ALERT: "Shutdown" is a state of exception when the government gets to do things it normally can’t do
Essentially Vicious
By AARON BADY
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.................... A shutdown is a moment in which a choice gets made about which laws to obey and which laws to ignore, when the government gets to decide that some people are essential and some people aren’t.
This is a choice, a choice that happened long before Ted Cruz was a thing we had to know about. This is a choice the government made. Republicans believe that WIC should be de-funded and the EPA should close down, and while the Democrats say they disagree, they were willing to compromise, temporarily, as long as everyone agreed that the important stuff, the essential stuff, would continue.
Partisans can’t see this, even the smart ones. And sure, republicans who think it was all Obama’s intransigence that caused this are living in fantasy land. But it takes two to tango, and the Democrats have plenty of blood on their hands, enough that it doesn’t really matter who has more. Ted Cruz gets to play maniac, and the DNC gets to play its favorite role, the reasonable liberal who doesn’t actually have the power to do anything. When the Tea-Party took a hostage, the Democrats said, “Go Ahead. Make my day.”
Seriously. If a government shutdown meant that planes would be grounded, it would never have happened. If a government shutdown meant the NSA would turn off the lights, not a single Republican would have signed on. If it meant that soldiers would stop killing, that police would stop putting people in jail, or that any of the many things that the government does to keep the economy running would come to a halt, it would be a cold day in hell before Ted Cruz would make himself the face of the shutdown. But the Office of Management and Budget helpfully requires every federal agency to have a plan for all the important stuff to continue, if ever there’s a shutdown. They must distinguish between essential services and inessential services, between the government functions that matter and those that don’t. That means that when the Republicans threaten to blow up the government if they don’t get everything they want, they know that the technocrats won’t let them hurt anyone who matters. The OMB won’t let them hurt the business community, or wreck the economy, or imperil America’s status as world’s warmonger. They know that poor people will suffer the most, and rich people will suffer the least. There are some things that transcend partisan divisiveness.
the rest:
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/essentially-vicious/