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True Inequivalency
Author: Raine    Date: 10/02/2013 13:45:05

Via the Daily Banter:
The folks over at Think Progress have a story up noting how the mainstream media are bringing their typical “pox on both your houses” approach to reporting on a government shutdown caused by House Republicans’ temper tantrum over Obamacare. (snip)

(W)we wondered how headlines about historical events might look if the American media applied the same false equivalency. A few possibilities:

“Whodunit? John Wilkes Booth, Mary Todd Lincoln both just inches away when president was shot”

“FDR’s refusal to negotiate prompts Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor”

“Distrust between Nixon, Dems leads to burglary at Watergate”

“Al Qaeda, Bush administration trade blame over twin towers’ collapse; Bin Laden faults buildings’ design”
That's really it in a nut shell, isn't it? The idea that both sides are to blame has been making my eyes twitch of late, and I believe what the Banter did here was demolish this false equivalency meme. I felt better after reading this.

The other meme I heard a lot about yesterday went something like this 'If Obamacare is so good then why is Congress exempted?'
or another variation: 'Why are they trying to get out of Obamacare if it's so great?' Putting aside that the GOP shouldn't be using an existing law for extortion -- those questions are being asked because people are being lied to. It's pants on fire proportions:
When the health care law was being written in 2009 and 2010, Republicans proposed requiring that lawmakers and their staffers obtain insurance through the exchanges, arguing that if the law was good enough for ordinary Americans, then it was good enough for Congress.

Presumably fearing a public backlash if they refused, Democrats accepted the language, and it became part of the law.

The problem arose in the drafting of the law. For most Americans who have employer-based insurance, the employer pays a majority of the cost of insurance. But the version of the health care bill signed into law doesn’t include an explicit mechanism to allow the federal government to pay its employer share of congressional employees’ health insurance if they use the exchanges, now called marketplaces. (Here’s a rundown of how this drafting error occurred.)
Here we have, once again, the GOP playing political games that only end up hurting regular people, particularly staff members on the hill that generally don't make the same kind of money as elected officials. Some are looking at upwards of $12,000 in pay cuts because of this nonsense.
Because while members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year, most of their staff members make a fraction of that. In the case of a lower-paid staffer who is supporting a family, the loss of the employer share could amount to a 20 percent cut or more from the total compensation package.

In fact, at the lower salary levels, it could qualify congressional staffers for generous tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act or even make them eligible for Medicaid, depending on which state they live in and whether they have families.
Public servants, quality good people who choose to work for our government have become nothing but pawns in the GOP's political game. That is sad. We can pay the military but not federal workers? What is wrong with us?
Every single federal worker who contributes to the relatively smooth functioning of the state is indisputably engaged in that project. No one subset of this workforce should receive special treatment, as if their job is somehow more critical to serving the Constitution. The woman who helps safeguard America’s electrical grid keeps me free. The man at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent dangerous financial products from damaging the economy also defends this country. The scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency providing data on the catastrophic effects of climate change bears a tremendous burden for our future as a planet. They aren’t in the military. They are no less critical to our society.

Moreover, as Heather Hurlburt of the National Security Network recently pointed out, military operations increasingly rely on civilians, to help with supply lines, travel orders, mess hall activities, intelligence gathering and much more. Paying military service members during the shutdown is actually paying the defense industry to pretend like they’re working. It’s not for nothing that the Pentagon spent $5 billion on weapons the night before the shutdown, before the logistical support staff all vanished.

The GOP shut down the government because they can't be bothered to send a Clean Resolution bill to the Senate. This bill would, as previously stated, simply say that our nation would pay the bills for things already spent. It's not like they haven't done this before. As a matter of fact, it was the House GOP that demanded just that in 2010.
The 23 then-minority Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee all signed a letter demanding that Congress only pass a continuing resolution that was “clean” and “free of any extraneous spending or policy provisions.”
The committee Republicans, fourteen of whom are still in the House, wrote:
We have serious and growing concerns about the process and composition of any potential CR… At a time of extreme spending and political fatigue, it is simply unacceptable to use a must-pass CR as a legislative vehicle for more wasteful federal spending or completing an array of unfinished political business before the election.
I guess this time they aren't worried about November elections. Perhaps they believe we will forget come 2014. Either way, all that is needed right now is for a clean CR. and then we can get government running again, until October 17. On that day we hit the debt ceiling deadline. We'll get to go thru this chaos all over again.

I suppose it is easier for people to say both sides do it. It abdicates responsibility of understanding what really is happening in our -- the Americans people's -- name. The problem is that when that responsibility is abdicated, those that would abuse power will do horrible things, like shutting down our representative democratic republic. The people are being dictated by a small and radical group of House members that are no longer doing the will of the people as dictated by our nations Constitution.

This is not patriotic. As I said yesterday: Don't call yourself a patriot and celebrate the fact that one party just shut down our government. Real patriots fought and died to make sure we had a nation and that included the ratification of our Constitution so we could HAVE a government.

Real patriots don't celebrate a party that ignores the Constitution.

Congress has a constitutionally defined job. Part of that job is to pay the bills. They failed -- on purpose -- to do so.

Some might just call that sedition.

and
Raine
 

85 comments (Latest Comment: 10/03/2013 00:55:37 by Raine)
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