Politics & Current Events
vlagrl29
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Government Shutdown Thoughts?
I know not many people come on here anymore but I thought I would post about it anyways. I honestly think the Repubs should have just let the ACA happen like it was supposed to. Do they not realize they are making themselves look bad to the public? I really have no respect for congress anymore. The debt ceiling is coming on the 17th and the Fiscal Cliff happened last Jan. I think there is another deadline looming in the future. I don't remember this much crap going on before. What do your guys thing? I'm hoping the shutdown isn't affecting you guys.
Re: Government Shutdown Thoughts?
Only because Roberts was an idiot and wanted a legacy.................................and he changed the law to say it was a tax and not a fine.
Cnon
they will. Hopefully they will at least get something for their efforts but it's not likely.
We modify laws all of the time. There was a time when alcohol was outlawed and that pretty much got 100% changed so nothing is so set in stone that it can't be fixed or improved. The politics is the worst part of it IMO. Take out all of the special gifts given such as the waivers and exemptions and you'd see more people on board. Also take out the things that make negative enrollment such a more appealing option and you'd get even more people on board. Finally actually address some of the things that make healthcare expensive (insurance is pretty low on that list) and then you'd get tons of support.
We modify laws all the time, as you said. The Republicans are doing an end run because they don't have the votes to modify the law. They're throwing a tantrum. People voted for Obama the first time because he had a health plan. The voted for him the second time, after the plan had become law. The Supreme Court has said the law is constitutional. The House has held over 30 votes trying to repeal the law, BUT THEY DON'T HAVE THE VOTES TO DO IT.
It's fine to stand up for what you believe in, but not by hijacking the system. Keep trying to elect like minded people, or even better - work to IMPROVE the law.
You don't get to stop all progress within the country because you're a sore loser who refuses to abide by the rules of the game.
No Child Left Behind was essentially ended by defunding it. The major catalyst in actually ending operations in Viet Nam was defunding the war. This process has been used to change things that are currently the status quo many times on both sides.
I don't think it's fair to equate a presidential election with automatic will of the people with regard to one specific issue ie health care. There are people who voted for other policy issues (in fact many who have been very vocal about the president not being the anti-war guy they thought they were getting) there are people who voted because they thought he was charming, there were people who voted for racial reasons, people voted on the pro choice basis and there are people who think Obamacare is actually Free Public Insurance who are now very surprised that they misunderstood the thing. In fact a Washington Post/ABC news poll found that 62% of people surveyed were completely unaware of the exchanges. It's hard to say that its the will of the people when the people admit they are pretty in the dark on the details of the thing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/09/20/National-Politics/Polling/release_263.xml
People also voted for their representatives in Congress for even more reasons specific to that candidate or their challenger. I definitely did not vote among party lines nor was I a single issue voter. In some cases I had to weigh which issue was more important in that particular race or office and then go with the least evil LOL.
There are also people who voted for it who have been unaware of all of its provisions and have been surprised to find some of the things that they voted for. Once it got crammed through there has been zero give other than giving waivers and exemptions based on political throwing of bones. Most of those bones have been thrown along party lines. I think many more people could stomach it if it applied to everyone equally and all exemptions and waivers were eliminated. It feels a little 1984 with some groups being more equal than others.
Our debts will still be paid because by law they have to. We only would not be able to BORROW more money which means we'd have to prioritize some spending. I don't care what your political agendas are, most people would agree that we have some serious waste spending that happens just because there is no trigger to stop it. There will be no political payoff via pork to cronies of congresspeople etc. The credit reporting agencies have already stated that regardless of whether a true default occurs or not, that our rating is subject to change as if it had due to our already strapped resources.
an interesting take from the perspective of the credit rating agencies here
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-15/moody-s-clashes-with-treasury-s-lew-on-prioritizing-payments
Our military budget is bloated and still full of pork, but it's not likely to bear the brunt of the burden. Instead "discretionary" spending will, and that's often the stuff that does the most long term good like science research.
Perhaps we need to look at the budgets that are strained and why and perhaps look at the ones that aren't and why. Unfortunately the government doesn't run like a business. When a business finds a more efficient way to do something it either uses the savings to expand or eliminates a position. In government there is no motivation to find efficiencies and if they accidentally happen upon them it doesn't seem that there is much impetus for eliminating positions that are no longer needed. On a local level there is a person who is paid to sit at a desk at the entrance to one of our government buildings and assist people who walk in. She has no computer nor does she sign them in or anything remotely like that. She simply asks them why they are there and directs them to the proper office (water dept, tax dept, permitting, etc). She makes more than a starting teacher's salary in our county. In this day and age it seems like this is a pretty inefficient use of public funds. I can't help but feel like there is quite a bit of this that goes on at the state and federal level as well. Aside from employee costs, we've seen quite a few examples thanks to social media of government spending run amuck. Again in the age of modern technology there is no longer the same type of need to travel to hold certain meetings and certainly travel accommodations can be economized.
However we have no catalyst for rooting this sort of thing out. We just keep budgeting more money and borrowing more money..
Fine. But we do have a capitalistic society at this point. The government has to exist in the sort of economic climate of the nation in which the government is set up to serve.