“Fuck You, James Madison!”
—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.
Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.
But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:
“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”
Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,
“I’m not saying, like, they don’t still get the shitty little offices and don’t get to use the, you know, the Senate steam room, except when Schumer’s in there towelless. But some consideration that those 75 million people should have a scintilla of representation in the federal budget. So, thank you…yeah, once again, fuck you, James Madison. Boom!”
None of that makes any historical or logical sense. The shut-down is a direct result of hyper-partisan warfare, and the Founders, particularly Madison, didn’t want political parties to be part of their revolutionary government structure, so parties aren’t mentioned in the Constitution at all. This was, perhaps, a bit naive on the Founders’ part, but blaming them for the direct result of a phenomenon that they neither created nor approved of is ludicrous. The Founders did not envision or create a system that should have naturally led to trillion dollar deficits. What “bureacracies”? The Founders envisioned a bare bones government with few executive departments, not today’s mass of powerful federal agencies that Congress has no power to control once they are created.
Meanwhile, Stewart is ethically estopped from bitching about any government ignoring the wishes of supporters of the party not in power, not after he happily cheered on the Biden administration establishing extreme policies that a majority of the public didn’t want and still don’t want.
Reality is that the Founders’ Constitution went to extraordinary lengths to give minority interests in Congress power to block the majority and force compromise, when the minority’s position is tolerable. When both Congress and the White House end up in the same ideological camp, the ones to “blame” are the voters. Madison Mason and the rest couldn’t create any form of democratic government that would operate well when the public’s civic education is warped by the likes of Jon Stewart.
Ethics Alarms 
“When both Congress and the White House end up in the same ideological camp, the ones to “blame” are the voters.”
Which leads me to wonder if having a divided government (which is what voters often opt for in the midterms when they are once again reminded of the problems of trifecta rule) is actually the best we can hope for re having a kinda sorta functioning legislative branch? Maybe? Trifectas in state government (which tend to be more enduring because of gerrymandering) have yielded all sorts of ills (Oregon has had one for a long time, ugh) that a better balance of power is (often not always) able to avoid.
Also I wonder if there might be some sort of “fix” that removes the “shut down the government” option as a weapon of partisan warfare. Like an automatic CR?
Shutdowns are expensive (and they extra expense buys absolutely nothing of value), cause all sorts of problems for ordinary people, and quickly devolve to this idiocy of both parties eagerly checking “polls” to see which side is going to “win” the shutdown.
When winning is defined as “I think our constituents hate us for our incompetence a little less than they hate the other side for theirs, at least momentarily–and they will likely forget about by the time the next election rolls around” we are truly in a deep ditch.
A CR is used to fund government until all appropriation bills are passed. What was offered was a CR with no added spending. This was passed in the House to provide time for negotiation on certain contentious issues. The Democrats want the Republicans to agree to 1.5 trillion over ten years in new spending to open the government. This is demanding that they get massive increases in spending before negotiations begin.
Prior to Carter the government stayed open past Oct 1 if a budget had not been passed. It was his AG that said they had to shut down. No court has stated that it must shut down. Some of the Democrat intransigence could be to buttress Abbigail Spanberger’s (D) gubernatorial chances for Governor in VA this November. Any shut down is always blamed on Republicans because Democrats use the threat of a shutdown to gain considerable concessions before negotiations begin or put the republicans on the defensive.
There is apparently some legislation that requires that employees get back pay when they are locked out of their jobs during a shut down. WHY? This had to have been a union sponsored bill. If the employees are to be paid when they return after a shut down then there is no reason they cannot work during one except to create political pressure on one side.
I hope that any RIF’s that occur because of this are held to be valid because that will cause a shift in the blame when federal employees start actually paying the price for the shutdown. Until then they are just getting extra days off with pay.
The ones hurting are not federal employees it is all the service and hospitality workers who can never recover the lost opportunity to earn a buck.
“No court has stated that it must shut down.” Hmm, interesting. So maybe federal employees would have grounds to sue and get a ruling from the courts? Maybe that would be a way to make this idiocy go away.
The only part of what you said that I disagree with is that people are hurt by the shutdown. I don’t know that the government shut down has affected anyone.
Granted, nearly everyone I know works in private industry, but we still have banks, grocery stores, water, electricity, sewer, etc. Sure, they shut down some parks a couple weeks early, but we are past first snow and first road closure from snow, so they’d be shut down soon anyway.
Even the people I know who work for government work in state or city funded government jobs, and those keep trucking. It is hard to see the federal government’s shutdown as anything other than a boon to society from where I sit.
Now, I recognize that not everyone views it that way, so who is being hurt besides the leeches and hangers-on (Congress critters, aides, lobbyists, etc) of our bloated federal system?
Now here in Northern Virginia in contrast….
Are the governing class discomfitted?
Let them eat cake!
Honestly, the shutdown should continue unit the national debit is balanced. I think THAT reality is more in line with what James Madison intended.
In Oregon it affects the logging industry as they rely on BLM to clear the path for cutting etc. and approve timber sales. That infrastructure is on hold now. Because such a big chunk of Oregon is National Forest and BLM land, it affects those who make their living from this land. In rural Eastern Oregon National Forest and BLM jobs are (normally) among the most secure and reasonably well-paying. In general, the disappearance of a paycheck creates problems for those without a cushion of savings to fall back on. Also, while those directly employed by the feds will (supposedly) get back pay, private outfits that contract with the feds to provide services will not be able to make up lost revenue. Also military. For the military it is often a double whammy because when they live on base, spouses often also work for the military in some capacity. Both paychecks disappearing at once = problems.
I hate them all. The Republicans should be there every day offering small bills to pass. Start with “Fund Air Traffic Controllers” and “Fund TSA” then “Fund XYZ” and “Fund ABC”. Get back to the basics. Rather than future negiotiations on “what to cut” from these endless continuing resolutions, make the democrats vote against the basics.
The whole reason they need a CR to begin with is because (as usual these days) they are chronically late completing what is supposed to be a core job of Congress — appropriations. I agree that they should all be hard at work getting these bills lined up. Which is NOT what is happening…. instead they are “hard at work” conducting polls and generating talking points blaming everyone but themselves… sigh.