Well, big surprise, they did it! The Money Party is in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy with the failure to come to an agreement on spending cuts. Now the sequester Frankenstein hits the streets. This link takes you to an interactive map. Scroll down, click on your state, and you will see what goes right away. These are government jobs. The ripple effect into private sector jobs is next if this process continues.
Of course, small business will be hit hard. Main street will take a beating.
But here’s the sleeper issue. 100 to 160 regional airports will be closing within the next two weeks. Why Those closed are among the 240 smaller airports with contractors serving as air traffic controllers. So if you have a ticket to any of these airports, good luck: Naples, FL; Macon, GA; Sioux City, IA; Columbia, MO; Hilton Head, SC; Everett, WA; or several of the major Executive airports. And, here’s a map of delayed flights.
Too bad we can’t sequester congressional pay checks until they fix this.
Well, when the house and senate (all elected officials[loose use of term officials]) are elected; and then permitted to do as their real keepers want; what the hell do people expect?
I’ve railed and railed about responsibility; not of the elected but of the electorate.
The main reason (IMO) we’re going down is because we refuse to get up off our collective asses and fix the damn system.
But then that begs the question; who actually understands the system? The electorate? A resounding, hell no! They have no idea and look to the thieves to protect them from the thieves.
Talk about a cluster fuck; there is no solution to this circular cycle of the uneducated/uninvolved. The beauty of freedom of speech also includes the freedom to be stupid and functionally illiterate.
Which is of course, exactly what the elected’s bosses want.
In it’s own way; it’s quite elegant; the perfect non-solution to perpetuate the maintenance of the status quo.
That ship has sailed.
The system has been co-opted. All my life I have seen good people struggle to correct it, and all that has been accomplished so far is for the system to develop new ways to resist the people’s attempts to improve it. (Culminating in “free speech zones” surrounded by barbed wire and armed goons, no-fly lists for political activists, indefinite detention and torture of government whistleblowers, etc.) For the purposes of the First Amendment, money is now speech, but speech is not.
How do you propose to reform this thing we have, short of lynching them a few at a time until the remaining ones begin to see the light?
Elect fools and they behave foolishly. You’re right.
Howeer, when you have a choice between a right wingnut and a moderate Republican who embraces the national security state, you choice is between two candidates with 3 degrees of separation. Our system, much like the Iranian democracy, vets candidates for conformity. AS a result, the system works against real change.
Those 35% to 60% who choose not to vote have a valid point and make a strong, albeit, ignore statement. There is no choice for responsible voters to make the way things are set up.
Until we go to public financing of elections and ranked choice voting, we are going to get the kind of government we pay for – which is broken and dysfunctional. I don’t see any hope short of another revolution.
Right. But we can’t get there from here. Public financing would be a huge fix but it can’t happen with the system as it is because that would be political suicide for those in power.
I live in Columbia, MO. This has been getting a lot of local air play. But we’re the Godless Hippie city of Missouri, so no one cares.
Too many smart people there. But if it’s a business destination, and it must be with the U there, folks will get ticked off
.
Maybe this shut down prospect (from the FAA list linked in post)…
The other interesting development are the several “executive” airports mid city in major destinations across the country. Those on corporate jets would be very inconvenienced.
(Absent User Diaries I treat all Front Page Posts as Open Threads. Sorry)
Beppe Grillo says Italy may soon have to pull out of euro
Actually the more I hear about this guy the better I like him. He has taken himself out of the running for Italy’s prime minister because he has a felony conviction for manslaughter from 30ish (?) years ago. He is refusing to work with either the so-called center-left or the right wing coalitions. The people he got elected to parliament are all ordinaryish types of citizens rather than career politicians, and other stuff that I forget.
Anyway now this. The guy seems to get it that the Greek crisis is caused by Greece not having it’s own currency to manage a devaluing of its internal labor markets via currency devaluation. That is one of Italy’s own problems at the moment and one solution is to have it’s own currency. Plus just the hint of such a solution drives the German and other Euro-nuts crazy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9904270/Beppe-Grillo-says-Italy-may-soon-have-to-pull-out-of-euro.html