Calling the game by its name: the Government Lockout of 2013

The Republican Party has, over the last 40 years, become experts at the art of framing – tailoring your message to the predispositions of the audiences you are trying to reach.  Between Sarah Palin’s oft quoted (and not quite dead) Death Panels, the Tea Party’s continued focus on federal spending as the source of Great Recession (As opposed to the financial dereliction of Wall Street), and the NRA’s outright lying about the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill, right wing politicians, pundits, and interest groups are more then willing to bend their story to inflame passions when they think it will get them a political victory.

Sadly, the Main Stream Media (MSM) seems to have taken a few pages from te Republican playbook as they describe the . . . dereliction of duty  . . . going on in Washington DC at the moment.  The MSM, the Republicans, and even Democrats keep referring to what happens when the federal government runs out of money as a “Shutdown.”

Bollocks.  What is happening now is nothing less then a classic Management Lockout of labor in a dispute.  Except here, federal workers are not being locked out because they (as labor) are demanding better working conditions or more wages (even as a part of the profits).  No, labor is being locked out of doing its lawful work because Management and owners (here the politicians and the 1% who fund their campaigns) no longer agree on what role is whose, and more importantly they no longer agree on what the outcome of the American Political System is supposed to be.

See, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) does two main things.  First, it brings more people into the health insurance system.  This ultimately drives healthcare costs (and profits) down, since more people will benefit from preventive care and from lower cost treatments.  Second, it mandates how that insurance must care for patients, most importantly by removing the bars on preexisting conditions.  Again, that will eat into the profit margins of health insurance companies.

SO the 1% have deployed one group of their manages to do battle with the others.  The result is labor will be locked out, Americans will suffer, and the 1% will NOT get the comeuppance they deserve. 

That is, until the federal government breaches the debt limit ceiling, and markets tank.  When that happens, locking out labor will no longer be a sufficient tactic to keep the 1% in the level of greed to which they wish to become accustomed.