Here are a few more articles worth reading on the meltdown triggered by Congressional ultra-conservatives and their backers.

First, from Forbes, not a liberal rag, comes this tale I missed the first time around (“Guess Who Pushed Hard For Obamacare Subsidies For Congress Before Using Those Subsidies To Shutter Government?“).

Here’s the abbreviated story (but you really should read the whole thing).

When Obamacare was signed into law, including the provision requiring Members of Congress and their staffs to purchase their healthcare on the exchanges to be created under the law (with the exception of committee staff who managed to exempt themselves), there were no subsidies made available to these people beyond the subsidies they would be allowed to access on the exchanges if they earned a low enough salary to qualify.

This, understandably, struck many in Congress—particularly among the Congressional staff who do not get paid very much—as grievously unfair given that the overwhelming majority of Americans receive their healthcare benefits through their employment, complete with employer contributions covering a large portion of premium costs. Yet, employees of Congress were being denied this same benefit and all because Senator Charles Grassley wanted to try and embarrass the Democrats—an effort that not only failed but backfired on Grassley’s colleagues and their employees.

Now, Politico is reporting that—based on a treasure trove of emails that have come into their possession— it was none other than John Boehner and his staff, busily working behind-the-scenes with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who fought mightily to reinstate government contributions to the healthcare benefits that Members of Congress and their staffs have always received.

The Politico version, cited by Forbes, can be found here.

Then there’s Bill Moyers’ discussion of the conservative groups trying to push the House ever further to the right (“The Ten Hardline Conservatives Pulling the Strings of the GOP Shutdown“).

If there’s only a relatively small group of lawmakers who think defunding the law is a dandy idea, why has every budget resolution with such a provision won more than 200 Republican votes in the House of Representatives during the showdown? Why is this supposedly silent majority of Republicans so docile? Why don’t they push back?

The answer lies in the clout wielded by an extensive web of non-governmental conservative groups supported by mountains of dark money. Those groups see the Affordable Care Act as an existential threat to their worldview and their party and have waged a multipronged campaign to kill it in its cradle. Theirs is the ultimate inside/ outside strategy: They fund primary challenges from the right by upstart candidates against incumbents they view as insufficiently pure. When those true believers get into office, these groups promote them relentlessly to the party’s activist base – filling their re-election coffers with donations by portraying them as courageous mavericks fighting against ossified “RINOS” (Republicans in Name Only). They mount “public education” campaigns and buy ad blitzes, and they coordinate messaging among friendly voices within the conservative media.

An interesting Truthout column looks at the media’s failure to put federal spending in context, and calls for better reporting in this important area (“The Tea Party and the New York Times Shut Down the Government“).

A CNN poll from 2011 found that the typical person thought foreign aid accounted for 10 percent of the budget. The actual number is less than 1.0 percent. The poll found that a typical person thought funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) took up 5.0 percent of the budget. The correct number is 0.012 percent. It is not surprising that if people think that these and other less popular areas of the budget account for much of the government’s spending, they might be willing to see extreme measures to cut spending.

This is where the New York Times comes into the picture. It is the media’s job to inform the public about the budget. They are clearly failing badly. A major reason is very simple. When they write about the budget they almost never put the numbers in context.

As a result, readers might hear that we’re spending $15 billion on foreign aid or $400 million on the CPB and think that this is a lot of money. Of course it is a lot of money for anyone other than Bill Gates. Almost none of us will ever see this sort of money in our lifetime. But it is not a lot of money for the federal government.

And the Center for Economic & Policy Research has a handy dandy calculator to assist in converting budget amounts into budget percentages.