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[werechicken]

The soviets got mainly lower placed people, mainly because most of the best scientists wanted to surrender to the American army

Which is the main strength of a democracy, it may move at a snails pace unless it's reacting to something, but you can usually count on it to treat people at least semi-humanely.

And hopefully that gets us back on topic

[RedKing]

Colbert on cutting the defense budget.

"The defense budget cannot get cut because making instruments of destruction is as American as napalm pie."

[RedKing]

It's baaaaaack.....

Remember that two-week extension that passed? Well, the two weeks will be up on Friday, and they still haven't passed a budget. As I dreaded, they're working right now on passing another extension rather than an actual budget. However, even that is running into problems. This blurb from a CSM article kinda sums up how bad it is:

House Republicans are set to put forward a new short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Its toughest opponents? House Republicans.

They're currently debating the next budget band-aid bill (H.J.Res.48). If a Tea Party revolt kills attempts to pass it, I believe the government is slated to shutdown as of midnight Friday night. I might have a lot of free time on my hands next week....

[Nadaka]

Yeh... My boss still hasn't told me what is supposed to happen then.

Everything we do is for the DoD. I believe that only logistics will be funded as a part of the war effort. R&D, where I work won't be able to charge to our project codes...

It could end up being an unpaid "vacation".

[RedKing]

Yeh... My boss still hasn't told me what is supposed to happen then.

Everything we do is for the DoD. I believe that only logistics will be funded as a part of the war effort. R&D, where I work won't be able to charge to our project codes...

It could end up being an unpaid "vacation".

Yeah, we got an email from upper management stating that "we are aware of the situation and are monitoring carefully, and will issue further communications in the event of a government shutdown". 

So....you sent an email to say that you'll send an email? You know how many electrons died for that non-message?



In other news, Kenny Marchant (R-TX) appears to have resigned his committee membership, in what looks like a protest but it's unclear over what. Something to do with H.Con.Res.30, which there's no text or summary available of (I'm groking the raw floor summary from the House to see what's going on). And now they're busy electing his replacement. Either this is a protest move, or some bizarre procedural move to chew up time?

In any case, nothing's getting passed today it looks like. And whatever passes would still have to be passed by the Senate.
EDIT: Nevermind. They passed it, although 54 Republicans voted against and 85 Democrats voted for, which is the only reason it passed (271-158). 3 more weeks, and $6 billion more in spending cuts. Last time around there were only 6 Republicans against. This is only going to get tougher with each band-aid, as both popular opinion and a number of politicians go, "This is stupid, let's fix the damn budget already." Marchant's resignation makes a lot more sense now.

New Budget Armageddon date (presuming this passes the Senate): April 8.

[RedKing]

Time for our next installment of "The Thread That Won't Die, Because Congress Can't Get Their *&^* Together".

When we left our heroes last time, they had narrowly managed to defeat the impending Budget Beast by passing a continuing resolution that would fund the Federal government until April 8.

*checks calendar*

OH SHIZNAT...that's this Friday.

And each time we go through this crap, it gets harder. Why? Because the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Cuts to funding to research sea slug mating habits? That sort of stuff was on the chopping block early on. Now we're talking real cuts to real programs and services that impact a lot of people. Which makes lawmakers a lot more skittish about voting to "kill Big Bird" (i.e. defund PBS and NPR, which is one of the cuts on the table now).

Plus, you have the Tea Party caucus that increasingly feels like they're losing by degrees, and would rather shut the government down than settle for less than they wanted. The Democrats are taking increasing flak for allowing more and more programs to face the axe. And the Republican establishment is caught in the middle, accused of "selling out" by trying to compromise towards a weaker overall budget cut, while also trying to avoid the narrative that this is 1995 all over again, and that if the government shuts down, it'll be the GOP's fault and they'll catch hell for it at the ballot box next year.

So far, the House hasn't passed a new budget resolution. What they did pass, was an amusing little bill (H.R. 1215) called the "Government Shutdown Protection Act of 2011" which basically just says, "If the Senate doesn't notifiy us that they've passed a budget by April 6, then the budget bill we passed way back at the beginning of the session (H.R. 1), with it's $50 billion in cuts that NOBODY outside the Cloudcuckooland Caucus supported, and which the Senate refused to even discuss and which the President said he would veto...goes into law immediately." Oh, and there's some bit in there about the President and Congress not getting paid if there's more than a 24-hour interruption in government funding.

Nice try at a Xanatos Gambit, except they forgot to read the manual (which seems to be a running theme for the Tea Partiers. For people who claim to be all about the Constitution, they sure as hell don't seem to have read it). The House can't DO that. But it does make for some nice soundbites come election time next year. "My opponent voted AGAINST the Government Shutdown Protection Act, and voted to KEEP GETTING PAID even when the government shut down. Ergo, my opponent is a greedy rat bastard."

Or, "I voted for the Government Shutdown Protection Act, but those evil, baby-munching Democrats and their Quisling Republican collaborationists and the activist judges on the Supreme Court struck it down and arrived at a compromise that didn't cut nearly as much of the budget as it needed."

[Chunes]

Here are some sensible ideas to fix the economy:

1. The biggest and most obvious thing we could do is stop flushing $400,000,000,000.00 per year down the drain for no reason. This is merely the interest on the national debt. It literally goes to nothing material. Think of all that could be accomplished with that much money. I'd say that at the moment, personal incomes need to be increased by about that amount to stave off cataclysm.

2. In order to facilitate this refusal to waste money, the government would issue its own currency. You may be surprised to learn that it does not currently do this, but instead pays interest to the Federal Reserve for all money created. Furthermore, the government must go above and beyond merely issuing its own money and refuse any debt-infused currency. This would eliminate inflation, thereby negating the ammunition the rich use to keep the poor down. Saving would now mean something, rather than nothing.

3. Eliminate interest. Money should reflect value. Money is the tool, not the master. That means that society gets to decide what society values and not money. Therefore, it should be obvious to all inhabitants that we do not value the property whereby a million dollars can easily produce $60,000.00 per year through literally no effort. It should enrage Americans that the rich make millions by doing nothing while the rest of us slave away at demeaning jobs for pocket change. This will have the extremely desirable property of allowing the poor to build wealth and also will make it harder for the rich to keep egregious amounts of it.

4. Eliminate the war hawk stranglehold on the federal budget. Appoint someone with balls to clean up the obvious corruptions of the military complex, but make sure the livelihoods of people who depend on that income remains intact in some form. After all, this pointless hoarding, at its root, is because people feel insecure about their sustenance. Remove any doubt that it will be forthcoming. There's no need to perpetuate the cycle of pettiness.

5. Alter the legal definition of corporations. Currently, they enjoy the rights of individuals without any of the liability. It's incredible simple: either make them liable or limit their rights.

6. Wealth caps for all individuals and corporations.

7. Banking outlawed.

[Criptfeind]

I am sorry, you really had some good points, although very heavily slanted away from what I believe, but did you just say we should do something akin to printing out way out of debit and… Saying that any money is worthless… And… Something…. Something, magic away interest?'

To summarize:

1: How?

2: What?

3: How?

4: Yeah. Most likely a good idea, but I always wonder what the long term effects of such a action would be. Hopefully good, but maybe not.

[Nadaka]

Yeh. There are only 2 ways to stop paying interest on the debt.

1: pay it off early.
That will mean:
a: dramatically raising taxes in the short term to pay it off.
b: dramatically slash funding to all other areas of the federal budget in a time of an already nearly crippling shortfall.

2: default on it.
That would pretty much screw over the entire worlds economy (even more so) and make use a fiscal pariah.

None of these are really possible without toppling our government.

[Chunes]

I get the impression many people assume 'national debt' means money owed to other nations, when that simply is not the case.

The simple fact of the matter is that no government can be expected to remain solvent. Currency, as it exists now, is a funny thing. The money supply is mathematically designed to be slightly smaller than the debt. That's why all this talk about repaying the debt is irrelevant. That's not the problem. The way currency is designed is.

[Criptfeind]

Your obviously a crazy person then.

[Chunes]

Oh, I try to get people to listen to reason. It seems obvious to me that money possesses the arbitrary properties which we assign it. Most others assume money is an immutable fact of existence.

[Criptfeind]

No. They don't. No one seriously thinks that. We act as if it is so because it does not work if we go around saying "Oh hey! I got a piece of paper that says it is worth 50 arbitrary units! How about some goods and/or services? I am sure you can trade it for more goods and/or services later!"

Edit: What exactly are you suggesting as a alternative? Cause there is a reason we don't barter with rocks anymore.

[Nadaka]

Your obviously a crazy person then.

I vaguely recall this is some of the stuff they talked about in zeitgeist.

[Earthquake Damage]

stuff

I'll only address the parts that don't leave me going "lolwut?"

4.  The military industrial complex is very well entrenched.  Any effort to root it out will necessarily cause collateral damage, politically and economically.

7.  Well-established, healthy financial systems have a strong correlation with economic growth.  Economic growth is a good thing, both in theory and in reality.  Hell, with no financial industry there can be no electronic transactions.  That alone would have a very broad and serious impact on life as you know it.

EDIT:  I don't like to knowingly (key word) be a dickhead, but I'll go ahead and unload both barrels.

FYI Chunes:  You are not a uniquely rational and brilliant person.  You are not the first person to think such "revolutionary" tripe would cure the world's ills.  The rest of the world's best and brightest, a group to which you almost certainly do not belong (by statistical likelihood alone), are not merely corrupt benefactors of the system (because why else wouldn't they already be enacting your superior policies).  You are as ignorant and short-sighted as anyone else (myself included, and how!).  When you're done extolling the virtues of your latest brainchild, please step off your podium and join the rest of us here on the ground.  The world doesn't look so deceptively simple from down here.

EDIT 2:  Botched my first edit.  Overwrote instead of appended.  :/