{"id":40520,"date":"2013-10-04T16:06:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T20:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=40520"},"modified":"2013-10-04T16:08:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T20:08:48","slug":"a-slip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/10\/04\/a-slip\/","title":{"rendered":"a slip…"},"content":{"rendered":"
I swore off political blogging after the 2008 election. I had avoided political commentary even at cocktail parties from the end of the Viet Nam War until the invasion of Iraq. I have no desire to go back to that. But this morning when I read this, I thought it had something to say about the strength of the medical industry lobbies trying to stop healthcare reform, so I regressed and posted it. I promise to see this as a "slip" and get back "on the wagon."<\/div>\n
\n
The Shutdown in 10 Infuriating Sentences<\/a><\/div>\n
Mother Jones<\/font><\/strong> <\/div>\n
By Kevin Drum<\/div>\n
Oct. 4, 2013<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

At its core, the dispute over the budget and the debt ceiling isn’t complicated at all. But it is<\/em> full of misconceptions and urban myths. Here are the 10 facts worth remembering past all the obfuscation:<\/div>\n
1. <\/strong>Democrats have already agreed to fund the government at Republican levels.<\/a><\/div>\n
2. <\/strong>Despite what you might have heard, there have only been two serious government shutdowns in recent history, and both were the result of Republican ultimatums.<\/a><\/div>\n
3. <\/strong>Democrats in the Senate have been begging the House to negotiate over the budget<\/a> for the past six months, but Republicans have refused.<\/div>\n
4. <\/strong>That’s because Republicans wanted to wait until they had either a government shutdown or a debt ceiling breach as leverage, something they’ve been very clear<\/a> about all along.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
5. <\/strong>Republicans keep talking about compromise, but they’ve offered nothing in return<\/a> for agreeing to their demands—except to keep the government intact if they get their way.<\/div>\n
6. <\/strong>The public is very strongly opposed<\/a> to using a government shutdown to stop Obamacare.<\/div>\n
7. <\/strong>Contrary to Republican claims, the deficit is not increasing<\/a>—it peaked in 2009 and has been dropping ever since, declining by $200 billion last year with another $450 billion drop projected this year.<\/div>\n
8. <\/strong>A long government shutdown is likely to seriously hurt economic growth<\/a>, with a monthlong shutdown projected to slash GDP in the fourth quarter by 1 percentage point and reduce employment by over a million jobs.<\/div>\n
9. <\/strong>No, Democrats have not used debt ceiling hostage taking<\/a> in the past to force presidents to accept their political agenda.<\/div>\n
10. <\/strong>This whole dispute is about the Republican Party fighting to make sure the working poor don’t have access to affordable health care.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I swore off political blogging after the 2008 election. I had avoided political commentary even at cocktail parties from the end of the Viet Nam War until the invasion of Iraq. I have no desire to go back to that. But this morning when I read this, I thought it had something to say about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40520"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40526,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40520\/revisions\/40526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}