Tuesday, October 1, 2013

First Encounter With The Shutdown

Had my first encounter with the U.S. government shutdown this morning. USGS maps were not available on line. For one site I have a work around, but for another I am not sure I can proceed. Stratum Group also does environmental consulting and some of the data bases we routinely use are down.

So simply put the shut down is hurting our work already, and, no, the Affordable Care Act has not caused any harm to our business and we recently added an employee.

And less one thinks both sides need to compromise consider this chart from Micheal Linden and Harry Stein the-senate-continuing-resolution-is-already-a-compromise



Lots of smart folks have been trying to explain what is going on: Ezra Klein quotes Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein as a way of explanation as to what is going on: "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics — it is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.", but I think House Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) calling his fellow House GOPers "Lemmings with suicide vests". sums the situation up as well as anything. 

4 comments:

Nick said...

What a misleading graph from my favorite blogger. I really enjoy reading your geology and history-based blogs, but that graph (without a y axis label) is very misleading. The continuing resolution is only 19% lower than the original Obama budget. We're going to need more than 19% in cuts to Obama's budget to get to a sound fiscal position... Stick to geology/history Mr. McShane, the stories are so much more interesting.

Geoff said...

Not making the USGS on line maps available, seems a little extreme to me. Like closing parks. Usually this just means that no one is there to collect the fees, and each NP is somewhat unique. Still this whole drills sucks. And, I've never seen a bar chart with a y-axis, so keep up the good blogs.

Dave Wenning said...

Dan, you seem to be encountering a "negative multiplier effect." Here's another example:

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/breaking-news-economist-gets-sandwich-sees-negative-multiplier/

Scott Schuldt said...

Everything is connected. Politics made it into my canoeing blog today, as it did into your geology blog (as it often does). I too am a frequent user of topo map downloads and that will slow me down some in my work. But, to put a positive spin on it, the shutdown does make voting a very simple process... I can't condone the unemploying of 800,000 people to fantasy joust with windmills. I don't suppose that during my remaining lifetime I will ever cast a vote for someone with an R next to their name.