Sequester

[Sean]

I like the concern of boo fucking hoo, there is for teachers. So sad I guess that lower middle to middle class families will suffer. God damn those teachers. Sure some areas teachers make enough to take a reduction in pay. What about those that make 24k a year? It's going to hurt.

Life hurts when you realize there is a world outside politics and the internet.

But on the internet he can pretend he's a real man with a working penis.

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

And you can pretend to be something other than a used up truck driver turned wino.

I would have bet he was a sterno sock squeezer.

 

[hogjack]

Really funny how Obama rails daily against the Republicans for not saving his sorry ass from the consequences of his own dumb idea.

The President has been really pathetic - almost intentionally so - on this issue and he has ZERO credibility when it comes to budgets (or business).

However, the Republicans still have a LONG way to go to regain credibility after the George W. Bush fiscal buggery.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ishmael]

Kinda interesting the effect Rand Paul's filibuster has made.

Big government suck ups like McCain, and Graham, have done their best to down play the murder of citizens on sovereign soil for no other reason than the "president" ordered such.

Idiots.

If it can happen, it will happen.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I like the concern of boo fucking hoo, there is for teachers. So sad I guess that lower middle to middle class families will suffer. God damn those teachers. Sure some areas teachers make enough to take a reduction in pay. What about those that make 24k a year? It's going to hurt.

Life hurts when you realize there is a world outside politics and the internet.

You voted for it. Do not be bitter that you got it.

Many of us whom you hate tried to tell you about the road you were about to go down, but you did not want to hear it. The only way Socialism levels the playing field is to bring people down to a common level; a two-tiered feudal caste system.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Kinda interesting the effect Rand Paul's filibuster has made.

Big government suck ups like McCain, and Graham, have done their best to down play the murder of citizens on sovereign soil for no other reason than the "president" ordered such.

Idiots.

If it can happen, it will happen.

Ishmael

He is terrifying the establishment class; reminding them of that they are simply not what imagine they are with his example. That's the big problem with a consensus, lack of leadership and if he can survive the assaults of his own party, people will follow him, for the consensus is the polity of cowardice.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Busybobble's thread reminded me...



What a class act our President is!

He lashed out at the Republicans by punishing the children; denying them access to OUR house.

I have never been prouder of my country in my entire adult life.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ishmael]

Busybobble's thread reminded me...



What a class act our President is!

He lashed out at the Republicans by punishing the children; denying them access to OUR house.

I have never been prouder of my country in my entire adult life.

I wonder if anyone has bothered to report that the tour guides are all volunteers, no one is paid to do that job. It's got to be really bad when you have to lay off unpaid help.

Ishmael

 

[phrodeau]

I wonder if anyone has bothered to report that the tour guides are all volunteers, no one is paid to do that job. It's got to be really bad when you have to lay off unpaid help.

Ishmael

Only you so far, since that doesn't make any point.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...nceled-white-house-tours-save-74k-a-week?lite

According to an official who broke down the numbers for NBC News, there are 37 Secret Service officers staffed for tours. They each get paid $50 per hour for eight-hour shifts. These officers work five days a week, adding up to a savings of $74,000 per week that the tours are off.
That comes to almost $2 million before the end of this fiscal year.

 

[hogjack]

...the junior Tea Party Senators that are putting them to shame as far as standing on principle is concerned.

Unfortunately the Tea Party office-holders are less likely to remain in office like the rest of the LIFETIMERS.

Tea Party favorites will serve as the Founders expected:

Serve a term or two then go home, back to the private sector.

Washington D.C. is filled with the power-hungry, self-centered elected bastards of both parties who want to live the life of parties, lobby-funded special trips, greed, and prestige. Both parties are entrenched and WON'T LET GO OF THE PUBLIC TEAT.

 

[mercury14]

Glad to see you're signing your posts these days.

You sure know how to expand on the facts and omit quite a few as well.

Let's start with the teacher furloughs. April, May, and Sept. only sparky. I don't think the children are going to suffer much considering that base schooling is more like a prep school seeing as how the DoD has complete control of the curriculum and the staff. The schooling is FAR superior to the shit they drivel out in the public schools. Doing a little schedule shuffling isn't going to hurt a bit. Summer schooling is unaffected.

Why does it end in Sept.? Because that's when the new fiscal year kicks in and they can move their budgets around to accommodate the mere 4% increase in spending they'll have to live with next fiscal year, poor babies.

So some teachers will see a temporary reduction in pay-----Boo Fucking Hoo.

And ALL of this doom and gloom bull shit is predicated on an extended sequester.

Ishmael

This is a group of teachers that's had their wages frozen for a few years and now they're looking at a 20% loss of pay for three school months on top of that. Like I said, bases are going to be reducing the duty day for many service members with kids which means less readiness, less capability, and more stress on fellow service members who are forced to pick up the slack for a quarter of the year.

Tell an E-6 crew F-16 maintainer crew chief that his 52-hour work week isn't enough because A1C Johnson needs to take every Friday off to watch his kids and see what they say.

 

[hogjack]

This is a group of teachers that's had their wages frozen for a few years and now they're looking at a 20% loss of pay for three school months on top of that. Like I said, bases are going to be reducing the duty day for many service members with kids which means less readiness, less capability, and more stress on fellow service members who are forced to pick up the slack for a quarter of the year.

Tell an E-6 crew F-16 maintainer crew chief that his 52-hour work week isn't enough because A1C Johnson needs to take every Friday off to watch his kids and see what they say.

Grab a box of tissues: Stat!

"Oh, my God we've got to deal with change! Help! Help!"

 

[mercury14]

Grab a box of tissues: Stat!

"Oh, my God we've got to deal with change! Help! Help!"

These are overworked, underpaid, overstressed people who can easily go for a week or two without seeing their families even though their families live on base with them. Their divorce rate approaches 80% and they're extremely high utilizers of mental health services.

So no, I don't think these are the right people to put the burden of the sequester on.

 

[Ishmael]

Only you so far, since that doesn't make any point.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...nceled-white-house-tours-save-74k-a-week?lite

Did you bother to actually read that blurb? Does it say that those agents are being furloughed? Well, not exactly. What's happening is that their expense is going to be charged off to a different account. So the "White House Tour" account is going to reflect a 'saving', but in reality that money is still being spent, just charged off to a different account. As far as it goes the article is 100% correct, and 100% misleading to the low information voter.

Symbolism over substance.

Ishmael

 

[hogjack]

These are overworked, underpaid, overstressed people who can easily go for a week or two without seeing their families even though their families live on base with them.

How were they forced into these careers? Seriously, that is NOT right. Probably some sort of trickery or deceit!

They should have the option to quit or leave like every other American who is allowed to direct their own course, select a career, make job choices and pick locations to live.

 

[mercury14]

How were they forced into these careers? Seriously, that is NOT right. Probably some sort of trickery or deceit!

They should have the option to quit or leave like every other American who is allowed to direct their own course, select a career, make job choices and pick locations to live.

And that has no bearing on anything at all.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"The outpouring of support for my filibuster has been overwhelming and heartening. My office has fielded thousands of calls. Millions have followed this debate on TV, Twitter and Facebook. On Thursday, the White House produced another letter explaining its position on drone strikes. But the administration took too long, and parsed too many words and phrases, to instill confidence in its willingness or ability to protect our liberty.

"I hope my efforts help spur a national debate about the limits of executive power and the scope of every American’s natural right to be free. “Due process” is not just a phrase that can be ignored at the whim of the president; it is a right that belongs to every citizen in this great nation.

"I believe the support I received this past week shows that Americans are looking for someone to really stand up and fight for them. And I’m prepared to do just that."

Rand Paul

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...52d8a8-881b-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_print.html

Watching McCain and Lindsey jump and rush back to the microphone only confirms my impression as to the stake he is trying to take to the Liberal (Big Government and power loving) hearts of the Republican Party.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The last time the Democrats pulled this shit with the help of their lapdog media, the pain was only temporary, Congress got back into the tax and spend grove and everyone was reimbursed in the long run, that is what will happen this time and I have no sympathy for anybody who truly believes that they are going to come out losing a fucking dime.

Our Federal Government is simply out of control; ol' Charlie stole the handle...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Americans now accept the right of minor bureaucrats to collect all kinds of information for vast computerized federal databases, from answers on gun ownership for centralized “medical records” to answers on “dwelling arrangements” for nationalized “education records.” With paperwork comes regulation, and with regulation comes enforcement. We have advanced from the paramilitarization of the police to the paramilitarization of the Bureau of Form-Filling. Two years ago in this space, I noted that the U.S. secretary of education, who doesn’t employ a single teacher, is the only education minister in the developed world with his own SWAT team: He used it to send 15 officers to kick down a door in Stockton, Calif., drag Kenneth Wright out onto the front lawn, and put him in handcuffs for six hours. Erroneously, as it turned out. But it was in connection with his estranged wife’s suspected fraudulent student-loan application, so you can’t be too careful. That the education bureaucracy of the Brokest Nation in History has its own Seal Team Six is ridiculous and offensive. Yet the citizenry don’t find it so: They accept it.

The federal government operates a Railroad Retirement Board to administer benefits to elderly Pullman porters: For some reason, the RRB likewise has its own armed agents ready to rappel down the walls of the Sunset Caboose retirement home. I see my old friend David Frum thinks concerns over drones are “far-fetched.” If it’s not “far-fetched” for the education secretary to have his own SWAT team, why would it be “far-fetched” for the education secretary to have his own drone fleet?

Do you remember the way it was before the war on terror? Back in the Nineties, everyone was worried about militias and survivalists, who lived in what were invariably described as “compounds,” and not in the Kennedys-at-Hyannisport sense. And every so often one of these compound-dwellers would find himself besieged by a great tide of federal alphabet soup, agents from the DEA, ATF, FBI, and maybe even RRB. There was a guy called Randy Weaver who lost his wife, son, and dog to the guns of federal agents, was charged and acquitted in the murder of a deputy marshal, and wound up getting a multi-million-dollar settlement from the Department of Justice. Before he zipped his lips on grounds of self-incrimination, the man who wounded Weaver and killed his wife, an FBI agent called Lon Horiuchi, testified that he opened fire because he thought the Weavers were about to fire on a surveillance helicopter. When you consider the resources brought to bear against a nobody like Randy Weaver for no rational purpose, is it really so “far-fetched” to foresee the Department of Justice deploying drones to the Ruby Ridges and Wacos of the 2020s?

I mention in my book that government is increasingly comfortable with a view of society as a giant “Panopticon” — the radial prison devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1785, in which the authorities can see everyone and everything. In the Droneworld we have built for the war on terror, we can’t see the forest because we’re busy tracking every spindly sapling. When the same philosophy is applied on the home front, it will not be pretty.

Mark Steyn, NRO

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Living Large in the Obama White House
Charles C. W. Cooke, NRO
March 8, 2013

We are now firmly ensconced in the brutal Age of the Sequester, and things in America are grave. The federal government, we learned on Wednesday, is so strapped for cash that the president has been forced to cut off the People’s access to the home he’s borrowing from them. He didn’t want to have to do this, naturally — “particularly during the popular spring touring season.” But then Congress just had to go and acquiesce in measures that the president himself had suggested and signed into law. How beastly! We axed 2.6 percent from a $44.8 trillion budget, and now the president can’t even afford the $18,000 per week necessary to retain the seven staff members who facilitate citizens’ enjoying self-guided tours around the White House.

The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio), or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year), or to trim his ridiculous motorcade ($2.2 million). If Ellen DeGeneres wants another dancercize session or Spain holds another clothing sale, the first family will be there before you can say “citizen executive.” Fear ye not, serfs: Austerity may be the word of the week, but the president is by no means in any danger of being forced to live like the president of a republic instead of like a king.

When Calvin Coolidge was president in the glitzy 1920s, he took the republican ideal so seriously that he ended up in a series of tiffs with the White House housekeeper, Elizabeth Jaffray, over the cost of state dinners, and took to admonishing the executive branch for using too many pencils. Such behavior now serves only as a punchline to a joke that is not funny. The current annual cost of the White House — just in household expenses, not the policy operations for which it exists — is $1.4 billion: Annually, presidential vacations cost $20 million (the low estimate for one presidential vacation to Hawaii is $4 million, but the true cost is probably five times that); the first family’s yearly health-care costs are $7 million; more than $6 million is spent on the White House grounds each year. Transporting the president cost $346 million last year. But as Michelle Obama might say, America is basically a downright mean sort of place, so the tours will just have to go. One hopes at least that the calligraphers were recruited to sign the docents’ pink slips.

 

[mercury14]

How were they forced into these careers? Seriously, that is NOT right. Probably some sort of trickery or deceit!

They should have the option to quit or leave like every other American who is allowed to direct their own course, select a career, make job choices and pick locations to live.

It doesn't matter. The military will just put more people into that job track against their will to replace them.

 

[mercury14]

"The outpouring of support for my filibuster has been overwhelming and heartening. My office has fielded thousands of calls. Millions have followed this debate on TV, Twitter and Facebook. On Thursday, the White House produced another letter explaining its position on drone strikes. But the administration took too long, and parsed too many words and phrases, to instill confidence in its willingness or ability to protect our liberty.

"I hope my efforts help spur a national debate about the limits of executive power and the scope of every American’s natural right to be free. “Due process” is not just a phrase that can be ignored at the whim of the president; it is a right that belongs to every citizen in this great nation.

"I believe the support I received this past week shows that Americans are looking for someone to really stand up and fight for them. And I’m prepared to do just that."

Rand Paul

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...52d8a8-881b-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_print.html

Watching McCain and Lindsey jump and rush back to the microphone only confirms my impression as to the stake he is trying to take to the Liberal (Big Government and power loving) hearts of the Republican Party.

Yes, Rand Paul "got" the Obama administration to repeat its position that it said earlier that same day. That's what passes for a Republican victory these days I guess.