“A Federal Budget Crisis Months In The Planning”

This is worth a read.

It’s a NY Times article.

Suggests that the government shutdown was orchestrated by forces inside and outside the government. Koch Brothers, so-called “grassroots” organizations, and so forth.

It’s also worth spreading around.

Because these people don’t care about you.

They don’t care about the country.

They care about their bottom line. This is a faux-populist movement controlled by corporate interests who are on par with the mine barons — they are comfortable exploiting you, denying you health care, and kicking this country in the gut until it coughs up the results they want.

I don’t know that any of this is actionable in a legal way — I mean, I’m a little tickled at the thought that this is treasonous behavior and punishable as such, though I suspect I’m being woefully naive on that front. I do know that we all can take action.

For one thing, we can boycott Koch Brothers products.

We can also vote (though gerrymandering and other nasty tricks have helped ensure that Tea Party members are almost preternaturally safe). Just the same — peeling away their politicians one by one is a value-add. If this is a game of inches, so be it.

We can write to our moderate Republican politicians and demand they excise this tapeworm from within the bowels of their party.

We can keep up the pressure and spread stuff like this around.

The ACA has already saved lives: Author Jay Lake talks about it here.

Author Kameron Hurley talks about the horror novel you’ll never have to live:

Going without health care.

Anyway.

I’m heading out of the country soon — so, you know, let’s try to keep it together until I get back. I don’t want to fly home to find a dystopian novel made real, jeez.