Governmental Inaction

The stalemate over the federal budget in Washington DC is hours away from causing a shut down of the Federal government. The two major parties, especially the hard core Tea Party Republicans elected in November, are making it very difficult to find common ground.

Each blames the other, but the Republican side has questionably financial conditions. They want a rider that would ban the EPA from publishing regulations that have undergone the full public comment and review period and are ready to release. This has fiscal impacts somewhere, sometime, but lacks the urgency of the problem for military families when their paychecks stop. The Republicans also insist on a policy of no further funding, ever, for any aspect of Planned Parenthood. This is fiscal, but its purpose is more in line with their love of social engineering. 

Some of those arguing to defund Planned Parenthood are insisting that this would increase women's freedom. I must be unfit for public office. I don't understand how removing a source of affordable medical care enhances any one's freedom.

In my younger years I volunteered as an escort at a local Planned Parenthood office. I usually went on a Saturday morning, when the more aggressive protest groups came through. The group would bring a couple of bus loads of people to hold signs and make access to the clinic difficult for a few hours. It never bothered the more extreme of them to bring young children, who were often freezing their arse off on a cold early spring day and risked being hurt by the crowd if things got nasty. 

The protests were futile for the stated purpose. Clients looking for an abortion, their issue, avoided Saturday mornings because that was always when the protesters came in. But they would get a good shot in the newspaper since it is usually a slow news day, and that was probably their goal. Not that I am cynical or anything... 

I noticed a new place to view one of the area hydroelectric power facilities when I was driving around today, a dead end street behind a rental place on one of the islands in the Hudson. I stood on the shore and listened to the water flowing over the dam, watched it spread into three channels around two more islands to my north. We'll soon be taking our kayaks out to play there, in the white rills beyond the waterfall and the two low head dams that were beyond my view. Two geese were sitting in the grass just behind me, likely a pair with a nest built somewhere nearby.

A short term government shut down has no effect on them - the water will still flow. But longer term, could it? Maybe, if no entity is there to mediate between the competing interests for the river's water. If the water was taken upriver, this pair might find their little piece of urban heaven gone.