They want the shutdown. Likely part of their coup attempt for the election.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Looks like some GOP members are actually smart enough to recognize that voters would attribute the government shutdown to them.
unpopular opinion: in the year 2024, obtaining proof of citizenship should be free and simple to obtain from every municipality, state and federal office. this is the fight we should be having. not whether it's necessary to have proof of citizenship in order to able to vote. of course you should. everyone should. we spend so much political bandwidth on a loser of an issue, year in, year out, for decades, and republicans continue to make hay off something we should be pushing for too. the poll tax argument no longer holds weight, no matter how much you whine about the smallest percentage of the smallest percentage of people who find themselves disenfranchised by the requirement. the amount of support republicans get from this, as in issue that makes logical sense, doesn't add up.
Nobody cares. If we could make it free and easy enough it would stop being useful at suppressing the vote and Republicans would lose all interest and Democrats already don't care.
Anything which requires action in all 50 states and the government giving up a source of revenue and overhauling complicated systems couldn't be completed this century. While we are at it though I would like a hardware security key handed out with your ID as a second form of ID and required for any sort of large purchase like a car, or opening a line of credit.
But they know it's not easy. If it were, they'd just pick a different pet issue to mislabel their deliberate mass disenfranchisement as.
This. I'm not actually opposed to the requirement for needing ID or proof of citizenship to vote. What I am opposed to is anything creating a barrier to voting that's more substantial than an extremely mild inconvenience like registering.
Imo we need a national ID system anyway, so we can stop using SSN data for that purpose because it's stupidly insecure. In the modern digital age it would be trivial to just assign a "user is licensed to drive x" flag in a digital database in your home state to your ID. Pair it with some kind of 2FA and switch government services to digital.
Easy, cheap to administer, make it free, and auto register people to vote when they turn 18. Have highschools participate in the ID issuing process, since that covers the vast majority of people.
obtaining proof of citizenship should be free and simple to obtain from every municipality, state and federal office
If it was, Republicans would just find another way to suppress the vote. This isn't about citizenship or the integrity of the electoral process. It's about the GOP knowing that the fewer people vote, the better for their fascist and therefore unpopular party.
whether it's necessary to have proof of citizenship in order to able to vote. of course you should. everyone should.
That's already in place, though. When voting, you have to supply your name, address and voter registration.
If no citizen with that name is registered to that address, you don't get to vote.
It's a pernicious lie that people in any significant number is able or even attempting to vote without indirectly proving their citizenship and even requiring "free and simple" (which it probably won't be to some people anyway) direct proof will suppress the vote whether that's your attention or not.
we spend so much political bandwidth on a loser of an issue, year in, year out, for decades
Because currently there's no consequences for Republican politicians and their media echo chamber willfully misleading the people with their lies. In fact, the corrupt system encourages it.
Ceding ground to their demagoguery doesn't make it go away. They'll just have that more power to suppress the vote in additional ways.
something we should be pushing for too.
Nope. See above.
the poll tax argument no longer holds weight
It VERY much does. Any unnecessary obstacle to voting is undemocratic in the same way as a poll tax is and requiring direct proof of something you're already indirectly proven is unnecessary.
no matter how much you whine about the smallest percentage of the smallest percentage of people who find themselves disenfranchised by the requirement
You VASTLY underestimate the number of people for whom voting is already unnecessarily difficult and who will be at a greater risk of not being able to justify the cost of voting the more obstacles are thrown in their way.
Especially when you consider that in person voter fraud is so rare as to be statistically nonexistent and is never non eligible people trying to vote.
That you display your ignorance in a supremely condescending way doesn't help either.
the amount of support republicans get from this, as in issue that makes logical sense, doesn't add up.
It does when you consider how effective lying their ass off is in the current system.
They aren't right about any of this. They just have the money and media echo chamber to get their point repeated so much that impressionable people such as yourself are fooled into thinking that they are.
Let’s flip this around and show evidence that there’s some mass voter fraud with our current system. The only consistent fraud I read about is conservatives voting for dead family members, voting twice, etc.
Let’s also remove the restriction of ex-felons from voting. If you’ e served your jail time, once you get out, you should be able to vote again.
Conservatives don’t act in good faith here. Sure have a system with free voter id and watch as magically inner city locations stop offering the service or some other made up excuse to disenfranchise a certain population of our country.
The point is to make it harder for "those people" to vote and participate in society. If you came up with a magical, iron-clad, mechanism for everyone to have ID, the conservatives wouldn't support it because that's not what they want. They want minorities to suffer.
That's just moving the goal posts. These f'ers don't want anyone to vote or have rights, unless they're benefiting. They'll be super fiscally conservative and complain how expensive this would be if Dems start pushing it.
They're the party of "fuck you, got mine." That's it's there are no other salient principles for them.
I've been saying for years that we should have an optional National ID card that you can obtain free at the point of service from every post office in the land. We have most of the infrastructure already, the training wouldn't be onerous and an ID is necessary in the modern world.
Sounds good in theory, but not when you consider that exactly the groups that the GOP want to stop from voting have local post offices that are effectively unusable for the vast majority due to being open only a few hours a year.
I'm unfamiliar with this issue, where does this bullshit happen?
Literally thousands of places. Some places, such as Trappe, MD they've even been without one for a long time.
Hell, some places can't even get mail delivered, let alone show up st the nearest post office without significant expense for child care and/or risk of getting fired for going during working hours.
The crumbling and mismanaged (due to laws and a postmaster general appointment by the GOP) USPS isn't who you want in charge of upholding democracy.
Passports mostly fit that description, but they're not free.
Yeah, but Christian nut jobs will freak out about the mark of the beast or whatever shit.
The irony is that they'll do so while simultaneously having "MAGA" emblazoned across their foreheads.
Those same morons are clamoring for id to vote though
Basically like the dog in this comic.
No register, only vote
Bonus: Christian nut jobs freak out
Evangelicals don't belong in modern society.
A-fucking-men.
The least productive Congress since the Civil War is proof Republicans are unfit to lead. They're unfit to hold office too.
What consequences could the government shutdown have for these elections?
Shutdowns always piss people off, and the GOP is always rightfully blamed, no matter their spin.
A shutdown would probably shift things to Harris a solid amount, and lose the GOP the house and keep them in the minority in the Senate.
You can tell most in the GOP know this because every GOP senator is telling the house to cut their shit out, but they ain't gonna.
For once, I'm begging the GOP to shut down the government. God that would be so fucking funny if they sealed the deal for Harris.
Ditto.
Now, it's actually unusual when a party is punished for a shutdown - as per https://time.com/6317658/government-shutdown-gop-elections-virginia/ past shutdowns that the GOP got the blame for didn't really seem to hurt them later.
However, the key point from that article is this,
It was an early sign that anger over a largely pointless shutdown is not destined to necessarily last long.
We've never had a shutdown this close to a presidential election, let alone during one. That might keep the pain fresh enough to actually cost the GOP, for once.
Shutting down the government also means we stop doing any and all government work. That includes NASA, and anything else funded by tax dollars. I'd rather they just do their damn jobs and fund the government so I can do my job.
On the one hand that's super fair, and I totally understand that. The fact that I'm open to this prospect isn't me saying that the government shutting down is a good thing unto itself in the same way that being open to chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer isn't me saying that cytotoxins rule and I love how they make my body feel.
Another Trump term means a bare minimum of four years where not only is actually important government work not getting done, but its efforts are actively redirected toward harmful ends. (And as we've seen from his fascist rhetoric, this likely ends up being much more than four years; even if he does leave office at the end of that term, the US government would spend decades recovering from his fuckery.) The GOP shooting themselves in the foot by making it more likely to get Harris into office and make Congress bluer than it would've been would mean that whatever issues the government shutdown would create would be vastly outweighed by the benefits of a functioning government and the avoidance of a second Trump term. It's not a guarantee, but Harris really needs all the help she can get right now, as this race is still too close for comfort.
I agree, shutdowns suck, but a month or 2 of crappiness is nothing compared to years of a Trump presidency.
If a shutdown is what it takes to seal a Harris presidency, so he it I say
a month or 2 of crappiness is nothing compared to years of a Trump presidency.
On the surface, you're right.
However, to some people, that month or two of pay could be the difference between having a home or not and, depending on where in the country they live, that could be permanent or even deadly.
I agree with you that Trump and his fascist cult MUST be stopped, but we still need to be careful not to irreparably harm innocents in the process..
I don't think we need to shutdown the government to beat Trump.
Maybe, but why interrupt our enemies when they're devouring each other / making a mistake?
Because a government shutdown could permanently destroy the lives of people who are dependent on the government to function, stave off homelessness, or even survive.
Mike Johnson is paid in rubles
But where is the man with no bank account keeping his money?
No U.S. bank account…
He Didn't read his contract, it's rubes
He’s filthy rich with those!
😂 Well played
Bold to think the true believer needs to be paid :(
Same reason I roll my eyes whenever somebody starts talking about Trump and "kompromat."
It's not that I don't think Putin has it, it's that I don't think Putin needs it.
Maybe he needed it in the beginning to set the ball rolling. But not anymore.
Trump has been involved with the Russian Mafia since the '80s. There was never any need for coercion because he thinks they're his friends.
They don't care the whole point is to burn it all down.
No, the point is to sell it off at pennies on the dollar to their masters' companies. Far more sinister, if you ask me.