So the Government shut down,
 

But I still have a job that I "get" to come to everyday.
I'll even get paid... sometime... eventually... :gofurslf:

I think I'd rather be like the Federal Technicians that are actually unemployed, but are able to go find other work.
It's harvest time, lots of farmers looking for help right now...

I am still working but my part of the federal govt isn't part of the national budget, our ratepayers take care of us.

I'm still working, just not sure when I'll get another paycheck. That becomes the problem if this becomes drug out.

Gotta love partisan politics.

I'm in the same boat, still working, but who knows when we will next be paid. Grateful I still have orders, at least, it could have gone the other way since I'm on ADOS.

I'm working because I've been designated as excepted/essential. I'm limited on the work I can do, and have no idea when I'll get paid, although I'm sure to get it eventually. Those who were furloughed might get paid for the time they've been furloughed, but they won't know for sure until Congress passes a bill saying that they will get their back pay. I'm about ready to get out for good...! Tired of no pay-raises or bonuses for three years, sequestration, and now furloughs for who knows how long.

I was furloughed over the summer because of the sequestrations stuff but here were not affected by the shut down unless it drags on for months and we run out of working capital. I have some friends who work for NOAA fisheries and theyve been furloughed. I doubt anybodys getting back pay this time.

I'll just leave this here


http://www.cnbc.com/id/101078243

So you ARE still around.

Still working? I got the impression that you were looking at retirement a couple of years back.

They did pass something that all military are considered essential and will continue to get paid like normal.

Only AGR and T-10 ADOS are in that boat for us ARNG folks. If you're T-32 ADOS, you have to be specifically excepted/exempt from the shutdown. In my case, the HRF is considered essential, so we're still here working so we can maintain our response posture.

On that note, the downside to being considered an essential asset is that we can't take any leave.. so the leave I had planned for the week of the 14th may get canceled, if this damn shut down is still ongoing. Which if that's the case, it means we won't be paid yet either. Which will make me a pretty unhappy camper.

I suggest that you find out who your local representative is and politely explain your situation before you shank the shit out of him or her.

If the fuckin republicans push this shit too far and then get voted out of office and then we get gun laws forced on us, I am going to be fuckin pissed. You aren't going to change Obamacare right now, give it the fuck up.... What you are going to get, is get voted out of office and then we get all of the Democrat wet dreams put in place like they did with Obamacare thanks to Bushy...

Could have been worse. You could have gotten an actual single payer medicare system instead of the watered down shit that you got.

Oh..... wait.....

This is my biggest fear.

It's over....we're already fooked (Obamacare) so stop showboating! In just a few months time we'll ALL see how bad of an idea this package is, and when it's grossly underfunded the whole country will turn on Obama.

All they're doing now is turning straight party voters against them too.

My insurance is actually really good, much better than what my Dad receives in Canada. Of course he has American insurance that blows mine out of the water as well for when he is in the States. If I get thrown into Obamacare, I will be pissed.

I would be pissed too because you guys had the chance to do it right for basic coverage, better than us in fact, and it all got screwed up by partisan bullshit. A good single payer system allows for both two tier coverage and reduced costs, by bulk purchase. Public and private can co-exist. With the amount of money you folks pay for insurance the people paying the most for the best coverage could pay a little less, while still helping to cover the costs for those who can't afford ANY health insurance.

Your dad pays a fraction of what you do, for what he gets here by default. A supplemental health plan would easily bring him up to your level, while still paying less than what you do. You could have even better than that, for less than what you pay now, if your system was set up right (the way that ours should be).

I have federal coverage, it's great and right now we aren't being forced on exchanges. :lol:

He pays similar for his Canada coverage that I do, prescription prices are very similar because my plan has a max for uncovered medication that I cannot pay over if no generic is available.

His high management level coverage in the States just crushes anything I could get as a worker bee without spending a small fortune.

Obamacare doesn't really bother me too much though. The only thing that I would like to see go is the individual mandate. That should of been shot down by the supreme court.

So he's a foreign national who actually pays for the care he receives here, rather than it being paid for by remittance? Well we've got to make SOMe money, don't we? It's not like we would charge him the same that we would a Canadian citizen ;)

The best way to handle universal health care would be to take a basic rate from everyone who can afford it, for a basic level of care, then allow supplemental insurance to be added over and above that. The basic level of care would be overseen by a single payer system. Similar systems exist up here for auto insurance, and they seem to work reasonably well.

I'm in the "wait and see" phase on Obamacare, but I agree with this point completely. Republicans have been mismanaging every fight they've taken on since President Obama was elected (or about a year before, if you count McCain's pathetic excuse for a campaign). It's like the '08 election took the brains out of their sails.

It's like they think they need to go more and more extreme, every time that they lose. The opposite is likely more true.

My question is, if the republicans are so sure the ACA is bad and wont work right, then they should let it be implemented and when it fails come in and clean up the mess. I really think that they are worried that it would work right.

On a side note, my sister in law is trying to get coverage in FL and they want to charge her $600/mo for a family of 4, FL being one of the states that didnt agree to the federal funding. as a test she put in NJ, and the same plan through the same company came to $190/mo with federal assistance because NJ is particpating.

....:boobs:

We will get paid our normal wage, once a budget is passed. The bill they passed just let us keep our jobs and continue working during the shutdown.

Luckily, my supervisor is still allowing leave, however he's working it.
Without knowing when the next paycheck is coming, the fun is a bit dampered, but still get to carry on my plans.

I guess since they decided to bring everyone back on board, my boss decided to allow me to take my leave. But yeah, I'm in the same boat, a little dampered from the unknown paycheck situation, but I think I'll be ok (expecting a Pell grant payment, hopefully.. assuming that isn't affected by this BS too :panic: ).

You guys are a bunch of Debbie Downers! :lol: This guy found a pretty interesting silver lining to it all: http://www.roadandtrack.com/features...o-the-shutdown

I think he definitely has the right idea. :lol

Oh the paycheck situation - for those of you with USAA, if you have an LES showing what you're supposed to be paid mid-month, they will grant you an interest-free loan for that amount. No, it isn't ideal, I hate having to take out loans for anything (except expensive and fast toys that are likely to kill me :lol: ), but if it means keeping you from going hungry until Congress gets their shit together, it's better than nothing.

Except it wasn't Obama who shut down the government ;)

http://drunkdialcongress.org/

:lol:

The House has sent multiple funding bills to the Senate which Reid won't hold a vote on. Obama has also promised to veto at least some of them if they did reach his desk, but of course Obama has nothing to do with it.:skep:

We've been told by our TAG that we will actually get a paycheck on the 15th. Technically, since the 14th is a holiday, and the 12-13 is a weekend, we should see the deposit on Friday.

Yeah, I saw an e-mail about that after I had already posted. :lol: Should be good to go, but it does suck for all those non-essential ADOS folks that they have to put on orders retroactively - they said the earliest they'll see their pay is the 18th.

So I guess Monday isn't a bank holiday, so pay may come in then...

Well considering the Republicans and Democrats had a deal in place months ago and the Republicans reneged Id say the Republicans chose the shutdown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzEpSJNaLs

Yup. they need to toss out anyone who breathes the words "Tea party."

So it is all Republicans, Obama has nothing to do with it?

If you want to blame Obama for passing a law two years ago that Republicans dont like then sure.

You honestly think this is about Obamacare and NOT the fact that the president hasn't had a budget passed the entire time he's been in office?

This same president has raised the debt ceiling HOW many times while in office?

But...yet...holding the government accountable for it's spending somehow equates to "republicans are the debil"

Call it whatever makes you feel more 'Murican (or elitist canadian for Papa :rockwoot: )but it damn sure ain't ONE sided fucktardedness

Debt is growing, maintenance on the debt is growing, and the debt started growing with Bush but it's Obama's fault. Inflation exists. More people are on the social safety net than ever before. Your basic costs of doing business are rising, without increasing the services involved. Where does the debt ceiling go down?

Yet he wanted the job :skep: Wonder what the statute of limitation on blaming the previous administration for the problems of the current administrations entire run is? I suppose The Carter administration blamed Ford for the fuel crisis too, so par for the course.

Supporters of the Bush II regime were blaming Carter for the crash :shrug:

Starting to see a lot of blame going specifically towards Boehner...

This partisanship garbage is fucking ruining us... yet we live and breathe the shit... It's really scary to go back and look at what people were saying under Bush and how clearly they're tunes have changed - on BOTH sides. it's fucking sports teams...

http://scottystarnes.files.wordpress...t_two_face.jpg

And they were right... Started with Carter and made worse as the years went on. You may or may not recall, the Bush administration was trying to plug the leaks in the wall before the whole thing collapsed, and the Dem response was, "there's no problems here."

You can certainly blame the Bush administration for a lot of things, but if you get to the nuts and bolts of it, it wasn't just their doing... not by a long shot.

Oddly enough I don't see those two statements as being at odds. Raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership (across the entire government) AND it's irresponsible for America to consider not paying its debts.

The ceiling does eventually have to be raised somewhat, as a matter of simple realism, due to factors like inflation. It's the AMOUNT that's at issue.

They wouldn't be at odds if in a different context...

I disagree. The Tea Partiers say not one dollar more. That's unrealistic, at best.

Unrealistic, but a step in the right direction.

On a lighter note, I got paid today!!! :rockwoot: :boobs:

That, no. On the other hand I will spread some blame to Obama for refusing to discuss any changes to that law passed 3 years ago that we now know delivers significantly less than promised, at a significantly higher cost than promised, and has been pretty much a complete disaster in implementation so far. I'll also spread some blame for refusing to discuss any potential cuts, Obamacare related or not, before a budget or debt ceiling increase is passed.

Inflation? America has increased our national debt by more than 70% over the last six years. That isn't inflation.

I haven't heard anyone say they refuse to raise the debt ceiling. What I have heard consistently though is people saying they want spending reductions to get the rate at which debt is growing under control before they will increase the debt ceiling.

We can make some cuts, sequestration pretty much proved that. Despite the post-apocalyptic vision the Obama administration and their lackeys in the media desperately tried to sell about sequestration the end result has ultimately been relatively painless. I fail to see the harm in trying to hammer out some additional cuts before we write another blank check for the next year or two.

The only reason the debt ceiling has to be raised so often is because congress refuses to pass anything long term. Theyre already talking about raising the debt ceiling until only February so we can do all of this again in 4 months. Congress passes budgets, not the president, if we dont have a budget its their fault.

If you want to reduce the budget then do it before the money is spent, dont talk about cutting back the day before bills are due.

Its been two weeks since signups started, and the actual coverage for the plans doesnt start until January. Neither you nor anyone else knows how well its doing. The Obamacare horse has left the barn, theres nothing to negotiate.

That's like saying that shooting your dog is a step in the right direction for controlling unwanted pet breeding. Now it may well screw you all on debt servicing costs, since there's talk of downgrading your Federal government from AAA.

Two points on that. The first is what EponXero said: How can you know the ultimate real costs or effectiveness of a programme when it hasn't even started?

The second is who will you blame for it not providing the promised services, when it was cut off at the knees by the opposition? A crippled programme will not have a hope in hell of providing anything close to what the original proposals promised.

And I recall the first pass of this idiocy, in which the Tea Party adherents were saying 'not a penny more.' It's rather immaterial, though, as you currently have a political hostage crisis.

The spending that increased the debt started under Bush. It was necessitated by a lack of controls on fiscal institutions that started decades back and hasn't been corrected by successive governments; both Republican and Democrat. Take a look at a graph of debt vs. year, corrected for the value of the dollar of any given year, and note when the majority of that debt took a big upswing. Odd how conservatives simply have different ways to waste your money, isn't it?

The Province of Ontario went through a microcosm of what you're experiencing, back in the '90s. The then-Premier started by spending his way out of a recession and then changed horses in mid stream, deciding to go for fiscal restraint and cut-backs. Either strategy has been proven to ultimately work but, unfortunately, only if you stick to your guns. His actions screwed our economy for a decade and it could have been even worse.

He says it all for me

[youtube]A3BHujm3cpY[/youtube]

He had me there, for a while, but then went off the rails a bit. The fact is that there was a deal in place, a contract if you will, that was vacated. That deal should have gone through, as phase one. You then start doing what you should have been doing for the last couple of years, which is getting spending more under control.

The rest of his points may be quite valid but they're serious issues that require both a fair bit of time, and voter involvement, to address.

Yes, take the money out of politics. How do you do this? By voting out liars. By voting out those who work only as part of a political machine, rather than doing the will of the electorate. The voters do that and as long as you have people who will vote based solely on what party a politician is a member of, that mess will never be fixed. Hidebound voters seem to be the majority, with a very small swing percentage making the ultimate decisions.

And the banking issue needs to be addressed. For one thing you need to follow our lead, in requiring that banks have more basic capital backing their investments. Reduce the amount of funny money and you limit the number of failures.

Those are long term goals though, not the immediate issue.

It isn't just the signup system, though that is a pretty good indication. They admitted things were going poorly months ago when they had to delay the employer mandate because they couldn't figure out how to enforce it after 3 years. At the same time in the interest of fairness they should have also delayed the individual mandate, but they wanted a political victory so they didn't. I believe plenty of people know exactly how well it is doing, but because the answer is poorly they aren't talking about it.

The Congressional Budget Office, a somewhat non-partisan agency, has changed their tune on what Obamacare will cost and how many people it will cover over the next 10 years. That's about as good of an estimate as we will see and is also the agency Obama depended on for his estimates when selling it to the American people.

Cut off at the knees? How so? They were working with effectively unlimited resources for the 3 years they had to build out the exchange website and that has been a clusterfuck. That may have been crippled by a lot of things, but none of them appear to be the opposition. I'm not aware of a single provision in Obamacare that hasn't been funded so far due to the opposition.

After six years of basically a blank checkbook under both Bush and Obama with mediocre results at best I think it is time to reign it in. The immediate economic danger of Fortune 500 companies failing was dealt with years ago. Agree or disagree with how it was done, it doesn't really matter.

The spending now is different and meant to build growth in the American economy. So far in my view and after years of this going on the results have been shitty. What I mentioned before doesn't help either, the roadshow that happens every time cuts are mentioned. The Democrats and the media went on a jag for months before sequestration about how devastating it would be if sequestration went in to effect. The end result barely moved the needle. I think we can make some cuts and I don't see pushing for them as an unreasonable position.

We've YET to see the actual damage it will cause...but it's starting

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/0...nthly-premium#

You miss my point. Obamacare, as it presently exists, is a poor shell of the original proposals, as it was torn to pieces before originally being passed. It's a clusterfuck because it was passed as a clusterfuck, rather than a fully formed and realized plan. That is when it was cut off at the knees, as I previously stated.

Spending your way out of a recession works but it extends the length of the recession, making it longer to come back from. You have to wait for the money to come back into the system. Unfortunately many corporations seem to be sitting on the money, rather than reinvesting it as intended, which further adds to the assfucking that you're all taking.

Someone needs to shoot partisan politicking in the head. That's what is really pulling you all down. Nothing has been done fully, completely, and so everything has failed to have positive results. Too many people want to climb up on a pulpit and scream their personal mantras, without consideration to how much they're truly fucking over the average voter.

Looks like the senate just veto'd the deal without ever reading it

Default we come! :rockwoot:

Hope you got groceries and cash today!

Where are you seeing this? Everything online says they have a deal right now...

Heard it in the waiting room on the TV (Faux news)


All I could find online about what was being said:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...udget-impasse/