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fandomhigh2013-10-03 12:48 pm
professor-lyman.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2013-10-03 12:48 pm
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Current Affairs [Thursday, October 3, 2013]
Had Josh noticed the pollen thing this week? No, no he had not. He was far too busy reading All the Things on the government shutdown and exchanging pithy, profanity ladened texts with Sam and Donna. Besides, he always felt this amped up during a political debate...which was probably more than you needed to know about Josh. Oh well.
"Today we are going to learn new vocabulary," Josh said, "and not just for really amusing things to call Speaker Boehner, though if you give me one that makes me laugh, you'll get extra credit."
Josh was a giver that way.
"Okay, so the federal government has shut down," he began. "'How,' you ask, 'did something this collosally stupid happen?' The quick answer is 'The House of Representatives is broken in a way that hasn't happened since before the Civil War,' and the longer answer is that, plus some new vocabulary words." He pulled out a map of the 113th Congressional districts by election results. "Right. Unlike the Senate, where each state gets 2 Senators regardless of population, the US House has 435 representatives that are dolled out by how many people live where. So those big blocky states with no lines mean they only have one Representative for the entirity of, say, South Dakota, because it's cold and no one lives there, while California has 53 Representatives because it's California and warm and sunny and they have those great advertisements about how you want to go. At the end of each census period--every ten years--the states are told how may Representatives they'll get and it's up to the state legislatures--or in the cases of some really smart states, a non-partisan commission--to redraw the district lines. See these states here?" He pointed to Ohio and Pennsylvania. "Both of these states, in the last election, voted for President Obama for re-election, and yet that sea of red in their Congressional districts would make you think that nothing but Republicans live there. That, my friends, is called gerrymandering--redrawing the district lines in a way that makes it impossible for your party's guy not to be re-elected while pretty much ensuring the opposition party will be screwed for the next ten years. Both sides do it, and while it's illegal, it's only really illegal if you're redrawing to disenfranchise on the basis of race. So while your state on a whole might be moderate in their political views, the districts are so that they can be won by the party who controls the state house. It's why, say, a guy who'd had three heart attacks and was older than dirt was being run as the Democrat in Orange County, California--a Democrat hadn't won in Orange County since practically the inception of Orange County and so we don't waste time or resources in districts where we have no chance."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "Which brings us to the Tea Party." He put another map up on the wall. "They're a radical strain of increasingly radical Republicans, led by Michele Bachmann, a woman who is in the dictionary beside the definition of 'crazy flakes.'"
This was not literally true.
"There are currently 49 members in the House being led by all accounts by Senator Ted 'Listen to Me Talk' Cruz from last week's class," he said, "and they are the real reason our government has come to an entirely preventable screeching halt. When I mentioned the districts now only being won by certain parties? It means that the primaries--where candidates from the same party run against each other--is the real election. And the Tea Party comes after normally rational Congressmembers claiming that they aren't ideologically pure enough, and beats them, or at least tries to. And job security--their own--is what has the rest of the Republicans in the House too afraid to behave like fucking grown-ups. And what the far right wing and their crazily rich backers hate more than anything, apparently, is nationalized health care. Let's not talk about how every other industrialized nation in the world already has this. Let's not talk about how people go bankrupt when they don't have insurance and then get hit by a car. Let's not talk about how the plan the ACA was based on came originally from the conserative think tank Heritage Foundation or how it was implemented on a state-wide level by the guy the Republicans ran for President in 2012. Let's instead focus on three things: the bill became law in 2010. The Supreme Court--which has a conservative majority right now--upheld its constitutionality, and we had a presidential election where the man who's name is in what the Republicans prejoratively call 'Obamacare' was resoundingly reelected. By any rational measurement, this fight is over. But that hasn't stopped the House of Representatives, which managed, while simultateously being the least productive in the history of the country, to pass bills overturning the health care law more than 40 times. The Senate is run by Democrats and if you seriously think that the President of the United States is going to sign a new law overturning his signature domestic accomplishment, you have never paid attention to politics. Ever. So the House, which is stupid, but not that stupid, refused to negotiate on the annual appropriations cycle with the Senate for the last six months. And let's be real here--the government has been moving from one continuing resolution--or CR--to another for years now with no new appropriations, and that's not even counting the sequestration ridiculousness of the last nine months. The House has been using its Constitutional responsibility of holder of the nation's pursestrings as hostage-taking extortion for a while now. They refused to send a budget that didn't include defunding the ACA to the Senate. The Senate refused to pass a bill that would dismantle or delay implementation of the health care law. And so the House--or more specifically, the 49 member caucus of the Tea Party--shut the government down. Entire departments, including the National Institutes of Health and NASA, are furloughed without pay for the duration."
By this time, five teal deer had made their way into the classroom and were watching Josh avidly. They loved when people got talky.
"And here's the stupidest part," Josh said, "of a really stupid situation. In order to pass a 'clean CR--' a continuing resolution without any of the ACA stuff attached, since ACA began to be implemented on the 1st because it was never attached to the discretionary spending bills anyway--you need 17 Republican representatives to join with the Democratic minority and pass it. And there have already been that many Members saying they'd vote for it. But Speaker Boehner won't bring it to a vote because as soon as he does, it's admitting that he's lost control of the Republicans in the House. Which...um, he has. A while ago."
He leaned back against the desk. "Okay. Today I want you to give me your best guess on how long this shutdown will last--closest to being right will get extra credit--a really good, insulting name for Speaker Boehner without descending into Oompa Loompa jokes--and your own assessment on what the government shutting down really means. Go."
"Today we are going to learn new vocabulary," Josh said, "and not just for really amusing things to call Speaker Boehner, though if you give me one that makes me laugh, you'll get extra credit."
Josh was a giver that way.
"Okay, so the federal government has shut down," he began. "'How,' you ask, 'did something this collosally stupid happen?' The quick answer is 'The House of Representatives is broken in a way that hasn't happened since before the Civil War,' and the longer answer is that, plus some new vocabulary words." He pulled out a map of the 113th Congressional districts by election results. "Right. Unlike the Senate, where each state gets 2 Senators regardless of population, the US House has 435 representatives that are dolled out by how many people live where. So those big blocky states with no lines mean they only have one Representative for the entirity of, say, South Dakota, because it's cold and no one lives there, while California has 53 Representatives because it's California and warm and sunny and they have those great advertisements about how you want to go. At the end of each census period--every ten years--the states are told how may Representatives they'll get and it's up to the state legislatures--or in the cases of some really smart states, a non-partisan commission--to redraw the district lines. See these states here?" He pointed to Ohio and Pennsylvania. "Both of these states, in the last election, voted for President Obama for re-election, and yet that sea of red in their Congressional districts would make you think that nothing but Republicans live there. That, my friends, is called gerrymandering--redrawing the district lines in a way that makes it impossible for your party's guy not to be re-elected while pretty much ensuring the opposition party will be screwed for the next ten years. Both sides do it, and while it's illegal, it's only really illegal if you're redrawing to disenfranchise on the basis of race. So while your state on a whole might be moderate in their political views, the districts are so that they can be won by the party who controls the state house. It's why, say, a guy who'd had three heart attacks and was older than dirt was being run as the Democrat in Orange County, California--a Democrat hadn't won in Orange County since practically the inception of Orange County and so we don't waste time or resources in districts where we have no chance."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "Which brings us to the Tea Party." He put another map up on the wall. "They're a radical strain of increasingly radical Republicans, led by Michele Bachmann, a woman who is in the dictionary beside the definition of 'crazy flakes.'"
This was not literally true.
"There are currently 49 members in the House being led by all accounts by Senator Ted 'Listen to Me Talk' Cruz from last week's class," he said, "and they are the real reason our government has come to an entirely preventable screeching halt. When I mentioned the districts now only being won by certain parties? It means that the primaries--where candidates from the same party run against each other--is the real election. And the Tea Party comes after normally rational Congressmembers claiming that they aren't ideologically pure enough, and beats them, or at least tries to. And job security--their own--is what has the rest of the Republicans in the House too afraid to behave like fucking grown-ups. And what the far right wing and their crazily rich backers hate more than anything, apparently, is nationalized health care. Let's not talk about how every other industrialized nation in the world already has this. Let's not talk about how people go bankrupt when they don't have insurance and then get hit by a car. Let's not talk about how the plan the ACA was based on came originally from the conserative think tank Heritage Foundation or how it was implemented on a state-wide level by the guy the Republicans ran for President in 2012. Let's instead focus on three things: the bill became law in 2010. The Supreme Court--which has a conservative majority right now--upheld its constitutionality, and we had a presidential election where the man who's name is in what the Republicans prejoratively call 'Obamacare' was resoundingly reelected. By any rational measurement, this fight is over. But that hasn't stopped the House of Representatives, which managed, while simultateously being the least productive in the history of the country, to pass bills overturning the health care law more than 40 times. The Senate is run by Democrats and if you seriously think that the President of the United States is going to sign a new law overturning his signature domestic accomplishment, you have never paid attention to politics. Ever. So the House, which is stupid, but not that stupid, refused to negotiate on the annual appropriations cycle with the Senate for the last six months. And let's be real here--the government has been moving from one continuing resolution--or CR--to another for years now with no new appropriations, and that's not even counting the sequestration ridiculousness of the last nine months. The House has been using its Constitutional responsibility of holder of the nation's pursestrings as hostage-taking extortion for a while now. They refused to send a budget that didn't include defunding the ACA to the Senate. The Senate refused to pass a bill that would dismantle or delay implementation of the health care law. And so the House--or more specifically, the 49 member caucus of the Tea Party--shut the government down. Entire departments, including the National Institutes of Health and NASA, are furloughed without pay for the duration."
By this time, five teal deer had made their way into the classroom and were watching Josh avidly. They loved when people got talky.
"And here's the stupidest part," Josh said, "of a really stupid situation. In order to pass a 'clean CR--' a continuing resolution without any of the ACA stuff attached, since ACA began to be implemented on the 1st because it was never attached to the discretionary spending bills anyway--you need 17 Republican representatives to join with the Democratic minority and pass it. And there have already been that many Members saying they'd vote for it. But Speaker Boehner won't bring it to a vote because as soon as he does, it's admitting that he's lost control of the Republicans in the House. Which...um, he has. A while ago."
He leaned back against the desk. "Okay. Today I want you to give me your best guess on how long this shutdown will last--closest to being right will get extra credit--a really good, insulting name for Speaker Boehner without descending into Oompa Loompa jokes--and your own assessment on what the government shutting down really means. Go."
Re: Talk about the News! [10/3]
Sadly, even with a week-long fogged up brain, Sia was trying to take this as a lesson for the future, just in case.
Re: Talk about the News! [10/3]
Thank you, Josh.