Well, That Was Very Brief

The Government Shutdown of 2018 barely had time to register with the public before the Senate Democrats voted to end it, with all but 16 - counting the two independents who normally caucus with them - of their 49 members voting to end cloture at 12:30 PM today.

Why such a very quick reversal? Here's a clue: a Harvard-Harris poll conducted just before the Friday night government shutdown found that 65% of voters would support a DACA deal that secures the Southern border, ends chain migration, and eliminates the visa lottery. That level of support was consistent across nearly every demographic group, including 68% of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Whats more, fully 81% of voters want to reduce legal immigration by at least half of its current number.

I'm guessing the Democratic caucus took one look at its internal polling on DACA and gave up that fight as quickly as they possibly could, getting nothing in return from the Republic leadership except the promise of a future Senate vote on some still-to-be-identified bill, something which neither the House nor the White House have so much as promised to consider.
    

Can Gov't Shutdown Theater Play When An Administration Won't Set the Stage?

So THE GOVERNMENT IS SHUT DOWN, oh my! Of course, it's normally shut down on a Saturday anyway, but if the shutdown continues into Monday, here's how it will, or more often won't, effect my fellow feds:

Social Security checks will still go out. Except there have been no actual checks since March 2013, after which date all federal benefit payments have been made electronically, but, you know, they continue to exist as a rhetorical scare tactic.

Doctors and hospitals will still receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Federal employees will continue to receive health benefits even if their agency doesn’t make premium payments on time. According to OPM's shutdown guidance, the enrollee share of Federal Employee Health Benefits Program premiums will accumulate and be withheld from pay upon return to pay status.

Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Program enrollees will continue to receive coverage for 12 consecutive months without cost to the worker or the agency. Federal retirees under both the Federal Employees Retirement System and the old Civil Service Retirement System will continue to receive scheduled annuity payments. The Thrift Savings Plan will operate as normal except that furloughed employees will not be able to make payroll contributions while they are not getting paid.

The 850,000 or so federal employees who may be furloughed come Monday morning can safely assume they will get back pay when the fiscal hoopla is over, as has happened after each and every previous lapse in appropriations.

All law enforcement functions will go on as usual, and Transportation Security Administration officers will continue to screen airport passengers. National parks and monuments will remain open.

Speaking of those monuments, that's where Government Shutdown Theater began. The National Parks Director back in the Nixon Administration would protest budget cuts to his agency by shutting down parks and monuments for two days a week:

When the Nixon Administration cut the NPS budget in 1969, [NPS Director George] Hartzog responded by closing all the national parks for two days a week, including prominent landmarks like the Washington Monument. He later commented, “It was unheard of; even my own staff thought I was crazy.” There was political criticism by both Republicans and Democrats, but the magnitude of citizen complaints persuaded Congress to reverse its decision and restore the funds. Hartzog’s strategy was dubbed the “Washington Monument Syndrome” by The Washington Post.

We saw a lot of that strategy during the 16-day government shutdown in 2013, including the utter absurdity of yellow tape put up around open air monuments. There won't be any of that from the Trump Administration.

Like that tree that falls in forest, will the public notice a government shutdown that makes no noise?

Chappaquiddick Gets a Movie Treatment, 50 Years Later

Robert McNamara: "Jesus. The Bay of Pigs was a better run operation."

It will open in April, but you can read the script here. Stunning, and less so for how it portrays Ted Kennedy, at whose behavior most people have long since guessed, than for the amoral political rescue mission undertaken by the JFK White House bigwigs who came at old Joe Kennedy's call and did whatever was necessary to make that callous manslaughter go away.

The script writers used the extensive inquest transcripts, which were made publicly available many years later, to reconstruct events. Much, of course, they had to imagine.

This movie might be the capper to a year of exposés about powerful men and the young women they used. But the bigger scandal, really, ought to be the 50 years of adulation that Ted Kennedy got in Washington after he slunk away from his sunken car.

Taking Names at the UN: It's the Law

This law, to be exact.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTIONS RELATED TO ISRAEL OPPOSED BY THE UNITED STATES Public Law 101-246, as amended by Public Law 108-447, calls for a separate listing of all Plenary votes cast by UN member states in the General Assembly on resolutions specifically related to Israel that are opposed by the United States.

You see read the annual Congressional reports going back to the year 2000 here, at a publicly available source of information.

From skimming the handy Voting Practices in the United Nations section of the reports, it looks like most UN General Assembly members have voted our way only 7 or 8 percent of the time, tops. The 9 who voted with us, 35 who abstained, and 21 who failed to vote on yesterday's measure look like par for the course or maybe a little better.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

That looks like some fine quality bud

Elderly couple claims marijuana was for Christmas presents - York News-Times

Paul Vrbka with the [York County] Sheriff’s Department said deputies initiated a traffic stop in the Bradshaw area after they saw a Toyota Tacoma driving over the center line and the driver failing to signal ... When they stopped the vehicle, he said, deputies could immediately smell the strong odor of raw marijuana ... Vrbka said they also told deputies “they didn’t know it was illegal to transport marijuana in Nebraska” ... The marijuana was seized and it is estimated that the street value is $336,000.

Merkelstein Monday: In Chicago They Like the Blue Lights

Chicago does a Christmas market, too, in cooperation with the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. And, just like the markets in Germany, Britain, and Canada, it installed perimeter vehicle barriers and put up a larger police presence in response to last last's truck ramming attack on the market in Berlin which killed 12 and wounded 56.

How does Chicago compare to the others in terms of the effectiveness and subtle streetscapery of its barriers? It compares poorly.

Down go the concrete blocks across the entrance of the market in Daley Plaza. Just plain blocks, with little to no anti-ram value and no trimming to attempt to conceal their purpose.

Up goes fencing around the perimeter of the market space. Fencing that weak would serve to channel law-abiding people, but not much more.

 

Mounted on the surface of the sidewalk with no anchoring, and even less aesthetics. Hey, Chicago, you could at least have made them look like benches.

What's more, from the looks of it the market organizers and the police didn't even try to maximize the setback distance they could possibly have gotten by placing those blocks on the outer edge of the sidewalk. Either they don't understand the purpose of the anti-ram exercise or they're just going through the motions.

This is a step up from last year, when Chicago parked salt trucks as barricades around the Plaza. But still, all Chicago did was scatter some blocks and pedestrian barricades around, plus flood the zone with police patrols. Clearly not enough to actually preclude a Berlin-style truck ramming attack,

Visitors interviewed by local TV news sounded pleased with it all. They feel “safer, I guess, there's a lot of stuff going on lately ... more blue lights, that’s what I want to see.”

That might be the city's only goal here. Make people feel better, but don't take the truck ramming threat seriously enough to put up serious, tested and certified, anti-ram barriers.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

And the temperature was in the 20s

Naked Man Jumps Onto Moving Truck Near Dulles Airport
- NBC News Washington DC

After his release from the hospital, police said, Gonzalez Flores will be served with warrants charging him with two counts of felony hit and run, throwing an object at a moving vehicle, destruction of property, assault and battery, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and possession of marijuana.