Government Shutdown, Reichstag Fire...

     It always amazes me that when the Federal government shuts down...it doesn't shut down.  Okay, I can see keeping the armed forces going, and DOJ (crime always ignores the shutdown memo, dammit!) and DHS (those passports aren't going to stamp themselves, nor will your carefully-folded underwear paw though itself at the airport); Congress has to stay on the job if they're going to even fake trying to resolve the impasse.*  But there's a whole list of optional stuff that Presidents get to pick and choose, and most of it is nonsense.  The current resident at 1600 Penna† has promised to set up the cuts for maximum partisan pain, which is pernicious nonsense: during a shutdown, the President -- any President -- needs to get the Cabinet working on limiting harm, not seeing what they can make even worse.‡  Other things have funding limitations.  I logged on to my doctor's website yesterday to discover this notice:
     "Medicare virtual visits currently not covered. Effective immediately, due to government shut down."
     Yes, Granny's got to make an in-person visit -- with a lead time measured in months for most appointments, as opposed to 24 hours or less for a virtual one.  Sure hope the old girl holds up!

     The Administration is using the shutdown as an opportunity to increase Executive Branch power and enact more of the dire promises of "Project 2025."  It's unAmerican.  It's contrary to our history and traditions.

     There's more and more revulsion to this trend:

     This page has a link to neat little booklet, Understanding Fascism.  It's designed to be printed out double-sided, cut and trimmed to pocket-size.  It includes the U. S. Army piece I quoted from and linked to recently.

     Then there's this article on a harm-reduction approach for reporters covering modern populists.  It's interesting reading, especially if you've looked into 20th Century U. S. history; Huey Long of Louisiana was one of that century's most successful populist politicians, playing the media with great skill, and  there's good, hands-on, nuts-and-bolts insight into how to avoid being used.  It also links to a clear and concise 32-page booklet, and an even shorter "toolkit."  The Press is far too easily made into a partisan megaphone by extremists and it's well past time they realized it again, and pushed back.  One thing caught my eye: several times, the writer calls for greater specificity in quotes and descriptions, and fewer blanket labels, even looking askance at the use of "populist" and other broad terms when covering politicians and events.  Details matter!  Facts matter!  Fuzzy reactions and handy-dandy us-vs-them labels often obfuscate rather than clarify. 
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* On the other hand, heating, ventilation and cooling for their offices and chambers?  Maybe not so much.  That nice cafeteria, coffee service, on-demand water carafes?  Surely a needless luxury!  Nose to the grindstone, Congressthings, a little more cloakroom dealmaking and a little less Ritual Grimacing.  We already know you're foursquare with whatever will get you re-elected but voters are increasingly wondering what it is you're actually going to do.
 
† I've seen pictures of what he's done to the place and he is not gonna get his security deposit back.  I don't think he quite understands that it's essentially a rental.
 
‡ Of all the Administrations I would not associate with "harm reduction," I would not associate this one the most.  They came in vowing to create trauma and they have.

"Blue Channels"

     Action, meet reaction.  The Committee for the First Amendment is getting a relaunch.  Considering how the first launch went, it's a little surprising: in 1947, a bunch of prominent Hollywood types banded together to speak out against McCarthyism -- and then found out some of their friends were, indeed, communists.

     "It was a different time," as they say, and the Soviet Union had managed a remarkable degree of control over their public image in the U.S. (and the West generally) from the end of the Russian Civil War through the Spanish Civil War (though many volunteers, like George Orwell, came away disillusioned about the Soviets) and right up through the The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; when Hitler turned on Russia and they joined the Allies, it brought rehabilitation.  All kinds of political notions took root in the U.S. during the Great Depression, and communism developed a following among writers and actors.  Some of them were quite serious about it; others went to a rally or two and then moved on.  After WW II, HUAC, McCarthy et al went after all of 'em, inflating the numbers a few genuine Reds by adding in anyone who had ever admired the Soviets or spoke approvingly of Marx in public.  They painted with a very broad brush.

     1947's Committee for the First Amendment waved just as broad a brush back, with predictable results, like Humphrey Bogart's 1948 article, "I'm No Communist" explaining his involvement.  

     Defend freedom of speech, and you find yourself in the middle of a howling pack of people speaking freely, many of them espousing ideas you do not agree with.  That's how it works.  But it's not at all comfortable and it may be terrible PR.

     And perhaps that's something the 2025 Committee for the First Amendment understands.  Anyway, they're out there trying, and that's not nothing.  The current Administration is certainly flapping a broad brush around and they're overdue to get brushed back at.

     I'll leave the last word to the United States Army, in 1945's Army Talk Orientation Fact Sheet/Number 64:
     "Many fascists make the spurious claim that the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as 'communist' everyone who refuses to support them. [...] Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of 'super-patriotism' and  'super-Americanism.' Fascist leaders are neither stupid nor naive. They know that they must hand out a line that "sells." Huey Long is said to have remarked that if fascism came to America, it would be on a program of 'Americanism.'"

     Real Americanism knows the answer to speech you don't like isn't suppression but speaking up yourself, and that the marketplace of ideas only works when it is a free market.

Bad Management

      Congress has ground to a halt, as predicted.  Democrats blame Republicans; Republicans blame Democrats.  It's a dance we've seen before.

     Both sides admit they're far apart.  The GOP wanted a basic, nothing-changes continuing resolution to keep the wheels turning for a couple of months.  Dems, aware the funding was about out for some key health-care subsidies -- money that helps pay for insurance for lower-income Americans -- wanted concessions.  

     Either side could break the jam by giving the other guys what they want.  Both sides could break it by finding some middle ground that everyone would loathe.  Neither side could work out a compromise and so here we are.

     The shutdown comes with something we haven't seen before: the Executive Branch has decided to violate the Hatch Act.  Go the the website for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and (as I write this) you'll be greeted by both a banner and a pop-up reading, "The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need."  The second sentence is just their job.  The first sentence is inaccurate at best; see previous paragraph.*  It takes sixty votes to get a budget bill through the U. S. Senate.  The Republicans haven't got that many Senators and any Senator with five friends could add up the results† and see they were going to have to work something out.

     Nor do the violations stop there.  Set up to prevent abuses under the New Deal, the Hatch Act essentially prohibits any member of the Executive Branch except the President and Vice President from engaging in partisan politics.  Something like, say, sending official messages to everyone working for Federal agencies explicitly blaming Democrats for the shutdown would, in fact, be in violation of it.  So you'll never, ever guess what happened.  Not only illegal but, as explained above, untrue.

     As things stand, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid payments are unaffected.  The mail will still be delivered, the military remain at their posts, air traffic controllers and TSA agents are still at work -- and ICE and the the Border Patrol under DHS will keep on doing their thing.  The latter appears to be the Administration's top priority, so what do they care if the lights are off everywhere else?  The Executive Branch is threatening to use the shutdown as an excuse for further permanent reductions in the Federal workforce, a threat that would probably be more effective if it wasn't what they were already doing anyway.

     In the meantime, if you wanted to ask the FCC or the Social Security Administration (etc.) a question?  Tough luck, kid.  Planned vacation to a National Park?  Better research nearby State Parks.  Many are quite nice, though lacking the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful and so on.  And isn't there a hurricane or two headed for the Southeast?  Oops.
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* This appears to be telling us all Democratic Senators except for Catherine Cortez Masto and John Fetterman, along with independent Angus King, are members of "the Radical Left," as is Republican Rand Paul.  It will come as a surprise to many of them, especially Senator Paul.
 
† I am not going to explain this.