state + local

Republicans, full of Tea Party-fueled notions of ideological purity and soused on Grover Norquist Kool-aid, own this shutdown.

BLAH BLAH BLAH--Strip printing more gloom about the shutdown, quoting, of all sources, the government that is shutdown, the AFSCME union workers and others. They won't get unemployment for the first week so unless it goes longer than a week you can't count unemployment. Then, in the 2nd week, the UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE will kick in and there will be a cost, but clearly not as much as it costs to keep folks working. If this hype were true, when private sector businesses need to cut costs they wouldn't lay folks off...but yet they do. Man is this end-of-the-world non-stop blather from the Strib and the government getting old. The shutdown hurts. With government as large and intrusive as it is of course it will hurt. So does the underlying DEBT and structural deficit that is in place. But you can't propose a budget that grows 6% in the biennium, you just can't.

Where is the Governor when we need him? His inexperience in political office as a leader hurts the citizens when he draws a line in the sand and says that is my compromise--take it or leave it.

Can't have the millionaires paying their fair share. Good job GOP. Greed over People.

looks like Dayton made a mistake.

Should have kept the employees on the payroll and stopped paying the Gov and the Legislature and turned off their AC and deleted their security guards. Bet that would have fixed this in short order.

We should just admit we have too many state union workers. Fire half of them and move on. No one is really seeing any big impact on their lives with the shutdown. Why are we paying for health care coverage for the union? Let them use their union due slush fund.

Why doesn't the Strib balance this article by providing an estimate of the money that will not be spent during the shutdown. Tax receipts will continue so it's not as if there is this expense burden but no revenue. How about some balance in your reporting?

Private businesses can lay off people at no cost to themselves, briley - so they do. But, as the article points out, the public employees still receive insurance benefits and 50% of their salaries - so there's a cost whether they work or not, and the net cost is higher when they're not doing any productive work.

"Tea Partiers, in demanding even more cuts in government help for average citizens and even more tax cuts for the rich, represent only the most deluded part of middle-class America...The only answer to this American crisis would seem to be a reenergized and democratized federal government fighting for average citizens and against the greedy elites. But – after several decades of Reaganism, with the “free market” religion the new gospel of the political/media classes – that seems a difficult outcome to achieve." How Greed Destroys America by Robert Parry