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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Frumple]

Aren't private prisons completely tax-funded anyway? Where else is the money coming from?

At least some comes from prison labor. One of the reasons I massively fucking hate privatized prisons is that a fair amount of them are making part of their profit off of penal slavery. Give a mo' and I'll see if I can't dig back up one of the articles that was posted to b12 about it.Bleh. No luck, and it's too late/early to keep looking. In the meantime, check the wiki page, especially some of the citations.

[Lord Shonus]

No, I can't say that really is even remotely part of it here. It leans more mental health issue then anything.

And how people with mental health issues are allowed to purchase firearms

Technically, people with known mental health issues aren't generally able to pass the background check. The issue is that many firearms transactions have loopholes avoiding said check, and the poor state of mental health care in this country means that such issues are often misdiagnosed.

[misko27]

9 days until the US government shuts down. The Senate is wokring hard on re-writing the bill that will fund the government, and Obamacare, for the next 3 months. Assuming no Filibuser (which is highly unlikely) it should take 3 days. With a filibuster, 4 or 5, 6 tops.

[10ebbor10]

Again?

Yeez, no point in placing a deadline if you're not going to use it.

But yeah, said it before, in some ways the US's current situation is worse than that of Greece.

[Redzephyr01]

9 days until the US government shuts down.

What.

[10ebbor10]

9 days until the US government shuts down.

What.

For some reason, the US has a debt ceiling. One which has almost been reached. (And will be reached in 9 days).

Now congress needs to raise it, and if they don't , then the government runs out of money. Republicans however, only want to raise it in exchange for cuts. Preferably, the entire Obama Care system.

[FearfulJesuit]

The cynic in me wants the Republicans to have their way. The electorate will turn out in force in 2014 against them if they do.

However, the results would be bad. Probably, very bad. Likely enough to cause a double-dip recession, IIRC.

[GreatJustice]

The Senate is gonna send it back to the House, the House will be completely surprised that the Democratic Senate didn't gut their own bill, the Republicans in the House will posture for a while, Obama will talk about how the sky is going to fall, and then they'll pass the budget and life will go on as usual.

[misko27]

The Senate is gonna send it back to the House, the House will be completely surprised that the Democratic Senate didn't gut their own bill, the Republicans in the House will posture for a while, Obama will talk about how the sky is going to fall, and then they'll pass the budget and life will go on as usual.

Well yes, this is sorta the best option. 2 problems though. One, they're pretty bad with hard dead-lines. Last time we had this it actually was a couple minutes after. Fortunately, this isn't a "Rock fall, everybody dies" moment, they don't even turn the lights off at midnight, but that leads to: Two: Immediately after this we have a entirely different cliff, the Debt ceiling, and this one manages to have far more dangerous consequences, that is, a total default on US debt. Immediately following the government's shutdown/not-shutdown on Oct 1, we have until around Oct 16th. That's far less time then this one has had to stew, and unlike the previous, if this were to go even a hour beyond our not entirely clear limit, we DO have a problem


Sure it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it'd make the only one we got significantly less pleasant.

[Digital Hellhound]

So, how did US politics get this fucked up in the first place?

[da_nang]

So, how did US politics get this fucked up in the first place?

The budget plan agreement problem or the debt accumulation problem? The former is /politics while the latter is systemic. From what I can tell anyways.

[Bauglir]

You've got two groups in power, each of whose members want to game the system for personal gain while making token efforts to satisfy the demands of the people in order to keep on getting the opportunity to do that. They've both got a vested interest in keeping things running, and in doing what their particular slice of the public says they want done, but that's the limit of their altruism. Recently, however, the Republicans elected a batch of people who're more interested in crashing the system than gaming it, largely out of frustration with the degree to which it's been exploited. This is the most charitable I can be about the whole thing.

EDIT: Before, keeping things running took precedence over bowing to public whims for both parties, because the important thing always was the gravy train. What I mean by "interested in crashing the system" is, you're stuck in a situation where a large part of the Republican votes want to force sweeping changes that they think will fix everything no matter how complex it really is, and the only alternative in their eyes is to break it all if they don't get their way. As far as they're concerned, it's not worth having a government if it's not the one they want. And a lot of those changes will likely break the economy anyway, so there's no good outcome.

It's a stupid response, but it's to a very real problem of corruption. Rejecting compromise is, admittedly, a rejection of one of the major contributions that allowed that problem to exist in the first place, and it's definitely emotionally satisfying, but it's the worst possible way to go if your goal is to actually make things better. It's been a long time since we've had politicians so invested in their principles that they take priority over maintenance of the status quo. It's just that they also take priority over the welfare of their constituents.

[misko27]

So, how did US politics get this fucked up in the first place?

The budget plan agreement problem or the debt accumulation problem? The former is /politics while the latter is systemic. From what I can tell anyways.

You've got two groups in power, each of whose members want to game the system for personal gain while making token efforts to satisfy the demands of the people in order to keep on getting the opportunity to do that. They've both got a vested interest in keeping things running, and in doing what their particular slice of the public says they want done, but that's the limit of their altruism. Recently, however, the Republicans elected a batch of people who're more interested in crashing the system than gaming it, largely out of frustration with the degree to which it's been exploited. This is the most charitable I can be about the whole thing.

To be honest though, they really only care about Obamacare. They actually passed a bill that kept everything else, even the things they don't like, perfectly intact, it's only Obamacare they hate enough. And as always, I don't like people who hand wave the parties as "nothing more then copies of each other", any more then I like people who think they are complete and total enemies, one of which (pick whichever) that wants to DESTROY AMERICA.


And the debt ceiling itself, is perfectly arbitrary. There is a debt problem, but they plan to force the government to not be able to pay it's debts. Totally arbitrary, it's something that is passed regularly.

[Bauglir]

Hey, don't get me wrong. Their demographics demand very different things, and I identify with one of them more than the other by a significant margin (if that somehow weren't obvious). The parties certainly aren't identical, but their leaders more or less are, at least when it comes to how many shits they give about the people that elected them. Similarly, nobody in political office wants to destroy America, either, because they presumably want to continue holding that office. My claim is that anybody who manages to get elected to a Federal office, with few exceptions, is going to be very good at self-interest, and that's going to produce people with very similar priorities.

The Tea Party is basically a gigantic fluke - for a little while, it was more in your interests to ignore the consequences of your actions in favor of standing up to the status quo, just for the sake of standing up to it. I'll be honest, maybe it still is - that wave of elections granted a disturbing level of legitimacy to the strategy. Either way, just about the one thing worse to give power over government than the Mafia is the Inquisition. Only one of those mobs will consider negotiation.

[FearfulJesuit]

We all know the GOP's being pushed as far right as it can go by various think-tanks and interests...but who are they? The Atlantic takes a look at the rise and bizarre fall of the Heritage Foundation, who now more than ever are the face of the GOP's inability to get its act together.

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz goes insane again and pisses off his own party in a 21-hour filibuster in which he treats Washington to a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.