Government Shutdown

I don’t know anyone who’s been killed by it yet.

One of the band memebers arrived yesterday saying that his SSI
payment wasn’t going to come. This isn’t what I get
from google, but certainly even if he’s wrong, if lots of
people believe that, they’re probably pretty upset.

The other consequence I’ve heard of was in this
post by Phil Greenspun. The short version is that because
the office he needed something from was only doing that ID, and
not all the other stuff they usually do, he got his ID much faster
than he normally would have.

I guess this probably shows that I live a pretty sheltered
life, at least on Tuesdays. And of course my not knowing about
any serious short-term consequence doesn’t mean that there aren’t
some, and certainly doesn’t mean there won’t be serious long-term
consequences.

And it also doesn’t mean that I agree with a system that allows
one man to single-handedly shut down the government. (I know the
House Republicans who elected John Boehner as speaker, and could
presumably elect someone else if they didn’t like what he’s doing,
share the blame, but really it wouldn’t be happening if he hadn’t
decided he wanted it, and it will stop as soon as he decides to
stop it.)