october-rosehip:

pervocracy:

cuyguy:

pervocracy:

Politically I agree with the Democrats not giving in to hostage negotiations and manufactured emergencies, but personally it’s going to mess up my month if the government shuts down for more than a couple days.

:/

I’m German and my knowledge of US politics comes mostly from reddit and YouTube videos of Stephen Colbert monologues. My understanding is that a bipartisan agreement on a law for undocumented immigrants, who entered the US as children, is being used as a bargaining chip to force the Democrats to agree to funding for Trump’s border wall?
Which seems… kinda weird? And feels very inaccurate. Could somebody explain the actual situation in the house (or senate? Or all of congress?) that is the problem and how the Republicans (with their majority in / control of both legislative and executive branch) can’t just do what they want? And why this is pictured as the Democrats’ fault?

So here’s my understanding of what happened:

- Trump ended DACA, a program allowing 800,000 people who entered the US illegally as children to stay and work here if they meet certain requirements.  He’s been flip-flopping wildly between saying he wants Congress to work out a permanent solution for those people, and saying they should all be deported because they’re mostly not white of reasons.

- Congress failed to reauthorize spending for CHIP, the children’s health insurance program which insures 9 million children.

- (Note that before they became Designated Controversies, both of these programs had pretty broad bipartisan support.)

- Also, Trump wants to build a giant goddamn wall across the southern border because he wants a giant symbol of his racism thinks that immigrants are Lemmings and if they hit a wall they’ll just get confused and walk into it forever.

- Congress needed to pass a budget or at least a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open.

- Congresspeople from both parties had a public meeting with Trump in which he basically said “just make an agreement and I’ll sign whatever you come up with.”

- Congresspeople from both parties came to Trump with a bipartisan budget agreement that could pass both houses and addressed both DACA and CHIP, and Trump went on his infamous “shithole” rant and rejected it.

- Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a CR that provides for CHIP but not DACA.  They’re trying to spin this into making Democrats choose between DACA and CHIP, so they can say “Democrats are hurting CHIP kids to protect DACA illegals!”, and hoping the public will forget that Republicans could easily have just done both.

- The Senate did not support this bill, so Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic leader, went to Trump and offered him another deal that could keep the government open, and this one even included the freakin’ wall.  Trump turned it down because it included DACA.  It is not yet known which racial slurs he used this time.

- The Senate voted on the House bill because it was all they had, and it failed.  (This was mostly because Democrats refused to vote for a bill that didn’t support DACA, but there were some Republicans who voted against the bill as well.) So right now, we have no CHIP, no DACA, and no federal government funding.

- I think Democrats were right to vote against the bill, because the “CHIP or DACA, you can only have one” choice was bullshit, and because it’s worth some sacrifice to save 800,000 basically-American people from being deported to countries they haven’t seen since they were infants.

I hope that’s clear and more or less correct.

I would like to add that they also tried to CRIMINALIZE POVERTY. I mean, more than it already is. The GOP DACA bill, if it became law, would not just deport Dreamers who failed to earn over 125% of the poverty rate, but would render them overnight criminals for that.

It takes a sixty hour work week at minimum wage to hit the poverty line.

Update evening of Jan 22nd, 2018: government is back online, for now, because the Democrats… sort of caved, but strategically. As it stands now:

• Temporary CR has been passed, funding the gov’t until February 8th (this date is important, we’ll come back to it)
• CHIP has been funded for the next six years. 9 million children, including 1.75 million who would have lost their health insurance starting February 1st, are safely off the hook and will stay insured.
• Government workers are getting paid again now that the government is back on - which they wouldn’t have during the shutdown, which would have hurt a lot of them especially if it went on for a while, because how many families do you know that can just afford to lose a month’s pay like it’s nbd? Right.
  
• Military servicemembers are also getting paid again - despite McConnell (Senate Majority Leader, Republican) having led Republicans in a “but why do you hate our military families??” attack on the Democrats, which was total garbage, because the Dems proposed a bill (some sources said two?) specifically to ensure military families got paid during the shutdown, but he rejected it so the Rs could do public relations crocodile tears about it. Because if hell is real that’s where he’s going when he dies.
  
• DACA has not been renewed, but it hasn’t definitively been denied either; it’s still under negotiation, but only until Feb 8th, when the CR expires and McConnell publicly promised to allow a vote on DACA. We don’t expect him to comply because he’s a lying snake, but if he backs out again, the press & Dems will crucify him for it, and the Democrats can refuse to re-up the CR and send us right back into shutdown until DACA gets renewed.
  

What this means politically is that the Dems temporarily caved on DACA to end the shutdown (which maaany people are not happy about), but in the process of temporarily caving, they:

• got CHIP renewed, which takes 9 million hostages and a lot of leverage out of the Republicans’ hands.
  
• Negated the false “CHIP or Dreamers” choice Republicans were trying to set up by freeing one set of hostages so they can’t be played against each other (see above)
• Got McConnell to publicly commit to a date for a DACA resolution (!!), so they can still save the DACA recipients
  
• Gave themselves a failsafe in the form of the temporary CR, which expires February 8th, and which they can refuse to renew if McConnell tries some broken-promise bullshit on DACA again (which seems likely).

The Republicans, meanwhile, lost their CHIP leverage, lost their (false) “Dems hate our brave military” narrative when the shutdown ended, and gained nothing except the end of the shutdown. The Democrats won big on CHIP, avoided hurting federal employees by losing them pay, and still have the shutdown option to use as leverage to pass DACA on Feb. 8th.

So, if you’re American, call your reps to thank them for fighting to fund CHIP and demand they support DACA (if they’re Democrats), or call your reps to scold them for waiting this long to fund CHIP* and demand they support DACA (if they’re Republicans). And don’t let anybody give you the ‘spineless Dems caved right away’ narrative, because the situation is awful, but they made a pretty good move under these circumstances, and set themselves up to rescue the other set of hostages (DACA) in a few weeks.

*(CHIP expired back in the fall and has been in limbo since, because the Democrats have been trying to pass it this whole time but the Republicans kept refusing or packaging it in with awful stuff like the CHIP/DACA choice to keep it from going through, almost like they’re soulless ghouls who wanted it for a bargaining chip in a situation like this.)

402. A silent breeze sweeps through the hedge maze. Its leaves flutter all around you but make no sound. Your footsteps make no sound. The maze is lovely, but empty and flat under the weight of the silence. You wonder who built it. You wonder how they made it like this.

529. You cut through the woods to get through the next neighborhood. The sounds of your progress startle something ahead of you. At first it looks like a deer as it struggles to its feet. You look at the way its eyes reflect the light and know it isn’t. It’s something else, wearing the deer face like a mask.

614. The next cave starts off promising. Any echoes come back flat, when they come back at all. Soon the light from your flashlight starts going flat as well. The shadows it casts get more solid as the light falters. They press up against the shrinking circle of light.

157. Something about this cave gives you pause. You stop at the first turn in the tunnel and tap your flashlight against the wall. No echoes come back, just a deep, waiting silence. Something lives here, but it is not the spine of autumn. You back out the way you came.

268. The spine of autumn, restless, pushes against your skin. It forces more autumn haze past your pores. There’s enough to collect in a cloud around you. Seen through it, the world goes cool and smells of leaves. It’s not clear how it looks from the outside but people give you a wide berth on the street.

844. There are more of the faint floating spots when you get the mail. You no longer think they are floaters brought on by eye strain. They move around things instead of floating over them, and move too deliberately, with intent. There are a lot of them today. You nick a finger opening an envelope and they all start to drift rapidly towards you.

952. A haze of autumn seeps from your back, pushed through your skin. Flex your shoulders and feel the spine of autumn crack inside your back. Leaves crinkle and metal tarnishes as you trail haze down the street.

73. A haze of concentrated autumn floats by the door as you leave the apartment. The moon seen through it shifts, becoming huge and harvest for a moment. The porch light flickers like a candle. You finish locking up and set off into the night.

821. The first stomach bug of the fall is going around. You kneel by the compost bin as a familiar flutter rises in your throat. A retch and leaves are pouring from your mouth, bright red and orange and yellow. They are perfectly dry and cool to the touch.

Posts resume this weekend, thank you for your patience.

Been traveling for a good friend’s wedding, be back with you soon.

137. A virus has broken free from your grandmother’s computer. You have a lot of questions about that, but you also have a revolver. You touch a smear of the stuff that passes for its blood and prepare to hunt the bug to ground.

336. Someone is walking through the woods ahead of you. They seem to be struggling; whenever you see the figure through the trees it is lurching from tree to tree. You catch sight of the figure leaning with head and forearm against a tree and start forward to help. At the sound of your footsteps the figure’s head whips towards you and it dissolves into leaves.

523. You’ve been seeing shadows shaped like hands today. They are normal shadows that coincidentally overlap when you look at them directly, but the hand shapes are crisp and clear from the corners of your eyes. It’s hard to tell if they’re pointing at something or reaching out to grab. You keep your distance either way, because they twitch a little when you get near.