Killing newspapers-- increasing cover prices and decreasing quality of reporting

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Rushing Print’s Demise
By Peter Funt, October 3, 2013

The biggest threat to newspapers today might be newspapers themselves — or, to be more precise, the companies that own them.

This week Gannett’s USA Today doubled its cover price from one dollar to two. Can you think of any other struggling business that would raise prices 100 percent?

The U.S. Postal Service, similarly threatened by digital alternatives to its core business, is proposing to hike the price of a First Class stamp from 46 cents to 49. How many people, even those who eschew email, would continue mailing letters if the price was immediately doubled to 92 cents?

Gannett, along with several other newspaper groups, is effectively throwing in the towel on its printed products. The apparent strategy is to extract as much circulation revenue as possible from a small group of diehard readers, with little regard for the damaging effects to the product itself. Meanwhile, publishers wait and hope for digital advertising revenue to increase beyond current levels.

The gambit is shortsighted and, moreover, a blow to journalism — even for those who don’t read or care much about the affected newspapers.

In most businesses, total revenue can be increased either by selling more units at or below the current price, or fewer units at a higher price. However, the second option works a lot better for, say, thousand-dollar designer shoes than it does for mass media. And the first option generally requires improving the product, which many major newspaper owners seem unwilling to support.

Readers of dailies in California owned by MediaNews have watched the newspapers shrink, like prisoners on a starvation diet. The Oakland Tribune, for example, exists now in name only, while functioning as an edition of the San Jose Mercury News. The Merc-News, meanwhile, is shedding pages like a jet dumping fuel before a crash. The chain’s smaller dailies such as The Monterey County Herald and Santa Cruz Sentinel have seen their presses sold for scrap, with production moved to distant facilities.

In the same Bay Area market, Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle recently cut costs by moving the copy deadline for its first edition to 5 p.m. Papers delivered to many California homes miss everything — news and sports — that occurs the evening before.

Many publishers have concluded, perhaps correctly, that ink-on-paper editions will not survive too far into the future. What is reckless — for papers and their readers — is that management is taking misguided steps to try and speed the process.

When Gannett cut 223 newsroom jobs in late summer, including 29 at its largest regional paper, the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix Business Journal obtained an internal memo from Gannett’s management. A telling passage addressed the future of print:

“While consumer habits continue to change, the print edition remains a preferred format to many of our readers and an effective advertising vehicle for advertisers. A daily print edition will continue to be produced until a point (at which) there is no longer a significant demand for the product.”

Therein lies the rub. By natural process, demand will ebb gradually as digital alternatives improve and as older readers die off. Artificially, it will be hastened by newsroom layoffs, reduced page counts, earlier production schedules and jarring price hikes.

Some publishers see it differently. Aaron Kushner, the entrepreneur who owns southern California’s Orange County Register, has expanded the reporting staff and launched a sister paper in Long Beach, while holding the cover price at one dollar.

Among the national dailies, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have high cover prices, but they also charge for digital subscriptions and had double-digit circulation increases in the latest reporting period ending March 31. USA Today, on the other hand, does not have a paid digital presence. Its circulation dropped 8 percent in the same period.

Newspapers are businesses, entitled to operate as they see fit. But in the best-case scenario, publishers profit by providing quality journalism. That’s not happening across much of the media landscape. It is disingenuous to cite reduced demand while working aggressively to reduce it.

On the first day of USA Today’s two-dollar price, the boxcar headline was about the federal government but readers may have wondered if it was also about the paper itself. It said: Closing Time?
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The GOP has shut down the government over an ideological crusade

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Obama blasts ‘Republican shutdown,’ defends Obamacare
By Oliver Knox, October 1, 2013

President Barack Obama on Tuesday defiantly declared that “this Republican shutdown” risks hurting the fragile economy and pressed the House GOP to abandon its “ideological crusade” against Obamacare.

“This Republican shutdown did not have to happen,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, surrounded by a dozen Americans who stand to benefit from his landmark health care overhaul.

“They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans,” he charged. "This, more than anything else, seems to be what the Republican Party stands for these days. I know it's strange that one party would make keeping people uninsured the centerpiece of their agenda, but that apparently is what it is."

Obama pointed to the last partial government shutdown, in 1996, and warned that a closure will hurt the economy.

“And we know that the longer this shutdown continues, the worse the effects will be — more families will be hurt, more businesses will be harmed,” he said. “So once again, I urge House Republicans to reopen the government, restart the services Americans depend on and allow the public servants who have been sent home to return to work.”

Obama directed those listening to www.healthcare.gov if they want to apply for health care exchanges where they can buy insurance, saying it’s time to “get America covered, once and for all.”

The president allowed that the site had suffered glitches — but portrayed it as victim of its own success, saying more than 1 million people visited the site before 7 a.m.

“We're going to be speeding things up in the next few hours to handle all of this demand that exceeds anything that we had expected,” Obama said. “Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. That's not how we do things in America. We don't actively root for failure.”

But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R.-Calif., said the problems showed the law's underlying failures.

"Americans are attempting to purchase health insurance on Obamacare exchanges and are being met with crashing websites, missing price information, confusing forms and in some cases, exchanges that had to delay their start date because they aren’t ready yet," Issa said in a statement. "These ‘glitches,’ which the President is trying to brush off, reveal how totally unprepared the government is for this launch even with three and a half years to prepare. This is nothing, however, compared to the potentially irreversible damage the law threatens in the long term."

As he began his remarks, Obama’s microphone generated feedback, leading him to worry about a technical glitch. “Can everybody hear me? Mic work?”
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Republican unity shows signs of fraying

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Analysis: Republicans get opposite of stated goals
By David Espo, October 3, 2013

Republicans insisted they wanted to shut down the nation's 3-year-old health care overhaul, not the government. They got the opposite, and now struggle to convince the public that responsibility for partial closure of the federal establishment lies with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.

There's ample evidence otherwise, beginning with Speaker John Boehner's refusal to permit the House to vote on Senate-passed legislation devoted solely to reopening the government.

In the days leading to the impasse, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said he would do "everything and anything possible to defund Obamacare," including a filibuster against legislation to prevent a partial closure of the federal government.

In the House, Rep. Jack Kingston told reporters his Georgia constituents would rather have a shutdown than Obamacare, and Rep. Tim Huelskamp added recently that in his Kansas district, "If you say government is going to shut down, they say, 'OK, which part can we shut down?'"

Ironically, Republican leaders urged the rank and file not to link a defunding of Obamacare to federal spending for fear the unavoidable outcome would be a shutdown that would harm the party politically.

Yet Boehner, who survived a conservative-led attempt on his tenure in January, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who faces a primary challenge from a tea party-backed rival in Kentucky, were unable to prevail. Instead, they were steamrolled by Cruz, his allies in Congress and Heritage Action, Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express and other groups that have used the issue to raise funds.

The strategy in effect, Republicans negotiated exclusively with themselves in the days leading to the shutdown as they sought the demise of "Obamacare."

First, they passed legislation demanding the health care law be defunded in exchange for a bill providing essential government funding.

When the Senate rejected that, they scaled back.

Instead, they sought a one-year delay in the law, combined with the permanent repeal of a tax on medical devices and creation of new barriers to contraceptive coverage for women purchasing insurance.

That, too, was torpedoed in the Senate.

The next GOP demand was for a one-year delay in the requirement for individuals to purchase coverage, along with a provision that would oblige the president, vice president and members of Congress and their aides to purchase insurance under the same system as the rest of the country without receiving the customary employer contribution from the government, for which they work. The principal impact of that is to raise the cost of insurance dramatically for thousands of congressional aides and political appointees of the administration.

That, too, fell in the Senate.

There have been ideological retrenchments, as well.

Despite their long-held positions against government mandates, House Republicans agreed beginning last week to leave in effect requirements in the health care law they have refused to embrace in the past. Among them is a requirement for insurers to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions and another to allow children up to age 26 to remain on their parents' plans.

All are politically popular, although rarely mentioned by Republican lawmakers who say the country clamors for a total repeal of the law.

Despite pledging in the 2010 campaign to "repeal and replace" the law known as Obamacare, Republicans have yet to offer a comprehensive alternative. Efforts to create one have been hampered by opposition from conservatives to some of the mandates they tacitly agreed last week to leave in effect.

Conceding as much, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said that as a conservative, he had often found during Obama's presidency that his choice was "between something bad or (something) horrible."

Republican unity, so valuable in pushing to reduce spending in the past three years, shows signs of fraying.

Even before the shutdown began, some moderates said it was time to shift the fight against Obamacare to another arena and allow the government to remain open. A handful of conservatives, backed by outside groups, rebelled when GOP demands for changes in the law were scaled back.

"I feel like we're retreating," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., while the conservative group Heritage Action said it opposed the last in a series of GOP maneuvers because it fell short of "fully defunding the president's failed law."

Restlessness grows.

In the Senate, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., says routinely, "We're in a box canyon," and Sen. John McCain of Arizona observed, "We can't win" when it comes to using a federal spending measure to squeeze out concessions on health care.

Ironically, Obama and Senate Democratic leaders have said repeatedly in recent days they are willing to negotiate changes in the health care law — on another day and another bill.

Even Democrats privately concede that a tax on medical devices isn't likely to survive long, given that 79 members of the Senate backed its repeal on a nonbinding test vote last spring.

What survives is the expansion of the health care law that was passed in 2010, the opportunity for uninsured Americans to obtain private insurance at a cost oftentimes subsidized by the government.
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Testing.....1, 2,....is this mic on??????

NBC affiliate WPSD 6 in Paducah, Kentucky caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday on a hot mic

Paul “I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise, I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

McConnell “Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,”

Paul “I think if we keep saying, ‘We wanted to defund it (Obamacare), we fought for that’ and that we’re willing to compromise on this, I think… We’re gonna win this, I think.” 

Source?  Brietbart!!!!!

Sometimes your friends are enemas.


 

The GOP is panicking over the possibility that Obamacare will create new Democratic voters

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The Reckoning the Republicans Need
By Caroline Baum, October 3, 2013



The debate over the proper role and size of government never ends—nor should it. It’s part of the essential give-and-take of American politics. But the debate hasn’t amounted to much lately, in part because Republicans haven’t been holding up their end of the argument.

Instead, a vocal minority of Tea Party Republicans forced a government shutdown over its opposition to Obamacare, which passed a milestone on Oct. 1 when the first websites offering health insurance went online. It’s worth dwelling, yet again, on the quixotic nature of House Republicans’ demands that the White House and Senate Democrats defund or delay the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans lost the legislative battle against Obamacare in Congress in 2010, then lost the political battle when President Obama was reelected in 2012 (along with a Democratic majority in the Senate). Like Medicare and Social Security before it, Obamacare is offensive to some conservatives on principle and to others on political grounds. The law’s conservative origins aside, that’s hardly surprising: Obamacare intrudes on the health-care and insurance markets and creates new bureaucracies to boot. If successful, it may also, as some Republicans fear, create new Democratic voters.

Yet Republicans have never grappled honestly with the law, resorting to hyperbolic denunciations without offering a viable alternative for public consideration. When the House majority leader calls a law to extend health insurance an “atrocity,” it’s hard to ignore the signs of panic.

The cyclical nature of politics is not new. It was only a few decades ago that some Democrats were calling for a federally financed living standard or were making other “principled” demands that proved a bridge too far for U.S. voters. As a result, Democratic candidates suffered, and the party’s power waned. Either the voters had to change or the Democrats had to.

Republicans are now articulating their principles—loud and clear—and some are proving similarly unpopular. In many districts, the Republican message was embraced. But in the nation at large, it was not.

The 2012 loss in the presidential election should have encouraged the party to do what it has successfully done throughout history: reexamine its policies and retool for the next competition. Just after the election, there was a buzz of commentary about Republicans seeking ways forward on immigration policy, health care, and even declining wages and inequality.

Rather than engage such issues in the public arena, however, the party retreated, opting instead to bide its time until the crisis points of the new fiscal year and the debt ceiling arrived. This has suited the Tea Party faction. But it has been counterproductive to the Republican Party as a whole, postponing an internecine fight over policy and tactics and displaying a lack of nerve that neither the party nor the nation can long afford.
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Number 3 is the best one!

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Yes, they said that: 10 best #shutdown quotes
By David McCumber, October 1, 2013

Quotes on the shutdown  pinging around the Twitterverse this morning:

1. Pride in accomplishment: “The House has done its work.” — Speaker of the House John Boehner.

2. When jumping off the cliff just isn’t enough: “Lemmings with suicide vests.” — U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., describing his GOP House colleagues.

3. We have met the enemy, and he is us: “We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable it insists the nation be ungovernable, too.” -- Charles P. Pierce, Esquire.com

4. Run that by me again? “You can’t accuse me of beating my wife and then turn around and tell me isn’t that true.” — Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on CNN.

5. This guy’s clearly ready for Congress: “Just as the Fugitive Slave  Act was an overreach by the federal government, so too we understand that Obamacare is an assault on the rights of individuals.” — State Rep. William O’Brien of New Hampshire.

6. Well, that’s a relief: “This doesn’t impact me mentally.” — Sean Hannity on the shutdown.

7. There is a Santa Claus: “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.” — Rep. Michelle Bachmann on the shutdown.

8. Um, see No. 7 above:  “Democratic leaders in Congress finally have their prize: A government shutdown that no one seems to want but them.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

9. What do you mean, that’s nonessential? “Sorry, we won’t be tweeting/responding to replies during the government shutdown. Back as soon as possible.” — USA.gov notice

10. Finally, some plummy British understatement: “It’s all quite bonkers” — BBC reporter.
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"Cruz is an attention-whoring narcissist ... the most-obnoxious reality star on the planet ... a con artist ..." So why is he getting so much attention?

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Ted Cruz, John Boehner Don’t Care If Shutdown Hurts You
By Michael Arceneaux, October 1, 2013 

Earlier this morning, the usually well meaning Chris Matthews made an interesting observation about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), one of the key players in the now-official government shutdown. Matthews said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “Ted Cruz is brilliant. I think President Obama may have met his match.” I immediately had to flip to something more mentally stimulating: last night’s edition of “The Real Housewives of Miami.” Ted Cruz is a lot of things — most of which I cannot repeat in this space — but brilliant is a stretch by far. Last week, another MSNBC host, Lawrence O’Donnell, spoke of members of the media being “blinded” by Ted Cruz’s resume.

O’Donnell explained:

“Ted Cruz says things that are profoundly wrong all day long, and the Washington media does not hold it against him because they all believe that he is smart enough to know the truth and understand the truth but that he is simply lying about it. And the Washington media actually respects lying, respects political lying. They believe it is part of the game, because they believe governing — the thing they are supposed to be covering as reporters — is a game.”

Cruz is an attention-whoring narcissist, who to his credit, does know how to cherry pick which trends to hop on in order to advance himself — in this instance, the stupidity and recklessness of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. But if that makes him “brilliant,” the same can be said of Kim Kardashian.

Cruz is nothing more than the most-obnoxious reality star on the planet, only it is to everyone else’s detriment that his show is based in Washington.

For the first time since 1995, the government has shut down. While that may be not for long, it’s long enough for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who will miss out on money because rich, obnoxious, well-off men and women of power don’t want millions of people to get more affordable access to health care. If it lasts longer than a few days, the consequences will spread mighty quickly.

Ted Cruz and company act as if they are doing this “for the people,” but anyone with at least four out of five working senses should know better: Ted Cruz is a con artist, and the Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) is a cowardly impression of a real leader given he allowed a freshman senator from Texas to cajole control of his side of Congress.

The sad irony is, most Republican members of the House of Representatives don’t want this fight. Neither does the majority of the GOP Senators. Only a handful of people are cheering this government shutdown, most of whom are the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), a.k.a. the original “Crazy Eyes.” It is Ted Cruz who emboldened them and undermined Boehner’s leadership. It is Boehner who has allowed this to happen.

Around 1:00 a.m., Boehner said in the House chambers:

“The House has made it’s position known very clearly. We believe we should fund the government and there should be basic fairness for all Americans under Obamacare. The Senate has continued to reject our offers. I would hope the Senate would go to conference and discuss this so we can resolve this for the American people.”

This is utter nonsense. These self-involved sore losers bought off by various industries are trying to ask for the repeal of the Affordable Health Care act in exchange of allowing the government to run for a couple more weeks. This is selfish, this is petty, this is utterly insane. Worse, this strategy will re-emerge in only a few weeks.

Based on some of the media coverage, though, you would think that it’s “both sides” that are unwilling to compromise. Such is a media narrative created for the sake of ratings. The truth is a lot less WWE-style for news directors. There are two men to boo and hiss in response to the government shutdown, but it’s certainly not President Obama or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Stop saying otherwise. After all, much of this has been about Ted Cruz and his band of anarchists wanting as much exposure as possible. Give it to them…but in a much more honest context.

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Republican posturing, using WWII veterans for the poorest of reasons

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"Rep. Michelle Bachmann particularly seemed to be capitalizing politically on the nation's focus on the memorial." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/world-war-ii-memorial-shutdown-2013-10#ixzz2gbnS8BNW
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World War II memorial lockdown: veterans used as political pawns
This is the American government at its worst: the shutdown and then political posturing. We should not forget this scandal
By Tom Rogan, October 2, 2013

An inscription on the Freedom Wall of the World War II memorial in Washington says: "Here we mark the price of freedom".

Washington memorials are reserved for the greatest of American public servants, and the World War II memorial is one of the most special. Anchored between the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the plaza guarded by 56 pillars is more than a place of remembrance. It's an immortal testament to the triumph of American ideals, even in the most terrible of circumstances. It's a shrine to more than 400,000 citizens who gave their lives for America and for the world.

It is, in short, a sacred place. At least it should be.

When the government shutdown Tuesday, barricades, yellow tape and insipid signs went up around the memorial. It was closed like other federal parks. The story of 92 veterans from Mississippi who traveled a long way to see the memorial and broke the barricades went viral and rightfully so. This is the American government at its worst. Dishonorable, vindictive and bound to bureaucratic immovability. Elderly heroes traveled thousands of miles to hear a simple message: "Go home. Your fallen brothers belong to the government now".

The visiting veterans knew that this might have been their last opportunity for a solemn pilgrimage. For us, the lockout was temporary. For these veterans, it is eternal.

Once again, we witnessed how quick American politicians are to use veterans as pawns.

Instead of immediately recognizing what the memorial means, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) embraced a callous disregard. They claimed that the shutdown had forced the lockdown of memorials and parks. That they had no other option. The facts suggested otherwise. After all, the OMB was able to assign park service officers to guard the memorial. Then they were able to call for reinforcements to supplement their guard. Yet somehow, amidst their proven contingency capabilities, they lacked the ability to provide the veterans "escorted access". As chief executive, as commander-in-chief, the president should have addressed this disgrace.

Of course, befitting the pathetic state of our national politics, the executive branch's stupidity has had warm company from Congress.

Desperate for a shutdown PR victory, Republican representatives flocked to the memorial to take advantage from the toxic imagery. In turn, desperate to counter the GOP, Democratic members then arrived. And in this meeting of adversaries, the present and absent veterans of the Ardennes, of Iwo Jima, of Midway and of a hundred other battles, thus became props in a PR war for public opinion. Yes, some in Congress went to the memorial for the right reason – to provide support to their constituents. Yet ultimately, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann's posturing presence said it all.

Together in one place, the sick dichotomy between our military and our politicians could not have been clearer: on one side, veterans who buried personal interests to fight and die for each other. On the other side, politicians barely willing to sit together in the same air-conditioned room.

For many families though, this is personal.

Earlier this morning, I couldn't help but think about my grandfather; a veteran of Guam, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. How would this 88-year-old man, a New Yorker who gave his youth to the muddy hell of the Pacific campaign, react to seeing this sacred site now rendered a political circus.

I decided to find out and gave him a call. He was typically succinct and didn't have particularly kind words to say about the country's current crop of leaders. Let's just say that the old adage "once a marine, always a marine" extends to unconstrained words as well as intrinsic value.

The barriers at the memorial have now effectively been removed as more veterans continued to break through the barricades today. Reports on Twitter indicate that the government has backed down, at least for those who are part of the second world war "Honor Flights":

Carol B Johnson @NationalMallPIO  The Honor Flights are being granted access to the WWII Memorial to conduct 1st Amendment actives in accordance with NPS regulations.  8:20 AM - 2 Oct 2013

But this scandal must not pass easily from our memories. Ultimately, like the war the memorial records, some good must come of this grotesque situation.

We, the American people, must take heed of our responsibility. In the end, we're also to blame for what's happened and for what continues not to happen. We must recognize that by our political apathy, we're relinquishing our honor. That as we sit and watch TV and complain, in Afghanistan and across the world, a future generation of veterans must be wondering about the country they serve. Whether we, their fellow citizens, truly care about the burdens they bear. Or whether we care just as long as caring doesn't distract us from Breaking Bad or the latest football game.
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Lying, offensive ads

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Sabotaging Health Care, One Lie at a Time
By Juliet Lapidos, September 23, 2013

A Koch-brothers funded conservative group, Generation Opportunity, is out with a wildly misleading, pernicious set of ads aimed at sabotaging the Affordable Care Act by discouraging young people from signing up for health insurance exchanges.

One targets young men, the other young women. In the “for him” version, a young man tells his doctor that he saw an ad for the Affordable Care Act and “figured, why not?” The doctor tells him to take his pants off, “hop up here, lay down and bend your knees to your chest.” He leaves the room. Then a man wearing an Uncle Sam mask snaps on a blue glove. As if the message weren’t perfectly clear, the ad states: “Don’t let government play doctor.”

The “for her” version is much the same, except in that case Uncle Sam’s performing a gynecological exam.




The ads are as offensive as they are derivative.

During the 2012 campaign, the reproductive rights site Lady Parts Justice released a web video attacking laws requiring women to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds before receiving abortions. In that spot, a woman with her feet in stirrups explains that she wants an abortion because she’s “just not emotionally or financially ready to have kids right now.” The doctor, sitting between her legs, responds, “OK, well, just so you know, the law says that before I can do that, I need to do some things to you that you need to pay extra for. You know, just some things that will help you better understand what it is you really want.” These “things” include inserting a camera into her vagina and looking at pictures of what’s inside her uterus.

But that video made sense—states actually did pass laws interfering with the doctor-patient relationship—whereas the Generation Opportunity ads perpetuate outright lies. Young people who sign up for exchanges won’t be getting access to government-run healthcare (if only they were!), but to privately run insurance. Nor does the A.C.A. force doctors to ask patients about their sex lives or perform unwanted exams—as Politifact explained recently. Under the A.C.A., government doesn’t “play doctor,” it merely enables access to doctors who then decide, using their professional judgment, the best course of action.

Signing up for an exchange isn’t an act of political (or sexual) submission. It’s just a way to get insurance if you don’t have a job or your employer doesn’t provide it. The Generation Opportunity crowd surely knows that and obviously doesn’t care because its priority now, as ever, is bringing down President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment. The group also doesn’t care about the possibility that some number of young people, scared by its ads, will forgo access to affordable care, get sick, and go bankrupt paying their medical bills.
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Where the president is given conflicting commands, he can use his discretion to resolve the conflict

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On the Debt Ceiling, at Least, Congress Will Blink
By Eric Posner, September 30, 2013

President Obama shouldn’t let the United States default on the debt, even if this means defying Congress and disregarding the debt limit. However, he shouldn’t, and can’t, stop the government shutdown.

Barring a compromise with House Republicans, the government closes Tuesday. The showdown over the debt ceiling will come in mid-October. The implications of the threats, as well as the timing, are different. If the debt ceiling is not raised, and the executive branch stops borrowing, the government will need to cut spending by about 15 to 20 percent—or almost 40 percent of spending on everything (yes, Medicare and defense) other than the interest on the debt. The decision about what to cut appears to be largely, but not entirely, up to President Obama.

Whatever he does, the impact will be large and immediate. If he pays the debt interest while cutting expenditures, hundreds of billions of dollars will vanish from the American economy, sending thousands out of work and depriving many others of pension checks, medical insurance, and basic services. If he stops interest payments, the United States will default. This will not only raise interest payments—costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars—but could spark a financial panic like the meltdown of 2008. Treasuries (as well as other government securities) are used in the repo market, which funds the major financial institutions. If that $5 trillion-to-$10 trillion market collapsed, it would take the banking system with it.

By contrast, a government shutdown—actually only a partial government shutdown, since essential services will continue—would not cause great hardship in the short term (although the stopping and restarting of programs would waste money). Most major programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are paid out of permanent appropriations, and so would not be affected by the failure to pass a bill by Tuesday. Aside from the closing of national parks and museums, much of the impact would be invisible to the public. Only as time passed would people realize that programs that they support had been suspended, and that unpaid government workers were putting a drag on the economy.

Because the crackup from failing to raise the debt ceiling would be so huge, the president could afford to defy congressional Republicans. No one—not even a hard-core Tea Partier—wants the government to default on the debt, or even to stop cutting Medicare checks. President Obama can therefore calm financial markets by announcing that he will unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Tea Partiers can, of course, condemn him for pushing past the limit on executive power, possibly thinking that they have maneuvered him into a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t position. But they are wrong if they think that he’ll be damned if he does.

As I have argued before, the president has the constitutional authority to lift the debt ceiling on his own. If Congress won’t vote to do this, then it will have commanded him to spend vast sums on valued programs, but not given him enough money to do so. Where the president is given conflicting commands, he can use his discretion to resolve the conflict, bolstered here by his inherent administrative powers and his emergency powers to protect the nation, both sanctioned by constitutional tradition. Since a default on public debt would result in an economic catastrophe, he can borrow with or without Congress behind him.

And if this comes to pass, Congress will have little recourse. If lawmakers complain that the president failed to let the government default, they’ll get little sympathy from the public. Conceivably, the House could launch impeachment proceedings against the president, claiming that he has violated the law. But impeachment would be fruitless; a conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which the Democrats control. And while an impeachment would further bog down the presidency, it would be politically risky for Republicans as well.

If Republicans in the House tried to stop the president by going to court, they would probably lose there, too. The courts would refuse to intervene under the political question doctrine, which directs courts to stay out of disputes between the legislature and the executive. Most private individuals would lack standing to bring a challenge because they would not be able to show how increased borrowing specifically injured them. Maybe people who own credit-default swaps that pay off in the case of default would claim that raising the debt ceiling harmed them, but courts would probably dodge such claims under the political question doctrine as well.

Nor would courts recognize challenges to expenditures (like salaries for employees) financed by borrowing in excess of the debt limit. It would be impossible to distinguish between expenditures financed by debt above the limit, and expenditures financed by tax receipts—it’s all fungible. So judges would have to declare all government expenditures invalid (including their own salaries) if they declared any invalid. This is not going to happen.

The story with the partial government shutdown is different. The public does not fear it that much because they know essential services will continue. That means significant political risk for the president if he goes against Congress. His constitutional arguments would be weaker as well. We know from previous shutdowns that they do not create emergencies—indeed, the law explicitly permits emergency spending—so the president’s emergency powers do not come into play. And it is well established that the president cannot spend unappropriated money. A law called the Antideficiency Act even subjects agency personnel to criminal liability if they intentionally spend money that Congress has not authorized.

Law and politics line up here: President Obama would do well to accept the partial shutdown of the government tomorrow, and then compromise with Congress before the costs of a shutdown mount too high. But if financial markets get spooked as the debt ceiling deadline looms, he should make it clear he’ll raise the debt ceiling on his own. He has the Constitution and the public behind him. In the bigger showdown, he can count on Congress to blink.
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Trying to have their cake and eat it, too

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Abortion and GOP political spouses
By Patt Morrison, October 1, 2013

If Nancy Reagan ever dropped in on Texas, she would make a foursome: four past and present Republican First Ladies, all married to anti-abortion politicians, and yet who themselves, to varying degrees, support a right to abortion.

Anita Perry, wife of the super-duper pro-lifer Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who just signed into law very stringent abortion regulations, let it slip over the weekend that she regards abortion as “a woman’s right.”

She answered a question at the Texas Tribune festival with an equivocal-sounding response – that she and her husband agree on abortion — but with an eyebrow-raising kicker: It’s a “difficult” question, she said, “because I see it as a women's right. If they want to do that, that is their decision; they have to live with that decision."

“That could be a woman’s right, just like it’s a man’s right if he wants to have some kind of procedure,” she said. “But I don't agree with it, and that's not my view."  

I think she means she wouldn’t get one herself, but if other women choose to get an abortion, on their heads be it. She defended the clinic-shutting rules her husband and the Texas Legislature just endorsed as being in the interests of women’s “safety.”

Hers is not by any means a full-throated endorsement, not enough for Planned Parenthood chief and fellow Texan Cecile Richards, daughter of another Texas governor, to call her up and schedule a girlfriends’ gab lunch, yet it could be enough to move the needle.

But move it where?

Did Anita Perry truly let this comment slip? Or was it a calculated move to steal some Panhandle thunder from Wendy Davis, the Texas Democrat who filibustered to stop that abortion law, and walked her pink sneakers right into a national spotlight — and a possible run for governor?

The list of Republican first spouses who have — sometimes softly and then more vocally, and rarely when their husbands are actually in power — opposed their husbands’ anti-abortion policies is a substantial one. Nancy Reagan said at George Washington University in 1994 that while she’s personally against abortion, she wouldn’t deny the right to other women.

It’s a nice, politically adroit nuancing of the abortion matter. They have not made a point of announcing their opinions, and when they’ve allowed themselves to be drawn out on the matter, they’ve made it clear simultaneously that they’re not that kind of woman, but if other women are, that should be up to them.

Barbara Bush, wife of one president, mother of another, also parsed the personal and the political. “I hate abortions, but just could not make that choice for someone else," she once said.

Laura Bush, a former Texas and more recently U.S. first lady, answered monosyllabically on inauguration morning in 2001 when she was asked whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned. “No,” she said. After her husband left office, she elaborated on that, that it’s “important” that abortion remain legal, and that she disagreed with her husband’s administration's campaign against gay marriage.

A few weeks before the 1972 election, President Richard Nixon’s wife, Pat, said she regarded abortion as a personal choice, but didn’t like abortion “on demand,” a loaded phrase whose meaning has always puzzled me. And she also said it should be left to the states to decide. There was a point of view somewhere in there for everyone to embrace.

Maybe the “on demand” phrase came from her husband. Four months later, after the Roe v. Wade decision, he was heard in the Oval Office saying that legal abortion encourages permissiveness, but endorsing exceptions for rape and interracial pregnancies.

The landmark Roe ruling did not generate then anything remotely like the divisiveness it has recently — much like the Affordable Care Act, which is now being used as a political tool, not as a public policy.

The website Slate is not alone in speculating that conservative politicians are in fact advantaged by cannily letting it be known that they’re getting some pro-choice pillow talk from the missus.

It makes them look broad-minded, less doctrinaire, less dictatorial, when the lady of the house can harbor political positions at odds with her hubby’s.

Maybe 2016 will be an election year when we see campaign couples out and about the way they fast-pitch a sitcom: “He’s anti-abortion. She’s pro abortion rights. And they’re moving into the White House!”
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"If Obamacare has so many provisions bad for unions, why did most of them support passage?"

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What the GOP has missed on Obamacare
By Charles Lane, September 30, 2013

Say what you want about Republicans’ obsession with destroying Obamacare. One thing they can’t be accused of is acting in calculated, partisan self-interest.

If all the GOP cared about was hurting Democrats, Republicans might support the health-care law — because it threatens a core Democratic Party constituency: organized labor.

Collective bargaining in this country developed under a system of employer-based health insurance, which government encouraged via generous tax breaks. In European nations with state-run universal coverage, unions focus on pay and working conditions. Here, they have the added function of negotiating for health benefits.

By now, that’s much, if not most, of what unions do in return for members’ dues.

Obamacare undermines this function and, therefore, labor’s already diminished power to attract and maintain members, whose dues fill the campaign treasuries upon which many Democratic politicians depend.

The law does this in several ways. The first is the 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health plans — employer-provided insurance costing more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. This cost-control measure, widely hailed by health-care economists, takes effect in 2018 and will hit many union plans. Over time, it will create a de facto cap on the benefits for which unions can bargain.

Obamacare’s individual health-care exchanges also disfavor unions. When organizers try to recruit members today, health care is often a big selling point. What will organizers tell workers who, thanks to Obamacare, already have access to subsidized health care?

Then there are the “Taft-Hartley” plans, which serve unions whose members work for various companies over their careers, rather than for one firm. These plans, common in the hospitality and construction industries, gather contributions from employers and buy insurance for 6.2 million active participants, according to the Labor Department.

Obamacare menaces these affordable, portable plans by providing both workers and employers an affordable, portable alternative — the exchanges — that requires no union middleman and is partly subsidized by the tax on union plans. Suddenly, nonunion employers have a new competitive advantage.

Laborers’ International Union President Terry O’Sullivan is so upset that he has threatened to support repeal of Obamacare unless the administration gives tax subsidies to Taft-Hartley plans, like it does for individuals on the exchanges. Alas for O’Sullivan, there appears to be no legal way to do so.

A natural question: If Obamacare has so many provisions bad for unions, why did most of them support passage?

It’s a bit of a mystery. The answer seems to be that Obamacare was a progressive goal, unions are progressive, ergo unions were for Obamacare.

They did negotiate changes, such as a lower “Cadillac tax” with a later start date. Perhaps labor thought it could go back to Congress after the bill passed for relief on the tax and other issues, such as Taft-Hartley plans. If so, that became impossible after the GOP took back the House by campaigning against Obamacare.

Labor was blindsided this summer by President Obama’s decision to delay the employer mandate by a year, to 2015. Having the employer and individual mandates start simultaneously was crucial to labor’s support for the bill, as it kept the employer-based system — from which unions benefit — on an equal footing with Obamacare’s new individual-based market.

Now, however, there’s only an individual mandate until 2015. Employers are under no mandate to provide health care, and some may abandon their coverage, knowing that their workers must go to the exchanges.

Again, a worker insured by the exchange is one who doesn’t need a union to get insurance.

In truth, there was always tension between the interests of organized labor and the goal of universal health coverage, regardless of employment status.

A 2009 AFL-CIO resolution backed government-run single-payer health care — as long as it did “not diminish the hard-fought benefits currently enjoyed by our members” and permitted unions “to collectively bargain supplemental coverage.” Translation: Unions want health care for all, plus more for them.

In reaction to the unions’ clash with Obamacare, Republicans offer little but rhetoric, the gist of which is “we told you so,” and continue demanding total repeal, as if the unions’ objections were additional valid reasons to oppose the law.

What they seem not to grasp is that the features of the law that the unions hate are those that many Americans, including many who do not currently vote Republican, might like: the end of health insurance “job lock,” say, or bending the cost curve through limits on Cadillac plans.

If Republicans were smart, they might support those aspects of the law, instead of total repeal. But, as we have seen in recent days, that is a very big “if.”
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Conservatives refuse to inhabit political reality?

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The tea party’s revolt against reality
By Michael Gerson, September 30, 2013

If you can judge people by the quality of their enemies, one quality shared by many opponents of the tea party is their conservatism. Like many ideological factions, tea-party activists display a special intensity in fighting the “near enemy” — other elements on the right that don’t share their tactics. President Obama may be their ultimate foe, but conservative pragmatists are their rivals. And rivals are the more immediate problem.

So the Senate Conservatives Fund runs ads against Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and other solid Senate conservatives for opposing a counterproductive strategy to defund Obamacare. The circle of tea-party purity is drawn so tightly that it excludes Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) — some of the most reliably conservative members of Congress.

Ideological conflict between Republican factions is, of course, nothing new. The modern conservative movement arose in opposition to Eisenhower Republicanism, which it regarded as ideologically compromised. Ronald Reagan challenged and defeated Rockefeller Republicanism — and seldom has a political defeat been more complete. But Reagan still viewed the Republican Party as a coalition, not as a faction. He campaigned vigorously for Republican moderates such as Sens. Chuck Percy, Robert Packwood and Mark Hatfield (who was the congressional chair for his first inauguration).

During the Obama era, Republican ideological conflicts have intensified. The latest round began with a typical, largely healthy revolt against leaders such as House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who were viewed as tired and uncreative (though easier to criticize than replace). The young guns — including Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor — would finally take on Medicare reform and push big questions about the role of government in American life. This involved political risk but had the virtue of intellectual seriousness.

Tea-party populism, however, moved quickly beyond this point. We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican “establishment”; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality. Conservatives are excommunicated not for holding the wrong convictions but for rational calculations in service of those convictions.

What explains this development? Some of this is a reaction to the unique provocation of Obamacare. Tea-party activists assert that the launch of health-insurance subsidies and exchanges will cause immediate and pervasive entitlement addiction — creating a permanent new class of Democratic-voting clients of the state. It seems more likely that Americans will see the flaws of a hastily and poorly designed system and express their displeasure in midterm elections. But the notion that the character of the country is about to suddenly change helps explain the state of emergency in tea-party circles.

This is reinforced by the development of an alternative establishment — including talk-radio personalities, a few vocal congressional leaders and organizations such as FreedomWorks and Heritage Action — that creates a self-reinforcing impression of its power to reshape politics (while lacking much real connection to the views of the broader electorate).

And these ideas do have some resonance among conservative activists who are convinced that Republicans lost recent presidential elections because their candidates lacked combativeness. At least, the argument goes, Ted Cruz has some backbone. It is the political expression of pent-up anger. “If we’re going to fight,” says Michele Bachmann, “we need to fight now.” Few believe any longer that Republicans will be able to defund Obamacare in this session of Congress; it is the fight that counts. This is a word that crops up frequently in tea-party discourse. Not winning. Not strategy. Not consequences. The fight.

Under normal circumstances, this faction — composing less than 20 percent of the House Republican caucus — might exercise a marginal influence. But we have the peculiar situation of a divided Congress and a weak president. The tea-party faction holds the margin of victory in a slim Republican House majority. Boehner has kept some semblance of order by appeasing it — an approach of diminishing utility. And now, in a series of budget showdowns, the interests of tea-party activists have suddenly aligned with those of Obama (who needs a dramatic reshuffling of the political deck). Both sides prefer a powerless, discredited Republican leadership.

The problem for Republicans (as Democrats found in the 1970s and ’80s) is that factions are seldom deterred by defeat. Every loss is taken as proof of insufficient purity. Conservatives now face the ideological temptation: inviting an unpleasant political reality by refusing to inhabit political reality.
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The Speaker of the f'ing House has humiliatingly ceded control of his House to Cruz and his Tea Party henchmen

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An Open Letter to John Boehner
By Andy Ostroy, September 30, 2013

Dear Speaker Boehner:

Before I rip into you I must first admit that I do feel a little sorry for you. On the cusp of a likely Tea Party-led government shutdown at midnight Monday, you appear as feeble as the helpless substitute teacher unable to control the rowdy, disruptive kids in the back off the class. Like that classroom, your House has been hijacked by the bad kids. And there's nothing you seem to be able to do about it.

And that's just the problem. You are Speaker of the f'ing House, for Pete's sake. You're supposed to be the strongest, most powerful, influential figure in that Chamber. Instead, you're as impotent as a neutered mutt in a dog run. I'm not sure what's worse: the reckless, irresponsible antics of your renegade Congressmen who are hellbent on destroying America's economy because of their hard-on to kill Obamacare, or your humiliating lack of juice in keeping them in check. Either way, I blame you.

You and your party apparently have forgotten what Democracy means. The Affordable Care Act, or more pejoratively branded Obamacare by the right-wing spin machine, has been legislated, adjudicated and signed into law by a sitting United States president. It's been signature law since March 2010, and was a referendum in several elections. In 2012 voters were given a clear choice between the incumbent president who created this law and the Republican challenger who largely ran on repealing it. And Americans spoke, sending Mitt Romney back to sulk in his thirteen homes. What part of this democratic process don't you and your party understand? You don't get to call "do-overs" by extorting the process and holding America's economy hostage. Quite frankly, it's unconscionable that your members are careening towards shutting down the government tonight, and worse, threatening to send the U.S. into default on October 17th in the debt ceiling stand-off. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

What's also despicable, and hugely disingenuous, is the political rhetoric you guys are spewing. On the Sunday talks shows your talking heads accused Democrats of being the ones seeking a government shutdown, not you. You cited the revised "compromise" bill the House sent the Senate Saturday. Ya know, the laughable one where Obamacare wasn't defunded, but tabled for a year (and also stripped of the medical device tax which would be used to help pay for it). Predictably, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said screw off and we'll see ya Monday at 2pm. You weasels cried foul: 'See?! We're the ones compromising, and Dems won't even talk to us!'

Your idea of "compromise" is a joke. Modifying a ludicrously unrealistic, impassable bill to make it slightly less ludicrous and impassable is not a "compromise." If I demand the deed to your house and then the next day said, "Ok, I will only live there 50% of the time," that doesn't make me a compromiser. It actually makes me just as ridiculous. If Reid didn't come back to the "negotiating" table it doesn't mean Democrats are disrespecting the process. It just means you and your "compromise" are a colossal insult to them and every American and Reid won't dignify it, or you, by showing up to such an outrageously offensive charade.

I'm incredulous that you guys think you could load up your "revised compromise" bill with, literally, your party's entire platform... which voters have already soundly rejected. I swear, I think I even saw a demand that Ted Nugent be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Are you people insane?

Wait, there's more. You guys cited how "hard" you've been working all weekend while Obama played golf and Dems didn't even show up to work Sunday. "He talks to Iran and Putin, but won't talk to Republicans." Yeah, there's a very good reason for that, and it's quite disturbing: unbelievably, Iran and Putin have been acting more sane than you lunatics!

And then there's the outright lies. The ones like "People are going to lose their existing coverage." Again, shame on you. You know darn well that Obamacare only applies to those currently without health care. It doesn't apply to those currently insured unless they choose to seek cheaper options on the federal and state exchanges.

Or how about this lie: "Obamacare is the biggest job killer;" that American business are only hiring part-timers because they don't want to have to cover full-time employees. Seriously? Or is it that American corporations (who are earning record profits, by the way) aren't hiring because productivity levels are the highest they've been in ages following the massive layoffs from the recession. Why hire more people when you can get the job done with less?

And this one's my favorite, from Sen. Ted Cruz, the chief flame-thrower in the repeal movement and the man who gives you raging hemorrhoids: "The American people overwhelmingly reject Obamacare. They understand it's not working." Funny, Obamacare doesn't start until tomorrow.

Ya know what, Mr. Speaker? I actually don't feel sorry for you anymore. That you've humiliatingly ceded control of your House to Cruz and his Tea Party henchmen makes you inept and not worthy of your leadership position. But there's still a few hours to change all that. The ball's in your court...
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Republicans operate and act with the mentality of Richard Pryor’s Double Muslims, which is to say, the mentality of terrorists

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Republicans Aren’t Hostage Takers, They’re Political Terrorists

Today’s Republicans will never release the hostage—instead they’re intent on taking down Obama, and they don’t care if they go down with him, says Michael Tomasky as we head toward a shutdown.

By Michael Tomasky, September 30, 2013

Back in the late 1970s, Richard Pryor had a routine where he gave a rundown on the various factions he’d encountered inside prison. There were the black Muslims, he said. They were fairly rough customers. Then there were the Double Muslims. The Double Muslims, he said, “can’t wait to get to Allah, and they wanna take a bunch of muthafukkas with them.”

Pryor obviously wasn’t talking about today’s Republicans, but he was describing them better than they’ve been described anywhere. They know they’re going to bear the brunt of the blame if the government shuts down—at least some of them do, the ones who have the ability to think beyond the boundaries of their districts. And the thing is, they don’t care. As long as they can drag Obama and the Democrats down with them, dropping in the polls is fine by them. And that’s why we’re in this situation. We have here people who are participating in the democratic process, and who respect certain of its rules and practices because they know they must to attain legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the media, but who at the end of the day—and the end of the day means now—operate and act with the mentality of Pryor’s Double Muslims; which is to say, the mentality of terrorists.

It’s naive to call them anything else. What they’re doing here is not hostage taking, the most commonly used metaphor in the media. It’s political terrorism. When hostage takers see that their demands are met, they release the hostage. But what makes anyone think today’s Republicans will ever release the hostage? No—if the Democrats agree to negotiate, the demands will never stop. Every pivot point on the legislative calendar will be an opportunity to make demands without precedent in our system.

And they won’t care how much they sink in the polls, as long as Obama sinks too. And he will. Not as much as they will. In a recent CNBC poll, 59 percent of those surveyed said they opposed defunding Obamacare if such a move was attached to a government shutdown. Sub in delaying, as defunding is evidently off the table now; I don’t know what that number would be, but probably not very different. So they’re going to take a hit nationally. Of course, the majority of them are probably going to see their personal numbers go up within their own districts if there’s a shutdown, because they stood up to the Kenyan, and in their districts, that’s all that matters. But nationally, the GOP brand is going to take a big hit in the event of a shutdown.

And they don’t care. As long as they can drag Obama down with them, they’ll take the hit. This is exactly the mentality of the suicide bomber. I will die, but I’m taking some infidels with me. And to them and to their base, Obama is the biggest infidel of all and Obamacare the greatest impiety. Whatever they can do to traduce him is worth doing.

There’s no surer way to get away with criminality than to accuse your political opponents of exactly the criminality that you are committing.

It doesn’t stop there. The complete psychological profile of this GOP also must reference the totalitarian mind. Here I refer to the common totalitarian tactic of accusing the enemy of doing exactly what the totalitarian himself is doing. Every totalitarian dictator from Stalin on down has employed this tactic regularly. There’s no surer way to get away with criminality than to accuse your political opponents of exactly the criminality that you are committing, to get the people looking the other way.

And so of course John Boehner said over the weekend that the Senate, if it fails to accept the House’s terms, “will be deliberately bringing the nation to the brink of a government shutdown for the sake of raising taxes on seniors’ pacemakers and children’s hearing aids.” And of course whip Kevin McCarthy said, “We will not shut the government down.” And of course Sen. Rand Paul said: “We are the party that’s willing to compromise. They are the party that says, no way, we’re not touching Obamacare.”

You don’t even need to have read Orwell to know these are quasi-totalitarian statements that depend on obfuscation, rely on the gullibility of the listening public. The obfuscators all know very well that most Americans won’t stop to realize that their position is a scandal to begin with. They’re trying to undo a law that was duly passed and then upheld by the Supreme Court, as if that were normal in American politics, as if it should be considered an acceptable tactic on its face. And they know that ... some Americans (I don’t think most, in this case) will stupidly and dismissively assign equal blame to both sides.

That’s what we’re dealing with. These people are not small-d democrats. The giveaway is how excessively they claim the language of democracy, how fully they wrap themselves in the flag, the Founders, the Gadsden motto, and the fife and drum. If you know you’re a democrat, you don’t have to go around trying to prove it. Whereas if you know deep down you’re not, that’s exactly when you start invoking the Founders all the time. It’s the same reason child molesters join the priesthood or the Boy Scouts. It’s cover. (Or, in the case of the priesthood, it used to be.)

Boehner can change this dynamic. He can accept a “clean” continuing resolution on Monday and let it pass with mostly Democratic votes. That’s the only way to avert a shutdown. The Democrats won’t budge, and they shouldn’t. You don’t renegotiate existing laws while one party has dynamite strapped to its chest. But there’s nothing in Boehner’s past to suggest that he’ll do the reasonable thing. He caves to the extremists all the time. He did it this weekend, and he’ll probably do it again on Monday night. And the government will be shut down. And the GOP will take most of the blame, but for now at least, they won’t care. Double Muslims never do.
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It's not just Boehner's fault-- it's the fault of every damned one of the Republican members of Congress!

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Yes, It Is John Boehner's Fault
By Brendan Greeley, September 30, 2013

And not because he can’t control the Tea Party.

It’s tempting to feel sorry for House Speaker John Boehner. He seems like a reasonable man caught in a trap. His Republican majority in the House can’t decide whether a repeal or delay of the Affordable Care Act needs to be a condition of any agreement on anything else. But Boehner, along with the rest of the Republican leadership at the time, built this trap for himself in 2009 and early 2010, before the Tea Party caucus was formed.

In 2009 the Republican minority, faced with what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act, he had a choice. Obama, like every President, wanted to pass something that someone might call a “bipartisan achievement.” To get that, he needed a couple of Republicans to make an offer, a price in exchange for their votes. The answer, from the entire caucus: nothing. No price, no votes. Under any conditions. There was extraordinary, Pelosi-like discipline among Republicans in the House and the Senate. No offer, no deal, no votes.

After a televised meeting with the president in late February of 2010, Boehner, then-Senator John Kyl (R-Ariz.), and Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) huddled in front of the White House to answer questions. “What we think we ought to do is start over, go step by step, and target the areas of possible agreement,” said McConnell. “That’s why the bill needs to be scrapped,” said Boehner. “We need to start over on those things that we can work together on.”

Kyl, like Boehner and McConnell, agreed on some unspecified areas of future agreement. But those areas would not be reached by “tweaking” the bill, he said. “The whole concept of the bill, with its government mandates, its taxes, its spending, and all of the other features of it, are what make it unacceptable to us and to the American people,” said Kyl, “and that’s where we have to start.” McConnell then jumped in so that he, too, could say “scrap this bill.”

Scrap. Start over. Not tweakable. It was clever at the time. Sound reasonable but ensure that none of those reasonable-sounding ideas would accidentally become concessions in a bill made law. Adults could agree on modest steps to fix health care. But the Affordable Care Act was unfixable.

The next month, Obama sent a letter to Republicans, offering to expand tax-favored health savings accounts, more aggressively investigate Medicare fraud, and fund demonstration projects to seek alternatives to medical malpractice lawsuits. These had all been Republican ideas, but Boehner, in a statement, gave the same answer: “There is no reason to lump sensible proposals into a fundamentally flawed 2,000-page bill. … The American people want the President to start over with a clean sheet of paper.” Scrap it. Start over. It’s not tweakable.

It doesn’t matter whether this was a cynical strategy or a sincere act of political conviction. In 2010, Boehner sent a message to the party that was still his to lead: No part of this bill is acceptable. It cannot be allowed to pass. Period.

So now he’s stuck. He has a majority in one of the chambers of Congress, but he can’t use it to improve any aspect of health policy, because the Affordable Care Act—which is currently law, remember—is unfixable. He should not be surprised or frustrated that members of his own party have reached the obvious and logical conclusion to a strategy he signed off on three years ago. If Obamacare is unfixable and unacceptable, what kind of American would accept it? Why would we expect our politicians to do anything other than fight it in the air and on the sea?

Three years ago, this strategy nearly worked. Democrats had a tough time getting it together when Scott Brown (R-Mass.) entered the Senate and it looked like they’d need a single Republican vote to pass the bill. We should not feel too badly for John Boehner or any member of the Republican leadership that the rhetorical stand they took in 2010 is proving such a bother now.
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