GOP like Steve King Wouldn't Listen to a Hostage Negotiator

Last night the Daily Show had a great clip which they brought in a real hostage negotiator to try to talk to a Tea Party representative about holding the government shutdown.  The realization becomes that the GOP and the Tea Party actually want the hostage dead and therefore makes negotiations impossible.  

The biggest problem is that the far right has been calling for the death of the government for years.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has also been calling for a government shutdown for years. In 2010, Rep. King asked for a "blood oath" that Obamacare would be repealed regardless of what it took, even if a shutdown was necessary. "I'd like to challenge them to make that pledge," King said, according to Roll Call. "I'd like [Boehner] to make that commitment that if the president shuts down the government, there wouldn't be a repeat of 1995 where the House caved."

We have seen time and time again that reasonable Republicans are being shutdown because of fear to being called a RINO and risk a primary challenge.  

Iowa’s U.S. Rep. Steve King was among the 80 Republicans who asked U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to resist any spending bills that would accommodate the new health care law, which is nearing a critical stage of signing up millions of Americans for health coverage. 

Because it’s virtually certain that President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate would reject such demands, leaders of both parties say the standoff likely would result in a partial shutdown of the federal government, similar to those that occurred in 1995 and 1996.   

Except now that this has occurred, just ask the farmers in Western South Dakota or farmers in Iowa if the lack of the government is a big deal.  Remember if you vote for King and the GOP you get an ugly, ugly mess.  While King sits in Washington, he may have no understanding of the impact that this is having on real people in his district or in most of the United States, but just ask Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation

While Hill said most of the attention of farm organizations has been focused on the farm bill, the government shutdown is an additional concern. First, it diverts attention of Congress from the farm bill. Second, it means the closing of some USDA offices and a sudden lack of funding for a number of government programs. 

Money for trade and research programs has been put on temporary hold, Hill said. And, there is still a question if farmers will get a final direct payment check this fall. 

Organizations such as the U.S. Grains Council and the U.S. Meat Export Federation could see funding issues if the shutdown lasts long, Hill said, because they have contracts with the government. USDA statistical analysis could also be affected. 

And, conservation programs could see issues as well. 

Add those issues to the already difficult farm-bill situation and farmers are frustrated, Hill said. 

Trying to understand the hostage taking mentality on the Daily Show.

Because It Matters To Someone

Today I heard someone talking about that he/she has not been impacted by the government shutdown then it shows that it probably isn't that big of a deal.  I thought, "This is the reason that we have problems like the government shutdown.  When we look at the world only through our eyes, then we ignore those that may be suffering."  Then I read Kallis entry about those with plenty often disregard those with less and it made unfortunate sense.

The idea that this government shutdown is no big deal is not limited to the one person in my earshot.  People like Stuart Varney from Fox News

Look, most people won't notice. If the government shuts down at midnight tonight, most people will not notice. National parks are closed. Eight hundred thousand federal workers furloughed, OK. Most people won't notice that. What Wall Street is worried about is a totally separate issue.

And people like Ted Cruz and the Tea Party,

When the US government runs out of money for the following fiscal year…losing its ability to pay its bills…it’s forced in theory to shutdown. And thanks to the Obama administration’s out of control spending…ignored was Economics 101 which teaches you cannot spend more than you take in…the US will hit the current debt ceiling of $16.7 trillion and go into default in mid-October, which likely will have already translated into a ‘supposed’ government shutdown. 

The government function is never a big deal until it actually affects you.  And then you have all sorts of people that complain why the government isn't there to provide what I want.  That is when you have people that voted to close the government because it is not really important, but then pretend to fit the big evil government shutdown. 

Thune and Noem fall into that last category.  The both have voted against a clean CR and end the shutdown, but now that a real disaster has hit South Dakota, they are reminding people the importance of government when it comes to helping ranchers and farmers and families hit by the snow storm.  Instead of giving credit to Thune and Noem for their hollow concern, Johnson reminds us that a government shutdown may not impact you at this second, but it does matter to people all over:

“While total losses are still being determined, this major blizzard has killed huge numbers of livestock across western South Dakota. Exacerbating these losses is the fact that the government shutdown has shuttered USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) offices across the state. As a result, producers don’t even have anyone to contact at USDA for assistance in documenting losses.

The closure of FSA offices is another demonstration of the real impact the government shutdown is having on South Dakotans. Like the snow storm, the government shutdown is causing major disruptions in people’s lives and every day business.

While snowstorms happen, government shutdowns are unnatural events. The House needs to pass a clean Continuing Resolution not just for the sake of South Dakota’s ranchers, but for the good of the country.”

Is Noem As Frightened As Boehner?

This shutdown is clearly the Republicans making.  They are the ones that have been talking about shutting down the government since 2011.  If you don't believe me that the GOP is the one behind the government shutdown, ask Republican Peter King.

"We are the ones who did shut the government down," he later added. "Charles Krauthammer called it the suicide caucus. The Wall Street Journal said they were kamikazes. You don't take the dramatic step of shutting down the government unless you have a real strategy and it has a chance of working. It's never had a chance of working."

Today the President and others called Speaker Boehner out.  He told the Speaker that instead of making a claim that 25 Republicans would not vote for a clean Continuing Budget Resolution that passed the Senate by an overwhelming majority, he should just bring it up to a vote and allow the Representatives to record a vote.

“Today, Speaker Boehner should stop the games and let the House vote on the Senate’s clean CR so that the entire federal government can re-open within twenty-four hours,” Jentleson said in a statement, referring to a continuing resolution to authorize government spending.

The question to Mr. Boehner is what is he afraid of?  Why not vote on the bill?  There is no threat of a filibuster.  There is no need of a supermajority.  All you have to do is vote and then you can say, "See, I told you that I was not just a tool of the Tea Party.  The Republican Party will only function if we get everything we want.  You just can't compromise with us.  We care more about preventing people from getting healthcare then we do about maintaining the basic functions of our government."  

Where is Kristi Noem in all of this mess?  She claims that she doesn't want a government shutdown, 

“No one wants to see the government shut down,” she said. “I think the only person who keeps talking about it is the president and a lot of the media.” 

A shutdown, Noem said, “would be devastating” to the country. 

“I am hopeful that we won’t be in that situation,” she said.

Unfortunately that rhetoric is about as shallow and empty as Kristi's rhetoric on the Farm Bill and so many other things she claims to want to do for the people of our state.  So, Mrs. Noem, if you realize that this shutdown is devastating for our country, then tell the Speaker to allow a vote on a clean CR or you won't let him fundraise for you again.  That would be getting really ugly to get something done.

Rick Weiland's Pledge We Can Live With

The GOP love their pledges.  "I pledge to bankrupt the government and do what ever Grover Norquist tells me to do on the budget."  "I pledge to make sure that people can't get health care if they have ever been sick or are not fortunate enough to be a hedge fund manager."  These type of pledges are bad for America because they prevent common sense thinking and are filled with empty rhetoric.  However, Rick Weiland offers a pledge that is good for all Americans:

"I hereby pledge that, if elected to represent the people of South Dakota, I will never vote to shut down their government, or to place their government in default, in order to force it to act, or to prevent it from acting, on unrelated issues." - Rick Weiland 

Our government has been shut down, and our nation literally threatened with default, by a handful of extremist Members of Congress willing to turn the lights out on democracy to destroy the Affordable Care Act. 

Every Federal candidate in America has an obligation to pledge to their voters that they will not join this extremist wrecking crew. 

I have done so and I am asking others to join me. 

Unless we put a stop to this "my way or the highway" mentality that excuses anything, even the willful harming of millions of American citizens, and of their country, our future as a great nation is in jeopardy. 

I hope you will join me by insisting that any person seeking your support take this pledge, and thereby promise to you that they will never vote to shut down our Democracy just because they did not get their way on some unrelated issue. 

It is shocking to me that every other candidate to replace Senator Tim Johnson, even former Governor Mike Rounds, has publicly stated that they support shutting down the government unless the Affordable Care Act is effectively repealed. 

That is not responsible governance. It is blackmail and it must be stopped.

If you need a clear difference between Rick and the GOP establishment, you now have one.  He is the only candidate that would have voted to prevent the shutdown.  We all know that Kristi voted for it while not getting around to vote for a Farm Bill for our nations farmers.  We also know that all the candidates vow to be Ted Cruz Lemmings and support a government shutdown.  So, if you want to a candidate that has enough sense not to support shutdown our government and damaging our economy, then your vote is easy: Rick Weiland is your candidate!

Kristi Noem Fails at Another Promise

Kristi has been busy posting about how the House's failure to take up the Senate funding bill and pass a continuing resolution is hurting America.  One more thing that she can also proudly point out is that she has failed to deliver on a Farm Bill on time.  Not only has the GOP created a mess by playing hostage with economy, (not my words but the words of our state's papers) they have failed on delivering a Farm Bill on time, again!  You remember that Farm Bill that Kristi promised she would get ugly with the leadership until the Farm Bill was passed.

One of the programs that is going to be damaged is the Rural Energy for America Program.

Last year’s farm bill expiration was unprecedented in U.S. farm policy history, but this year’s had been long expected as the House has proposed cuts to the bill’s food stamps program. The farm bill’s expiration, though, has been downplayed by senior agriculture leaders in Congress because funding and authorities for major commodity subsidies and food stamps will not begin to expire until the beginning of next year (E&E Daily, Sept. 20). 

But several of the bill’s smaller programs — such as those in the energy, conservation, organic and trade-promotion sections — are facing uncertainty at best and shutdowns at worst as of Monday’s expiration. For energy programs, it’s a question of funding. 

USDA operates seven energy programs, including one that provides loans to biorefinery producers to commercialize the next generations of fuels made from agricultural residues, perennial grasses, municipal solid waste and algae.

This is a program that has been used in South Dakota to some success.  I hope Kristi remembers that these are the people that she works for, like the people in Elkton

- The town of Elkton, South Dakota had been without a grocery store for several years until the owners of “Big Daddy’s Meats” decided to expand their small business to a full service store. With a REAP grant, they were able to realize their goal with the installation of a geothermal heat pump system that would save them enough money to make it possible.

Or Lake Andes

Pioneer Energy, LLC in Hesperus, Colorado, was selected to receive a $25,000 grant to help fund a feasibility study on building a 99 megawatt wind farm near Lake Andes, South Dakota. 

There will be a lot of other issues that will hurt our farmers thanks to Kristi's failure.  

Trade and export. Promotional export programs will also run out of funding, including dairy and specialty crop export programs. Export deals may be delayed or entirely sabotaged if the programs are defunct for too long. Vilsackwarned that Brazil trade relations, already delicate, will be impacted immediately.... 

Farmers and businesses, meanwhile, remain paralyzed by the uncertainty, unable to plan for the next season of planting until Congress passes a 5 year bill. As the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition notes, many programs have been suspended since the 2008 Farm Bill expired in 2011, including aid for “beginning farmers, minority farmers, specialty crop farmers, organic farmers, value-added farm enterprises, rural small business, and renewable energy and energy conservation.”

Thanks Kristi for nothing, nothing at all.

Hostages and South Dakota Stockholm Syndrome

This morning on the way into school I heard a lot of hostage talk.  The GOP are trying to claim that the Democrats are hostage takers by not giving into demands and Pelosi are claiming that the GOP are hostage takers by threatening to do harm if they don't get their way.

GOP view:

"What you need to do is quit holding the national parks, the Smithsonian, the Holocaust Museum and others hostage to your desire to shut down the government — that's what's going on here," he said. "You think we're holding the Affordable Health Care Act hostage? You're holding our national parks hostage."

Dem view:

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the effort "pathetic" and "not responsible," and encouraged all Democrats to vote no. 

In a letter, House Democrats cited Cruz's possible involvement as a reason. 

"They took hostages by shutting down the government, and now they're releasing one hostage at a time," Pelosi said. 

The question is how can the Democratic party and Obama be the hostage takers.  They simply said, lets pay our bills and follow through with what was legally passed and deal with the budget in the proper way.  Then the GOP talking about this strategy for years said, we get what we want or you get a government shutdown.  Which one sounds like the hostage taker?

Now we have Kristi Noem and John Thune repeating the illogic that the Democrats did this.  

"House Republicans will continue to do what the American people elected us to do – keep the government open and get rid of Obamacare," U.S. Rep Kristi Noem wrote in a statement, shortly before voting for another bill that would delay aspects of Obama's health care overhaul in exchange for preventing a shutdown. 

In a conference call with reporters, U.S. Sen John Thune also accused Obama of failing to "compromise." 

That attitude by our GOP leaders will end up hurting us all.

Evert Van der Sluis, an economics professor at South Dakota State University, said that however government cuts are implemented, they're bad news for the state economy. 

If the shutdown continues through to the end of the year, Van der Sluis said, it is projected to reduce national GDP growth from 1.4 percent to 0.2 percent in the final three months of the year. 

"This is going to effect all of us," he said. "There's no doubt about it." 

Maybe that is their grand plan.  Hold America hostage until they develop the Stockholm Syndrome and will look at the GOP that abuses them as saviors.  At Discovery Health, they explain the causes of the Stockholm Syndrome

People suffering from Stockholm syndrome come to identify with and even care for their captors in a desperate, usually unconscious act of self-preservation. It occurs in the most psychologically traumatic situations, often hostage situations or kidnappings, and its effects usually do not end when the crisis ends. In the most classic cases, victims continue to defend and care about their captors even after they escape captivity. Symptoms of Stockholm syndrome have also been identified in the slave/master relationship, in battered-spouse cases and in members of destructive cults.

The question, I guess, is what does that make Kristi Noem, John Thune, and the GOP?  My money is on a destructive cult.  Now the cult of Ted Cruz. 

Mt. Rushmore and Compromise

Thanks to the government shut down Mt. Rushmore and other national monuments and parks are now shut down.  Why?  Because the GOP refuse to let Obamacare go.  They refuse to budge on the issue.  They refused to compromise.  The impact: Governor Daugaard is begging the feds to allow him to use state funds and personal to reopen it despite knowing that it won't happen.  The GOP argue "NO COMPROMISE!  NO OBAMACARE!"

I thought that this would be a good opportunity to see what some of the Presidents on that landmark had to say about compromise.

Teddy Roosevelt had some powerful words about the issuse published in 1900

The man who is taken in by, or demands, impossible promises is not much less culpable than the politician who deliberately makes such promises and then breaks faith. Thus when any public man says that he "will never compromise under any conditions," he is certain to receive the applause of a few emotional people who do not think correctly, and the one fact about him that can be instantly asserted as true beyond peradventure is that, if he is a serious personage at all, he is deliberately lying, while it is only less certain that he will be guilty of base and dishonorable compromise when the opportunity arises. "Compromise" is so often used in a bad sense that it is difficult to remember that properly it merely describes the process of reaching an agreement.

Thomas Jefferson is quoted to say

"A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires
much compromise of opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward
Livingston, 1824. 

Abraham Lincoln said

"To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken, if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law, would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated. The provision of the Constitution that 'The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it,' is equivalent to a provision---is a provision---that such privilege may be suspended when, in cases of rebellion, or invasion, the public safety does require it. It was decided that we have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ which was authorized to be made." Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 186 

George Washington:

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.