Government by spite

A quick roundup of some items on the government shutdown (gleaned from Ace, HotAir, ZH, etc.).

• Protesting ‘Federal workers’ are not. As in, (1) are not federal employees, and (2) are not authentically protesting. These ones were paid $15/hr to stage the protests just for the divisive optics.
• Service academy athletics cancelled just ‘for the optics’. Privately-funded athletics, little reason to cancel them.
• Privately-funded national parks are closed, again, just for – you guessed it – ‘the optics’. The article refers specifically to a privately-funded national park that stayed open during many previous government shutdowns.
• By the way, that closed WW2 Memorial is also privately funded; little or no reason for that to be barricaded.
• They’ve even even barricaded the Lincoln Memorial, again unlike the 1995 government shutdown where tourists could still walk up to it.
• And, as previously mentioned by Bruce, Sen. Harry Reid won’t let the NIH help kids with cancer – until he gets his way. Which party takes hostages, again?
• While we’re on the subject of which party takes hostages: Obama has hinted to Wall Street that he’d like to see a market crash about now.

Are these the actions of a constructive presidency, or one filled with spite?

I think they fit with the Obama administration’s hostage-taking over the ‘sequester’ budget cuts earlier this year. For example, they refused to restore White House tours for school kids, even after alternate (private) funding was found for the tours.

One good note: 91% of the IRS has been furloughed.

BONUS: A history of government shutdowns. Here’s the short version: There have been many…as in, many shutdowns organized/led by the Democrats. So the present shutdown is nothing new, nothing disastrous, and nothing that Democrats themselves haven’t done whenever they felt like it.