Rest easy, furloughed workers! The good news is that to celebrate all this winning, Fat Nixon will be sponsoring free meals for you every day – all the Flaming Hot Cheetos and orange soda you can eat and drink! Huzzah! God Bless the Republic!
I am a contractor for a large federal agency (SSA). Technically a state employee but funding comes from SSA, and we have been affected by earlier shutdowns. SSA is currently funded, however, so we’re not affected. Not directly anyway, we do have need to work with other fed agencies which are furloughed.
And I feel kind of guilty, like I should also be furloughed. I’m proud of the work we do, and I’m pissed as hell that so many of my fellow gov’t workers are having to go through this. No one is in this for big money, obviously. It’s a job, but it’s one that I feel good about, serving my fellow citizens and not just boosting corporate profits. And for the GOP to shit all over these workers, using them as pawns for the ego of a certifiable madman just enfuriates me.
They’ll bend over backwards to further enrich the already obscenely rich, but will piss on the folks that are actually making this country work, for really a pittance, despite the obstacles and insults put forth by the likes of Trump and Scott Walker and all the other grifters.
I guess it is as it ever was…
Gee, whoda thunk that forced laborers would attempt to collect unemployment compensation? I mean, don’t they have blood they can sell and children that would fetch a decent price from Hillary’s Ping-Pong Pizza Basement Teenage White Slavery Ring?
And since the FDA can no longer do food inspections during the Trump/McConnell/GOP shutdown, have fun with that projectile diarrhea, folks!
Are there no orphanages? Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?
Hmmm… what will this do to the January unemployment numbers that have shown nothing but job growth for the last several months?
I haven’t believed these numbers anyway, but if we are still seeing unprecedented growth, I think we can pretty well deduce that someone’s been cooking the books.
Obviously, those federal workers working without pay are not having much of an impact on the economy or the unemployment rate yet. Expected UE numbers this morning were projected to be at 220,000, they came in at 213,000. I know they represent just 800,000 paychecks out of 129,000.000 full time workers in the US. That’s less than one percent. When they do get paid eventually, that money will go back into the economy.
This market is weird. The 2011 shutdown resulted in a downgrade of our debt rating and a large stock market selloff. With a Republican president, the market just yawns.
Depending on the state bureaucracy, they’re unlikely to see money before the shutdown ends (unless it drags on even longer than we expect) but they’ll have to pay it back anyway.
Here are honest unemployment / inflation / GDP numbers, calculated way back last June. Unemployment then, the real data, shows 21.5% unemployed, 10% inflation, and no Growth, with all worse numbers by now. Everything else you read that is positive is of course government’s distraction / disinformation / dishonesty:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49632.htm.
Those figures do not include support contractors - in some offices the percentage of contractors to full-time Federal Employees can be 50% or more.
And then there’s the secondary effects - the restaurants, etc. losing business because their clientele can no longer to afford to spend money on little luxuries.
And with Delta Airlines announcing they already expect to lose $25 million in January because of the trump shutdown , the economic impacts will grow rapidly.
On Tuesday, JPM, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo reported mortgage business declines of between 25- 30 percent.
Auto manufacturing is way off. Steel prices fell a lot. I can’t understand why the market is not selling off by at least a thousand points.
Natural gas is rising, it’s getting cold and will stay cold for at least 3 weeks in most the country. Farmers are hurting and many will have trouble financing in the Spring. No reaction at all in the market.
Thank you for your service.
A friend of mine is a claims person for SSA - like you said, funded by the SSA but employed by the state.
She’s terrified that SSA funding will run out and she’ll be furloughed. A missed paycheck would blow a huge hole in her finances.
One of my daughter’s friends from high school is a contractor in the government.
She posted this morning on Facebook that she will receive no back pay from this shutdown, as she is a contractor rather than an FTE. She was asking her friends in the area if they had ANY kind of small job she could do for them to help stave off the bills while this gets settled.
The kid has a masters degree in Diplomacy and International Commerce. So it’s not like she’s a panhandler or anything.