Which comes as a surprise to nobody ever. This time it involves the sequester, a term I’m coming to hate with the fire of a thousand suns. Fuck the seniors who are not getting Meals on Wheels; fuck the cancer-ridden medicare patients who cannot be seen by a doctor; fuck the 70,000 Head Start kids who are just shit out of luck at this point.
But they have no problem making sure that the airplanes fly on time so the miserable assholes can get home on their break without the inconvenience suffered by tens of thousands of travelers up to this point. A bunch of self-serving cocksuckers.
I don’t think that it’s just self serving in that sense. Passengers have been complaining about delays, the news media has, the airlines have. It’s sort of become the symbol of the way the sequester is inconveniencing people. I mean, I assume the Meals on Wheels, cancer patients, and Head Start things are bad too, but I haven’t heard about them before you mentioned it. I watch NBC news every night and they haven’t talked about it that I can remember. So fixing that stuff is less of a priority because there’s less of a stink being made.
Wasn’t on the news tonight, though. I mean, minority members of Congress can bring up whatever they want. But nothing’s going to happen unless the public complains and the press covers it.
And I think what a lot of people will say is something like, “Isn’t Head Start for poor kids or something? It’s sad for them, I guess, but it’s probably not going to affect me.”, but meanwhile, that same person might contemplate travelling for business or going on vacation or something like that, and airport delays are going to be a problem for them, so they’re going to make a big deal about it, especially when there are news reports about how people have to sit on the runway for 2 hours before they can take off.
Once again, the “haves”*** making sure they get theirs, while the “have nots” get trod under foot.
*the “haves” being not just congress, but those who are fortunate enough to have delayed flights be something that is a relevant and important issue.
Look, it’s not optimal but clearly congress has been dysfunctional for a long time. The sequester cut everything, good and bad. They will now find out and hang if they individually obstruct funding to specific popular programs the public truly cares about. If their jobs aren’t threatened by the lack of say Head Start funding, why is it their fault? Apparently Americans don’t really care enough in large enough numbers to force it.
Don’t care enough? Or don’t own the television stations or choose the “news”?
There’s a news anchor here who has started using the newscast as his personal blog. During our recent rainstorm, he took a camera crew around his flooded basement. Last night he had the crew at a gas station next to his car, “reporting” on what he, personally, was paying for gas.
I know lots of terrified people who care very much about losing their Meals on Wheels and preschools for their grandchildren. They don’t, however, own camera crews. Suckers.
Color me confused. I thought that Meals on Wheels was volunteer operated and donor financed. That’s the way it was always presented to me.
As to Head Start, my SO and I are childfree and nothing will ever change. We both firmly believe that our future depends on educating the young people who will be in charge of our health care in 20 years. We NEED an educated population and education starts early.
Head Start not only benefits children, but it helps working parents to actually work by providing low-cost child-care. Not being able to work seriously screws up the family. Much more so than waiting for a delayed flight.
It makes sense that it would be represented to you that way because I don’t know of many non-profits that like to wear government funding on their sleeves. A pride thing.
According to their website, they get at least some government funding.
I wonder if people who think the sequester is a good way of trimming fat from the federal budget are going to be increasing their charitable donations. Or maybe they think the trimmings will just shrivel up and disappear.
The sequester was put in place with the idea that there would be a set of budget cuts so misguided, so fucked up, that Congress would be forced to come together and cut $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A truly dubious idea, made necessary only because of Republican hostage taking with the debt ceiling.
Here’s an idea Boehner: Just do your freaking job. You pass a budget, the Senate passes a budget, the President proposes a budget then you get together in a big room and cut a deal. Before Gingrich, Congress did that for 200+ years without drama.
Oh, and I’m not so thrilled with other examples of mandating piss-poor policy. Let’s make a list. Remember, these cuts were made without planning so inefficiencies in implementation are guarenteed. And no, it’s not because this is “The government” or even “Congress”. It has to do with the inserting of talk radio posturing into the Republican clown show:
Aircraft purchases by the Air Force and Navy are cut by $3.5 billion.
Military operations across the services are cut by about $13.5 billion.
Military research is cut by $6.3 billion.
The National Institutes of Health get cut by $1.6 billion.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are cut by about $323 million.
Border security is cut by about $581 million.
Immigration enforcement is cut by about $323 million.
Airport security is cut by about $323 million.
Head Start gets cut by $406 million, kicking 70,000 kids out of the program.
FEMA’s disaster relief budget is cut by $375 million.
Public housing support is cut by about $1.94 billion.
The FDA is cut by $206 million.
NASA gets cut by $970 million.
Special education is cut by $840 million.
The Energy Department’s program for securing our nukes is cut by $650 million.
The National Science Foundation gets cut by about $388 million.
The FBI gets cut by $480 million.
The federal prison system gets cut by $355 million.
State Department diplomatic functions are cut by $650 million.
Global health programs are cut by $433 million; the Millenium Challenge Corp. sees a $46 million cut, and USAID a cut of about $291 million.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cut by $55 million.
The SEC is cut by $75.6 million.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is cut by $2.6 million.
The Library of Congress is cut by $31 million.
The Patent and Trademark office is cut by $156 million.
Let’s see research, securing nuclear bombs, prisons, the CDC, NASA, the state department, the SEC (remember the financial crisis? Me neither) nuclear power plant regulation (including approvals, presumably) and the patent office have the tap abruptly shut. Fucking incompetence guarenteed.
Ignorance fought, thank you. I’ve always worked for small rescue groups who do rely on charity and if we manage to get a grant or something from the government, we brag.
This bites even more than I thought. I’m going to call the local Meals on Wheels on Monday. I’ve recently moved so haven’t remembered to start donating pet food. Not for the home bound to eat, but because they often give their pets their food and I want the pets and the humans to eat well.
BTW, welcome to the Dope. What a depressing way to meet.
Minor local controversy: some bureaucrat decided that county-funded medical prescriptions could only be filled at pharmacies associated with a medical clinic or hospital. An indigent patient can no longer go to the supermarket, or CVS, but has to go to a clinic pharmacy.
This seriously hurts the indigent, as clinics are few and far between, and this adds a long nasty bus trip to the business of filling a prescription.
The good news is that the regulation will probably be overturned…because it is opposed by the supermarkets and CVS. The bureaucrat erred in making a rule that hurt big business and the poor, rather than just the poor alone.
Thanks for the welcome! I’m extremely excited to find a place like this, and I hope to contribute well.
I will admit that the “government funding” thing may have been a bit of a projection. Some time ago I volunteered for a local meals-on-wheels type organization and in the orientation they went out of their way to say that they refuse government funding. It does make good sense that non-profits would be stoked about government recognition, though.
Head Start is a program which has a very large positive “return on investment” to government collectively, at least in the long term. Head Starters become productive taxpayers instead of drains on law enforcement and welfare. (My disgust with Dick Cheney grew when I realized killing Head Start was one of his high priorities as a Congressman.)
Another giant profit center affected by the sequester is the IRS.
How much flexibility is Obama given in implementing the sequester? There was talk of allowing flexibility, but fear that Obama would get credit if he managed the cutting intelligently. (Not that flexibility might help a lot – many programs were already cut to the bone.)
The party that keep bleating that government is incompetent and cannot do anything right has just proven that they are correct. By the simple expedient of wrecking the government from the inside.
Wonder if they’ll have the stones to make that a selling point for the midterm elections. “We’re the guys who brought you the sequester!”
Which— actually could be exactly it. They don’t intend to do shit about it and they know it’ll be brought up, so it’s time to start pre-spinning it as a positive.
