This is easily blamed on the shutdown, but it isn't that simple: Falcon Heavy static fire has been postponed numerous times. On Tuesday (Jan 16th), it was cancelled once again, but with no new target test date. That indicates that SpaceX is still working on the rocket/pad.
I didn't find information on when they'd be ready again, but blaming a delay on Falcon Heavy's static fire test on the Government Shutdown is only half the truth.
SpaceX had activities planned for Sunday and Monday which have been canceled. New rockets and new launch pads (2/3 of the booster fueling equipment is new) are always like this; the first shuttle flight sat on the pad from December through April. It's very tedious for the range people because both fueling the rocket (wet dress rehearsal) and fueling and static firing it are dangerous events that require exclusion zones.
Every time they've cancelled the static fire, it's for a reason they've found not to do it. It's small, incremental steps and they knew it would take this many to get there.
The point is that with the government shut down they cannot continue to make those incremental steps anymore. It's a shame because today could have been the last of those little steps. We'll find out when the elected officials stop acting like children I suppose.
They did go through with a Wet Dress Rehearsal on Saturday, though, which already validates many things just prior to engine ignition. So if they were confident to continue with a static fire on Monday and there were no other issues known I'd say it's fair to blame it on the shutdown. Of course, more issues could arise during the test, but we won't know now.
Officially yes, but I can imagine there being some bureaucratic delay until it's in full effect/everybody got the news. Not a lot of time between midnight Friday and Saturday.
In German radio news, the US correspondent explained that the weekend should still be fine, with full effects of the shutdown beginning around Monday with the new week.
That’s oversimplified. Some agencies continue to operate for a bit because they have enough money stashed to do so. For example, the Smithsonian stayed open over the weekend and is apparently open today as well. The EPA will stay open for another week because they apparently have a nice chunk of cash somewhere. The postal service will operate indefinitely because they earn their own money.
For everybody else, a shutdown means you stop working right away. For most people that means the first day they’re affected is Monday because most of them have the weekend off, but people who would work on the weekend have already been affected. There’s no room for a bureaucratic delay or people failing to get the news. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for non-essential people to work during the shutdown unless their job is somehow still funded. Anyone who went to bed early on Friday and went to work on Saturday without checking the news would be told to go home.
> For everybody else, a shutdown means you stop working right away.
This is not correct; for many a shutdown means you keep working entirely as normal on the understanding that when things are resolved, you'll get paid retroactively.
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor government shutdown stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
The bureaucratic prep for a potential shutdown (including identification of essential personnel and functions that are exempt) usually happens in advance; if you missed the memo and you aren't exempt, the whole “not being allowed to work” thing will catch you up on the key relevant bits for you right quick.
> In German radio news, the US correspondent explained that the weekend should still be fine, with full effects of the shutdown beginning around Monday with the new week
That's just a way of saying most (but not all) non-essential functions run on a normal workweek, so are effectively mostly “shutdown” on the weekend anyway.
> Anyone affected working on the weekend knew that they wouldn't get paid.
They knew that, for certain, only after Friday midnight. It's not that far-fetched to assume that most people working that Saturday would already be asleep during that time and just showed up at their work on Saturday like it's business as usual.
Gotta be a weird person not to check the outcome on the news before going to work since they've been plenty forewarned.
I guess someone living close by, that woke up late and doesn't have radio, tv, or internet available for a quick check could plausibly skip over calling someone to find out before jogging over.
Weird persons exist, just like persons who don't include checking news during their breakfast routine, then there's also a subset of weird people who might just like doing their job and don't mind working that one Saturday without pay.
That looks to be a recent interpretation of an 1884 law that could be reversed by the current administration, if it wanted to make shutdowns smoother, as easily as it was adopted in the 1970s.
(And, if there were a general consensus/expectation within an agency/administration, it could be a 'dead letter' law even without explicit re-interpretation. OK, so you "break the law" by answering an email, sending an official tweet, or staffing a booth during the shutdown. Which of your fellow federal employees is going to prosecute you once the shutdown ends?)
They may exist, but they'd figure it out pretty quickly when they can't get into the office or access any job-related systems (which is what happens during a shutdown).
> with full effects of the shutdown beginning around Monday with the new week.
That's just because most government services are always off on the weekend, not because of a delay. The news was distributed widely and broadly near instantly.
Maybe SpaceX knew that this would be a golden opportunity to to blame their own problems on the government and therefore set the stage for blaming them...
Space-X was supposed to be building their own launch facility in Brownsville, TX, and it was supposed to be open now, but it's still just a vacant lot. They brought in some tracking antennas and some dirt fill; that's it.[1]
They're doing soil surcharging, so that's intentional. Don't want the castle sinking into the swamp (it's on 300+ feet of silt[1]).
The steps for soil surcharging are:
1. Pile extra dirt on top of your fill.
2. Wait a sufficient amount of time (usually months/years; it's important to wait long enough[2]) as the dirt compresses and squeezes out water.
3. Remove the extra dirt (also important[2]), and build your heavy structure on top. Now the pre-loaded ground underneath won't settle, because it already did that.
Don't want the castle sinking into the swamp (it's on 300+ feet of silt[1]).
"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England."
This has been going on in South Florida for sometime. A dirt lot is filled with soil sometimes 20-30ft high. And then just as mysteriously, a few years later, it disappears.
I just assumed this was temporary storage of backfill for a construction project elsewhere.
At their current rate of launches it probably just doesn't make any sense to put a lot of resources into it.
There has been upgrades in automation for the ranges last year which allow a higher frequency of launches. Plus they started launching again from their second Cape Canaveral pad.
I read that even with their own facility they would still be affected by a shutdown.
Apparently the soil there kind of sucks for heavy construction, so they have to put a bunch of material on top and wait for it to compact before they can start properly building out the facilities.
to try circling this back to relevancy: NZ is a fantastically business-friendly country where the shenanigans we (US) have to put up with just don't seem to occur (I had a business there for a while, so this isn't just their tourist propaganda talking).
also - I swear I heard a sheep on the launch video for electron.
I find this article very frustrating. What do they even mean by "key members of the civilian workforce"? I wish they'd include examples of what kind of people aren't working. Since I have absolutely no connection to this industry, I have no way of understanding the impact of a government shutdown on the space industry. Why is it considered reasonable or unreasonable that they halt certain space-related activities due to a government shutdown?
> Why is it considered reasonable or unreasonable that they halt certain space-related activities due to a government shutdown?
I don't think anyone's opinion on whether it's reasonable or not really matters for this article. The fact is that they have no budget from which to pay people who operate all the things at the space centre, so they aren't working. I don't think it's any more complicated than that is it? What more could they say?
I would imagine the launch requires the participation of civil servants from NASA who I assume all the range safety people work for and I assume they use the coast guard to keep boats away from the danger zone two.
If no on is getting paid, they aren't going into work, simple as that. This can be anyone. Fire personnel, security, gate guards, flight-line / launch pad techs & engineers, anyone. Most civilian companies barely function if the office manager is out of the building. The launch pad is private property with a ton of personnel, they can't just launch without the workers.
It's a mixed bag. Some jobs are deemed essential or exempted and so those individuals have to work. But not all are. Most of NASA, for instance, is shutdown as their work isn't considered critical or exempted.
Exempted: Usually a result of the way it's funded. Some government work is funded by the budget, directly. Others essentially pay for themselves (the government workers acting in essence as contractors or a business, they receive payments from others besides the Congress to do work). Most of those have funding that would last 2-6 weeks. They get to stay open.
None of these people were going to get paid during the shutdown, but they were still expected to work. Their paychecks after the shutdown would pay them. Essentially they're guaranteed the pay, but the pay date would slip.
Although now it's a moot point as it looks like the shutdown is ending.
So, is SpaceX now eligible for contract-breach money from the government for this delay? I assume SpaceX 'rents' the facility at KSP from the government. If that facility shuts down, then the government isn't upholding their part of the deal with SpaceX.
Say, as a company I had a deal where I rent an office, and the owner of the office decides for 2+ days I have no access to my office, because one-sided reasons, I can claim lost revenue from the owner, right?
These types of things are almost certainly written into the contracts. A government shutdown is not the only reason that SpaceX might temporarily not be able to use the facilities the way it wants.
Watched the video on the page demoing the falcon heavy concept. The real pictures don’t have the water tower at the launch site like the concept video. Is there some reason the water tower was in the demo design but not the real thing ... — maybe the water tower is mobile and only in place during an actual launch? Or is this closer to a case where somebody thought the water tower would look cool so they put it in the demo video ...?
The water tower is just further away, that's why you don't see it in the images. It was still there during their most recent launch from LC-39A: https://youtu.be/CNRTNxZSPhE?t=2m20s
When eventually launched, both boosters and the first stage are designed to return to earth, landing upright for reuse.
That this seems entirely feasible is a testament to how far SpaceX has moved the industry forward (and signifies that they are going to have a huge lead over any competitors).
It's not exactly a new idea. The boosters on the Russian Shuttle equivalent were designed to glide back for reusability in the 70s and 80s, but it's amazing the lack of momentum pushing these ideas forward languished in the space tech arena until SpaceX showed up.
There are many difference between a glide-back booster like the Baikal, and a Falcon 9 first stage.
Baikal would not only need wings and other aerodynamic surfaces, but also was supposed to contain a jet engine. However, perhaps more importantly, it would need to have structural rigidity to bending to be able to fly back horizontally. The result would be a significant mass penalty.
Falcon 9 only needs some landing legs, a little extra heat shielding around the engines, some grid fins, and some extra fuel. As it comes back in tail first, it only needs to be strong in the same direction it needed to be strong when launching. And they can use exactly the same rocket (minus legs and grid fins) in expendible mode where they burn all the fuel to reach orbit rather than saving some for the reentry and landing burns, for payloads that are too heavy to recover the booster.
One thing SpaceX discovered when they first started working on reusability was that high-altitude reentry itself was hard, not just the landing. After booster burnout at about 70km altitude, the first stage is travelling upwards fast enough that it reaches 125km. Their first attempts broke up on reentry, before the parachutes they planned to use were any use. Only by doing a reentry burn could they slow enough to survive to even consider how to land.
If I understood correctly, after booster separation the russian proposal was to fly in an upside down arc starting at 75km using the wing to burn off upwards velocity, so they're not reentering from nearly so high. Would be interesting to see that work - I'm sure they must have done the calculations, but still seems like it must be a pretty hairy reentry.
According to the Russian Wiki article, Energiya's first stage was designed to be reusable by the way of parachutes, solid fuel engines and supports, however, the system was not implemented during its two launches and the parachute containers were loaded with other equipment. Wiki gives this as reference:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/09-3.htm
Static fire was planned for today. Date for an actual launch hasn't been set yet, because a successful static fire (or several) has to take place before that. SpaceX is taking their time to extensively ground test this one, because the Falcon Heavy has never flown before, and is a significantly more complex rocket than the proven Falcon 9 (27 engines need to ignite at launch vs. 9, plus the booster attachments have never been tested before).
One thing to understand about the US is that it is actually a federation of states. Much of the day-to-day work happens at the state or local level, not at the federal level. Police, fire departments, emergency first responders mostly employed at that level, and when the federal government is involved, a lot of it is in doing some coordination between states, setting standards, funding for various programs, and so on. Even things like building interstate highways, which are funded by the federal government, are generally done by allocation to the state governments to actually construct them.
However, the military is entirely part of the federal government, as are many other organizations. In the case of not having a budget, the government is required to shut down all functions that are not essential for safety and security. So things like the military, the TSA, and so on can continue to function, but office workers doing jobs like allocating the funding for highway construction are furloughed, put on temporary unpaid leave from their jobs.
This is, of course, terrible for the efficient functioning of government; when the impasse is over, they will have to come back to their jobs and try to catch up. Oh, and in the time leading up to the shutdown, many of them would have been busy preparing for the shutdown, documenting which functions would be considered essential and thus able to continue during the shutdown; because the deadline was no surprise, and there had been many temporary funding bills leading up to this point, there was always a pretty high chance that this shutdown would happen.
Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and so playing games like this that increase its inefficiency help to sell their case and get government functions sold off to private enterprise, who just so happen, in so many cases, to be some of the largest donors to campaigns of this particular party.
"Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government"
Which is beyond ironic to anyone who's worked in the corporate world, but I guess that's for another thread.
This idea they have that private enterprise naturally evolves toward the most efficient system is laughable.
I've worked in both, I find bureaucracy is roughly proportional to the seriousness of the work. Serious work - Law, Healthcare, Finance etc are very bureaucratic regardless of whether it's the private or public sector.
Public sector can sometimes seem worse because there's less money sloshing round and people demand it isn't wasted, which effects a lot of bean counting.
There's also something to the notion that we want our regulatory bodies and government agencies to be slightly 'conservative', to avoid waste and avoid short-term folly. Our public institutions should live for generations, and have transparency and ethical demands placed upon them by the citizenry.
We could collectively decide to eliminate a lot of red tape in government, no problem. It's just the effect of unchecked, unsupervised, unaccountable governments that make us want that red tape in the first place. Todays Justification Paperwork is yesterdays front-page scandal...
In my native Norway, we let the public sector and private sector compete to perform public services. I can't say that I've ever seen that the private sector has a clear advantage, otherwise they would already have taken over running everything.
In fact I think I know of far more cases of private companies doing considerably worse job than what the public sector did.
My city recently switched to a private company for garbage collection e.g. It was an absolutely horrible mess. My home town had a care home for mentally ill people, that got taken over by a private company. They promised to run it cheaper than the government. Except they totally messed up everything. They lost a lot of talented people, who quit due to their poor management. Then they demanded to be paid more than the public solution had charged to do the same job.
So not only were they worse, they were also more expensive. Sure these are just anecdotes. But it puts a hole in the claim that the private sector is ALWAYS better. To disprove the notion of always you only need a single counter example.
I am not against private companies. Just let them compete on equal terms and prove that they can do the job better. Unfortunately our conservative government is often so ideologically tied to the idea of private always being better than they push for private sector solutions even when a company is not able to demonstrate that they do a better job.
In fact almost every case I've seen where a private company does the job cheaper, it is because they give their employees worse conditions and salaries, not because of smarter organization and management.
I can't say that I've ever seen that the private sector has a clear advantage, otherwise they would already have taken over running everything.
An entity that can rig the courts, the laws, and the regulations to its favor has an advantage.
Sure these are just anecdotes. But it puts a hole in the claim that the private sector is ALWAYS better.
Yeah, that's just magical thinking nonsense. You have to take the situation apart and look at what the incentives are. Economic libertarian woo is just as bad as alternative medicine woo. Markets aren't magic. They are a particular kind of distributed machine. It sounds like that mental hospital/home didn't have a competitive environment, or they couldn't have demanded more funding.
In fact almost every case I've seen where a private company does the job cheaper, it is because they give their employees worse conditions and salaries, not because of smarter organization and management.
In Washington state in the US, there were private DMV counters at Fred Meyer. AAA auto insurance can also do some of these functions. The customer experience is almost universally better at the private counters, because the private employees have incentives to make the customer experience pleasant, and the state employees have none. If a company can cheap out on its employees as compared to the state, and the level of service stays the same, then the market worked. If a company does that, and the level of service gets crappier, but the company doesn't face consequences, then the market has not worked. I bet, if you tried hard to prove the null hypothesis and looked for circumstances that would interfere with the market, you'd find them.
Yes. For one, they've obtained a position where you are forced to patronize them, even if you would choose to not utilize their services. For two, they generally get themselves excepted from local regulations (eg noise ordinances) for essentially convenience purposes.
Having said that, "privatized" trash collection creates its own type of shithole - whether it's a single vendor obtaining a city's exclusive contract for politicians' short-term balance sheet gains, or many competing services that result in visits by multiple trash trucks every single day.
I'm of belief that the inefficiency scales with internal organizational complexity, which roughly scales with size. Basically, the more people you need to involve for a typical step in a project, the less efficient you get. Government branches seem to be terribly inefficient, because even the smallest one is in fact responsible to a lot of people (other agencies, oversight bodies, politicians and, ultimately, the public).
I'm a business analyst and work with both private sector and government clients. From about a decade of analyzing how each type operates, I can tell you that the amount of bullshit that goes on in them is about the same level.
Sure, but the private sector has its own equivalent vehicles of waste, such as corporate executives getting paid insane salaries and bonuses even for average performance. You don’t get that in government because salaries are capped.
>This idea they have that private enterprise naturally evolves toward the most efficient system is laughable.
This is a straw-man, nobody claims that private enterprises are necessarily more efficient than government organisations. What is claimed, however, is that a free-market system invariably leads to better processes and products, compared to a government monopoly, because there is a competitive advantage in optimising overheads.
To suggest that government organisations are "often" or even "occasionally" more efficient than private organisations is quite chuckle-worthy.
>>Of course, this inefficiency plays well into the politics of one of the parties, who hold a religious belief that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and so playing games like this that increase its inefficiency help to sell their case and get government functions sold off to private enterprise, who just so happen, in so many cases, to be some of the largest donors to campaigns of this particular party.
One party believes 92% of this and the other party believes 83% of this statement, for any non-American reading this.
FYI this is a great neutral explanation up until the last paragraph, which is politically charged. This attempts to imply the Republican party sought the shutdown. In fact, the shutdown was caused by the Democratic party not voting for the Continuing Resolution (pseudo-budget). 60 Senate votes are required, but the majority party (Republicans) only has 51. It's a big slimy ball of politics all-around.
Also, more on point, many government entities have "carry-forward" funds which are available during a shutdown. In 2013 the Executive Branch (Democrat president) discouraged the use of these funds. The current admin is encouraging their use to ensure as little disruption as possible.
Clanan, to my knowledge this is ALL Trump and the republican's fault. Until 3 weeks ago they could have passed anything they wanted. It is just because they wasted time and Trump sabotaged everything the republicans came up with that so much time passed that they reached a stage where a 60 senate vote was needed.
You can't blame this on democrats when republicans could have handled this exclusively themselves and had ample time to do so.
This is simply a reflection of the chaos that is the Trump administration.
It is ironic to think of how I told Trump voters before the election, that if you vote on that man you will get noting but grid lock politics, because he is not a uniter. He is not a man who seeks cooperation and common ground.
I got laughed at for this, with Trump supporters telling me they didn't need democrats for anything because they controlled both houses.
I guess it is my turn to laugh then. I great irony that they manage to get themselves into this mess. The democrats didn't even have to lift a finger.
Citations are far more helpful than ranting. If you want a productive conversation, you should provide some. Democratic leaders have made the current budget/CR about DACA, which was not relevant to it. (Ironic because they're in favor of everything in the CR, but they voted against it anyway!) Here's House minority leader Pelosi promising to block any funding that does not include DACA [0]. Yes, the Trump admin could have avoided the shutdown by giving in to minority demands, but that doesn't mean they're at fault, logically.
As for opinions, my political golden rule is "never trust a politician". We're veering far off-topic, though.
Edit: as further evidence of the cause of the shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Schumer just caved. The shutdown was a political gamble for both sides; I'm assuming internal Democrat polling found that they were receiving the most blame. Continuing the disruption would be disastrous. (Obvious, considering they effectively blocked the CHIP children's health insurance.)
Government is only funded through Feb. 8 and this reauthorizes the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years.
So, they got something they wanted all for keeping the government operating for another 2.5 weeks. I would call it a solid democrat win.
Also republicans can pass 1 bill per year without the risk of filibuster and they used/wasted it on their tax bill. Thus, any government shutdown is arguably 100% on them.
You're projecting your politics onto the events. The CR already contained CHIP, and the majority already promised a debate on DACA/immigration back in December. The Democrat leadership promised a shutdown if DACA was not added to the budget/CR. They shutdown, but then reversed almost immediately without DACA being added. No idea how that can be labeled a "solid democrat win" without some severe rationalization.
> Thus, any government shutdown is arguably 100% on them.
Under this logic, all outcomes can be blamed on the majority party in all situations, because tool X was used on Y instead of Z. In a theoretical situation where a supermajority vote fails 59-41, isn't it more logical to blame the failure on the 41 opponents rather than the 59 proponents?
Sure, blame them too. If a bill fails, blame everyone who voted against it. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Of course, then you have a situation where politicians (on both sides) will grandstand if the outcome is already decided. For example, if a CR is guaranteed to fail, a moderate Republican will vote against it to appease his base. But if his was the deciding vote, he would vote to pass it to appease his party. Politics...
You say, now. After mentioning how Democrats are to blame at least eight separate times in this thread, and mentioning how Republicans are also to blame... none, until this comment.
Senate Democrats initiated the shutdown by opposing the continuing resolution. You can blame Trump if you want, but only in the sense that you could say it's his fault for not giving the Senate Democrats what they wanted.
Tea Party types found rationalizations for why the 2013 shutdown led by Cruz was really Obama's fault, so I'm not surprised #resistance types are blaming Trump.
What I don't understand is all this fuss about the Democrats having to vote to pay for Trump's wall, after all he promised that Mexico would pay for that, it shouldn't be a sticking point at all
Why could they pass anything up until 3 weeks ago? I though filibustering meant the senate always needed 60 votes if the opposing party wants to block the legislation.
They could have used the budget reconciliation process to bypass the filibuster. Instead they used their one opportunity this year to do that to get the tax bill passed. If they hadn't insisted on forcing through a (historically unpopular) tax bill, they could have passed a funding bill over any Democratic opposition.
As I recall from the last shutdown, Congress usually passes an apology bill to pay back-wages for the furloughed workers. In theory, it's unpaid time off, but in practice, they get made whole and it becomes a free (but potentially angsty) vacation.
Ah, you're right. I didn't recall whether they had been paid for that.
Either way, it's fairly inefficient; either they were paid for doing no work, or they were not paid and may leave for better jobs or morale destroyed due to that.
Beyond the pay itself is also the financial anguish and unnecessary work the employees might have to go through if there is a missed car-payment or loan-payment or down-payment on a house... This creates meaningless productivity loss, with oodles of meaningless lost productivity required to make up for the original loss, to the glorious benefit of destroying morale and scaring away talent...
10/10 federal policy. #ShootFootNow #AskQuestionsLater
IMHO, states should be prepared for federal governments being "shutdown" or dissolved. What we call shutdowns are not real shut downs. Military doesn't go on leave. They still do their same job. Many key workers do their same jobs as well. Some workers end up staying home and then later are usually paid for the time they missed at work anyway. #FreeVacation
It is a contrived emergency so the political parties can try to increase pressure to get pork through that they would not have otherwise in order to get the votes high enough to end the BS.
IMHO, the federal government should be entirely dissolved and the states should have a more loose confederation like the EU has. Federal law and over spending have gone too far. By overspending, I mean how the DoD decided to spend billions that it was not given by Congress. I don't mean any liberal vs conservative notion of how government should spend.
I know this is a pipe dream, but one way it could happen is through a "shutdown" that never stops.
chisleu I've contemplated this as well. I don't really believe in big political unions. However there are major practical problems dissolving a union which needs to be addressed, which people who favor dissolving a union seldom address.
It is very hard to have open borders between states if there is no federal authority. It is also hard for a state to run their own economic policy without their own currency and central bank.
Already American states struggle with running different welfare policies. You see how red states e.g. a freeloading on blue state welfare programs, by dumping their poor people in blue states and enticing companies created in innovative states like Calefornia by luring them with low taxes.
I personally think it would be nice if we could have a wide selection of countries and states following completely different policies. It is good with experimentation and trying new things. In practice however this is difficult, as somebody can just freeload on everybody elses work by creating a tax paradise.
What I don't understand is this: why not just change the process so that unless there is any change in funding decided politically, funding always continues as-is?
The whole setup is stupid, due to a chain of constitutional oddities. There's no distinction between budget votes and other kinds of votes. Most other systems, Westminster-style or otherwise, have a process which results in either a budget being passed or a fresh election being held which should result in a majority capable of passing one.
The US system has elevated a denial of service attack (filibuster) to the status of important democratic ritual. This doesn't help either.
("Funding continues as-is" may be rendered impossible by external factors, as in the Greek budget crisis.)
It is impossible for this not to be a political topic and I probably shouldn’t be even discussing it here, but whatever.
What would be the reasonable thing for the democrats to do right now? They weren’t allowed to see the tax bill. That’s what happens when something has the 51 republicans and it can’t be filibustered in the current environment.
Further, the republicans haven’t even brought a bill forward to be filibustered likely because they don’t have the votes in their own party.
I’m fairly centrist for this site but the republicans controlling every part of the government as well as already using their reconciliation power and blaming the democrats is so shockingly perverse in its cinycism. That’s before you even take into account the duplicity on DACA that has broad bipartisan support up to a meeting with the president last week.
Neither morally or strategically should the democrats budge on this.
Except they are hurting tons of people in the US in exchange for strategy. That's simply not right.
And of all issues DACA? It's important to some people, but as a national topic it's pretty minor.
> What would be the reasonable thing for the democrats to do right now?
Realize they are weak and accept it. Then take the offer they were given and do the best they can. But don't hurt unrelated people in the US to try to increase their own strength.
As a national issue, deporting people who should by rights be citizens and have known no other country than ours, many of whom are parents of actual American citizens, children, citizens, who might not even know Spanish, that's a minor issue?
In comparative terms it's minor: 35 million enrolled in CHIP [0] (shutdown) vs. 3.5 million DACA. Hopefully all would agree that neither is minor from a moral standpoint.
... Until they did? Your comment is true of all bills and all proposals. "Party X was free to vote on it, they chose not to. Until they chose to." Furthermore, the minority had promised to veto all funding unless DACA was included, at all times. Regardless, the above comment was simply pointing out the difference in terms of magnitude.
Maybe the simple reading of the statement is true of everything, but what’s unique here is that it was deliberately held up so it could be used as a bludgeon during the shutdown negotiations.
Especially egregious was the fact that it had broad bipartisan support, and had been scored by the CBO to save money. The health and welfare of children was used as a political bludgeon.
The 51 seat party should simply out forward a bill that can be accepted by 60 seats. If they fail, they should take 100% responsibility. Republicans have to concede that those last 9 seats are democrat seats and the power of those seats is (perhaps unfairly) almost as big as the 51 first seats, but the responsibility still lies with the majority to govern.
You know, like I'm sure you wanted the Republicans to do under Cruz in 2013?
Shame on the Democrats for opposing the Republican party, as the Republican party did the last eight years. They should just "realize they're weak and accept it [and do what they're told]".
The sad thing about this is that you most likely you think your perspective is eminently objective and unbiased.
I personally, was totally against the tax cut after reading about it in the media.
Then it actually passed and the media (yup, that same media) put out some calculators. I played with those, and realized I was seriously mislead.
Wait another month, when people will get higher paychecks, and see if it's still unpopular.
I really wish the media would stop telling me how to think. Just tell me what happened. Leave out the reactions, and quotes from "other people" telling me what I should think about a topic.
Best I can do right now is read opposing media outlets and contrast them, but it's hard to do.
So? The survey is older than the present. The comments I've seen online and in person show that people actually do support it, which will only increase once higher paychecks arrive.
Are you? I don’t think the popularity of the tax cut is terribly relevant, although its unpopularity makes this cock-up worse. You felt it was worth correcting, but you can’t back it up with anything more than anecdotes or guesswork. So what’s the point of arguing?
The shoreline of San Francisco is a national park (donated when the military base here closed). There's a restaurant on the shore called Cliff House, whose landlord is the US government.
During the shutdown, the government forced the restaurant, a private establishment, to close. The owners and the kitchen staff were not allowed to make a living. And because they aren't government employees, they don't get any restitution when the government is funded again.
Private companies also behave this way. It’s not unique to government.
If a mall shuts down, the stores don’t get to stay open. If a restaurant closes early, the waitstaff doesn’t get paid for missed hours. If budget gets tied up in other projects, competing projects get cancelled or deferred. If customer payments are late, new work & paychecks can’t be released to employees.
Edit:
Also important to list the high percentage of startups that fail and layoff employees, often employees who worked under market value in exchange for equity.
> If a mall shuts down, the stores don’t get to stay open.
Good luck blocking access while they're still renting. I can't even plausibly imagine that happening in a strip mall, where the entrance to the store is outside. Which is the best analogy to a park.
Everything else you mentioned was about employees, which is very different from renters.
During the last shutdown, the executive branch deliberately tried to make it as painful as possible, whether or not it actually needed to be, as a political ploy. I recall in another instance it spent resources to block access to something which people could have just walked across.
I'm sincerely curious if the executive branch this time is pulling the same sort of shenanigans.
Why would a lack of funding for the government suspend a rent agreement? That's actually money flowing into the government. Why does that need to be shut down?
Without knowing the specifics: renting land from the feds inside a national park is not entirely the same as renting land from a private person in a commercial zone.
From a park-management perspective services offered inside a national park close when the park closes. The park-restaurant doesn't get to reopen that park or its services any more than the hotdog vendors force Wrigley Field to open on the weekdays...
Just like a mall closing for safety reasons: even though there is a buck to be made there are also liabilities and requirements. If the park isn't offering its rangers/personnel/management/responsibility then they don't want to be simultaneously advertising to the public that they're open for food sales. They're not open, they're closed.
The weird part is that there's not exactly a toll plaza - it's totally integrated into the city.
I presume they made some argument about rangers not being available or something, but there was really no reason it needed to close. It's on a public street, and in a city with emergency services.
My guess is politics. If you want voters to push to end the shutdown, make it hurt regardless if the shutdown requires it.
This also happened with national parks. They actually chained up the entrances during the shutdown as if people can't access a park if the gov't is shutdown.
"I said powerless to help you, not punish you." --Chief Wiggum
Maybe ensuring that the economic hostages of a shutdown will actually suffer is an essential government function?
It wouldn't surprise me if there were a few people trespassing on closed national parklands right now, without incidents. And a few of them might even be furloughed employees.
The way I understood things is that if you are lucky (e.g. if you are military) you get paid when government is funded. If you are less lucky, you are simply furloughed and NOT paid for the time the government was shut down. For example: civilian employees in the military.
(The fact that the dysfunction alone of US government needs a whole dictionary is amusing: gerrymander, filibuster, furlough, ....)
The upside here is that you can visit national parks for free while the shutdown is ongoing, without the threat of a ranger fining or detaining you! While I don't roll with the A team, I do appreciate some of the philosophy.
But also without the safety net of having rangers around to know you are out in the backcountry, and come looking for you if you get hurt and don't make it back to the main areas. Personally, I carry emergency beacons when I'm out in the wilderness, but that is something the average tourist exploring the parks doesn't have.
It's more of a shutdown on non critical departments, and lots of times there are still skeleton crews for some of them. For example, the postal service is still running.
It's a shutdown in almost all distribution of funds that consequently includes a prohibition on work by non-essential personnel; “department” in the federal government is a very large organization, and a much higher level of organization than the one at which the non-essential vs. essential distinction is made at.
The vast majority of police in the USA are not federal police, only federal government workers, not state government workers, are affected by this.
Essential workers, such as military, are still required to turn up to work, they just don't get paid. It's not the US Government would stop wars just because they can't pay their bills.
Congress, funnily enough, is actually except from the shutdown and members of congress still get paid, which is a bit perverse in my eyes.
As for things like electricity, I assume they just put it all on credit, it's not like the government isn't going to pay the power companies when they finally approve the budget. I usually have a month after my power bill comes in to pay it.
Most police are funded at the local or state government level. The police employed by the federal government still stay on the job they just won’t be paid until the situation is resolved.
I think some groups are exempt. Like congress men.
Separately I think that the police aren't on the federal level, the FBI is but they may also be exempt.
I'm thinking losing a billion dollar spy satellite might play a factor here. Also the timing of the US government shutdown couldn't have been more damaging.
nonsense. There is no evidence whatsoever that spacex's launch of Zuma was anything but a success. Also, in what way is this the most damaging possible timing?
The timing wasn't that damaging. SpaceX has been working on Falcon Heavy for a long time, and a delay of the length of the typical government shutdown is not that big of a deal.
Turns out this delay was shorter than average anyway.
You're welcome to push whatever conspiracy theory you like, but Occam's Razor is currently voting for the satellite failing to separate from the second stage.
it can be a failure without having been in any way spacex's fault. you can lead a horse to orbit but you can't make it drink - they were just the boost.
also, it can be a success while they allow people to believe it was a failure (there is a history of this, if you'd like to tune your tin-foil receiver to the proper channel)
1. Go to "about:config" in the URL bar and hit Return/Enter
2. In the search box at the top, type in “autoplay”
You'll find two variables to modify. `media.autoplay.enabled` and `media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground`. They do exactly what they say they do. Turn them off/on as you wish by double-clicking, changing true to false and vice-versa.
Yes, that's annoying. When I find pages like this I disable javascript on the whole domain, which usually has many other benefits (no more nagging for notifications or email lists, no adblock detection, etc.)
I can't use Safari until I reboot to install a critical security update. Yeah, no, I have a lot of ssh sessions open. And how is it possible that a browser on Unix requires a reboot to update?
Isn't it generally a bad idea to rely on everything (power, network, OS) to remain stable to keep an SSH session open, just so processes on the other end don't get terminated?
Yes, that's what tmux and screen are for. You run one of them on the server and work within it, and then it doesn't matter what happens to the client or connection, your server processes are fine.
Yes, you can reboot or disconnect the client all you want. tmux keeps your processes on the server safe, and you can ssh in and go back into your completely preserved tmux session.
Or are you randomly trying to connect tmux and Safari? Safari's update requirements are totally unrelated, but tmux can mitigate some of the problems they cause.
You're the one connecting tmux and Safari. My complaint is that a browser update should never require a reboot, especially for a browser that I never use.
I actually use screen on my laptop, but this is my workstation. It breaks rarely enough that also using screen on it doesn't make sense for me. But thanks for asking.
No updates besides kernel updates should require a reboot, yet here we are... Its pretty rare that I have to reboot my mac though, at least compared to my windows experience.
But above you said that you can’t reboot because you have too many ssh sessions open. Mkl’s suggestion of using tmux or screen would certainly help with solving the specific problem you mentioned preventing you from rebooting.
I personally disagree. I HATE getting linked to something that then autoplays a video — I don’t always know before clicking a link that a video is the main content. If I want it to play, I will press the play button.
just like you can grant a site permission to use your microphone, get your location, run flash plugins, or any of various other things, the ability to auto-play video should be a permission that sites have to ask for, not something they can do implicitly.
YouTube at least stops the autoplay when you are not looking at the tab or while scrolling down through the comments. A behavior I much prefer compared to the usual news sites behavior of "Let's just play this video, hidden somewhere halfway down the site in a side-frame, no matter what".
"a worse browser" is an interesting way to put it. It seems you're trying to convey a sense of objectivity to your choice. A lot of people will point out privacy concerns from chrome to justify their choice of Firefox, and that seems to cause a bit of polorization between the two groups of users.
You did not elaborate on what makes chrome a better browser, but it's safe to say a large portion see performance/speed as what makes Chrome better. However, if my assumption on your reasoning is wrong please share.
So assuming that a possible increase in privacy does not have weight on what makes a better browser, what else than performance. 2 reasons why Firefox could be better, for certain users, are: safer add-ons, and less Network use.
To me, the idea that malware (adware) could be in an "app" store so obviously for such an amount of time is wholly unacceptable. The Chrome addon still contained malicious code long after that post. Forgive me, I am on mobile, so I have not researched when/if it was fixed
2) ad blockers on Firefox are simply more effective. They block the download of ads to the browser, where ad blocking on chrome uses JavaScript. This means, which is especially important on mobile, a decrease in data usage
Disclaimer: Firefox has switched a lot of things in the newest update, this may very well have changed I know they are becoming more and more like Chrome. However, that would not change the meaning of my post. I am not trying to say Firefox is a better browser, that is entirely opposite my opinion. My point is different users have different use cases, and to categorize one as objectively better is difficult to do (for such a hotly debated topic for two products of such similar quality)
This was a more thought out answer than my comment deserved. I left FF some time ago as it was feeling bloated and I hated the rounded look. I'll reconsider FF from your comment, particularly in regards the the note on ad-blocking.
It's not just one webpage - it's for an increasingly large number of websites.
And 'worse' depends a lot on use cases.
I typically have many tabs open (maybe 40+) and for my use case Firefox has always been a better browser for that.
I also get non-autoplaying videos - another thing that in my opinion makes the browser better than some alternatives, not to mention containerized browsing for better privacy.
Chrome is 'worse' for all the things I care about.
It's not a workflow issue, it's a workflow that I prefer to use (and I'm not the only one who prefers it - it's fairly common among people who still use Firefox over Chrome).
Government is normally getting in the way or at least slowing down the process of innovation. Hopefully that doesn't happen here at to much a cost to SpaceX and the U.S. tax payers.
Falcon Heavy is a vehicle that uses a heavily modified Falcon 9 first stage in the middle, and has two more-or-less standard Falcon 9 first stages as strap-on boosters. (These first stages are sometimes called "cores".)
The side cores for this flight are reused Falcon 9 first stages, while the center core is new. Falcon Heavy center cores are structurally reinforced, and hence are different enough from Falcon 9 that you can't reuse one as the other; whereas converting between Falcon 9 first stage and Falcon Heavy side booster just involves moving around some external hardware.
The government has done good work on this issue - it's bootstrapped a market for launches using its purchasing power in military launches and ISS resupply contracts, while actively working to preserve a competitive environment and avoid monopolies. It also provides essential services like range safety and airspace management; what's getting in SpaceX's way is the lack of government.
The government built and runs the range on which they're testing. SpaceX is free to finish building their launch site in Texas and launch from there in the future. Sometimes government slows down innovation but in terms of both public and commercial space NASA has mostly been a force for speeding up and enabling innovation.
tl;dr: Shutting down the government gives credence to those who base part of their political programme on "government is evil lol", when really they just want less regulation on behalf of wealthy donors -- a fundamentally corrupt bargain.
Government is a big reason SpaceX is where it is in the first place. They used government facilities on Kwajalein to launch their first five rockets, and have used government facilities in Florida and California to launch all the ones since. NASA’s CRS contract paid for a substantial part of the development of Falcon 9 and Dragon.
If SpaceX had built their own launch facilities instead of using the government’s, they wouldn’t be beholden to the shutdown like this.
This is the first launch of their heavy rocket according to the article so nothing to recycle yet. The government is one of spacex’s biggest customers.
Er, 2/3 of the first stages are reused, and the unusual thing about SpaceX is that they have a lot more non-government business than any US launch provider ever.
I didn't find information on when they'd be ready again, but blaming a delay on Falcon Heavy's static fire test on the Government Shutdown is only half the truth.