Robert Reich:  What’s Really at Stake With the GOP’s Awful Budget Plan and the Coming Government Shutdown

By Robert Reich, RobertReich.org
Posted on April 6, 2011, Printed on April 7, 2011
http://robertreich.org/

I was there in 1995 when the government closed because of a budget stalemate. I had to tell most of the Labor Department’s 15,600 employees to go home and not return the next day. I also had to tell them I didn’t know when they’d next get a paycheck.

There were two shutdowns, actually, rolling across the government in close succession, like thunder storms.

It’s not the way to do the public’s business.

By Ari Berman, The NationPosted on April 6, 2011, Printed on April 7, 2011http://www.alternet.org/story/150528/government_shutdown%3A_blame_gop_heartlessness_and_democratic_cowardice InTrade says there’s a 52 percent chance there will be a government shutdown before July. The brinksmanship and theatrics aside, I’ve long believed a shutdown would be averted and a budget deal reached for 2011–12. Now …

Jordan Flaherty

April 5, 2011

http://truthout.org/jena-six-activist-convicted-faces-decades-prison/1301547600

Civil rights activist Catrina Wallace, who received national acclaim for her central role in organizing protests around the Jena Six case, was convicted today of three counts of distribution of a controlled substance. She was taken from the courtroom straight to jail after the verdict was read, and given a one million dollar bail. Her sentencing is expected to come next month.

Wallace, who is 30, became an activist after her teenage brother, Robert Bailey, was arrested and charged with attempted murder after a fight in Jena High School. Bailey and five others later became known as the Jena Six, and their cause became a civil rights rallying cry that was called the first struggle of a 21st-century Civil Rights Movement. Their case eventually brought 50,000 people on a march through the town of Jena, and as a result of the public pressure the young men were eventually freed. The six are all now in college or — in the case of the youngest — on their way. Wallace and her mother, Caseptla Bailey, stayed in Jena and founded Organizing in the Trenches, a community organization dedicated to working with youth.

Ray McGovern

April 6, 2011

http://truthout.org/military-tribunal-may-hide-911-motives/1302066000

The Likud Lobby and their allied US legislators can chalk up a significant victory for substantially shrinking any opportunity for the accused planners of 9/11 to tell their side of the story.

What? I sense some bristling. “Their side of the story?” Indeed! We’ve been told there is no “their side of the story.”

For years, President George W. Bush got away with offering up the risible explanation that they “hate our freedoms.” The stenographers of the White House press corps may have had to suppress smiles but silently swallowed the “they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms” rationale.

The only journalist I can recall stepping up and asking, in effect, “Come on; now really; it’s important; why do the really hate us” was the indomitable Helen Thomas.

In January 2010, just weeks after the “underpants bomber” tried to down an airliner over Detroit, President Barack Obama asked White House counter-terrorism guru, John Brennan, to field questions from the White House press.

Huffington Post

April 6, 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/government-shutdown-threa_n_845838.html#69_obama-im-absolutely-convinced-that-we-can-get-this-done

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says late-night budget talks with the leaders of Congress have helped to narrow the issues, but there is no deal yet to avert a shutdown.

Obama spoke after a hastily arranged late-evening meeting in the Oval Office with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The three met for roughly and hour and 15 minutes.

The calling of the session itself underscored the stakes of the deepening political fight as time grew short.

Joanna Zelman

April 5, 2011

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/government-shutdown-environment-epa-_n_845451.html

How would a government shutdown affect the environment, and in turn, affect Americans?

According to CNN, 368 National Park Service sites were closed during the last government shutdown.

Indiana is a case in point. Yahoo! News reports on the impact of a government shutdown in Indiana:

The National Park Service in Indiana would be severely affected by a federal government shutdown. Indiana has three national parks and 30 national natural landmarks. A shutdown would close all the national parks and have a large impact on the local economy.

Ezra Klein

April 5, 2011

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/05-2

The part of Paul Ryan’s budget that’s going to get the most attention is his proposal to privatize and voucherize Medicare. But the part that worries me the most is his effort to slash Medicaid, with no real theory as to how to make up the cuts.

Paul Ryan’s budget proposal puts the intentions of the GOP in black and white; the wholesale destruction of the health care safety net and a privatization agenda that would would decimate the hard won gains of the 20th century. (AP Photo) Ryan’s op-ed introducing his budget lists Medicaid under “welfare reform,” reflecting the widespread belief that Medicaid is a program for the poor. That belief is wrong, or at least incomplete. A full two-thirds of Medicaid’s spending goes to seniors and people with disabilities — even though seniors and the disabled are only a quarter of Medicaid’s members. Sharply cutting Medicaid means sharply cutting their benefits, as that’s where the bulk of Medicaid’s money goes. This is not just about the free health care given to some hypothetical class of undeserving and unemployed Medicaid queens.

Agence France-Presse

April 5th, 2011

 WASHINGTON – Meditation can deliver powerful pain-relieving effects to the brain with even just 80 minutes’ training for a beginner in an exercise called focused attention, a study released Tuesday found.

“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said Fadel Zeidan, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina.

The findings appear in the April 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

“We found a big effect — about a 40-percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57-percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent,” he added.

Researchers looked at 15 fit volunteers who had never meditated. The subjects each took four 20-minute sessions to learn how to control their breathing and put aside their emotions and thoughts.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is demonstrating her huge popularity at the half-way mark of voting in AlterNet’s poll of the “Most Influential Progressive Media Figures Don Hazen April 6, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/media/150521/rachel_maddow_leads_for_most_influential_progressive%3B_mother_jones_and_the_nation_tied_for_best_online_mag%3B_daily_kos_slim_lead_among_top_blogs/ Nightly MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is demonstrating her huge popularity at the half-way mark of voting in AlterNet’s poll …

David Usborne

April 7, 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tea-party-budget-demands-could-force-us-government-shutdown-2264336.html

Party leaders on Capitol Hill are racing to overcome an impasse in budget talks that is threatening a partial shutdown of the United States government. If no solution is found, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will become idle and facilities as varied as zoos, museums and passport offices will close temporarily.

After President Barack Obama told negotiators to “act like grown-ups” and get over their differences, hopes of a solution were still flickering last night. If they fail to set spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on 30 September, the shutdown will begin at midnight on Friday.

The last such shutdown came in 1996 when Bill Clinton was in the White House. The stoppage lasted three weeks and in the end brought public wrath on then Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Centre-stage this time is Representative John Boehner, who became Speaker after Republicans retook control of the House in last year’s midterm elections. Mr Boehner is under pressure from his newly elected Tea Party caucus to win swingeing cuts not just in spending but in the size of government itself.