I’ve been fascinated with this story of the partial shut down of the American government. So naturally, I’ve been consuming a lot of American Media this week.
The parks department is getting by far the most attention with this story. Most of the national parks are shut down, Yellowstone, Lake Mead, The St. Louis Arch, Mount Rushmore and many more. The progressives will tell you that the US economy is losing millions of dollars while these tourist attractions are shut down. Here we go again with this assumption that government creates jobs. This idea that Idea that if people aren’t spending their money at the St. Louis Arch that it won’t be spent at all. Totally bogus, they’ll spend it at a restaurant they’ll spend it at another attraction that isn’t shut down, they’ll buy a T-shirt or a hat. The really sad thing is that things that don’t even cost money have barricades around them. There was that story this week about the WWII veterans who were denied the opportunity to see the national war memorial.
This whole thing is happening because the Republicans want to repeal Obama care. Perhaps they have a point, how many people are actually signing up for Obamacare? The Numbers are shocking. The healthcare.gov website crashed on Tuesday at people were “clamouring” to sign up for Obamacare. However the 5 million reported visitors were in reality 5 million page views. The actual number of unique visitors was 645 000. In addition, the sign up rate is horrible. Some reports say less that 1% of those who don’t have insurance have signed up. The state of Connecticut signed up 373 people this week. 373 people in the whole state! And not one person in Louisiana or California have signed up yet.
So how long will this continue? My guess is that by October 10th, the two sides will be getting closer to a resolution. Right now, the Democrats have no interest in ending the shut down. Think about it, you have all the media outlets out there blaming the Republicans for this shut down. The longer this continues the better it is for the Democrats. However, there will be a point next week where the tables will turn as people realize that the Democrats aren’t willing to negotiate.
I’ve totally lost all respect for CNN after how they have been covering this story this week.They grill every Republican who comes on but give Democrats a nice easy interview. CNN had a single mother on the other morning who was being inconvenienced because her government food program for her and her baby was stopped by the shut down. It was all pity on me… I was waiting for CNN to ask why is she having children when she’s not financially stable? Of course it never happened. This woman is going to continue to have kids and live on the government dole fore the next 15 years.
That’s the problem, government is too big and is spending to much money on things that aren’t essential. We are learning this week on who is essential and who isn’t. Unfortunately, things will soon return to normal and non essential workers will will become essential again and we’ll be right back where we started. That is until it’s time to raise the debt ceiling again later this month.