List of Legislation Passed by the House to End the Government Shutdown
Yesterday during remarks to reporters, President Obama said no party has a monopoly on good ideas and demanded the House of Representatives reopen the government. He also reiterated his stance that he will not negotiate over the budget or the debt ceiling and told Congress to "do its job" to fund the government.But the fact is, the House of Representatives has already passed more than a dozen pieces of legislation funding the government. Here is a list courtesy of Speaker John Boehner's office:
AP poll: Obama at 37% approval
Readers have to get halfway into the Associated Press report on its new AP-GFK poll to find this out, but Barack Obama’s job approval numbers have cratered in the shutdown. His overall job approval is now 37/53, and a majority want Obama to start cooperating more with Republicans, as 63% want Republicans to meet Obama part-way, too......The amusing headline in this instance is “GOP gets the blame in shutdown.” However, the data shows that plenty of blame is being heaped on all sides, by all sides...
Reid wants to hike debt limit by $1T
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is moving legislation to push the debt limit until Dec. 31, 2014, well beyond next year’s midterm election.Senate aides estimate the bill would increase federal borrowing authority by about $1.1 trillion.
Our Peevish President
It’s within his power to avoid the ludicrous scenes of this “shutdown.”
By Charles C W Cooke....Traditionally, the answer is that every effort is made to inconvenience people as little as is humanly possible.
Not this time. In Wisconsin, the Journal Sentinel reported early in the week, the federal Park Service “ordered state officials to close the northern unit of the Kettle Moraine, Devil’s Lake, and Interstate state parks and the state-owned portion of the Horicon Marsh, but state authorities rebuffed the request because the lion’s share of the funding came from state, not federal coffers.” Here, the federal government wasn’t so much regretfully informing the public that the money had run dry as it was attempting to remove its Royal blessing from a local Lord who does not rely on it. Nobody who genuinely recognizes government as the deferential servant of a naturally free people would view the state this way. Peeved Kings, convinced of their divine right and keen to demonstrate the folly of recalcitrant subjects, on the other hand, most certainly would. “It’s my party, and you’ll cry if I want you to,” our mandarins in D.C. appeared to say.
Defying government shutdown, national park visitors play 'catch me if you can'
With the US government shutdown well into its second week, growing numbers of Americans are gleefully engaging in what they call “civil disobedience” by tossing aside cones or jumping over government shutdown-inspired barricades around national monuments, malls, and park entrancesGrand Canyon Cites People For Entering Closed Park
All of the citations will be handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Wright says each of the 21 citations issued as of Monday has a mandatory order to appear in federal court.Meet the Group That Just Stepped Up to Do What the Gov’t Is Refusing to Do for Fallen Soldiers
After families of fallen U.S. military personnel were denied benefits due to the government shutdown, the Fisher House Foundation has stepped forward to help cover travel and funeral costs to help families receive the remains of their loved ones who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country......Campbell told TheBlaze Fisher House informed the Department of Defense of their offer, asking that it let families know of the assistance available to them. She said the nonprofit will be speaking with families, personalizing their assistance based on what they need.
The 2013 Battle of Yorktown -- restaurant owner defies feds
....But he also pointed out that even though the building is technically closed – he’s still required to maintain insurance, utilities and rent. He also has to pay for the building’s security system – even though the NPS kicked them out.“I don’t wish to take a stand against my government,” he said. “I’ve always been very proud of my country. [But] I don’t agree with what’s happening. I can no longer abide by what’s happening.”
Seniors Held Under Armed Guard Last Week at Yellowstone National Park
A group of tourists was held under armed guard for hours at Yellowstone National Park last week after the federal government shut down.
As Massachusetts’s Eagle Tribune reports, when a group of four dozen tourists disembarked their bus in the park to photograph a herd of bison, an armed ranger arrived on the scene and ordered them to get back on the bus, telling them they were not allowed to “recreate.”
America, Your Vacation Wonderland!
By Mark Steyn
....The choicest detail is when the lady explains that, during the hours they were stuck in the hotel and prevented by armed guards from walking next door to see Old Faithful, every hour-and-a-half throughout the day, just before the geyser was due to blow, your supposedly “closed” government dispatched a fleet of NPS SUVs to ring the site just in case any of those Japanese or Canadian tourists had managed to break out and was minded to take a non-commissar-approved look at it.
Oh, and stay tuned to the end when she recounts how the Park Service, on the two-and-a-half hour bus journey out of the park to Checkpoint Charlie at the Yellowstone Wall, forbade the seniors from using any of the bathroom facilities en route. If you did that to foreigners you’d captured on the battlefield, it would be in breach of the Geneva Conventions. But, if you seize them in an American park, you can do what you want.
David French is right. This is bigger than the boring process stuff – will Boehner get a deal? (yawn) - that so obsesses the cable yakfests. This pseudo-”shutdown” is about the convergence of the party and the state. For the moment, it’s mostly petty despotism. But despotism rarely stays petty for long.
Almost half a billion for public broadcasting, but nothing for families of fallen troops
The ruling class takes care of its own, but has nothing for those who die in service to the nation. The very partial shutdown of the federal government has served to expose the real values of the Obama administration.NIH Stops Therapy Dogs from Visiting Sick Children
The NIH Clinical Center has stopped therapy dogs from visiting the sick children within its confines because of the government shutdown. In addition, the NIH Center will not enroll new patients in their current studies or clinical trials until the shutdown is over. Normally, 200 people are part of clinical trials every week.Sandcastles? Verboten! Obama Boots Kids’ Sandcastle Contest off Beach
If you thought the Shutdown Follies couldn’t get any more absurd and spiteful, you were quite mistaken.
It was announced today that an annual sandcastle contest on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach has been cancelled out of sheer malice by the Obama administration, despite the fact that the beach on which it is held — part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area — normally has no lifeguards, no rangers, is permanently open to the public, and requires no funds for day-to-day operations...
“We were told that we could be fined for trespassing and that our permit was no longer valid,” the letter said. “We were also told that our event could be shut down by park rangers or by San Francisco police.”
Occupy America! Park Visitors Storm the Barrycades
By Michelle MalkinWelcome to Occupy America. It's a protest movement for all ages against Washington business as usual. Thanks to social media, citizens outside the Beltway are now able to voice their disgust in an unprecedented way. Through Twitter, Facebook and blogs, they are directly disrupting the well-worn politics of government parks-and-wreck extortion.
From closing down parts of the ocean around Florida to booting elderly citizens from their private homes on Lake Mead to shutting down private restaurants and farms that just happen to sit on federal land, the Democrats' overreach has finally backfired.
The explanation for this ridiculous Obama obstructionism can be summed up in one word: Control. Control of the people. Control of the partisan narrative. Monument Syndrome, perfected under the Clinton administration, is about inflicting the most visible pain on citizens to demonize political opponents. Big-government advocates in the media enabled the manipulators.
Department of Veterans Affairs Spent $1 Million on TV Ads During Government Shutdown
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/10/department-veterans-affairs-spent-1-million-tv-ads-government-shutdown/#fCHxq3vXYFDSIggP.9
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/10/department-veterans-affairs-spent-1-million-tv-ads-government-shutdown/#fCHxq3vXYFDSIggP.9
Department of Veterans Affairs Spent $1 Million on TV Ads During Government Shutdown
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/10/department-veterans-affairs-spent-1-million-tv-ads-government-shutdown/#fCHxq3vXYFDSIggP.99
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/10/department-veterans-affairs-spent-1-million-tv-ads-government-shutdown/#fCHxq3vXYFDSIggP.99
Debt Limit, Huh: Unfunded Liabilities Dwarf $16.7 Trillion ‘Ceiling’
President Obama and the Treasury Department are demanding that Congress raise
the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling so that the government can continue
borrowing in order to pay its current obligations before the October 17
deadline. However, and known to far too few citizens, $16.7 trillion is a fraction of the total national debt owed by our government. Missing from the discussion about raising the limit on the government’s credit card are trillions in unfunded liabilities that the United States of America simply will not ever be able to pay.We owe money which we cannot ever accrue. That's how nations fall.
What exactly are unfunded liabilities? They are payments the government knows it owes in the future, including the future costs of Medicare, Social Security, and the prescription drugs of Medicare Part D. You can follow the unfunded liabilities tab on the U.S. Debt Clock website — right now, this site estimates our unfunded liabilities to be $125.7 trillion. In 2017, if current trends continue, the site’s “Debt Clock Time Machine” estimates unfunded liabilities will reach $153 trillion.
Shutdown Theater
By John StosselGovernment wants you to play a role in the "shutdown" of the federal government. Your role is to panic.
Republicans and Democrats both assume that shutting some government is a terrible thing. The press concurs. "Shutdown threatens fragile economy," warns Politico. "Federal workers turn to prayer," laments The Washington Post.
If the public starts noticing that life goes on as usual without all 3.4 million federal workers, we might get dangerous ideas, like doing without so much government. Politicians don't want that.
No Obamacare questions at press conference
Several conservatives and a couple of journalists noted that yesterday's presidential press conference did not have any questions about the epic failure of Obamacare's rollout.The most significant social program passed by Congress in the last 40 years with extraordinary consequences for the economy and the health of our citizens and not one single question about the screw ups.
Obamacaid
Democrats ask: Why not expand the worst insurance in America?
Medicaid, the joint state-federal safety net intended for the poor, already covers more than one of five Americans and pays for two of five U.S. births. And that's before ObamaCare dumps up to 20 million new dependents onto its rolls. Liberals are still somehow evoking Little Nell and the blacking factory because 26 Governors or legislatures or both are so far declining to expand. Their hysterics would benefit from a fact or two......Note also that the opinion, which allowed states to choose to expand or not, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, President Obama's former Solicitor General. These liberal stalwarts explained that ObamaCare transformed Medicaid into something that "is no longer a program to care for the neediest among us." The major reason states don't want to participate is that rather than help members of society emerge from poverty, new Medicaid is supposed to be a permanent Washington-run, price-controlled health system, with no flexibility for the states.
The feds are dangling the promise of paying for all the costs of the new beneficiaries, at least for the next three years. This subsidy honeypot can't last forever, and Governors are right to worry about taking on fiscal obligations that will increase 13% on average in 2014 under new Medicaid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation state budget survey.
The Beltway boys and their allies in the hospital industry that are ravenous for more federal revenue are stunned that their bribery failed. So the new line of assault is to declare that the 26 conscientious objector states must hate poor people, or racial minorities, or Saint Peter and Christianity itself.
In reality, Medicaid is now mostly a middle-class entitlement for nursing homes. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid spending flows to the elderly, and 60% of people in long-term care institutions are on the program...
...What all this suggests is the real concern among Democrats isn't the well-being of the poor but their own in 2014. They'll run against Republicans as ideologues who won't even accept free money from Washington, and who by the way are mean-spirited and cruel. This election gambit has a certain political logic, or at least more than pretending the Medicaid status quo is a great success and packing more of the poor into an unreformed system.
A Cell Phone in Every Pot
When we measure by consumption, it’s clear people are better off today than they were 30 years ago.
By Arpana Mathur... The Census Bureau’s “Income and Poverty” report, released in September, underscored that the economic recovery has largely failed to reach the poor and middle class. However, there is a subtle but substantive difference between stating that inequality is worse today than it was 30 years ago, and that people are worse off today than they were 30 years ago. Rising inequality does not preclude an improvement in standards of living at the bottom of the income distribution.
...Whether the explanation for improvement in living standards lies in redistributionist policies and the growth of the safety net, or in technological improvements that have allowed prices of electronics and other durable goods to drop enough so that lower-income households can afford them, or in real improvements in productivity and wages, the bottom line is this: People are better off today than they were 30 years ago. The typical low-income household today possesses many more appliances and gadgets — items that have traditionally been considered the preserve of the rich — than at any time in history.
Elementary school in Montgomery County (PA) cancels Halloween
....The letter, obtained by Action News and signed by the school's principal, Orlando Taylor, announces Taylor's decision not to hold Halloween parades or celebrations at the school this year.It reads in part:
"Some holidays, like Halloween, that some see as secular, are viewed by others as having religious overtones. The district must always be mindful of the sensitivity of all the members of the community with regard to holidays and celebrations of a religious, cultural or secular nature. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that school districts may not endorse, prefer, favor, promote or advance any religious beliefs...."
WKMG reports:
Many people signing up for health care in
Florida through the Affordable Care Act have been shocked when they
have to give proof of their credit score before they finish the process.
Anne Packham, one of many people licensed
by the state to help people navigate the government’s website, said on
Tuesday that the credit check occurs so providers can make an educated
decision about who to insure.
Participants with low credit scores could
end up paying higher premiums, according to Packham, who said that
ultimately the insurance company makes the call.
Whistleblowers faced retaliation
The report, released Tuesday by DOE’s inspector general, revealed that a top legal official explicitly advised human resources officials at the department’s Bonneville Power Administration on how to disadvantage veterans in its hiring practices.
Lawyer made millions off of fraudulent disability claims
A two-year investigation led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, revealed a case of coordinated fraud responsible for the approval of billions in claims.
General Motors Executive Warns of Impending Auto Bubble
...Using subprime loans and easy credit to move cars off the lot may not be GM Canada’s goal, but its parent company, bailed-out, Detroit-based General Motors, has been moving in that direction, as the Washington Free Beacon reported in February. Nearly 90 percent of loans issued by GM Financial were subprime....
GM Financial isn’t the only entity at risk. The company has been packaging the loans and selling them off to Wall Street banks—just as many mortgage lenders did with housing loans.
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