If part of your house can be blown away by a tornado, you do not live in a "tornado proof" house.
It's all about punishing people as much as possible for the shutdown, thinking that they will get angry at the GOP and vote them out in 2014.
Everything this administration does is motivated purely by an "us vs. them" mentality and an obsession with power that it doesn't have anymore.
"In order to sell more video cards, we set BaseMosaic to 3 screens."
.... yes, technology does not kill jobs, and it creates new, better ones. But, those new, better jobs usually require more skill.
The telephone operator had to plug jumper wires into a board. But, a telemarketer needs to know how to use a computer, customer relationship software, a credit card interface, and other tools and utilities. A call center support technician needs to know even more.
So, unless and until people learn to increase their skills, they will be relegated to sitting on the couch bitching about technology eliminating their jobs.
I've been assuming that for years.
I've been saying this for over a decade. We are living in complete and utter denial. The average American is more concerned with what's happening on their favorite TV show than they are about what's happening in their own government - and it is made obvious by the fact that we keep electing a Congress that only 10% of us approve of.
And to answer your question: No, I do not think it can be fixed at this point. There is too much debt, too much oppression, too much corruption, and above all too much apathy to ever be able to recover.
It makes no sense to actually catch all the drug dealers. Then, there would be no reason for the government to spend billions of dollars militarizing local police forces to wage war on US Citizens.
The "war on drugs" is a money and power grab, and nothing more. It's an excuse to put local cops in control of armored personnel carriers, fully automatic machine guns, riot gear, and other weapons necessary to oppress The People.
The government is actually spending MORE money to close these resources than it is keeping them open.
An example is the closure of the memorials in DC. Normally there might be one parks officer roaming around them, but under the closure, there are dozens of park police manning the barricades to ensure nobody can go see them.
It's all political theater. The Administration (and don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit of an R or D is in the white house - they both would do the same thing) is doing today exactly what it did with the sequester - it's punishing the American people as much as it can.
Most of the sequester cuts were planned in a way to have the greatest negative effect on people, and these closures are being executed in the same way. Government is not happy that it has lost it's money source, and it figures the only way to get it back is to go around kicking people in the face to get them to scream at the people who control the purse strings.
It's despicable. Instead of doing their jobs and negotiating the best possible compromise between all interested parties, they've become a bunch of extremists (on both sides) who refuse to negotiate. It's "my way or the highway."
Obama in particular ought to be ashamed of himself. He campaigned on a platform of unity and leadership, and he has exemplified NONE of it. In fact he's the biggest one going on national TV proclaiming with pride that he refuses to negotiate.
Fire them all. Seriously. Every last despicable goddamn one of them.
Taxation has proved in the past to be a very effective and safe behavior modifier.
An annual $100/lb overweight tax would probably do the trick quite quickly and eliminate probably 80-90% of all new diabetes cases over the next 10 years (considering that 90% of all diabetes cases are of the voluntarily-acquired Type 2 variety).
Finally, after all this time, the US Government is the size it is supposed to be, and doing only what is "essential."
We've been paying for "non-essential" bullshit to the tune of trillions of dollars every year for a decade now.
"Natural gas-burning power plants that benefit from a glut of cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half."
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion