Why the shutdown scares the petty vindictive little man Barack Obama

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Despite the fact that the average federal employee earns $123,000 (2010 numbers) in salary and benefits while the average private sector employee earns $61,000, my sympathy goes out to those who have found themselves on the sidelines because of Barack Obama and Harry Reid’s shutdown. Despite the fact that they will likely get all of their backpay and perhaps a bit more, it’s always difficult to see people have their finances thrown into chaos. Nonetheless, big government is a cancer on productivity, and while a million federal employees are feeling the pinch of this impasse, tens of millions of Americans are feeling the pinch of no jobs, reduced hours and losing their healthcare because of big government and ObamaCare. Viva la shutdown!

The old saying goes: “Sometimes you have to break some eggs in order to make an omelet.” In this case a more appropriate characterization might be “Sometimes you have to break some eggs in order to put on a banquet.” Given that federal regulations are so costly to American businesses – and consequently to Americans themselves – the extended furlough or firing of the apparatchiks employed to enforce government regulations would allow for a resurgence of economic activity, leading to a return of American prosperity. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, federal regulations will cost Americans $1.8 Trillion this year or about $14,000 per household. How would you like to have an extra $14,000 per year to spend? Well, let’s be generous and suggest that 25% of the government’s regulations are both Constitutional and worthwhile. That would mean that the bonus would only be $11,500 per year. How much of a jolt do you think you could give your community if you and every one of your neighbors had an additional $1,000 a month to spend? I guarantee you it’s a lot more than an omelet.

This shutdown is 100% owned, lock, stock and barrel by Barack Obama and the Democrats. As wasteful as most of the government spending is, the House passed a bill that would fund every single piece of it other than Obamacare. The Senate rejected that and the President promised to veto it if it made it to his desk. They can whine as much as they want about obstructionism, but the fact is that they can have everything they want other than something that a majority of Americans don’t want. Cry as they might, the spilled milk has their fingerprints all over the bottle.

Barack Obama is a petty, spiteful, vindictive little man. In order to make sure that Americans knew the shutdown was going on – because most probably wouldn’t notice as they have lives and are not part of the Democrat / Big Government / Mainstream Media Industrial Complex in the first place – Barack Obama chose to inflict the greatest amount of pain possible. If you’ve never been to Washington to see the WWII monument, it’s a beautiful, spacious open air monument with marble pillars, arches and fountains which is accessible 24 hours a day. You don’t need to buy a ticket to see it, there’s nothing for anyone to do to make sure you can enjoy it, all you have to do is just walk across 17th St. from the Washington Monument and you’re there. You just walk around, that’s it. Barack Obama decided to actually spend money to put up barricades so that you could not visit it during the shutdown. When veterans who actually fought in WWII came to see it and ignored his barricades, he spent more money to have the barricades tethered together and then employed horse mounted Rangers there to ensure that the heroes could not visit the monument to THEM! (Until the veterans announced their visits were protected 1st Amendment activities…) What’s worse, according to one Park Ranger: “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.” If that were not enough, at the same time he threatened to arrest supplemental Catholic priests if they volunteered their time to conduct Mass for military personnel who have no priests available to them. He had police kick veterans and visitors off the Vietnam Memorial, which is literally an open air wall and a walkway dug into the ground. He even tried to close the ocean down in Florida. But if he wants to play golf the course on Andrew’s Air Force Base is open.

Like most things in Washington, words don’t always mean what they actually mean. A shutdown in plain English means that something is frozen, stopped, not functioning. In Washington parlance however, shutdown means that 83% of the budget is still being spent. So the shutdown which President Obama and the rest of the lefties are denouncing really only equates to 17% of the federal government, or about exactly what the government spent just a few short years ago.

Ronald Reagan endured half a dozen shutdowns at the hands of the stridently partisan Tip O’Neill and the world did not come to an end. It won’t end now either. This shutdown will not bring about Armageddon any more than sequester did. What it might do however is focus American’s attention on the fact that the nanny state is not as important as those in Washington would like us to believe. Many Americans might be surprised to discover that not only does the sun continue to rise during the shutdown, but the neighborhood supermarket still opens, cable TV is still on the air and their cars still run. Frankly, that’s a danger for Barack Obama and big government types of all stripes, because once Americans rediscover that they can survive without big government they just might start pushing back. And when they start the bell will soon begin to toll for much of what government has appropriated for itself over the last half century… and with it will go the confiscatory taxes that have made that encroachment possible. As such, don’t be surprised to see Obama and Co. continue to look for new ways to inflict pain on the American people. The question is, will the squishes in the GOP be able to stomach the fight long enough for Americans to come to the realization that they don’t need a nanny state to hold their hands from cradle to grave? Let’s hope they do.

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I hope the GOP keeps up the pressure.
If BHO is responsible for the closure of all the parks etc. he is pettier than I ever imagined.
It also irks me that the furloughed workers get all the back pay when they return. When I have been laid off I never had a bag of money waiting for me when I returned. They should bite the bullet like the rest of us do.

My sympathy is NOT with those few gov’t employees now considered too expendable to be working….they will be paid in full for their unplanned vacation time!
What is bothersome is Obama’s ”petty, vindictive,” and strangely labor-intensive way of trying to hurt Americans.
The NRO editors pointed out examples.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360591/vindictive-shutdown-theater-editors
The federal government’s blocking off not only the entrance to the Mount Rushmore monument but also roadside viewing areas outside the park!
After setting up traffic cones to block off the Mount Rushmore scenic viewing areas, the feds had to pick them up again because of a blizzard, but apparently had plans to put them right back down again after the plowing is done!
That takes more people working than it would to simply allow drivers to pull into scenic cutouts and see Mount Rushmore!
Other monuments that require no federal oversight — being, as they are, open to the public — have been barricaded by the federal government as part of the shutdown theater.

Obama once promised he’d have a huge army of civilian security forces, better armed than our military.
Maybe he hasn’t armed them all yet, but he did evict an elderly couple from their own home that sits on federally owned leased land!
Some people might have put up a fight over that, but these two went peacefully.
The court was the proper place to start, but Obama really is petty and vindictive.
It is ”shutdown theater.”

And you are correct, Vince, our gov’t is only ”suffering” a 17% loss of spending, putting them back to levels we saw only a few years ago, not down to bare bones or worse.

“Despite the fact that they will likely get all of their backpay and perhaps a bit more, it’s always difficult to see people have their finances thrown into chaos.”

Oh, boo hoo. Poor hundred-granders are living hand to mouth. When I don’t work I don’t get paid. Doesn’t matter if it’s because of snow, or because no one wants me to work for them that day. No nice little check plus interest for something I never did.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.” Including, in their pettiness, a veterans visit to their monument. The government is proven to be too big. Time for us to take a hatchet to it.

This shutdown is 100% owned, lock, stock and barrel by Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Shall we excuse the Obama Republicans for some obscure reason?

Please explain this innocence of guilt for RINOs.

The fact that the MSM lets Obama get away with this petty vindictiveness is even more disgusting.

Can you imaging the news reports if Bush or Reagan had pulled this kind of thuggishness during a government shutdown – where only 17% of the federal government is actually “shut down”?

Not sure where they are getting those numbers, but of the 10 people working in my Dept of Defense office, most with degrees, we average about $72,000. Most non-gov positions with the education and experience we have make over $100,000. I wish I made $123,000…

@DKJ: The USAToday article tells you, DKJ.
See the chart to the left of the main article.
And it includes all perks of the job, not just the base pay.

It is the Bureau of Economic Analysis, (BEA) an agency in the United States Department of Commerce.
That is one of the blacked out websites today.
Thanks Obama.
Its stated mission is to “promote a better understanding of the U.S. economy by providing the most timely, relevant, and accurate economic data in an objective and cost-effective manner”
BEA is the principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System.

it use to be the CONGRESS WOULD NOT FINANCE FOR A HOLE YEAR,
IT’S THE DEMOCRATS THAT STARTED THAT,
AND THEY WANT A WHOLE TRILLION ALL IN ONE SHOT,
THE SECRETARY BOEHNER DON’T WANT NO MORE BIG AMOUNT ALL TOGETHER, AND IT PISS OBAMA WHO IS A BIG SPENDER AND MUST HAVE ALREADY SPENT MOST OF IT BEFORE GETTING IT, BUT THE REPUBLICANS SAID THEY GO BACK TO BEFORE WHEN THE MONEY COME BY NEEDS,
NOT BY THE WASTE, THEY SAW HAPPENED, AND CUT THE CANDY FOR OBAMA, PELOSI AND REID, THEY CALL THE REPUBLICANS ARSONIST AND MORE OF,
GOOD THE REPUBLICANS KEEP THEIR CLASSY MANNERS AND DON’T RESPOND TO THAT,

Petty and vindictive AND a dog whistle-blower.
Turns out Obama blames OTHERS when his petty and vindictive attitudes get acted upon by low-level Obama-federal employees!

Obama put that FREE TO RUN Amber Alert web site back up.
Just a misunderstanding.

Obama allows cars to SEE Mt. Rushmore after overzealous dog-whistle responders blocked access to all scenic cutouts.
Just a misunderstanding.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20131004/UPDATES/310040047/Rushmore-blockage-stirs-anger-S-D-

The short-lived effort to close off the open-air World War II Memorial from visitors last week became the veritable symbol, for critics, of the government going the extra mile to make shutdown-related changes more visible.
“It cost more money to barricade the monuments than it would to keep them open,” Rep. Jason Smith.
Just a misunderstanding.

But were they all ”just misunderstandings?”
Or did the dog whistle produce too many bad optics?
Obama’s WH.gov website is still up and begging for sob stories about how you have been HURT by this shutdown.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-asking-for-sad-shutdown-stories/article/2536836

Despite the fact that the average federal employee earns $123,000 (2010 numbers) in salary and benefits while the average private sector employee earns $61,000, my sympathy goes out to those who have found themselves on the sidelines because of Barack Obama and Harry Reid’s shutdown.

A typically misleading and often repeated bit of propaganda. The U.S. government doesn’t employ a high percentage of people having educational, skill, and pay levels comparable to those of fast food workers, retail cashiers, waitresses, ticket takers, or agricultural employees. It does employ a high percentage of highly trained people doing highly specialized work. Comparing the average pay of all public sector workers to that of all private sector workers makes no sense.

By the way, if Boehner really wants to end the shutdown, all he needs to do at this point is hold a vote in the House on what has already passed in the Senate. What’s he waiting for?

@Greg: By the way, if Reid really wants to end the shutdown, all he needs to do at this point is hold a vote in the Senate on what has already passed in the House. Whats he waiting for?

@Redteam, #13:

What the House sent to the Senate was dead on arrival, and they knew that before they sent it.

What the Senate sent to the House is probably acceptable to enough republicans in the House to actually pass. Which is why Boehner hasn’t allowed a vote to be taken.

GREG
BECAUSE THE SHUTDOWN WAS DONE BY OBAMA,
IT’S FOR HIM TO STOP IT. BUT HE WANT THE PEOPLE TO SUFFER,

What, exactly, do republicans want Obama to do?

Andrew Sullivan ponders this mystery: There Is No There There.

Vince,
The vindictive little man still has support which we are puzzled about until we read things like this:

Countries listed by AVERAGE IQ
Rank: 19 — United States 98 (average IQ)

That’s a serious problem which we can no longer leave in the hands of progressive statists.

@Greg:

What, exactly, do republicans want Obama to do?

I hope they don’t want him to do anything. I’m hoping the longer the government stays shut, the more people will see what an overgrown, oppressive machine it is. I work with two major government databases, the FCC and NOAA. Both are shutdown, which makes no sense whatsoever. But, the private sector is already making plans to not give a damn. Private companies are implementing their own systems to take the place of these databases. Soon, I expect to see States start taking back their land the feds call “national.”
You keep bringing up, “the Founders never intended this and the Founders never intended that…” The Founders would have laughed at a government shutdown. Most of them abhorred the thought of a large central government.

it’s about time the STATES PROTECT THEIR LAND BECAUSE THEY MIGHT FIND IT GIVEN TO THE ILLEGALS ON A PAYOUT TO OBAMA,
A TERM OF MANY YEARS GIVEN TO THEM WHILE THE FEDS HOLD THE CERTIFICAT AND THE STATES WOULD NEVER FIND IT UNTIL TOO LATE,,
THIS SHUT DOWN is telling a lot of his mindset to take what he want and allocate it to his loyals and get away with it,, knowing they will vote DEMOCRAT FOREVER,