[javert]

The federal government is operational, so the text at the top of the page is politically dishonest.

We still have a federal government that is taking care of national defense, among a number of other things.

"Non-essential" services have been suspended, while "essential" are still operational.

Frankly, I'd like it if it stayed this way. The government shouldn't tax-and-force in "non-essential" areas.

[CodeMage]

Why, no, I don't really need to get an SSN, but thank you for asking! I guess it's not really essential to me and my family... [1]

Seriously, though, why are people popping up like mushrooms saying how it would be much better to get rid of stuff the government currently does, without proposing to actually replace it with something? I recommend reading Yegge's "Have you ever legalized marijuana?" [2]

[1]: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/shutdown/

[2]: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

[bcoates]

I would greatly prefer not to have a SSN as long as I wasn't the only one.

That essay's factual assertions were disproven by later events in Colorado where a chaotic and mostly unplanned transition (which neglected to come up with solid answers to any of stevey's questions) towards mostly-legalization went down without any serious consequences.

As it turns out, it really is as easy as saying "whatever, just do it now" and answering every hypothetical issue with "if that actually happens, we'll deal with it when it happens". The demons the government is protecting us from don't actually exist.

[lukifer]

Yegge wasn't trying to say such things are impossible, just that they are non-trivial. The legalization process here in CO is still underway, and is involving a lot of hard work from both lawmakers and the fledgling MMJ industry, not to mention all the years of leg-work by activists to pass the law in the first place.

While it's good that the sky isn't falling, and the situation represents a vast improvement over the Drug War, neither is it all sunshine and roses. Everyone involved has their laundry list of complaints and injustices as the exact laws and policies are being defined and implemented, whether it's the dispensaries, the authorities, or the consumers (not to mention all the counties that trying to opt out or pass their own laws). And of course, no one knows what will happen if/when the feds change their (mostly) hands-off approach.

Should we tackle hard problems? Absolutely. Voters in Colorado and Washington made the right choice, and in the end we'll have more freedom and fewer wasted tax dollars. But the worst way to start solving a hard problem is to pretend it's not hard.

[VladRussian2]

>Frankly, I'd like it if it stayed this way. The government shouldn't tax-and-force in "non-essential" areas.

you must be kidding.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/2/irs-collectin...

"IRS collecting money but not sending tax refunds during shutdown"

[bmelton]

That's just due to the politicization of the shutdown. The Executive has actually taken great pains to make things as inconvenient as possible for the citizenry, to ensure that they get the message that government is necessary to their daily lives, whether it would otherwise impact them or not.

Websites are shut down, but not like, in a way that would save any actual money. Instead of turning the servers off, they're serving up error pages carping about the shutdown, which takes power, bandwidth, etc. Also, of course, those pages had to be modified, which given how dispersed federal webservers are, was far more than a single search-and-replace effort.

Moreover, freestanding monuments are closed. These monuments don't require daily staff, y'know, cause they're just buildings, or walls in many cases, but instead of not manning them (which would be free), we're sending dozens of guards to keep people out of a place that ordinarily requires no staff. On top of that, at least in DC, they're renting barricades and pasting them with signs carping about the shutdown. In some cases, we've even tried to close parks that weren't affected, like when the Feds tried to shut down Mount Vernon, which is operated through private funds.

On top of that, there are essential persons in place and on duty that the executive branch has instructed not to do their jobs... Border Patrol, for example, has been instructed to "just let anybody through", despite their roles being considered essential.

Edit, for clarity, I was in debate mode, and did not intend to imply that the shutdown does not have negative effects. I've worked in the federal government, and have federal customers currently, live in the DC area, and am well aware of the pain that some are feeling. That said, the Executive Branch has specifically gone out of their way to make that pain even more acute.

[GabrielF00]

If you owned property, would you allow huge numbers of tourists access to it if you had no staff onsite and no idea when you were going to be able to get staff? Now consider if you owned 401 pieces of property* across the country. Some of these are historic sites that are pretty delicate. Some of these consist of thousands of square miles of wilderness where people get killed even when there ARE park rangers around. These people are charged with protecting the nation's heritage. They're not just going to allow somebody to wander into the Lincoln Memorial and start chiseling their name on the walls. And of course there are liability issues.

*The National Parks Service has 401 units. The actual number of individual sites is higher.

[bmelton]

No, but if my complaint was that I didn't have the money to staff it with the fraction of a full time employee it takes to run and administer (periodically, I might add; There is no full time staff for any of the particular monuments in DC), I would have a hard time justifying paying for multiple guardsmen, police and park rangers to keep people out of them.

The rental of barricades I can see as sensible -- the rental of barricades as well as a 1400% increase in staff? I cannot.

[GabrielF00]

I don't know what the staffing level before the shutdown was. Wikipedia says that the WWII memorial was patrolled by park police 24/7 and staffed by interpretive rangers from 9:30am to 11:30pm, which suggests that your claim that "there is no full time staff for any of the particular monuments" is false. Also, the WWII memorial has become something of a circus with media, congresscritters, etc. They need to have staffing to deal with this circus. This is one site out of hundreds. I'm sure if you go to any of the hundreds of parks that don't have cameras pointed at them you'll see a massive DECREASE in staff.

[bmelton]

1) The park police are roving, and not dedicated to particular monuments or parks in the DC area. I wasn't aware of the interpretive Rangers working 2 hours a day, but regardless, they have definitely increased staff at all of the DC monuments.

In addition, they've attempted to close attractions they don't manage, like Mount Vernon, among others.

2) The WW2 memorial, and memorials in the DC area aren't the only places that security has been increased.

I'm sure you're not wrong in that over all of the 400+ locations, we have likely seen a decrease in personnel, but the executive branch is decidedly making a point of ensuring that the most pain is felt because of the shutdown.

[krapp]

>"Non-essential" services have been suspended, while "essential" are still operational.

I see quite a few departments on this list of suspended or partially suspended services which I wouldn't consider "non-essential": http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/09/politics/government-s..., such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Labor, CDC, EPA, EEOC, FDIC and most of the USDA.

[dinkumthinkum]

Well that's just a very particular, narrow, Tea Party, simplistic mindset. In reality, it is a shutdown. You can spin it but that's all you're really doing. There nothing interesting in this attempt at pedantry, not to be mean, just being honest.

[philwelch]

Somalia has been operating in a state of government shutdown for years.

[dmm]

Entitlements , interest and defense are most of the federal budget. discretionary spending is only about 17%.

That includes all sorts of nice things like the National Parks. The budget is really dominated by mandatory spending, not affected by this shutdown.