-By Warner Todd Huston
Worried about a government shutdown? Don’t be. It won’t affect you much. But that isn’t what the left and the Old Media establishment are saying. They are making this a doomsday scenario and the false rhetoric they are doling out to America is similar to the BS that we saw during the 2008 debate (see video below) over bailouts and stimulus spending–you know, that spending that didn’t stimulate anything but the pockets of government union members? Yeah, that stimulus.
Paul Joseph Watson made some great points in his recent posting noting that the doomsday rhetoric we heard during the 2008 stimulus and bailout debates were pretty much just what we are hearing today. If government doesn’t act it’ll be the end of the world, we were told.
I’d add that we heard the same stuff about the sequester, too. If we passed sequester and made cuts to government, the left said, children and old people would die, the military would blow away, and the country would collapse. Well, the sequester came and went, some spending was cut and guess what? No one noticed any difference at all.
But this time, as Watson points out, we get the likes of extremists like Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, saying that a government shutdown would be just like “the civil war”… or something.
Other Democrats have decried a shutdown saying vital government spending would end. This is all simply untrue.
As Watson says, “the ominous ‘government shut down’ is nothing of the sort. It would be the 18th time it has happened since 1977. In no previous case did such circumstances lead to anything even approaching the apocalyptic hype being bandied about by Harkin and his ilk, nor did it significantly impact the economy in any way.”
He goes on saying,
The vast majority of government activities and services will remain fully operational whether a “shut down” occurs or not. Crucial services will not disappear and America will not collapse into a state of anarchy.
The reality of what a government shut down entails clearly does not warrant such alarmist hyperbole, but it’s not the first time we’ve witnessed these blackmail tactics.
But let’s think about this the proper way. Who will a government shutdown affect? Really only people that work for government.
Only four percent of Americans work for government and THAT four percent make more than most of the rest of us.
It is disgusting that Harry Reid and the Democrats would vote to shut down the government in order to guarantee that only SOME people can have an Obamacare delay–including the largest corporations, Obama’s union pals, and even Congress and their staffers–while regular Americans are forced into it at the point of an IRS gun. The very least Obama could do is accept the idea that members of Congress and their staffers go into the exchanges on the same terms as every other American who is losing his employer-coverage.
So, why are we all getting so upset that the rich 4 percent will have their exorbitant riches put on hold for a few days? After all, they won’t actually lose ANY money at all. They’ll still get it if only delayed.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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