Page 28 - Arent Being News Today

Real suffering going on out there from people who have been furloughed, from people who need their paychecks, from people who depend on various social programs that arent being funded right now. but to a lot of people in this town and in the building behind me, this is a showdown and one side has to blink, to an extent. so thats why you have senior obama administration official going on background to say that they think theyre winning, they do, they think the polls indicate, which they do overwh...

The other side is refusing. >> brit, now we have had 800,000 plus federal workers furloughed, sent home. but essential government employees are t at work. is this a shutdown or is the word slimdown more accurate and does this distinction even matter when we discuss this? >> it does. look, there is a great many people not at work. their government functions arent being carried out. there are applications for programs and so forth not processed. there is a lot of work not being done. people will i...

Now, we may not know the full impact of this republican shutdown for some time. it will depend on how long it lasts. but we do know a couple of things. we know that the last time republicans shut down the government in 1996, it hurt our economy. and unlike 1996, our economy is still recovering from the worst recession in generations. we know that certain services and benefits that americas seniors and veterans and business owners depend on must be put on hold. certain offices, along with every n...

Members dont spend nearly as much time in washington working together as they did in the past. they spend a great deal of time running back home, raising money for the next elections, so they dont get to know each other in the same way that members of congress used to. >> okay. lets look at the bigger picture, because you were one of the people who signed this letter from the u.s. chamber of commerce saying please dont do this, congress. please dont shut down the government because it is going t...

If the government shuts down at midnight on monday, millions of people will be affected. and while the military will still be expected to report to duty, many troops may not get paid on time. joining us now from washington, vivian greentree. shes a navy veteran and the director of research and policy with the blue star families. vivian, thanks for joining us. tell me, what are you hearing from the military families with blue star? what are their biggest concerns? >> well, we know from our resear...

Liberties. but in this case, the threat is really pretty minor. >> really does show us, though, that the veneer of civilization is really very thin. anything like this can just make -- throw everything upside down. >> it also gets to this idea that were kind of arbitrarilily drawing the line of terrorism, right? if we take terrorism as the grand -- more grand concept of instilling terror in the population and you look at just recent mass shootings, we want to just connect terrorists to people wh...

We would sacrifice a lot of our liberties. but in this case, the threat is really pretty minor. >> really does show us, though, that the veneer of civil lags is really very thin. anything like this can just make -- throw everything upside down. >> it also gets to this idea that were kind of arbitrarilily drawing the line of terrorism, right? if we take terrorism as the grand -- more grand concept of instilling terror in the population and you look at just recent mass shootings, we want to just c...

Literally walk down the south side of chicago demanding that people act and turn in folks. what is the next step here? >> well, in my opinion, i mean, i think that chicago police are doing what they can do and communities are trying to fight back. were all fighting back. my organization is an organization that responds to families in the aftermath of violence. and unfortunately, we have over 100 families in our network who have lost children to violence in this city. what i think the next step i...

In the sense that they are very strict rules. in other words, staffers and aides are not permitted in these meetings and note taking is not allowed. a number of things that i think will be, you know, will be on the agenda and on the table when it comes to reforming. first of all, when it comes to, you know, when it comes to the 75% statistic that is really mind blowing. we are talking millions and millions and millions of bytes of internet data and many can include mundane conversations youre ha...

Where do you think about where we are now? do you think we would have already had a woman president? >> you kind of thought so. back in 92 i was on the board of the womens hollywood committee which was the largest democratic pact on the west coast. when you have that effect of both senators getting elected you thought it would keep growing. instead it expanded a bit and seemed to short of stop. so i think -- i think a lot of us thought there would be a president by now. all of these other countr...