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A Taste of Freedom: Shutdown of U.S. government is a good lesson

21st Century Wire says…

Regarding all of those who are living well – off the fat of the land…

The U.S. government began a formal shutdown early Tuesday after Washington failed to reach any real agreement on their federal spending plan – with Obamacare being the single biggest bone of contention.

Thousands of government sites will be closed, as “America’s number one employer”, boasted by President Obama – the US Federal Government, has been forced to tell a million-odd federal workers that they are now being “furloughed’ (told to stay at home without pay), although Congress did manage last night to approve an agreement to keep the US military’s paychecks coming.

(PHOTO: Obama and wife forced to downgrade next $100 million vacation)

Regarded as Washington’s most bloated and corrupt financial sink hole – the Pentagon has been living high on the hog for a while now. This latest crisis has left a confused Chuck Hagel to scramble with the Earth’s largest-ever game of musical chairs. Reports claim that up to 400,000 of the defense department’s 800,000 civilian workers are being furloughed.

Here’s what’s happening to the rest of DC’s Federal Bureaucratic Army of Paper Pushers and Badge Wearers (although we’ll keep the air traffic controllers and Border Patrol)

In a memo issued by the White House shortly before midnight, the Office of Management and Budget instructed that federal agencies “should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations.” National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents will be required to serve without pay.”

Is this a staged, bipartisan distraction, designed to conceal what Washington is really cooking up behind the scenes? Time will tell, and soon.

What about all the trillions of Federal dollars tied up in gravy train Federal government contracts? Are those being paid first? Houston, we have a structural problem – with this overtly fascist system of government.

If they could furlough Congress and Senate – and the bottomless, black hole budgets like the White House’s dog who flies in an Osprey helicopter, the monthly golf, holiday, shopping and beauty regimes, the DHS, NSA and the CIA – and maybe, just maybe then, Americans might have a chance to make some real progress…

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WASHINGTON DC: A place were the marginally talented and mediocre alike, can hang out and get paid well to get fat, get drunk, snort cocaine, and use your tax money to hand out Federal contracts to their ‘friends’.

Shutdown begins: Stalemate forces first U.S. government closure in 17 years

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Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane

Washington Post

The U.S. government began to shut down for the first time in 17 years early Tuesday, after a Congress bitterly divided over President Obama’s signature health-care initiative failed to reach agreement to fund federal agencies.

Hours before a midnight deadline, the Republican House passed its third proposal in two weeks to fund the government for a matter of weeks. Like the previous plans, the new one sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act, this time by delaying enforcement of the “individual mandate,” a cornerstone of the law that requires all Americans to obtain health insurance.

The new measure also sought to strip lawmakers and their aides of long-standing government health benefits.

The Democratic-led Senate quickly rejected that plan on a party-line vote. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) urged House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to abandon the assault on the health-care law and pass a simple bill to keep the government open. Otherwise, Reid warned, “the responsibility for this Republican government shutdown will rest squarely on his shoulders.”

Boehner refused to yield. He instead won approval, in a 1 a.m. largely party-line roll call, requesting a special House-Senate committee to meet in the coming days to resolve differences between the two parties, leaving in limbo the fate of millions of federal workers and the services they provide.

Shortly before midnight, the White House budget office issued a memo instructing agencies to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations.”

The impasse means 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed Tuesday. National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents will be required to serve without pay. And many congressional hearings — including one scheduled for Tuesday on last month’s Washington Navy Yard shootings — will be postponed.

In a last-minute ray of hope for active-duty troops, Congress on Monday approved and sent to the White House an agreement to keep issuing military paychecks…

Read more at WP

READ MORE OBAMACARE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Obamacare Files

 

 

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