With this government shutdown, the very real possibility of default, the incompetency of many in government finally reaching and affecting the American public, the NSA leaks, the company and journalist shakedowns in the name of security, and the lightning speed at which information of all this can now reach the literal hands of millions, we're in an incredibly pivotal period in our society. I fully support Omidyar 150% for wanting to catalyze this change. Whether he may or may not be going about this the perfect way is irrelevant.
> the incompetency of many in government finally reaching and affecting the American public
There may be more, less, or the same amount of incompetence in government employees as there is in every other human endeavor. I can't speculate.
But let's be clear: the shutdown has nothing to do with that. It is a political move orchestrated by a relatively small number of power brokers in the Congress. No more, no less.
There was virtually no possibility of default. It was theater, and the more people bought into the idea of default, the more it fed into the narrative.
Sorry if I wasn't clear: my comment wasn't intended to be seen as a commentary on serious journalism, nor was it a commentary on the quality of journalism practiced by the subjects of the article, etc.
It was a commentary on Americans' perpetual Chicken Little mindset, and the way that feeds and funds a theatrical press, and the circular nature thereof. Everything is portrayed as being impending doom incarnate, whether it's by news outlets, marketers, religious coalitions, irreligious coalitions, etc.
America has over a fifth of the world's economy, the most military might in history and therefore control of the waterways the world over, the best breadbasket-and-navigable-rivers combination on earth, and yet every few days there's some new bogeyman around the corner that will end The Republic in a fortnight–especially if you change the channel now!–as if the winds aren't currently about as fair and the seas as following as they could reasonably be.
The Shutdown really didn't threaten any of those things in any practical terms, nor did the Boston Marathon bomber, nor did Aurora, nor did Anna Nicole Smith's offspring's paternity or whatever staged shock was programmed for the latest awards show.
Investigative journalism is wonderful. Enabling the emotionally manipulative theatrical tactics of any political entity is not investigative journalism; it's being the press arm of politicians (without even invoicing them for the help), which many, many news sources-of all stripes–are more than happy to do. Yet strangely, they continue to be held in esteem, mostly because they've always been held in esteem. (It gets worse when one's own team is the basis for most of that esteem.)
If journalists want to change the world for the better through journalism, as opposed to just maximizing ad rates and helping get their team elected, then they will only do so if they're more interested in being journalists than they are in making any particular argument, or seeing any particular outcome.
But how anyone can look at this endlessly breathless coverage of every last thing that bleeds, blows up, or politicks, and not see how utterly contrived most of it is, is beyond me.
It was never a possibility. Only a matter of cutting a better deal for each involved party. Just like with the Wall Street bailout - it's "too big to fail". So the debt bubble will continue to grow and enrich the few at the expense of common folk worldwide.
The 'debt' is just treasuries. Interest bearing dollars. They get exchanged for non-interest-bearing dollars as they mature, continually rolled over as a backwards facing record of past deficits. It's the deficits that matter; and given that the rest of the world is saving dollars, they are quite necessary to maintain private sector spending.
That provides a default happens, which it would not. First of all, looking at last year's budget (or, whatever we have instead of a real budget which we didn't have since 2009), the government income is about $3trln, while the government spends about $250bn for debt service. So there's plenty of money to pay the pension funds. The problem is that the budget plans to spend another $3.55trln on other stuff, and 3.8 > 3. Which is the source of the trouble. But saying "we have to cut 0.8" is not the same as "we can't pay 0.25 out of 3". We can, we just prefer to spend it on other things. But if push comes to shove, the possibility to prioritize debt over other spending is there. Of course, other spending then needs to be cut. But it needs to be cut anyway, just preferably in orderly manner, not as a firefighting measure. Which, of course, is not easy since we can't even have proper budget since 2009.
