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I has been sequesteredFollow

#1 Mar 19 2013 at 1:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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So we have a hiring freeze here at the hospital. Some 40% of our income here comes through government sources, mostly medicare/medicaid with some research monies sprinkled in. There's a lot of uncertainty about what happens to that income stream, so they're taking precautions. That's the line they're giving us at least. A lot of the sting seems to have been taken out by the recent stock market rally though. The nest egg is healthy again, and that's certainly helped them fund things around here and what not.

Anyhow mostly curious, anyone else experiencing fallout from the congressional bickering?
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#2 Mar 19 2013 at 1:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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Not in the baker's dozen years I've been in, since both sides fear losing their jobs if they're seen as anything less than unquestioningly supportive of the armed forces. Then again, are you counting flaming metal shrapnel as fallout?
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#3 Mar 19 2013 at 1:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
Then again, are you counting flaming metal shrapnel as fallout?

It depends, will I get super powers if I touch it?
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#4 Mar 19 2013 at 1:28 PM Rating: Good
Our hospital gets 70% of its reimbursements from Medicare/caid. They are in talks with Banner Health right now and have some bills going through the HI legislature to allow the hospitals in the HHSC system to go private.

This all started before the sequester, but I'm sure they'll be using the soon to try to get the community behind the bills. Right now, there is strong opposition from the unions (no big surprise there).
#5 Mar 19 2013 at 1:29 PM Rating: Excellent
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The company I'm with largely steers away from public bidding so I don't see a drop-off in public projects as affecting us except for greater competition for the other work. And Flea is luckily out of the immigration court business so she's clear. So I don't see any direct impact for us right now. One job ago, both of us would have probably felt it a bit more (my old place used to bid a lot of public work).
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#6 Mar 19 2013 at 1:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
It depends, will I get super powers if I touch it?
All I got was a paranoid level of attention to detail. Smiley: frown
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#7 Mar 19 2013 at 1:40 PM Rating: Default
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Welcome to the club!

#8 Mar 19 2013 at 1:40 PM Rating: Good
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Many of our clients are government, so it's been hurting a bit. So far, though, it's mostly just been minimum wage corporate espionage and no real cut backs yet.
#9 Mar 19 2013 at 2:34 PM Rating: Decent
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Anyhow mostly curious, anyone else experiencing fallout from the congressional bickering?

Nope, everything's awesome for us! The reward for a life of good works and charity, I guess.
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#10 Mar 19 2013 at 2:46 PM Rating: Good
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Indirectly... probably. Our company supplies products that a lot of Universities and the like buy to use in biomedical research. Whenever the funding dries up for these educational and research pursuits, it directly impacts our sales.

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#11 Mar 19 2013 at 2:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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At other job, I finally got authorization to buy a few hundred $k worth of network and server gear for a certain project office that has been stuck in stupid levels of spending freeze for almost a year now (even though all our other offices managed to find their upgrade funds just fine...), so technically it helped here! The one had almost nothing to do with the other aside from timing and a certain semicatestrophic, mid-day switch bank failure of an ancient and direly in need of replacement and much warned about switch, but it still counts!
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#12 Mar 19 2013 at 3:39 PM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
Anyhow mostly curious, anyone else experiencing fallout from the congressional bickering?


Hubby works for the Dept. of Navy so we are directly affected. Furlough days are expected to be announced on March 22 and they'll be cut down to a 4 day work week, resulting in a 20% paycut. It's going to be tight for us and we're going to have to use savings to tide us over as well as cutting down discretionary spending. Ray could go to school and get paid under some of the GI Bill benefits but that is up in the air as well. Medical, vision and dental benefits are untouched at least for now, but we see the premiums going up soon. I still can't complain about that. Our total annual premiums are less than what a civilian pays in a month. Pension is not touched.

We're lucky. The employees that were in contractor positions have been all let go and there is no word if they will be brought back.
#13 Mar 19 2013 at 3:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:
At other job, I finally got authorization to buy a few hundred $k worth of network and server gear for a certain project office that has been stuck in stupid levels of spending freeze for almost a year now (even though all our other offices managed to find their upgrade funds just fine...), so technically it helped here! The one had almost nothing to do with the other aside from timing and a certain semicatestrophic, mid-day switch bank failure of an ancient and direly in need of replacement and much warned about switch, but it still counts!
Nothing like catastrophic failure to make people understand why they should have updated their equipment last year.
#14 Mar 19 2013 at 4:40 PM Rating: Default
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The current message is "sequestration is bad, so let's blame every funding freeze on it, and lets even create some so that people have something to blame on sequestration". It's getting to some ridiculous levels really.

BTW: Sequestration only affects discretionary federal spending. Medicare/Medicaid are *not* discretionary. Thus, sequestration does not affect funding via those programs. It's pure FUD. The Dems don't like that they'll have to find ways to cut their precious discretionary domestic spending, but instead of actually pointing to real discretionary domestic spending that is at risk and they want to protect, they point instead at everything else. Which speaks volumes about how little the public really cares about the spending they're trying to protect. If it was really that important to the public, they'd be trying to scare them with that spending instead.


Oh. I also find it amazingly hypocritical to see all these Dems running around talking about how bad the sequestration will affect the military. Given that the only alternative I ever heard to sequestration from the Left over the last several month was to cut all the money from the military instead of just half, forgive me if I find their sudden care for our military readiness less than believable. Again though, it speaks volumes about the disconnect between what the Dems want to spend money on, and what the public considers important to fund.
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#15 Mar 19 2013 at 5:06 PM Rating: Good
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No affect here, as I work for one of those evil Fortune 100 corporations.
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#16 Mar 19 2013 at 5:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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Oh, I'm sure some of those companies get their share of the government cheese Smiley: laugh
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#17 Mar 19 2013 at 5:10 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Oh, I'm sure some of those companies get their share of the government cheese Smiley: laugh

We do have some grants from the DOE for smart grid installation, but most of our government involvement is either non-discretionary (NRC and FERC) or state-level (ICC, PAPUC, etc).
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#18 Mar 19 2013 at 5:12 PM Rating: Good
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Oh. I also find it amazingly hypocritical to see all these Dems running around talking about how bad the sequestration will affect the military. Given that the only alternative I ever heard to sequestration from the Left over the last several month was to cut all the money from the military instead of just half

Yes, many on the left have argued "let's eliminate the military and offer our selves up to invasion from Canadia" Then we realized that we hadn't rid all of the super manly GOP voter of their god given boomsticks yet, so we had to pull back a little and wait until Obama's 9th term.
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#19 Mar 19 2013 at 5:29 PM Rating: Decent
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#20 Mar 19 2013 at 8:16 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:
Oh. I also find it amazingly hypocritical to see all these Dems running around talking about how bad the sequestration will affect the military. Given that the only alternative I ever heard to sequestration from the Left over the last several month was to cut all the money from the military instead of just half

Yes, many on the left have argued "let's eliminate the military and offer our selves up to invasion from Canadia" Then we realized that we hadn't rid all of the super manly GOP voter of their god given boomsticks yet, so we had to pull back a little and wait until Obama's 9th term.


Yeah. Cause it's all or nothing! I just found it funny as hell watching liberal pundit after pundit over the last several months insisting that the GOP was being unreasonable for not making a deal to avoid sequestration, but every time they were asked what they would cut instead, their only answer was "there's lots of wasteful spending in the military we could cut". I never once heard a single suggestion of a dollar that could be cut from any non-military/defense discretionary item in that time period by anyone on the left. But to hear them today, it's like they suddenly care about the impact of spending cuts on the military.


The only "compromise" ever offered by the left was to cut half the deficit goal from the military and make up the other half with more tax increases. Um... Gee. I can't imagine why the GOP didn't fall over themselves to make that deal. Let's see. Half military cuts and half domestic cuts *or* half military cuts and half in more taxes. It's such a hard choice! Oh wait. It's really not. What's funny is all the Dems pretending to be upset about the impact of sequestration on military spending when it's quite obvious they were more than willing to cut that much or more if they could avoid domestic discretionary cuts. They can't even be honest about what they care about.


Oh. And while I'm thinking about it. I suppose you could admit you were wrong about the debt ceiling not being the end of the deficit reduction conversation. You know? When I said "there's still the whole sequestration thing coming", and you said the GOP would just drop the issue and move on cause debt was a losing issue or something. Guess that whole "The GOP wont push the issue" position didn't work so well, did it? Now we've got Dems crying about their domestic spending, but pretending to be crying about defense spending instead. Like I said: Funny!
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#21 Mar 19 2013 at 8:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh. And while I'm thinking about it. I suppose you could admit you were wrong about the debt ceiling not being the end of the deficit reduction conversation. You know? When I said "there's still the whole sequestration thing coming",

You didn't. Had you, I certainly would have. What you actually posted was "sometime at some point in the future, the GOP will continue to attempt to make the deficit an issue, of some kind." If you make claims that can't be falsified, there's no credit given for being "right". Sorry :( You're correct, though, I had assumed they wanted a chance at holding the House in '14 and would have been more reasonable. This is MUCH better for Democrats. While you'll get the usual "both sides are at fault" movement in DEM negatives, the GOP will be essentially destroyed.

I'm not sure you understand how this is going to look in a month or so...get back to me on 4/19 and we'll see how it's going for the GOP.
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To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#22 Mar 20 2013 at 5:01 AM Rating: Excellent
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I work at a state university, and the sequester's never even been mentioned - our primary nemesis is governor Rick Scott, who seems to think that education is teh debil and likes to cut funding to Florida universities.

... but even he hasn't affected my position much. The only issue we've had is a hiring freeze since October (and I was hired in September; ha, suckers!). That's coming back to bite us though, as one of my coworkers recently found a new job and now his position won't be filled for at least 8 weeks... if not longer. As it took almost 2 years to find a new director for my department, I think we'll be picking up the slack for quite some time.

Edited, Mar 20th 2013 7:04am by LockeColeMA
#23 Mar 20 2013 at 7:30 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Cause it's all or nothing!
Only conservatives are allowed that!
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#24 Mar 20 2013 at 1:09 PM Rating: Good
So far no warnings of cutbacks here. I'm quitting my job May 17th, though (already training my replacement) so in my current job upgrade search I'm trying to steer clear of places that live entirely off government cheese (like the local EPA branch, etc.)
#25 Mar 20 2013 at 1:26 PM Rating: Default
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Both parties secretly wanted this to happen, because any alternative is less likely to occur. This is why it was approved in the first place. It's a win/win for "everyone".
#26 Mar 20 2013 at 3:28 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:
Oh. And while I'm thinking about it. I suppose you could admit you were wrong about the debt ceiling not being the end of the deficit reduction conversation. You know? When I said "there's still the whole sequestration thing coming",

You didn't. Had you, I certainly would have.


Lol (including full bit for context):

gbaji wrote:
Of course. They'll raise the debt ceiling. Why on earth would you think otherwise? There's no way to *not* raise the debt ceiling. This is all theater at this point and you darn well know it. The GOP will call for cuts in spending in return for raising the debt ceiling. The Democrats will refuse. GOP will make a big show of saying that if we don't do something about spending, our deficit will keep growing and the problem will get worse. Insert rhetoric about kicking the can down the road again. Dems will dismiss GOP demands as hostage holding over the debt ceiling and suggest that we should talk about deficit reduction as a separate issue. GOP then takes the high road, says they will "reluctantly" pass a debt ceiling increase, but promise to hold the Dems to deficit talks in coming months.

Sound about right? It's all about public perception Smash. The whole plan from the GOP side is to present their side as loudly and strongly as possible, then appear to give in (compromise if you will) but in as minimal a way as possible (it's not like the GOP actually loses anything by increasing the debt ceiling, they just gain the opportunity to repeat the need for spending cuts). And over time, the Dems will look more and more irrational and unreasonable when we get to the deficit reduction part of this and they continue to refuse to cut anything meaningful. You get that the debt ceiling is not the end of this, right? We still have the pushed back sequestration and whatnot coming down the pipeline.

And when that time comes, the GOP will be able to point to how they compromised on taxes, and they compromised on the debt ceiling, and then ask when the Dems are going to compromise on spending. They'll point to the still looming deficit. They'll make the argument that the GOP is willing to give ground for the good of the people, but not the Dems. Oh, I'm sure the left will do as much as they can in the media to blunt this message, but again, at some point that stops working. You can only claim you're doing something without actually doing it for so long before people stop believing you.


To which you said:

Smasharoo wrote:
You get that the debt ceiling is not the end of this, right?

Nope, it's the end. The GOP learned how important an issue debt was to voters in '12. They, unlike you, aren't complete morons. The GOP hierarchy is already searching for traction on another signature issue. Gerrymandering only gets you so far, crying wolf about a steadily improving economy isn't going to sell in two years. If history is any guide the Obama administration will overreach and have some 2nd term scandal (an actual one, not a bullsh*t manufactured Libya one) that will provide an easy distraction from the massive failure of convincing anyone to give a @#%^ about the debt.


Which lead to this exchange (smooshed for clarity):

Smasharoo wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Smasharoo wrote:
You get that the debt ceiling is not the end of this, right?

Nope, it's the end.



I'll quote you on this when it ends out not being the end.


You should. Then, if that's actually the case, I'll post "I was wrong," then continue my day. It's a sort of superpower I have called "integrity".


So much for integrity, I guess.
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