So what it boils down to is this: Representatives who represent approximately 20% of the population of the United States have shut down the U.S. government by threatening the Speaker of the House with being primaried if he presents the Senate version of the continuing resolution to the House. Twenty. Percent. If Boehner moved the Senate bill to the floor it has the majority of votes needed to re-open the government. The Senate bill is already a compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate and satisfactory both to the majority of Democrats and to at least a significant percentage of Republicans. But Boehner’s scared. He’s scared that if he does this, he’ll be primaried by the Koch Brothers, and then he’ll lose his plum job on Capitol Hill. And so 20% of the population have basically declared that they will shut down the government unless they are given the right to retroactively repeal a bill (the Affordable Care Act) that was passed by and is supported by the majority in Congress.
The problem is that you don’t have a government if 20% of the population can veto bills. Here in California we’re almost ungovernable when 33% of the population can veto taxes and budgets (which must pass with a 2/3rds vote). If it were 20% — if 20% of representatives could veto taxes and budgets — the whole state government would collapse, because the majority simply would not be able to craft a bill that would satisfy both the majority of people in the state, and the tiny minority that hates everything the majority does. If the Senate or the President allow a precedent to stand — if they allow 20% of the population of the United States to veto any bill they want to veto upon threat of government shutdown — then the United States will truly become ungovernable. It was hard enough to pass a budget in California with only a 2/3rds requirement. With a 4/5ths requirement it would have been utterly impossible. The same with the United States.
In other words: If the Teabaggers and Koch brothers win, we will no longer have a federal government. We will, essentially, be Somalia with nukes. And that’s pretty fucking scary.
– Badtux the “Why don’t the Teabaggers move to Somalia?” Penguin
Update: Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station
spot on
[…] Are we on our way to becoming Somalia with nukes? […]
Well, I think one of the problems with USA is that it is a very large land mass with a very infantilized population. Naively, many people have started to entertain the notion that they can be happy spirits, free from any sort of authority or control. If they can simply imagine such an idea, they think they deserve to have the fantasy, or else evil and nefarious beings are holding them back. If the US were smaller or more exposed to danger from other nations, the citizens would likely have to rethink their assumptions in a more realistic light, but being a world power makes people think they are the centre of the universe — that they only have to click their fingers and something will be done for them.
I blame their parents, who never enforced consequences because it might “traumatize” poor little Skippy or Buffy. Thing is, reality don’t work like that. Reality has consequences, amiright?
Neither new age parenting nor the right wing’s “tough love” make any sense to me.
Not Somalia, our conservatives want a better standard of living. Also they want a country with fewer Spanish-speaking immigrants, a strong respected military, politicians who praise gun wielders, no social security, no national health plan, and power plants that burn coal as God intended.
And God has provided: Red China.
Hmm. Not sure Red China qualifies, because their government does that evil soshalist “stimulus” thing. Why, they build entire empty cities to employ construction workers! Maybe Russia. Putin makes their little soldiers salute, yo. They want their own Putin, a manly man who is anti-gay, anti-dissent, anti everything they hate.
And Russia is a kleptocracy. Just like they want here.
Russia. Except with beaches that aren’t freezing. At least in Florida.
– Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin