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Republicans Shut Down the Federal Government Again & Suffer Humiliating Defeat

Do they understand that the wall will take years to build? Do they even have a plan yet?
 



What kind of kompromat does Putin/Trump have on Graham, or is he that much of a weathervane?
 
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Trump’s Big Libertarian Experiment

“Government,” declared Ronald Reagan in his first Inaugural Address, “is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Republicans have echoed his rhetoric ever since. Somehow, though, they’ve never followed through on the radical downsizing of government their ideology calls for.

But now Donald Trump is, in effect, implementing at least part of the drastic reduction in government’s role his party has long claimed to favor. If the shutdown drags on for months — which seems quite possible — we’ll get a chance to see what America looks like without a number of public programs the right has long insisted we don’t need. Never mind the wall; think of what’s going on as a big, beautiful libertarian experiment.

Seriously, it’s striking how many of the payments the federal government is or soon will be failing to make are for things libertarians insist we shouldn’t have been spending taxpayer dollars on anyway.

For example, federal checks to farmers aren’t going out ­— but libertarian organizations like the Cato Institute have long denounced farm subsidies as just another form of crony capitalism.

Businesspeople are furious that the Small Business Administration isn’t making loans — but libertarians want to see the whole agency abolished.

If the shutdown extends into March — which, again, seems entirely possible — money for food stamps will dry up. But Republicans have long been deeply hostile to the food stamp program. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has denounced the program for “making it excessively easy to be nonproductive.”

The shutdown has drastically curtailed work at the Food and Drug Administration, which among other things tries to prevent food contamination: Routine inspections of seafood, vegetables, fruits and other foods have stopped. But there’s a long conservative tradition, going back to Milton Friedman, that condemns the F.D.A.’s existence as an unwarranted interference in the free market.

Strange to say, however, neither the Trump administration nor its congressional allies are celebrating the actual or prospective termination of government services their ideology says shouldn’t exist. Instead, they’re engaged in frantic administrative and legal maneuvering in an attempt to mitigate those program cuts. Why?

O.K., we shouldn’t be completely cynical (cynical, yes, but not completely so). Even where there’s a government-free solution to a problem, you might worry that it would take time to set up. Maybe you believe that private companies could take over the F.D.A.’s role in keeping food safe, but such companies don’t exist now and can’t be conjured up in a matter of weeks. So even true libertarians wouldn’t necessarily celebrate a sudden government shutdown.

That said, the truth is that libertarian ideology isn’t a real force within the G.O.P.; it’s more of a cover story for the party’s actual agenda.

In the case of the party establishment, that agenda is about redistributing income up the scale, and in particular helping important donor interests. Republican politicians may invoke the rhetoric of free markets to justify cutting taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor, or removing environmental regulations that hurt polluters’ profits, but they don’t really care about free markets per se. After all, the party had little problem lining up behind Trump’s embrace of tariffs.

Meanwhile, the philosophy of the party’s base is, in essence, big government for me but not for thee. Stick it to the bums on welfare, but don’t touch those farm subsidies. Tellingly, the centerpiece of the long G.O.P. jihad against Obamacare was the false claim that it would hurt Medicare.

And as it happens, many of the spending cuts being forced by the shutdown fall heavily and obviously on base voters. Small business owners are much more conservative than the nation as a whole, but they really miss those government loans. Rural voters went Republican during a Democratic midterm blowout, but they want those checks. McConnell may have trash-talked food stamps in the past, but a sudden cutoff would have a catastrophic effect on the most Republican parts of his home state.

The one piece of the shutdown that Republicans seem fairly calm about is the nonpayment of federal workers. Maybe the party believes, like Trump, that these workers are mainly Democrats. But when the effects of nonpayment start to bite, even that indifference may disappear.

In any case, while the gap between Republicans’ supposed ideology and their actual reaction to the shutdown is understandable, that doesn’t make it innocent. If a party is going to claim, year after year, to believe that government is the problem, not the solution, then complain bitterly when the government stops handing out checks, attention should be paid.

And if you have libertarian leanings yourself, you should ask whether you’re happy with what’s happening with government partially out of the picture. Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?
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Post an excerpt, sailor. That encourages us to click the link.
 
49726517_10219228444568586_9182296348320333824_n.jpg
 
Mentioning gun control, isn't the real solution to the "crisis" at the border to send some thoughts and prayers down there?
 
I'll post one:

"KUSI offered our own Dan Plante, who has reported dozens of times on the border, including one story from 2016 that was retweeted by former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and posted on DrudgeReport.com,""

Hmmmm, wonder which way KUSI might lean?

Never mind.

https://sandiegofreepress.org/2014/07/who-runs-san-diego-local-broadcast-tv-news-operations/#.XDiwp1xKiUk

"KUSI 51 “San Diego’s News Channel” http://www.kusi.com/ Owner: McKinnon Broadcasting. The McKinnon family may have started out on the Democratic side of the political aisle–grampa Clinton Dodson McKinnon was a Congressman and founded the San Diego Journal to compete with the Union-Tribune–but these days they and their TV station are a bastion of Republicanism.

KUSI is the outlier in local TV news, proudly waving their viewpoints whenever possible. They even been known to take right wing spin and–presto-chango!— turn it into fact.

A look at the FCC files for 2014 political advertising buys shows just two names: Carl DeMaio and Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs (CAHC), an insurance company funded campaign opposing Proposition 45. (Prop 45 is a measure on the November ballot requiring insurance companies to justify and explain their rates, placing them under the regulatory oversight of the state’s Insurance Commissioner.)

Unlike most other independent TV stations, KUSI has built its programming around local news, more than 50 hours a week. It’s safe to say their newscasts are grounded in the alternative reality that defines GOP politics these days.

My favorite anecdotal evidence of this slant comes from reviewers on Yelp.com:

John P
KUSI only success is in making the local Fox News team look like polished professionals. It’s a hair above a Public Access show, so view it with the same fleeting curiosity you’d give the two-headed calf at the County Fair. At least the calf can’t talk.

Russell S (Gave the station a 4 star rating)
My wife and I watch KUSI news in the morning. I find some of their segments to be great but some of their political interviews seem to me to be very biased. For a while my wife thought city councilman Carl DeMaio was a member of the KUSI staff. I finally explained to her that He is just a blustery, loud mouth politician that likes to hear himself talk."

Cram it up your cramhole, Sailor.
 
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I'd rather declare a state emergency to tear down the wall (cite potential flooding or something), then use the absurdity as a springboard to amend the power to declare a state of emergency.
 
ConnorEl said:
lol

Talk about an apoplectic right. Would be civil war, even if much more true (gun control crisis compared to border security crisis).
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I would get behind Dems trading a wall, which can be removed, for universal background checks, mandatory waiting period, assault weapons ban, large magazine bans, significant hand gun restrictions, and permanent DACA protections. Or Medicare for all and reentering the Paris agreement. Let's compromise!
 
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