How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

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How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by JimC » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:00 am

Seriously, US dudes, just the fact that your political system lets this happen is completely fucking stupid. I'm not talking about the particular issues at the moment, or the usual democrat/republican infighting.

It's as if you as a country have an urge to self harm, often part of seriously neurotic behaviour in individual humans.

Let's see, what form will the "yebbut freedom..." argument take this time... :roll:
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Svartalf » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:30 am

I don't get how this is even possible... then again, with our rump parliament, there's virtually no chance of OUR budget not being voted.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:45 am

It certainly is fucking bizarre.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Rum » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:48 am

The executive is too close to the administration in my view. Here in the UK, whatever the faults of our system the 'Civil Service' actually runs the country and they carry out whatever idiotic policy the current government want them to. They curb some of their excesses and encourage boldness in other areas. In my last job I had contact with some of those guys on the education side. They were pretty impressive on the whole.

In the USA a new administration brings with it, what seems to me to be a whole bunch of new heads of the big state departments. Besides anything else it seems very inefficient if they have to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of it all every four years. The thought of a Prime Minister here 'shutting down' government in a temper tantrum is totally off the wall. I'm sure - I know - it would not be possible.

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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Hermit » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:48 am

JimC wrote:
Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:00 am
Seriously, US dudes, just the fact that your political system lets this happen is completely fucking stupid. I'm not talking about the particular issues at the moment, or the usual democrat/republican infighting.

It's as if you as a country have an urge to self harm, often part of seriously neurotic behaviour in individual humans.

Let's see, what form will the "yebbut freedom..." argument take this time... :roll:
To be fair, Malcolm Fraser did that in 1975, and he did that before he even became Prime Minister.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Animavore » Sat Dec 22, 2018 10:36 am

I'm reading government workers aren't getting paid over Christmas because of this. I didn't realise a shutdown meant not a single bit of work would be done anywhere within the government.

That's a cunt move.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Tero » Sat Dec 22, 2018 12:14 pm

It’s like writing checks and then the bank refusing to cash them. ”Come back next month.”
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by tattuchu » Sat Dec 22, 2018 2:47 pm

And the solution to constructing Trump's wall is so simple anyway: just build it out of Hillary's e-mails, since clearly no one can get over them :tea:
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Svartalf » Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:00 pm

:funny:
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by laklak » Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:20 pm

:funny:

Good one Tatt.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by laklak » Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:36 pm

As usual it's complicated.

http://time.com/5099409/what-happens-in ... -shutdown/

As with many of our more questionable governmental traditions, the shut down was originally conceived and implemented by Democrats, who then squealed like stuck piggys when the Republicans turned it against them. The shut down was the brainchild of St. Jimbo Carter, patron saint of the Cluelessly Inept. Prior to 1981 the government just toddled along until Congress bothered to fund it.

Only "non-essential" functions are shut down, with makes one wonder why the government is involved in anything non-essential in the first place.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:08 pm

Carter isn't the mastermind behind the government shutdown in the US, though. It was his attorney general, and he based his legal interpretation not on some Democratic partisan finagling, but on a law that was passed in 1870.
As Jimmy Carter’s attorney general, Civiletti was asked for a legal opinion parsing out what exactly the federal bureaucracy is supposed to do when Congress doesn’t pass a budget by deadline. Congress had missed the mark many times before but the issue was becoming particularly urgent; in the four fiscal years from 1977 to 1980—every year of the Carter presidency to that point—Congress had failed to pass a budget on time. Remarkably, Civiletti determined that Carter’s request for a legal opinion on the matter “apparently represents the first instance in which this Department has been asked formally the address the problem as a matter of law.”

Civiletti based his opinion in the Antideficiency Act of 1870, enacted by Congress to stop the then-routine practice of agencies intentionally overspending, secure in the knowledge that Congress would eventually have to pick up the tab. Writes Civiletti, “On its face, the plain and unambiguous language of the Antideficiency Act prohibits an agency from incurring pay obligations once its authority to expend appropriations lapses.”

Civiletti took a surgeon’s precision—he’d once thought he might become a doctor—to a question that statesmen had left vague and squishy for centuries. The “legal authority for continued operations either exists or it does not,” he writes. And to those who argue that federal agency operations ought to carry on even without appropriated funds because Congress doesn’t mean for the government to shutdown, he responded thusly: “Faithful execution of the laws cannot rest on mere speculation that Congress does not want the Executive branch to carry out Congress’ unambiguous mandates.”

[source]

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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by laklak » Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:19 pm

He was Carter's AG, therefore it's Carter's fault. That's conventional wisdom, innit? Whoever is President is responsible for anything and everything that happens on their watch.
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Joe » Sat Dec 22, 2018 5:30 pm

Or we could blame U. S. Grant, since the law was passed on his watch, but I blame Congress and the President together.

I mean, they have one job.... :x
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Re: How idiotic is a country that shuts itself down

Post by Svartalf » Sat Dec 22, 2018 5:34 pm

and that job is to keep the country running, if they can't managed it, they ought to be ex post facto impeached en masse and new elections set up to find suitable replacements
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