That anyone would even consider the possibility that the federal government will be shut down because Congress cannot reach agreement on the most fundamental of all issues: providing funding for legislation already passed for every government agency, is an example of insanity. Those of you in the Republican Party would be well advised to "take your party back" from the rabid frothy-mouthed fanatics attempting to pass themselves off as "conservative". Those of you in the Democratic Party neutered by red state gerrymandering would do well to relocate your own consciences.
This nation can no longer govern itself and this "movement" represents NOT rank-n-file Americans, but an oligarchy seeking a roll back to feudalism. The Affordable Healthcare Act passed. Obama was elected, twice. Accept the decisions of your "exceptional" democracy and nation. Represent working Americans for a change.
Trillions spent on bailing out the financial services sector/Wall Street to save them from their own elicit practices and free market corrections. One hundred billion (according to Forbes) spent on corporate welfare in 2012 alone. A form of government that is no longer a representative democratic form of government in reality. Ted Cruz pontificating on "freedom" from healthcare for the peasants while sponging his own coverage off of his wife's Goldman Sachs executive plan. None of you people represent anyone who isn't at least a millionaire.
There has indeed been a vast redistribution of wealth over the past four decades or so, but in the opposite direction from the one everyone is always blathering on about. Before Reagan, the bottom 47% (that number ring a bell?) had access to 2.5% of the nation's wealth. That portion for the bottom 47% is now below 0%. A negative number. Is 47% of this "exceptional nation's" population just a bunch of deadbeats as Romney suggests? Or rather were they fleeced via policy decisions and targeted legislation birthed and incubated in oligarch think tanks?
There has been over the past four decades a complete re-rigging of the economic and political system. I put that in singular form, no “s”, because they are one in the same. Money is speech, corporations are people, and people sans a well-heeled lobby effort, the unsubstantial people, are irrelevant and meaningless to all of you. America is still nothing more than, and now even more so than at some times in the past, a colonial wealth extraction scheme and the masses but sharecroppers. And everyone knows it despite the propaganda machine referred to as "the media" which now resides in the control of five multinational corporations where even the pundits (Chuck Todd for example) publicly announce it's not their role to correct mistruths and lies.
We know what you are, you show is every day. Your actions drown out your crafted words and show who you serve. And upon whose backs you do so. At some point, that may puncture your substantial people bubble.