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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Shutdown in Perspective: Spying on Americans Continued; Services for Needy Children Did Not
http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/shutdown-perspective-spying-americans-continued-services-needy-children-did-notOn a damp Friday morning 11 days into the government shutdown, a few dozen truckers took to the Capital Beltway in a demonstration with the Twitter hashtag #T2SDA (Truckers to Shut Down America). They wanted to tell lawmakers they were angry, launch an impeachment campaign against the president, and pressure Congress to end itself.
They were on a ride for the Constitution, protesting big government and yet the opinion polls were clear. In fact, the numbers were stunning. One after another, they showed that Americans opposed the shutdown and were hurting because of it. At that moment, according to those polls, nearly one in three Americans said they felt personally affected not by too much government, but by too little, by the sudden freeze in critical services.
In reality, that government shutdown was partial and selective. Paychecks, for example, kept flowing to the very lawmakers who most fervently supported it, while the plush congressional gym with its heated pool, paddleball courts, and flat-screen televisions remained open. Thats because essential services continued, even as nonessential ones ceased. And it turned out that whether the services you cared about were essential or not was a matter of just who got to do the defining. In that distinction between what was necessary and what wasnt, it was easy enough to spot the values of the peoples representatives. And what we saw was gut-wrenching. Stomach-churning.
Prioritized above all else were, of course, national security activities, deemed beyond essential under the banner of protecting life and property. Surveillance at the National Security Agency, for instance, continued, uninterrupted, though it was liberated from its obviously nonessential and, even in the best-funded of times, minimal responsibility to disclose those activities under the Freedom of Information Act. Such disclosure was judged superfluous in a shutdown era, while spying on Americans (not to speak of Brazilians, Mexicans, Europeans, Indians, and others around the planet) was deemed indispensible.
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The Shutdown in Perspective: Spying on Americans Continued; Services for Needy Children Did Not (Original Post)
xchrom
Oct 2013
OP
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)1. This really needs a kick n/t
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)2. Huge K&R
Thank you. How utterly sick, the priorities of the corporate thieves who control our government now.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)3. What has become of this country?
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)4. Kicked and recommended.
Thanks for the thread, xchrom.