Update: Outside groups hold sway to keep government defunded.

I blogged on Monday that Conservative political advocacy groups, all fronts for billionaires and corporations, were behind the shutdown and coming default. They are going to be the driving force on keeping it going. A New York Times article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire confirms that:

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

The usual suspects are working the levers: the Koch brothers, Ed Meese, III and so on. It also seems they have at least foreseen the popular discontent this will cause:

A defunding “tool kit” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”  

Whether this means they have a war chest set up to shift the blame to the Democrats, as I fear they do, remains to be seen.

This shutdown is nothing more than a hostile takeover bid by the wealthy. It's more subtle than a coup, but the results will be largely the same. If the poor and middle class think the government is unresponsive to them now, there will be no illusion of a government serving the people if President Obama gives anything on this.


If this shut down continues it will damage the US politically, destabilize us and wreck the economy worldwide. It would mean the Supreme Court's Citizen's United is making short work of destroying the country, putting the Tea Party into Congress as the lapdogs of billionaires and keeping the rest of Republicans under threat of primary challenge. It would make the Citizens United officially an worldwide menace that must be repealed.

It would also make the Roberts Court the worst in history, something that already was in little doubt. Ironically, it was also John Roberts who refused to strike down the ACA and set the stage for this standoff. (Though striking down the ACA would have created another unworkable crisis in government eventually.)

Right now, everything depends on Boehner.  He can stop the crisis before it creates too much damage. But the structural problems that caused this will still remain. Without reform, this government is inherently unstable.We can expect other such crises. The age of domestic stability for the US is likely ended.

One thing for sure: the billionaires who lined the Tea Party up to do this definitely don't care or even notice how much suffering this shut down and default causes. If this crisis ends, it will be because their puppets and pawns in Congress either get cold feet, or less likely, find that they do have an conscience after all.