And So It Begins..............

[bird]

Have you ever wondered exactly what will happen if the government shuts down for various reasons such as budget talks disagreements and simply plain running out of money.  Well the State of Minnesota is experiencing just such a scenario this 4th of July Weekend.  

With the ever increasing National Debt that our Federal Government is looking at and the increasing disagreement between politicians on how to handle it.  I can see that the near future can become very dismissal in the not so distant future unless our politicians get their heads out of their backsides and make a real effort at solving this growing epidemic that our Country is having.

The shut down of the Minnesota Government is nothing compared to what will happen if the Federal Government shuts down.  It can and will get very ugly if that ever happens.

What do you thing we as a government should do to solve the financial crisis that we are in?


http://news.yahoo.com/minnesota-government-shutdown-begins-talks-fail-003516875.html

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/02/137575890/minnesota-shutdown-hits-vulnerable-first

[mossy835]

This is a touchy post Bird but a good one. We have to get spending in line with income just like everyone has to do at home. Health care is an issue for me (do you think Washington can do better with your health care and I mean the money than they did with social security)? Some where we have to draw the line and wake them up. We can not be the support system for the world especially when they do not pay us back and only ridicule us for helping. We do have a moral responsibility to take care of those that can not take care of them selves but too many want a free ride for a head ache for example at the emergency room driving up costs. Entitlements have to be cut and that will hurt some but it will have to happen. In my state they always try and take away anything that really helps people instead of the bloated over head in the city, state and county offices like a small business would do with shrinking funds. Enough said sorry.

[savduck]

I think there are some things that can be done quickly that will help get us in the right direction....not fix it totally but jump start the effort.

1. Get gas down. These corporations are making double digit billions of dollars per QUARTER. Some people argue that the cost of gas isnt that big of an expense, but when your a middle class citizen and only have a little bit of EXTRA every month, gas being so high kills you. Everything is affected by gas.....grocery cost, travel, building materials, etc.

2. Quit enabling those that dont want to work. Example. Welfare should be treated like a paycheck. Many cities bid work out to companies....picking up litter, mowing the grass in the city park, etc. They should make anyone on welfare do that work.

3. Fair Tax...We have a lot of citizens relying on public services paid for by our taxes, but somehow they avoid paying them. I think the fair tax system would at least make everyone contribute.

4. Worry about America. Our politicians should only have one goal right now. Figuring out how to get America going. We spend a lot of money on others that we could invest in ourselves.

[bird]

It is amazing at many of the services that our government provides us that you don't think about until it is closed.

Rest Areas Closed..... WOW.... where are all the truckers going to park now when they need to stop and sleep?

Court Houses.......

Prisons..........

State Parks....... During the 4th of July!  Now that is a real slap in the face for those that were going to celebrate our nations birthday this weekend. 

Every State Government Agency will be effected by this shutdown.... Now imagine if it is A fFederal Government shutdown which would trickle down to every State. 

Unbelievable!

[rtsj]

Savduck for President!!!!   

[savduck]

I think we need to get tough again. Capital punishment. To much wrist slapping and "time out" in America these days. Crime is going up because people can get away or get out of any punishment these day.

I saw something the other day about how criminals are running billion dollar businesses while in prison....now how does that happen. We start hanging some people again and using prisoners for HARD labor, people will think twice about doing wrong. I also saw a stat that in 1989 93% of huge coporations were audited, in 2009 only like 10%.

We all need to look at ourselves first. We have all sat back and let it happen. Its gonna take a lot of work to put it back

[turkey slayer]

I think we need to get tough again. Capital punishment. To much wrist slapping and "time out" in America these days. Crime is going up because people can get away or get out of any punishment these day.

I saw something the the day about how criminals are running billion dollar businesses while in prison....now how does that happen. We start hanging some people again and using prisoners for HARD labor, people will think twice about doing wrong. I also saw a stat that in 1989 93% of huge coporations were audited, in 2009 only like 10%.

We all need to look at ourselves first. We have all sat back and let it happen. Its gonna take a lot of work to put it back

sad to say but public hangings would stop alot of our crime.

[savduck]

The problem is GREED. Greed by politicians, greed by companies, greed by stockholders.

If there was a hurricane down here this summer in GA and you came down and tried to sell bags of ice for 10.00 a bag, you would be ticketed and your ice would be siezed. I cant remember the name of the law, but it is there, it protects us from being taken advantage of when there is a crisis.

I view the state of our union as being in crisis, but its ok for gas companies to rape and rob from us every day because they have to pay their stock holders. They could reduce gas by 1.25 a gallon and still be billionaires...but it aint about the people. And neither are the elected officials....because they are the stockholders lining their pockets. I have to give them my money, because I have to drive to do my job, and they know that, and they are preying on us. I view them no differently than terrorist.

I have no problem with people working hard and making profit. Thats what makes America great, thats the American dream, but I do have a problem when a private company is helping to bankrupt us and wont budge.

[longspur]

2. Quit enabling those that dont want to work. Example. Welfare should be treated like a paycheck. Many cities bid work out to companies....picking up litter, mowing the grass in the city park, etc. They should make anyone on welfare do that work.

.

I don't think anybody that can mow grass should be getting any wellfair

[catdaddy]

Sav
You are still going back to telling someone how much money they can make. This is America, we cant tell people how much they can make.
We left Europe 500 yrs ago for that reason.
Jebs chokes for instance sells chokes for $120 and wont sell as many as Pure Gold, but you cant tell them they cant sell their chokes for that. The market will set the price for them.
If Joe sells cars, and makes 10,000 in profit this year working by himself. Profit is above what He makes for salary. Who is to tell him he cant hire people to help him to make 20,000 profit next year. Who decides?

Look I dont like high gas prices. But they are artificially high because of harmful govt intervention.


John

Most excellent!!

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

They won't close down the prisons and release all the inmates.  Somebody will be there to see to that.  There will be some people there to see that the inmates are fed and taken care of you can bet on that. 

[mnturkey]

I think the govt. shutdown is good. It will show us what we can live without.

Here are a couple ideas.
flat tax, 10% of your income goes to the Feds.  No tax return no April 15th, your employeer sends the 10% to the govt every pay period.  The Govt runs on that.  The IRS gets absolved except for agents that work on getting the 10% from cash business.  Everyone pays, business, individuals coorporations.  If the govt needs more money to run they need to put it on the General election and everyone votes for it if it passes by a 2/3 majority of all voters they can raise the percentage.

Term limits 12 years of public service as a elected Senator/representative.

Anyone on Welfare has to show up every day at 7:00 AM and work until 3:30 with a 1/2 hour lunch break and 2 15 minute breaks.  They would pick up trash, mow lawns shovel snow and do whatever  needs to be done to make their city a better place,  if they are late to "work" they get docked "pay" just like a regular job.

We as a country have a spending problem, we as a country need to do something about the spending problem.  I am all for helping others when they are in need but a lifetime of need is wrong.

[lightsoutcalls]

    Our current president is a "disciple" of Saul Alinsky, the founder of modern community organizing. (Familiar term from 2008)  Mr. Alinsky wrote a book called "Rules For Radicals", which both the clintons and mr obama espouse as central to their "theology"(if you will) of life.  Mr obama is a man with a mission.  He has a very specific agenda, which he has been effectively carrying out for the past 2 years.  A big part of this agenda is to break down the economy so that more and more people are dependent on the government for even the most basic provisions and services of daily life.  Take the time to read the excerpt from Mr Alinsky's book below and see if you don't recognize some of the obama tactics.



Curiosity. What makes an organizer organize? He is driven by a compulsive curiosity that knows no limits. Warning cliches such as "curiosity killed a cat" are meaningless to him, for life is for him a search for a pattern, for similarities in seeming differences, for differences in seeming similarities, for an order in the chaos about us, for a meaning to the life around him and its relationship to his own life—and the search never ends. He goes forth with the question as his mark, and suspects that there are no answers, only further questions. The organizer becomes a carrier of the contagion of curiosity, for a people asking "why" are beginning to rebel. The questioning of the hitherto accepted ways and values is the reformation stage that precedes and is so essential to the revolution...

Irreverence. Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is this the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. As with all life, this is a paradox, for his irreverence is rooted in a deep reverence for the enigma of life, and an incessant search for its meaning. It could be argued that reverence for others, for their freedom from injustice, poverty, ignorance, exploitation, discrimination, disease, war, hate, and fear, is not a necessary quality in a successful organizer. All I can say is that such reverence is a quality I would have to see in anyone I would undertake to teach.

Imagination. Imagination is the inevitable partner of irreverence and curiosity. How can one be curious without being imaginative? ...

There was a time when I believed that the basic quality that an organizer needed was a deep sense of anger against injustice and that this was the prime motivation that kept him going. I now know that it is something else: this abnormal imagination that sweeps him into a close identification with mankind and projects him into its plight. He suffers with them and becomes angry at the injustice and begins to organize the rebellion...

Imagination is not only the fuel for the force that keeps organizers organizing, it is also the basis for effective tactics and action. The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions...

... Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization. I now begin to understand what I stated somewhat intuitively in Reveille for Radicals almost twenty years ago, that "the organizer in order to be part of all can be part of none." ...

An organized personality. The organizer must be well organized himself so he can be comfortable in a disorganized situation, rational in a sea of irrationalities. It is vital that he be able to accept and work with irrationalities for the purpose of change.

With very rare exceptions, the right things are done for the wrong reasons. It is futile to demand that men do the right thing for the right reason—this is a fight with a windmill. The organizer should know and accept that the right reason is only introduced as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved, although it may have been achieved for the wrong reason—therefore he should search for and use the wrong reasons to achieve the right goals. He should be able, with skill and calculation, to use irrationality in his attempts to progress toward a rational world...

An organizer must become sensitive to everything that is happening around him. He is always learning, and every incident teaches him something...

A well-integrated political schizoid. The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 per cent on the side of the devil. He knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree...

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts—one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 per cent difference—and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well organized person can split and yet stay together. But this is what the organizer must do...

A free and open mind, and political relativity. The organizer in his way of life, with his curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization, his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens. Having his own identity, he has no need for the security of an ideology or a panacea. He knows that life is a quest for uncertainty; that the only certain fact of life is uncertainty; and he can live with it. He knows that all values are relative, in a world of political relativity. Because of these qualities he is unlikely to disintegrate into cynicism and disillusionment, for he does not depend on illusion.

Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; that every time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged. Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation. He conceives of creation as the very essence of the meaning of life. In his constant striving for the new, he finds that he cannot endure what is repetitive and unchanging. For him hell would be doing the same thing over and over again.

This is the basic difference between the leader and the organizer. The leader goes on to build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal. He wants power himself. The organizer finds his goal in creation of power for others to use...

One would think that this was a description of an organizer but in everything creative, whether it is organizing a mutual fund or a mutual society, one is on the hunt for these qualities. Why one becomes an organizer instead of something else is, I suspect, due to a difference of degree of intensity of specific elements or relationships between them—or accident.





    Do you see mr obama in there anywhere?  He doesn't want financial solvency for this country.  When more people become dependent on the government, he has more power.  When he, through government agencies, etc. can "provide" for the needs individuals can't provide for themselves, these same people become "his" disciples, lemmings, koolaid drinkers if you will. 
    Already in this thread "big oil", one of mr obama's own favorite "demons" had been mentioned.  One particular "big oil" company has nearly $4 billion tied up in oil leases off the coast of Alaska.  The current administration will not allow them to access the lease because their "environmental impact" report failed to mention the exhaust output of one of the ships needed to transport equipment to begin testing/drilling for the oil that is there.  As was stated, the oil companies are privately owned businesses, not non-profit organizations.  If they have spent $4 billion dollars with hopes of accessing a product they can sell, just to be shut down by the government, do you think they will not have to make that money up by other means?  Again, an effective tactic of the government to demonize an industry in the eyes of the common man = effective "community organizing". 
  As was stated, think about the things that would shut down... parks, prisons... who would want such to happen...?  Again, an attempt to "rally" people of different values and viewpoints around a common cause.  Demonize anyone opposed to measures that would hinder the continued operation of these "institutions" of common good.  His is not an issue of what stays and what goes, it is simply a reach for increased power, increased dependence of more people on his programs and increased acceptance/popularity of his policies.
   We all see that the "bump" in approval rating for taking out bin laden didn't last long.  He's looking for his next boost in ratings and nothing is sacred, as stated in the excerpt above.

[Muskie03]

As much as many will disagree with me, at any point in time I could just saddle up and ride into those mountains and disappear. Only reappearing to trade furs for ammunition. If the whole world died tomorrow and I was left alone I wouldn't shed a tear. I have no problem being a hermit in the wilderness if it saves me from this travesty we call life. Relying on others that don't give a sh*t about you. It's all just a big joke(civilization) and someday, maybe sooner than later, I will ride off into those mountains of British Columbia and the Yukon and wish you all good luck(and to some good riddance). So take your fast cars and you $100 bills, your Walmarts and big name grocery stores, I'd rather die on a mountain side at the feet of a Grizzly bear when I'm 35 years old than live to be 100 years old in a city.

[Old Gobbler]

This is a case of = Politicians rewarding their constituents -- there is plenty of money out there , it needs to redistributed - and I'm not talking the Robin Hood method being used by today's liberals - they need to do some cuts in other areas ......

Prisons in this country ---  I do not know why for the love of god we pamper these felon's , It is a prison for criminals and dangerous people , not a country club -  They need to get the cost structure of these institutions  under control and by that I mean the tax payers should be making money off of prisoners, not spending $20-40,000 per inmate per year - who the hell do we care what they think they are convicted felons that cant vote a politicians into office