The new deal... isn't

[neadods]

I'm seeing a lot of celebration on the news that there's a Senate deal that's going to fix the mess this country's in. First of all, it's a no-deal until the House blesses it... not that Boehner's got a lot of alternatives, considering that this is the second time he's tried to grandstand with a Republican alternative at the nth second and gotten cut off at the knees by the Tea Party.

Second and far more importantly, look at what the Senate's proposing. Reopening the Government until mid-January. Raising the debt ceiling until mid-Feb. This isn't fixing anything, it's not even deciding anything - it's just kicking the can down the road a few more months.

Nor, even if this does pass and the Government reopens Friday, do the repercussions in my life magically go away. Government open or not, because I used up all my leave, I'm going to have to take the upcoming federal holiday Veteran's Day as yet another day without pay (see previous post about contractor holidays =/= Government holidays.) And because I'm in the hole for leave *and* not earning any back with every day without pay that I take, I'm probably not going to have anything earned back by ChicagoTARDIS, meaning *that* will be without pay, with all the ramifications of that.

And boy howdy, is that going to impact Christmas. Do you think I'd even consider lavish spending on presents under these conditions, with pay lost and a potential repeat of this nonsense right when the bills come due? No one with brain cells would go on a spending spree.

Comments

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

It's a deal worth celebrating in the sense that the mess we're in is nothing compared to what we'd be in if we hit the debt ceiling. But, yeah, it doesn't mean we won't have another ugly fight in a few months, and it doesn't undo the damage that the shutdown has already done.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The debt ceiling only gets pushed back too, and I've just seen someone saying that she's totally not a member of the tea party, but she just can't vote for this Senate bill because it doesn't shut down Obamacare and that's the most important thing her constitutents want.

We're going to go through the Exact. Same. Thing. in three months' time.

(And I'm sorry about your shoulder. I hope it heals quickly.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

"Will come"? We're there.

I always knew there would come a time the US would stop being a superpower. I didn't realize it would come in my lifetime, or that it would be the result of deliberate destruction from within.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

I don't know.... I was pondering which country I'd like to be the only superpower, and it's a bit of a tossup between Denmark and New Zealand. Except Denmark has had some nasty anti-immigrant activity in recent years, and I'm not sure how the Maoris are treated in NZ. Canadians tend to be calm and polite, but their environmental policy has gone down the bunghole. As to our having "more freedom than any other country," that would take some research on my part.

What a lot of Americans don't have is freedom to vote for a candidate of their choice. Way too many districts are gerrymandered into safe seats-- and I'm not excusing Maryland; I voted against that map but it passed.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

I agree on that last part, but they don't have the freedom to vote for a candidate of their choice if the district is so rigged to benefit one party that the other party doesn't even bother wasting money putting up a candidate, and the race is uncontested. There are far too many of those. One would be too many.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm with RedPanda we theoretically have the freedom to vote for who we want, but between deliberate disinformation being spread as news, gerrymandering, and voter restriction we don't actually have the power to vote in who we want. Especially if it's close. The court told us who won Bush v Gore, not an accurate count of the popular vote

That ain't no freedom of the polls.

[zinelady.livejournal.com]

I vote New Zealand myself. I really wish I wasn't leaving here to come back to the US. I love my kids and I'm sure I'll love my grandkids, but I really like living in New Zealand.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

we still have more freedom than any other country

I take issue with this statement. Can you really name any freedom we have that other first-world countries don't beyond the freedom to be killed by any lunatic who decides he's tired of living with "libtards and socialists"?

(edited to fix HTML error)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I said freedoms that other First World countries DON'T have. So far the only one you've come up with that fits is (as I expected) the right to have your own personal fucking arsenal until you become a headline-news story. Paying taxes is not an infringement on your freedom; taxes are what PAY FOR your freedom.

Oh, and don't forget, the Republicans are working on taking away your right to vote, your freedom of speech, and if you're female, gay, non-white, or non-Christian, pretty much all of your rights, period.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It is time to point out that the person who runs this blog is a New Deal Democrat who is aware that the money "taken away from taxpayers" in Canada, England, Netherlands, Denmark, France, etc., pays for a variety of services that we don't have access to in America, like national health care.

Instead, we're free to pay more out of pocket to receive fewer, more expensive services than anyone with single-payer service, and equally free to go bankrupt from medical bills even with medical insurance.

I might easily have been one of them, or dead, if I had not had the sheer dumb luck to work for the company I did -- whose owner was not interested in preserving her religious freedom to limit my health insurance when I needed emergency surgery a few years ago.

We go broker when we mop up after disasters because it's more important to prove that the Government can't support an infrastructure than to maintain it, and broker faster when we're all paying to fix the result of inevitable, foreseeable disasters like letting businesses store fertilizer in uninspected plants next to schools and hospitals.

And finally, if you read a few posts past this, you will see the post where I put a value, down to the penny, on the amount of money taken away from me -- not for taxes, from which I get a benefit, but by someone with the back asswards notion that stopping my paycheck won't make me a damnsight more broke a hell of a lot faster than raising taxes!

We are not discussing the lesser of two evils. We are discussing the price of doing business in a functioning nation vs the price of being an unwilling victim of an ideological play for power and donations.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

The only hopeful note about that is that the closer this garbage gets to the next election, the more people are likely to remember who caused it... unless they just quit voting for anybody, and we're left with just the fanatics who vote.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I worry bigtime about that.

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

Even from over here, I was sooo angry that they didn't make a deal - you know find an actual solution. All they did was put it off for a few months so we can go through it all again in Feb. And when I say "we", I mean it, because the US sneezes and the rest of us catch cold. At a time when the recovery from the GFC is still fragile, these IDIOTS are grandstanding and putting it at risk. And I DO NOT understand what they think they can do instead - how the US can just miraculously stop spending money without sending the country into a catastrophic spiral? And just what.the.FUCK is their problem with Obamacare? In what way is Obamacare making people's lives WORSE or infringing on their oh-so-precious liberty? It makes NO SENSE to me. None.

(incidentally, if they want to fund Obamacare, they should just withdraw all their troops from the global hotspots and stop buying massive amounts of weaponry. Plenty of money now. And I have to ask: why is the US expected to be the global police anyway? Why is Australia expected to police our near neighbours? Why can't stable, Middle-Eastern countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia enforce a peace in Syria, instead of people expecting the US to do it? Shouldn't Kuwait have learnt its lesson and raised an army after Iraq invaded? Can't they do it? Why the HELL are there still Australian troops in Afghanistan?)

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

Just call me Ranty McRanterson. :D

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

Were you too cowed to comment on my comment, haha?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Been offline a bit - saw your comment while I was at work and can't reach LJ there.

And yeah - I'm livid that they didn't reach a real decision. It means I have to live like this for another four months. Thanks, Congress.

And just what.the.FUCK is their problem with Obamacare? In what way is Obamacare making people's lives WORSE or infringing on their oh-so-precious liberty?

There's a huge Ayn Randian belief that people who are getting aid don't *deserve* it, and that the Democrats aren't providing it out of principal, but instead because we want to deliberately create a voting block addicted to the aid we give to people too lazy to get things themselves.

As one of our pundits has pointed out, if you tell people about the Affordable Care Act, they love what's in it. But if you ask about Obamacare, it's horrible. It's all knee-jerk thoughtless tribalism.

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

That attitude (that the poor do not deserve medical care) is the same kind of attitude that is creeping in here - where the govt has set the unemployment benefit so low as to be an actual handicap to finding work. And then they said that any mother of children over 8 must also receive only that because they should get out and get a job as well (instead of the seperate, far more generous supporting parent's pension). It's like they want to punish people for being out of work, and it makes me angry. How are they supposed to drag themselves out of poverty if they don't have the tools to do it?

But I'm trying to work out HOW these people deserve to be sick? How their kids deserve to be left with the debts for the (ultimately futile) cancer treatments (or whatever). I don't understand the logic of it.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Logic? What does logic have to do with it? It's all "I've got mine" and fear and hatred of the poor and other.

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

In theory the Fedrosplat is considered safer from resession than other areas of the country. Except every time the government does something like this it throws the area into a resession. I'm expecting sales in everything to go down. One of my friends was laid off today (along with most of her company). Another friend is worried about her company. And let's not forget all those small businesses who depend on the Feds and Contractors to stop by to pick up a bite to eat or a drink.

I'm wondering how many years this area is going to take to recover...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Fedrosplat?

I know contracting companies that are already firing people even though we're back at work, and I know a private company that's apparently been driven within a month of closing themselves.

The time of recovery is going to depend on if we do all this nonsense again. Some people think it couldn't happen. I think it WILL -- and will be not spending much to be prepared for it.