Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Republikans Strike Back...

This is a political post.

com·pro·mise  /ˈkämprəˌmīz/
noun
1.  An agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.


The Republican argument is they're willing to compromise their demand of the complete repeal to just delaying the implementation of law until next year. They seem to believe they can purchase enough elections by then (they hope) to completely repeal the bill. But they are willing to "compromise."

Only, the "compromise" they're asking for makes no sense. The offer hardly qualifies as a "compromise". The Affordable Care Act passed in both the House and the Senate, was signed into law in 2010 and upheld as Constitutional by the Supreme Court. The only way to un-make it a law is to repeal it, which the Republicans have tried to do more than forty times. They cannot. So how can delaying the implementation of a duly constitutional law - in effect temporarily repealing the law in a way they cannot themselves do - in exchange for ....er, doing your job...qualify as a compromise?

Even worse, the "compromise" the Republicans are offering is just enough financing to keep the lights on until December....at which point we get to do this all over again. That is Government by hostage, and a success here will only encourage a repeat of such a proposition. That's not good governance by any estimation. This time they asked to repeal Obamacare, what next time? Will Boehner ask the President to step down and name Ted Cruz Grand Exalted Super Cool Leader? It could happen. Because then the argument will be just accepting Ryan's budget sounds "reasonable."

I'm fairly certain that having a faction of one part of one third of government dictate the actions of the whole violates at the very least the spirit of the constitution. The real question here is how long will this go on, how long before the effects begin to trickle down to the man on the street? That's when the real action will begin. Now, to clear, my conservative FB friend is just ecstatic that the government is shutdown. Because according to the people she listens to, we don't need any government! So let me tell you a little story (I wish I had written this, but I didn't):

This morning you were awoken by your alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy. Then you took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, to make sure you were ready for what the day might bring, you might have turned on your TV to one of the Federal Communications Committee regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be, using satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. You watched this while eating breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected food and possibly taking a drug or two which have been determined to be safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the U.S. Naval Observatory, you got into your National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration approved adequately safe automobile and set out to work on roads built by the Local, State and Federal Departments of Transportation. Along the way you might have stopped to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. You might have even dropped off some mail to have delivered via the U.S. Postal Service. It's not even 9am.

After work, where you didn't lose a digit or inhale toxic chemicals due to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, at a company whose patents and trademarks are protected by the local, state and Federal Court Systems, you drove back on the same roads built by the Department of Transportation and returned to a house which had not burned down in your absence due to state and local building codes and the fire marshal's inspection, and which wasn't plundered of all you consider valuable thanks to the local police department. Then after watching some more of the FCC regulated television, and speaking to your mother by phone, who has retired and receives monthly checks from the Social Security Administration about her trip to the doctor which was paid for Medicare, you get onto the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, to read this blog.

And yet some people believe that the Government can't get anything, anything at all, right.


I wonder why they think something like that.

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