Tales From the Shutdown

As always, I learn more from the Horde then they learn from me. First from our own moderator Kathleen:

I'd like to advise everybody to keep a safe distance from each other until our national public health institute is back up to full strength. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are facing a reduced ability to detect and investigate disease outbreaks. The annual influenza program — the one that tracks the flu and helps people get flu shots — has been shut down. The CDC has also stopped offering its usual assistance to state and local authorities, who rely on the agency for help in tracking unusual outbreaks."

So, the flu program has been shut down right as flu season begins. And we just have to hope there are no unusual outbreaks of disease, since we won't be able to adequately track or respond to them. Gee, what a worthwhile risk to take, even if just for a few days!

I do appreciate James Fallows' point that:

As a matter of substance, constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it. The United States can afford it only because we are -- still -- so rich, with so much margin for waste and error.

However, some of the idiotic and noxious consequences of the shutdown, like our inability to adequately monitor infectious disease, have no respect for wealth. It's a roll of the dice that everything will be fine. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but Lord, what a pointless gamble.

Some science from the folks who keep us safe in the skies:

I work as an air traffic controller in a facility just outside of Washington, D.C. Our airspace extends from South Carolina to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and then along the southern half of Pennsylvania into New Jersey. By the time an airplane departing an airport in that area leaves 10,000 feet or is more than 30 miles from its departure airport, it enters our area of responsibility.

Last year, we handled just over 2.5 million flights, which makes us third behind similar facilities in New York and Atlanta for total flights handled. If you are an air traffic controller with a current flight physical and any current position certifications (i.e., the ability to work a given piece of airspace unsupervised), you are part of the exempted or essential employee base, and therefore are expected to come to work.

However, there is no plan for how we are to be paid during this time, since all of our payroll employees are furloughed (and the Department of the Interior's people who actually cut the checks/EFTs for most of the other federal agencies are too). Any leave for vacations, illness or personal emergencies is to be counted as a voluntary unpaid furlough until the government is funded again. If you had booked a wedding and a honeymoon a year in advance, you can still go, but you apparently won't be allowed to use accumulated leave to ensure that you are paid for that time.

If a family member is sick and requires your help for an extended period, the same conditions apply. I would imagine this is playing out the same at the FBI, Customs Service, TSA and several other agencies where people are too valuable to furlough but not valuable enough to pay on time and in full.

Contra Fox News, calling this a "slimdown" is bullshit, and it's dangerous bullshit. I am in a position to go a few pay periods without borrowing money to live, but I don't know that I am the rule rather than the exception among exempted federal employees. If you want to see how well government services function when the providers are worried about paying the mortgage, you need only wait through October 13 to find out.

More coming. As always if you've got particular experiences, like our commenter above, feel free to email me.