Afternoon coffee break: “No end in sight”

Photo: Martha Foley

To the bewilderment and frustration of many, the government is still partially shut down, and it looks like it will stay that way for some time.

That sense of frustration subtly comes across in this post from NPR’s The Two-Way blog.

We said it Tuesday: “No end in sight.”

The story’s the same a day later.

Pardon us for being repetitive, but there’s no end in sight to the partial shutdown of the federal government.

Here’s the latest on the standoff. The President has asked House Speaker John Boehner to come to the White House tonight at 5:30 p.m. ET. It’s unclear what’s supposed to come of this meeting. Harry Reid has also directly appealed to Boehner in a letter, pleading that the House end the stunt, and then hold the big debates after the government is funded. He argued,

I hated the Iraq war. I think I hated it as much as you hate the Affordable Care Act…In those days, when President Bush was Commander in Chief, I could have taken the steps that you are taking now to block Government funding in order to gain leverage to end the war. I faced a lot of pressure from my own base to take that action. But I did not do that. I felt that it would have been devastating to America. Therefore, the Government was funded.

Boehner and other Republican leaders in the House, for their part, have proposed to reopen some services for now, like Veterans Affairs and garbage collection. Democrats rejected that proposal.

Congress is still scheduled to find a way to raise the debt ceiling in just a couple of weeks. If the impasse and partial shutdown interfere with that, “the fallout could be scary and far-reaching.”

We have reporting on how the shutdown has affected New Yorkers so far – here, here, and here.

Today, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander said the agency stopped collecting Americans’ cellphone data in 2011 because they “didn’t have ‘operational value.'”

The Affordable Care Act is rolling out as planned. Many people experienced difficulties as they tried to access the new health insurance exchanges today. Some of the online exchange sites, including healthcare.gov, are overburdened.

Americans living abroad are giving up their citizenship because of a law that will require them to provide the IRS with detailed information about their overseas earnings. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act takes effect in July 2014.

In local news, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is launching the New York State Tax Relief Commission. In a press release from the Governor’s office:

the New York State Tax Relief Commission…will identify way to reduce the State’s property and business taxes to provide relief to New York’s homeowners and businesses…The Commission’s recommendations will be due by December 6, 2013 for inclusion in the Governor’s 2014 State of the State message.

St. Lawrence County won $33,000 in a court settlement over recent cases of welfare fraud, as the Watertown Daily Times reports.

And the Biodiversity Research Institute is launching what it calls “the largest ever” study on common loons.

Coming tomorrow on The Eight O’clock Hour:

Brian Mann talks in-depth with Assemblyman Dan Stec about the future of environmental regulation in the Adirondack Park.  Stec was a pioneer of local water-quality rules in the town of Queensbury, but he’s skeptical about reforms being proposed for the entire Adirondacks.

Hundreds of Catholics from around the region were in lake Placid Sunday for mass celebrated by Pope Francis’s personal representative in Ameica.

How do you say “comptroller?” With a “P”… or not? We go to the top for the answer.

We’ll talk with a long-time volunteer at the Strawberry Festival in Wadhams, NY. Each June in the small Essex County community, hundreds gather to enjoy strawberry shortcake, music and festivities.  It’s been an important local tradition since the 1860’s, and will be honored by TAUNY this month with a North Country Heritage Award.

On the next Natural Selections Martha Foley and Curt Stager talk about volcanoes and whether, like hurricanes, volcanoes have a season.