You Have To Go To UK For INFO On WHY GOP Wants To SCREW US So Badly

[kpete]

Government shutdown: two theories for Republican behaviour
With Barack Obama and John Boehner in budget deadlock, shutdown looms. Here's why the GOP is pushing so hard

............

So they're being told by people with experience that they're going to hurt their party, and they don't care. And how about that LaTourette fellow, eh? LaTourette's Syndrome: saying things publicly that many people think but wouldn't even say privately.

So that's theory one: they came here to fight and they just want to get it on. Once that psychology gets in a certain number of brains, a tipping point is reached.

2. It's about economics and the presidential election. The GOP knows that if the economy keeps improving and unemployment is down to 8% by election time, their chances in 2012 are fairly slim. Now, I hasten to note that that is a big if, so who knows? But everyone understands this.

A shutdown affects the economy immediately and directly. Hundreds of thousands of people in the public sector aren't working and therefore aren't spending. Hundreds of thousands more in the private sector who depend almost entirely, or at least largely, on government contracts for their livelihoods are out of luck. This is everyone from GM to pencil manufacturers. A huge swath of the economy just closes. If the shutdown lasts long enough, layoffs come along. Two bad months slow the tender momentum that now exists.

MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/apr/06/government-shutdown-federal-budget

[LaPera]

1. Republicans.

[handmade34]

2. posted this yesterday

don't need to go to UK... just a detailed macro class informs us of what is going on...

"...The most influential application of these ideas to macroeconomic policy
is the "political business cycle" theory of Nordhaus (1975), which is based
upon three assumptions: 1) The policymakers are only "office motivated";
2) they can manipulate an exploitable Phillips curve; 3) voters are not
rational since they do not understand that they are systematically fooled by
the politicians. Thus, the policymakers overstimulate the economy before
elections and then reduce inflation with a recession at the beginning of the
new term of office. Voters reward the incumbent for the pre-electoral
expansion without learning from the past that a recession has to follow the
expansion..."

http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10951.pdf

knowledge is power and the more the voters understand the better for the country...

[Stuart G]

3. It is all about the pukes getting more "power"

[librechik]

4. if Republicans wanted to do the exactly wrong thing to encourage the economy,

they couldn't do better than the Ryan plan. The sad part is those PuKKKes in Congress ought to know they are doing the wong thing. They just care about pleasing their crazy teabag followers more than healing the country.