Tag Archives: government shutdown

Shutdown Show Should be Cancelled

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 15, 2019

When we were little, my brother and sister and I would sit on the braided living room rug to watch shows on our Admiral TV. Some of the shows had names you could cut and paste onto the reality TV theater ‘now live on our stage’ in Washington: The Twilight Zone, What’s My Line?, Who Do You Trust?, The Show of Shows, and my favorite, Howdy Doody.

Playing now is the gridlocked immigration feud that has resulted in the closure of parts of the Federal Government. This extended shutdown is raising havoc with the economy, federal programs and most critically, the lives of hundreds of thousands workers, contractors, and program beneficiaries, from park visitors, to homeowners, and small businesses. Continue reading →

The Good News

BY JOHN  FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I want to focus on the good news.

The good news is that Barry Black, the Senate Chaplain, has come out of this entire mess as the only clear winner. His sermons have been on point, passionate, realistic and deeply spiritual. And he is now a rock star (as much as a Senate Chaplain can become a rock star).

The good news is that the government is finally open again.

The good news is that we didn’t default on our debts.

The good news is that the stock market largely ignored what was happening in Washington, figuring that we would figure it out. They were right. Continue reading →

Another Jacksonian Era

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

The deal to head off a government shutdown Friday night got done because a guy named Barry Jackson said it was done. Not one second before.

I have no – zero – inside info on what in the press world is known as a “tick-tock” who said what to whom, and when they said it. I am not one of Barry Jackson’s pals. I’m not even sure who they might be.

But, I have known Barry Jackson for about 15 years and I know this: He has the ability to focus in on a problem not like a laser – that would be too diffused; but like the beam of sub-atomic matter zooming around a particle accelerator.

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Get New Scorecard for Judging Value

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

We need a new way of keeping score when it comes to government spending. The only test is: How much did we spend on a program last year and how much more (or, rarely, less) are we spending this year.

There is no mention of whether the program in question is working well, badly, or not at all. There is no consideration of whether there is a more efficient way to deliver whatever services or goods are involved in the program.

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Shut Down Government

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

Over the 12 years of writing MULLINGS, I have often strayed – sometimes pretty far – from Conservative Orthodoxy.

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Democrats’ 2010 Budget Fiasco

BY GARY ANDRES

Reprinted from Weeklystandard.com

The 2010 federal fiscal year ended unceremoniously this week – a political and substantive fiasco for the Democrats. It included a cascade of miscalculations that could haunt the party in the November elections.  But that pales in comparison to the serious harm they’ve inflicted on the American economy.

Never before has a party so bungled fiscal policy in the United States , leaving citizens, businesses, and investors with head-spinning uncertainty.
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When Unemployment Rate Goes Up

By JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

The jobless rate and economic growth are not necessarily connected.

An economy can grow without people going back to work. Companies can make profits and not necessarily hire people. We are now going through a jobless recovery, despite President Obama’s delusional declaration that jobs are coming back.
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