Shut It Down

The power of perception is incredibly strong. In turn the perception of specific situations can be effected by many factors. The most important factor is the source of your information. Let’s take this little shutdown going on in the United States right now. I spoke with an extremely conservative friend of mine recently who has been lambasting the new healthcare reform for the past few years. He takes any and every opportunity to speak ill about the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, and pinpoints far right conservative websites and mouthpieces as his sources. He says things like, “this will raise the debt” or his go to “this is socialized medicine” and of course my favorite “wait until your company stops providing insurance and the country spirals into communism”. All of these statements are rooted in fear, opinions, or downright disinformation. To get to the shutdown

we must first break down some of these false notions. When it comes to raising the debt, the facts are that insurance prices have been trending towards a steep incline for a long time. So while it is true insurance prices will go up for some under the ACA the facts are that it was always going to go up before the ACA. The difference is that the incline is slowing down. Now, I am not naive to think this is thanks to the implementation of the ACA because we haven’t seen it in action yet. Many factors are in play in this and experts can’t pinpoint the exact reasons for the slowing trend. At the end of the day it is going to

According to the viagra 50mg online physician’s direction, the individual may be required to treat some instances of male impotence, for example. purchase generic viagra Silagra Sildenafil Tablets should normally be used about half an hour before intercourse. With this, men can be free and not cialis without prescription worry one bit about delivery factors. And if a woman is taking anti depressants, mood stabilizers and birth control pills, they have also given complaints including dry vagina, low sex drive, lack of libido and lack of testosterone level can also lead to this problem. free levitra sample take a few years with the Affordable Care Act in effect to iron out the wrinkles to actually see the effect it has on the economy and the debt. Obamacare will be tweaked to help it run more efficiently but the problem is that the Republican congress does not want it to go into effect at all. It has not even gotten underway and already they want to make dramatic cuts. They really just want the law done away with, evident by how hard they fought against it for years to no avail. The ACA has gone through all branches of government, even having the Supreme Court rule its legal constitutionality. It’s the law that we’ve been waiting on for three years now and it is time to get this program off the runway and in flight. Unfortunately, the Republicans have used this shutdown as a last second hail mary attempt in halting funding for the ACA. An entire party has been working diligently for three years to ensure that the ACA fails, something they won’t stop doing even after it fully gets going. I disagree with this tactic for a few reasons. For one, the power of a law is only as good as the confidence in the people who enforce it. So when these people are throwing up road blocks and stating how they want this law dead at every turn the law with undoubtedly be hurt and its implementation will become more of a burden. Texas US Sentator, Ted Cruz, made a 21 hour “non-filibuster” filibuster trying to fire up his party to fight against the ACA. He was also trying to get his foot in the door for the 2016 election but that’s another subject. So the Republicans voted to stop all funding to all non-essential government programs. They believe that doing this will force the Democrats to deal with them on the ACA. The shutdown effects parks and memorials as well as some entitlements like WIC that need to be closed due to funding. So now we’re treated to conservative talking points stating that these places are closed because of the Democrats, while liberals pointing at starving families and blaming Republicans. Just snappy sound bites that each party has tested and ran with. Common nonsense politics. I mostly blame Republicans on being obsessed with stopping the healthcare reform as the reason for this shutdown but Democrats are not exempt from any blame. They’ve failed to really communicate their message to the American people. Now the Republican strategy is to present bills to fund small programs here and there with little “kill Obamacare” clauses to stop funding for the ACA. It’s a political move that Republicans hoped would force the Democrats to deal on the ACA. They want to strip away at the law, which has been unsuccessfully challenged from day one for more than three years.

In my opinion the fault is 90% on the Republican congress and their extreme tactics. The law is on the books and by disagreeing with it, you should not have the power to shut everything off until the other party gives in to your demands. This is what children do. This would be as if the San Antonio Spurs demanded that game 7 of the NBA Finals go into OT even though they lost at the end of regulation. Tony Parker and company stand in the middle of the court until the NBA caves in and continues the game. Sorry, but there were plenty of chances and they all came up short. This is not how government should work. I told my conservative friend that these extortion tactics make me sick of politics. These moves are dirty and do nothing but divide people and then we get conservative and liberal sites spewing nonsense headlines. I get it, that’s politics but the level of insanity coming from a majority of the right is mind numbing to me.

This issue simply comes down to two differing opinions. In his conservative opinion, he states that the ACA will be a failure and cost the country trillions. He has no true facts or credible projections. He is only spewing biased conservative view points from Glenn Beck and other far right agenda driven sources. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office refute these numbers. Does that make their projections concrete? No, or they wouldbe called concretions, not projections. There are so many moving parts to these programs that there will obviously be ups and downs. They are highly educated guesses based on mountains of numbers and statistics that he and I will never fully grasp. With that said, his opinion that the ACA will fail is possible. Maybe this law falls flat on its proverbial face from the starting line and never recovers. But maybe (Louis CK Voice), just maybe this law succeeds and becomes a boon for this country. My opinion is that this law is not perfect and that’s fine. It’s not meant to be. Some people will benefit and some will not, like everything in life, but Republicans need to let it go and allow it to succeed or fail. Should our kids stay home for their entire lives because we’re scared they’re going to fail out in the real world? The only way we can fix any errors that comes up with the implementation of the law is by allowing it to get under way. I hope that this shutdown ends soon because if I see another person referencing an “Obama and his goons close the Ocean, kicking women and children out of the water” story I will lose all hope in people and journalism.

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