2018-19 #TrumpShutdown Day 19 Open Thread

14 thoughts on “2018-19 #TrumpShutdown Day 19 Open Thread”

1. The New York Times Editorial Board's assessment of *rump:

   With his demagogy, Mr. Trump managed to fuel a sense of insecurity and unease throughout his campaign, along with the idea that he alone could Make America Great Again. In office, he has attempted to perpetuate that angst by proclaiming existential threats to the Republic, be they migrant caravans storming the border, Muslim terrorists flooding the airports or violent immigrants roaming the countryside. Shutting down the government is only the most recent effort at getting what he wants by traumatizing the nation he has sworn to serve.

   The border wall began life as an applause line at Mr. Trump’s rallies, and it has endured as the rare — perhaps even sole — policy objective that actually matters to him. The substance of true border security may not interest him much, but this symbol sure does.

   While Mr. Trump proved a wily campaigner and political street fighter, as president he has been painfully out of his element. Two years in, he remains ill suited to the complicated, thankless, often grinding work of leading the nation. Governance clearly bores him, as do policy details both foreign and domestic. He has proved a poor judge of talent. He prefers grandstanding to negotiating, and he continues to have trouble with the whole concept of checks and balances. While the Republican base remains enamored of him, most of the electorate has grown weary of his outrages and antics.

    

   In 2020, we’ll have a lot of trash that needs to be taken out to the dump.

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2. Sign seen in a New Mexico border town:

   “Stop truth decay: Dump Trump.”

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3. Interesting interview on NPR yesterday — essential employees who aren’t paid are suing the government.  An attorney representing the employees said:

   In 2013, we filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of essential employees who worked during the October 2013 government shutdown. The government filed a motion to dismiss, claiming that their hands were essentially tied because of the Antideficiency Act. The judge ruled against them and confirmed that, in fact, the government had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and still should have paid these essential employees on time during the shutdown.

   The kicker: 

   hopefully, Congress will pass legislation and retroactively pay all of the employees. On top of that, however, they're entitled to liquidated damages. Liquidated damages, it's a payment equal to the amount of the wages that were not paid on time.

   Doing the math:  roughly 420,000 employees working, without pay.  Guesstimates of salary impact vary, but someplace around $50,000/year is a common figure. For ease of math, I’m going to guess $52,000, $1,000 per week. That means $420,000,000 in “liquidated damages” each week — $1.26 billion when we (in 2 days) complete day 21. Plus interest, since government is STILL working on the liquidated damages calculation from the 2013 shutdown. I think the employer (feds) pays the legal fees, too.

   Naturally, some employees will not join the suit and seek damages. And the suit won't help those employees this week — but eventually, the feds are going to pay.

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   1. That begs the question:  have so many attorneys in the DOJ been furloughed that there will be no one available to respond to the lawsuit?

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4. Trump’s America: . . . 

   Pastor Who Praised Pulse Nightclub Gunman Resigns After Allegedly Paying for Sex

   https://nyti.ms/2H52iwB?smid=nytcore-ios-share

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   1. Now there's a feel-good story. The article doesn't specify the sex or age of the hookers, but male and underage seem highly likely.

      Trouble is, pieces of shit like this are exceptionally resilient. The "my invisible magic sky daddy can beat up your invisible magic sky daddy" crowd has the rubiest rubes. Robert Tilton, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard — they're all still grifting. Here's hoping this Romero clown dies before his comeback can begin in earnest.

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      1. I imagine there will soon be a claim that alcohol and/or other substances drove this manly man of God into the arms of Satan, that he is repenting (think Jim Bakker and that performance he gave back in the 1980's when he was caught in flagrante), that Jesus saves, and that all is forgiven.

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5. The 538 model, which was based on publicly-available polling data, said the campaigns should target WI and MI. You didn't have to have any proprietary info to know they were important states. You just had to look at the data and not be huge dumbasses like the HRC campaign was. https://t.co/sbQgoq0gCO

   — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 8, 2019

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6. Guess who walked out of a meeting with Congressional leadership today?  He must have seen his shadow.  Guess there will be six more weeks of shutdown.

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   1. While *rump had gotten tepid support from GOP senators to continue his shutdown, Pelosi's dose of reality caused him to throw a temper tantrum.

      Moderate Republicans who entered the room confident that senators were coalescing around the idea that the government should be reopened while the border security debate continues left disappointed, convinced that for now, the party would follow Mr. Trump perilously further into a shutdown with an uncertain end.

      Ms. Capito said. She said she expected pressure from federal employees and voters in her state would only mount the longer the impasse drags on. “I’ve expressed more than a few times the frustrations with a government shutdown and how useless it is, so that pressure’s going to build,” she said.

      But she apparently did not speak forcefully in the private lunch with the president.

      Nor did Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who lamented on Wednesday morning that government shutdowns “never work” and turn federal workers into “pawns.” Though Senate Republicans had not reached a point of direct intervention yet, he said, “we’re getting pretty close.”

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      1. But isn't storming out of the room a crucial part of the fart of the deal?

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         1. I'm sure! Trump no doubt wrote an entire chapter on it . . . except that he didn't write the book at all.

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7. And in Colorado news, Governor Polis (I sure like writing that!) has announced several more appointments today. A couple mountain counties are going to be short a county commissioner.

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8. Nation with crumbling infrastructure excited to build giant wall  

   – Andy Borowitz, NYT

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