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There's a recent article I read (NPR, I think?) where Mick Mulvaney was interviewed about that shutdown. He made the point (and spun it to make him look especi

There's a recent article I read (NPR, I think?) where Mick Mulvaney was interviewed about that shutdown. He made the point (and spun it to make him look especially noble, of course) that the effects of a shutdown are largely decided by the Office of Management and Budget. They can choose to soften the blow, or they can make it hurt. He argued that in 2013 under Obama, the OMB really turned the screws and hired contractors to fence off even national monuments which were otherwise unmanned anyway. Complete with signs announcing why they were fenced off. They wanted the public to feel the pain and associate it with Republicans (which seems to work, historically the GOP gets the majority of blame for shutdowns). I think it's unlikely anybody is going to turn off GPS because the gov't "shutdown". I think the larger risk is that they will stop paying air traffic controllers, while expecting them to come to work anyway. That'll work for a while, but eventually some of those controllers may opt to stay home.

dfxm12 3y ago
Republicans don't get blamed for the government shutdowns because of signs or fences by national monuments. They get blamed because they are at fault, whether that's trying to cut the increasingly popular ACA purely out of spite to Obama in 2013, or party infighting like this year or 2018.
- mindslight 3y ago
  The "blame" is exactly what Republican Party wants, to keep up their kayfabe marketing of "fiscal responsibility". Put interest rates around 7% for the next several decades, end the inflationary treadmill, let the everything bubble deflate, let the Wall Street debt/financialization cancer recede - and then it would make sense to talk about fiscal responsibility as a real thing. Until then any peanuts thrown to the plebs by the Democrats are really just mitigating the economic damage from the trough of overwhelming corporate welfare.
  - jhoechtl 3y ago
    There are a couple of german words which made it into mainstream english like angst, zeitgeist, abseil. Based on your comment I would suggest a new one: brandrede. Look it up, afaik there is no english equivalent.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      From a quick look the literal translation is "fire speech" which doesn't seem that hard to understand. So it would seem the significance is its place as a cultural touchstone, and cultures can certainly differ. As to your larger point, pointing out errors in the social consensus is intrinsically inflammatory, as it upsets most everyone's neat little boxes they conceptually pigeonhole things into. That's unfortunate, but I don't think I said anything unnecessarily inflammatory - rather just tying together concepts each claimed by the red and blue tribes that they mostly use to talk past each other.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    TIL: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
abeppu 3y ago
I'm sure there are _some_ discretionary choices made but ... what does a shutdown that doesn't hurt look like? At some level, the government is huge and expensive, and society is adapted to it continuing to operate. If we had a no-pain way to not spend all that money, we should do it. But I'm guessing that putting up some fences around a few monuments is pretty cheap (it's not like they put up a fence around the whole grand canyon or something) relative to the funds that are being stopped. I think the political showmanship here is that it's easy to have an above-the-fold image of a "closed due to shutdown" sign in front of the Lincoln memorial that's immediately comprehensible, but there's not a great pic to show more substantive but dry government work that doesn't happen or gets delayed. It's hard to visually instantly convey "you're still paying all your taxes but you're getting a whole lot less government right now."
- dylan604 3y ago
  If everyone's turn-by-turn navigation stopped working, there would be riots in the streets (if they could figure out how to get there). If you want to bring attention to the everyday person, turning off GPS would definitely get their immediate attention.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    Don't a lot of modern systems combine GPS with GLONASS and Galileo?
    - jhoechtl 3y ago
      Pretty much every smartphone younger than four years.
      - antonjs 3y ago
        Also most receivers for super economically important things like a avionics or marine navigation, but shutting off WAAS specifically (augmented accuracy data for GPS broadcasted using a much smaller set of satellites) would affect air traffic that need it to land in low visibility at an increasing number of airports. Though, to the OP's point about GPS, WAAS is operated by the FAA, so it isn't clear to me whether not passing the defense authorization would affect it in the near term.

dfxm12 3y ago

Republicans don't get blamed for the government shutdowns because of signs or fences by national monuments. They get blamed because they are at fault, whether that's trying to cut the increasingly popular ACA purely out of spite to Obama in 2013, or party infighting like this year or 2018.

mindslight 3y ago
The "blame" is exactly what Republican Party wants, to keep up their kayfabe marketing of "fiscal responsibility". Put interest rates around 7% for the next several decades, end the inflationary treadmill, let the everything bubble deflate, let the Wall Street debt/financialization cancer recede - and then it would make sense to talk about fiscal responsibility as a real thing. Until then any peanuts thrown to the plebs by the Democrats are really just mitigating the economic damage from the trough of overwhelming corporate welfare.
- jhoechtl 3y ago
  There are a couple of german words which made it into mainstream english like angst, zeitgeist, abseil. Based on your comment I would suggest a new one: brandrede. Look it up, afaik there is no english equivalent.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    From a quick look the literal translation is "fire speech" which doesn't seem that hard to understand. So it would seem the significance is its place as a cultural touchstone, and cultures can certainly differ. As to your larger point, pointing out errors in the social consensus is intrinsically inflammatory, as it upsets most everyone's neat little boxes they conceptually pigeonhole things into. That's unfortunate, but I don't think I said anything unnecessarily inflammatory - rather just tying together concepts each claimed by the red and blue tribes that they mostly use to talk past each other.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  TIL: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

abeppu 3y ago

I'm sure there are _some_ discretionary choices made but ... what does a shutdown that doesn't hurt look like? At some level, the government is huge and expensive, and society is adapted to it continuing to operate. If we had a no-pain way to not spend all that money, we should do it. But I'm guessing that putting up some fences around a few monuments is pretty cheap (it's not like they put up a fence around the whole grand canyon or something) relative to the funds that are being stopped. I think the political showmanship here is that it's easy to have an above-the-fold image of a "closed due to shutdown" sign in front of the Lincoln memorial that's immediately comprehensible, but there's not a great pic to show more substantive but dry government work that doesn't happen or gets delayed. It's hard to visually instantly convey "you're still paying all your taxes but you're getting a whole lot less government right now."

dylan604 3y ago
If everyone's turn-by-turn navigation stopped working, there would be riots in the streets (if they could figure out how to get there). If you want to bring attention to the everyday person, turning off GPS would definitely get their immediate attention.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Don't a lot of modern systems combine GPS with GLONASS and Galileo?
  - jhoechtl 3y ago
    Pretty much every smartphone younger than four years.
    - antonjs 3y ago
      Also most receivers for super economically important things like a avionics or marine navigation, but shutting off WAAS specifically (augmented accuracy data for GPS broadcasted using a much smaller set of satellites) would affect air traffic that need it to land in low visibility at an increasing number of airports. Though, to the OP's point about GPS, WAAS is operated by the FAA, so it isn't clear to me whether not passing the defense authorization would affect it in the near term.