If Netflix was down as often as the government, they'd be out of business

RE: government shutdown.

The primary objective has two indivisible parts:

1. Put on a good face. Even if it goes against everything you stand for, you keep the government open.
2. Figure out where the problem is. We've been trying to eliminate the Federal deficit since Reagan. Since Nixon, probably. But we haven't been able to do it. Maybe we fail because we have the wrong solution.

If the power goes down, even momentarily, it is a problem: More people lose respect for government. More people see Fall-of-Rome as our destiny. More people expect the worst.

From the Washington Post:

Rand Paul thinks he is a man of principle. Yeah: principle without good judgement. If he's so concerned, then he more than anyone should be looking for a better solution. Alone in the Senate, he was willing to shut down the government:

... the federal government shut down when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) delayed the vote past midnight to complain about the budget deficit.

Don't do that to my country.


Again, the Washington Post:

The latest congressional breakdown came amid dispute over the spending deal, which earlier in the week had appeared primed for easy passage...

But it began to run into trouble Thursday, as House conservatives rebelled over excessive deficit spending and House liberals fumed that this bill, too, failed to protect “dreamers” who face losing deportation protections under the Trump administration.

I don't care what your objections are. You don't do that to my country.

Then, as an expected vote approached in the Senate, Paul began to throw up roadblocks...

“I can’t in all good honesty, in all good faith, just look the other way because my party is now complicit in the deficits,” Paul said on the Senate floor as evening pushed into night.

Paul himself made no apologies as he delivered one floor speech after another, casting himself as a lone defender of fiscal austerity...

A lone defender of fiscal austerity, with an ego bigger than the Federal debt. And no solution to the problem of deficits.

Pardon my French, but the man is an ass. He thinks we have deficits because B is greater than A, spending is greater than revenue. But that's only the arithmetic of deficits. It's not the cause.

To a man, economists will tell you the economy is too complicated for hobbyists like me to talk about. But the economists who set policy, they all buy the sadly simplistic "B is greater than A" story.

That story obviously does not explain the problem, as in 50 years of trying we have not solved the problem. Things only get worse.