Comment by nikatwork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nikatwork | Hacker News Reader

This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the primary purpose.

> That doesn’t seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, however.

The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official email went out to all webmasters with the message "Shut it down NOW, people. And then go home." The assorted webmasters then executed the shutdown with varying degrees of skill and diligence before heading off for a drink. Thus, some subdomains are still available, redirects are implemented inconsistently, etc.

Here's a list of agencies[1] exempt from the Antideficiency Act[2], a more interesting question would be: are any of those websites down?

[1] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf (p13)

[2] http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackgrou...

> The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money

You write like there's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing. There isn't. This is the natural consequence of not setting a budget, which many different sides had different purposes to not set.

Ostensibly, the consequences of a government shutdown are, supposedly, lower FUNDING to pay for some government service. Given this, it would seem that HIGHER spending would seem ridiculous. Financial motivations in cases like this are supposed to override anything else. The motivations are clearly NOT financial.

So the belly-aching about how A and B are suffering because of a lack of funding is not necessarily true. It could also be to make this situation seem worse than it is. In public discourse, the squeaky wheel gets the funding.

> You write like there's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing.

I'd say there's a grand unified purpose at the upper govt level to make the shutdown hurt as much as possible, as alluded to by those mentioning Washington Monument Syndrome. At the lower levels, it's probably more a diffused feeling of "fvck 'em, now we're not getting paid, let's shut it all down". And you've raised a very good point about liability elsewhere - why take chances?

Nobody is going to analyze the most fiscally effective website shutdown configuration and enforce it. It's not in anyone's interest, which is why I find these articles a bit silly; it's just another excuse to spout anti-gubmint rhetoric.

A much more interesting angle is, "how can we alter our two-party system to prevent these kind of Red vs Blue stalemates"?

Right. Bosses in the government are not any more amused by these legislative shenanigans than we the people are. The more things that are broken, the louder people will complain and the quicker the bosses will get their funding back.

This is a rather simplistic view of "bosses in the government."

Sure agency heads and managing directors might have their own opinions on the shutdown, especially since they were nominated by President Obama (or appointed by someone who was). But they have their own responsibilities as stewards of an agency. One responsibility is ensuring the agency acts within the law and shields itself from liability. Shutting down a website is a very reasonable measure for minimizing liability when there is no one around to ensure accuracy of content.

That's a fair point I suppose but I suppose it depends on the website. In general rules and regulations change at a pretty glacial pace. It would seem easy enough to place a disclaimer at the top of every page stating something to the effect of "No email will be answered and the validity of this information may in some cases not be up to date due to the government shutdown". A government website is a public resource that we paid to put into place so as far as I'm concerned it's not really acceptable to shut if off when it takes almost no money and more importantly staff to simply keep it up.

With all this talk o liability, would it not be cheaper to simply add a disclaimer to every homepage, etc, saying "due to the shut down some info may be inaccurate"?

I imagine that might be even easier than going through the steps to ensure a website goes offline. But, that would avoid spreading panic and pain, which is what the powers that be want in order to score points.

It's like the April sequestration all over again.

You're missing the point: people can't touch anything until the shutdown ends. You put up that disclaimer and go home for awhile. Tomorrow, you have drive fail or someone defaces it tomorrow and you cannot – by federal law – fix it until the budget passes, so you're basically hoping the essential staff — who, remember, are juggling a ton of new responsibilities – notice and can at least pull shut it down without causing too much extra damage.

I understand that absolutely CAN happen though in my experience it's fairly rare. However, it's akin to shutting down all public roads because a few may develop potholes we can't fix until funds are available. You are removing a critical resource from the hands of people that paid for it in the first place.

Congress is removing it, not the federal workers following the rules. If you don't like the laws or don't like the way they're stalling on authorizing spending, contact your representatives and express your displeasure.

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