US government Shutdown

[Borgholio]

Gents, I don't think its unfair to say that should the US default on all of its debt this second, every cent, just for shits and giggles it is not going to lead to the Union falling apart. I am not sure how anyone is linking the one with the other.

The union may not fall apart, but I for one do not relish a return to bread and soup lines or interest rates in the double digits when I want to buy a car or house.

[Borgholio]

In regards to the discussion about people entering national parks despite the closure?

http://news.yahoo.com/defying-governmen ... 27587.html

So right now they're knocking over cones and going for jogs. Harmless enough for now. But how long until that one asshat walks into the Mariposa grove with a book of matches? I tend to agree that it's best to keep all people out if they can't properly secure the place.

The 3,000 Park Service personnel who remain on duty (20,000 have been furloughed)...

[NettiWelho]

How would the federal and/or local state governments react if a political entity smaller than an entire state was to declare independence from the United States? Lets say a group of people large enough to field a couple thousand rifles and the willing to defend themselves?

[Patroklos]

In regards to the discussion about people entering national parks despite the closure?

http://news.yahoo.com/defying-governmen ... 27587.html

So right now they're knocking over cones and going for jogs. Harmless enough for now. But how long until that one asshat walks into the Mariposa grove with a book of matches? I tend to agree that it's best to keep all people out if they can't properly secure the place.

The 3,000 Park Service personnel who remain on duty (20,000 have been furloughed)...

1.) Of that 20K about 5K are seasonal or short term, generally for the summer.
2.) A small portion of that are actually law enforcement types, which I'd imagine most of those 3K on the job still include. I am not sure how many actual rangers are furloughed.
3.) They allow and sanctioned things like this:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/signs-say ... le/2536957

so I am not sure why we are supposed to believe joggers or hikers which generally have zero interaction with park rangers anyway are a concern. It would be trivially easy to set a fire in any national park or vandilze most any outdoor monument with the NPS fully manned or even doubled in size. I am an AT section hiker and I can't remember ever having encounterd NPS staff on the trial. The trails and shelters themselves are maintained by private organizations for the most part actually (I am specifically talking about the AT here).

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

[Borgholio]

Think Waco, Tx...only bigger. Instead of ATF storming a compound, you have the national guard or the regular army storming with APCs, armored vehicles, attack helecoptors and drones.

[NettiWelho]

Think Waco, Tx...only bigger. Instead of ATF storming a compound, you have the national guard or the regular army storming with APCs, armored vehicles, attack helecoptors and drones.

And what effect would that have on the domestic and international opinion and relations with the US? Especially if the initial secession declaration event itself goes without incidents with separatists signaling willingness for peaceful co-existance and diplomatic relations as an independent entity?

I'd imagine it to be a hard sell to justify deaths of so many people.

[Zaune]

How would the federal and/or local state governments react if a political entity smaller than an entire state was to declare independence from the United States? Lets say a group of people large enough to field a couple thousand rifles and the willing to defend themselves?

Probably laugh at them and take absolutely no notice whatsoever until and unless they went beyond macho posturing and low-level tax dodging, at which point the People's Democratic Republic of Fuckwitistan would get thoroughly and hilariously clobbered.

[Borgholio]

And what effect would that have on the domestic and international opinion and relations with the US? Especially if the initial secession declaration event itself goes without incidents with separatists signaling willingness for peaceful co-existance and diplomatic relations as an independent entity?

I'd imagine it to be a hard sell to justify deaths of so many people.

I don't know about that. The civil war pretty much established that states are not allowed to leave the Union, so the use of force to contain a rebellion has precedent. I know that states have split apart, and cities have broken away from larger metro areas, but I don't think anybody has actually tried to form their own sovereign nation...

[Silver Jedi]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

How many times are you people going to keep fucking harping on this? Server farms do require constants maintenance costs to operate (electricity, etc.). If the buildings they are housed in go dark during the shutdown, so do the websites in question. It's not that difficult to understand.

[Kitsune]

Why Obama probably will not use the 14th Amendment
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... risis.html

[Covenant]

And what effect would that have on the domestic and international opinion and relations with the US? Especially if the initial secession declaration event itself goes without incidents with separatists signaling willingness for peaceful co-existance and diplomatic relations as an independent entity?

I'd imagine it to be a hard sell to justify deaths of so many people.

No, it is an illegal action of the highest degree, and a direct attack on the United States of America.

Things would need to change dramatically before any of these secession movements actually have traction, however. Even in Texas the real number of people who want to secede are a minuscule amount of the population, and a change to the nation like this would also require a degree of national support. I think it is more likely that we as a nation decide to kick Florida out than let Texas leave and form an independent nation.

Most nations on Earth would understand the US not wishing to allow a significant portion of its nation to break off into Tealand or something. It's not like the international community is coming down on Canada to let Quebec turn itself into a microstate, or putting a ton of pressure on the Irish and Scottish sovereignty issues.

So if something like this started, it would first need to ramp up to an actually noticeable level, at which point it would be a separatist and insurrectionist movement (possibly domestic terrorist) or a legal and peaceful movement. The legal and peaceful one would run aground of the legal impossibility of the situation, and though there might be some debates, it would go nowhere. States Rights is already a drumbeat among the Republicans, but actual secession is an attack on America itself, and not the sort of thing a patriot votes for. The insurrectionists would get flyswatted the FBI, ATF and NSA as soon as they poke their heads out, and can linger on as a militia thing but would never achieve any degree of political clout.

So change in this manner would need to come from a peaceful angle, without any hope of achieving recognition from the federal government. If they just want to talk about a "Free Texas" and run their domestic affairs, pay their taxes, and pretend... then that's fine, a lot of states do that, that's pretty damn normal. But I don't think any state would seriously want to lose the advantages of a national safety net, let alone take on the need for private defense and trade agreements that would destroy their economy.

Basically, at the level of intelligence and organization it would require to make a case for this to the nation, the people involved would see why it is unnecessary and unwanted.

[Patroklos]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

How many times are you people going to keep fucking harping on this? Server farms do require constants maintenance costs to operate (electricity, etc.). If the buildings they are housed in go dark during the shutdown, so do the websites in question. It's not that difficult to understand.

I'm sorry, do you actually think they flipped the breakers on government buildings? The water mains turned off? The air conditioning secured? Or even the cable disconnected?

Guess what you need to host the "our website is shutdown..." page?

[Batman]

And the 'Sorry, we're shut down' page being up means...what, exactly? That's right, something's up and running somewherethat can tell you that. This means all the server farms are because of...

And while I don't know how government shutdown works in the US (or anywhere else), given that it apparently includes not paying government employees, them not paying utilities for government run/owned buildings seems only logical.

[Kitsune]

I an on a board where there are researchers working on important agricultural issues and they just had to shut down their labs

[Silver Jedi]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

How many times are you people going to keep fucking harping on this? Server farms do require constants maintenance costs to operate (electricity, etc.). If the buildings they are housed in go dark during the shutdown, so do the websites in question. It's not that difficult to understand.

I'm sorry, do you actually think they flipped the breakers on government buildings? The water mains turned off? The air conditioning secured? Or even the cable disconnected?

Guess what you need to host the "our website is shutdown..." page?

I'm sorry, you think they didn't? Uh... I think so because they did? It'll vary from place to place, but (unsurprisingly) different people in different parts of the government interpreted orders to do things like "shut down nonessential services" differently.

They didn't actually flip the breakers, but entire wings of the building I (normally) work in do have the AC and lights turned off. Maintenance also came through and unplugged all the 'fridges, vending machines, photocopiers and other large appliances, and we had to go through the office before we left and make sure every computer, monitor, tv, etc was shut off. From what I understand, IT literally did take the servers offline and are hosting my department's "our website is shutdown" page from somewhere else, because most or all of the people who maintain those servers are considered nonessential. As I said though, it's been inconsistent across the government. Ars Technica has a list of which websites are up and which are down. FWIW, NSA and BLS both seem to have taken the approach you're talking about.

Edit: tag issues

[Terralthra]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

How many times are you people going to keep fucking harping on this? Server farms do require constants maintenance costs to operate (electricity, etc.). If the buildings they are housed in go dark during the shutdown, so do the websites in question. It's not that difficult to understand.

I'm sorry, do you actually think they flipped the breakers on government buildings? The water mains turned off? The air conditioning secured? Or even the cable disconnected?

Guess what you need to host the "our website is shutdown..." page?

The ability to redirect the DNS to an "essential" server with a vhost?

[Broomstick]

How would the federal and/or local state governments react if a political entity smaller than an entire state was to declare independence from the United States? Lets say a group of people large enough to field a couple thousand rifles and the willing to defend themselves?

That's how we got West Virgina - a group of counties split off Virginia.

Of course, that was in the middle of a civil war in the 19th Century. Not sure how folks would react these days...

[Borgholio]

Of course, that was in the middle of a civil war in the 19th Century. Not sure how folks would react these days...

That was also a new state forming out of parts of another state...not splitting off to form an independent sovereign nation.

[loomer]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

I'm sorry, but what the fuck did you think would happen during a shutdown? It's a shutdown. Consider yourself lucky that essential services are still functioning instead of whining that non-essential elements are being taken down, because THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT. There's no money! Because your party feels entitled, as '1/3rd of the equation' to use your own terminology, to create this circumstance, services WILL start to go down.

[Kitsune]

Of note I just saw the NPS and NOAA sites are shut down wholesale, because we all know a website requires to the minute maintinance. Thats why they close them on the weekends and over the holidays. Maybe shutting down the active parts like application submissions and whatone makes sense, but to just close the entire thing including the static information?

I'm sorry, but what the fuck did you think would happen during a shutdown? It's a shutdown. Consider yourself lucky that essential services are still functioning instead of whining that non-essential elements are being taken down, because THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT. There's no money! Because your party feels entitled, as '1/3rd of the equation' to use your own terminology, to create this circumstance, services WILL start to go down.

Of Note, NOAA weather website is still operational because it is a life saving / protection service
For example:
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.ph ... lZST1OvPXR

[bilateralrope]

It sounds like the Republicans are willing to increase the debt ceiling without much fuss.

[Siege]

Isn't this the moment President Josiah Bartlet tells the Speaker to sign the budget or get out because he already met him halfway?

[SirNitram]

It sounds like the Republicans are willing to increase the debt ceiling without much fuss.

WSJ seems to think there's quite a bit of fuss attached. Link

Of course, I do not trust Boehner and his anarchist sociopathic cult with a set of safety scissors.

[aerius]

So if it passes you guys potentially get to go through this shit again in 6 weeks. Fucking genius! What's next, pass a bill that extends the debt limit one day at a time?

[Broomstick]

Please don't give Clowngress any ideas.