citizen of the United States RPG they apparently participate in and which is totally *empathetic* according to the rules of that RPG.
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Also, if the Republicans really want to pass the piecemeal bills, why are they trying to do it with fast track paths that require Democratic votes? Pass the bill, send it to the Senate and see what happens.
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Your information seems out of date.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/326243-house-sends-three-spending-bills-to-the-senate
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I really don’t understand why people in inland states should be taxed to benefit wealthy owners of beachfront property like myself. It seems to me that this should be solely the responsibilty of coastal muncipalities and states, and be funded by property taxes from the benefitted properties. I realize that the homeowners’ association to which I belong lobbies–successfully!–for the opposing view.
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That’s a very reasonable point of view and might be relevant if the Republicans were actually willing to try to propose something like that instead of the actual practice of funding disaster relief in states that might actually vote for them and not otherwise. Because that’s exactly what they are doing.
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Yes, I agree that I can’t find any explanation for the birther thing other than racism and willful ignorance. Does someone have another explanation?
I agree that for many other issues, one can have other explanations, and it is worth listening to them, even if you will ultimately disagree. I am trying to apply this rule right now, in listening to teens explain a hazing/underage drinking incident at a local school. I find that when I listen I can find some information that can have no effect on my view (for example, everyone does underage drinking, so the adults should look the other way) and some that might effect my view (what you are calling hazing is just initiation rites between kids who enjoy each others company) and some require education of the speaker (no, not every teen drinks).
And, as MH points out (nice link), one can rationally make the argument that hurricane aid for coastal dwellers (from the right/left coast) isn’t good for the country, but not while simultaneously arguing that flood aide for those who live on river banks (in the middle of the country) is OK. That’s information.
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Glad the squirrel is gone but sad that the school squirrels are still there (we have taken to calling all those problems that interfere with the lives we want to live squirrels). I am also cranky (in my case about a photo site I use as well as the shutdown, and general business). What I’m not sure about is whether venting is helping or hurting. My guess is that I need to time-limit my venting.
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Just IMed with my friend who has the sick son. He’s 6 foot something kid who has lost more than half his body weight. He nows weighs 90 pounds. He hasn’t be conscious in a couple of months. The hospital is doing a lumbar [ok, I don’t understand the rest] and the blood is going to be sent to the NIH for processing. My friend is unsure of what will happen. This lumbar test is VERY painful. She’s worried that he will be tortured and then the blood will go to waste at the NIH. Even if Congress has gotten its act together to make sure that the NIH is operating today, my friend is extremely freaked out. She needs this stress like a hole in the head.
This shutdown is having a REAL impact on people. It’s not just putting out people who had wedding plans at national monuments.
If my friend’s kid doesn’t get service at the NIH today, there’s going to be a BIG meltdown. I’m the least influential friend in this family’s network. The boy has a hand written get well card from Obama on his night stand.
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