Is the GOP really just extortionist

 Robert Reich

17 years ago I had to tell 15,000 employees at the Department of Labor that they had to go home without pay and I didn't know when they'd get their next paychecks. Today the same message is being delivered to over 800,000 federal workers, and almost a million more are being given IOUs instead of pay. The right-wing radicals in the Republican Party don't really care that their extortion has led to this -- and possibly even worse in two weeks when the debt ceiling is to be lifted -- because they don't like the government of the United States. They and their wealthy patrons, who have been financing non-stop ads against the Affordable Care Act and bankrolling even more extreme candidates in Republican primaries, would like to "drown the government in the bathtub" in the words of their guru, Grover Norquist.

Above all, they want Americans to believe the reason they can't get ahead no matter how hard they work is because government is giving their tax dollars to the "undeserving" poor, thereby distracting attention from the fact that almost all the economy's gains continue to go to a small group at the very top.