This lies at the feet of Trump! He has no idea or respect for the value or workers..... this is so sad - shameful. The impact could obviously be long lasting & devastating to our country. The knowledge, skills, and loyalty to our country that is being frittered away - stepped on by Trump who is absolutely clueless to the value brought by workers... unless they are cover up artists or deal makers.
4
I fear it's part of the point: "Starve the government till you can drown it in a bathtub". The aplause lines will fade, the brain and skills drain will be felt for years to come: in air traffic, in food safety, NIH, in the FBI and State departments...
How can we Americans be so self-destructive?
5
The ill will toward government employees comes from trying to get anything done and having to deal with low-level clerks who can't be bothered, who act as if they are doing you a favor by just showing up. Live in the DC area for any amount of time and you will see that 80% of these people could be fired and the same amount of work would be done. NASA scientists aren't the problem; however, they are few among the incompetent majority who perpetuate the idea that government workers are lazy.
3
If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Please make sure the Times follows up on the net losses to agencies and the net effect on credit scores, savings and health of workers from the shutdown. And then make sure those follow up stories run frequently throughout 2020
9
Pelosi and company are taking a long weekend so these guys will be out of work for at least another week. Perhaps it's time she stop acting like a spoiled child, stop sticking her tongue at Trump and stomping her feet? Maybe act like a responsible adult and come to some compromise?
1
with the guy who said Mexico will pay for the wall, who said he owns the shutdown, who takes his policy direction from Fox and Friends and who in his latest proposal buried a lot of anti-immigration changes in it? surely you jest.
7
The attitude toward govenment workers described in the article reminds me of what public school teachers endure-just a bunch of lazy dummies putting in their time to collect a pension. Plus they get all those long holidays. Needless to say, there is now a teacher shortage, especially in STEM courses. Why would anyone go to work for organizations whose workers are disdained? I hope the NASA workers all get jobs where they are well paid and whose brains/ideas are valued.
5
When I finally got fed up with state civil service, I took my PhD to the private sector and doubled my pay. I will not be surprised if multiple bureaucracies experience a real "brain drain" as a result of this mindless Trumpshow. That is bad for all of us
5
Having been transformed into what my Haitian ancestors called a forçat (one pressed into forced labor), I go to work daily doing forensic legal writing for the DHS. And with my legal background prepare to sue the government for my exorbitant inconveniences suffered during the shutdown.
3
Putin is loving this. His plan is working, probably better than he could possibly have imagined.
7
This is step one, on the way to drowning it in the bathtub. That's why Trump doesn't care; this is the plan.
9
And this is how super-powers end.
5
All part of he presidents plan - a way to thin out civil servants he doesn’t like since he can’t technically fire them. Just another reason he belongs in PRISON.
3
An education? A PhD? All the more reason for Trump and his precious base to dislike you. Apart from that, the actions of Trump, McConnell and Republicans demonstrate that they believe that a government paycheck is little more than welfare.
3
Highly educated and skilled workers in critical government jobs already sacrifice enough by working for the government and being paid far less than in most private industry jobs. Now they find out the government, led by Trump, doesn't value their services enough to pay them. Why should anyone with real choices want to work for the government? I'm not playing the false equivalency game: Trump and his sycophants in the GOP are the cause, the sole cause of this shutdown, but our government workers have to look out for themselves and their families.
2
As one of those postdoctoral fellows at NASA and someone who dreamed of working at NASA as a kid, this shutdown is extremely demoralizing. I too have been actively recruited by SpaceX and it is extremely tempting to jump ship: SpaceX has an exceptionally inspiring and ambitious vision from which I could derive just as much meaning from my work but get paid 2-3x more and most importantly, never feel like my work isn't valued. Even when this shutdown ends, who's to say the next one won't be even longer? I want to do my work even while not being paid but am told that I'm not allowed to. This is madness.
5
This is the end game of the conservative fantasy: break government to prove it doesn’t work.
5
If any of these individuals can better themselves, they should if, on balance, a government job best suits their interests. I think some would be surprised at the difference in working in the private sector. The rather fat government benefits are much more rare in organizations that must pay its debts and control its costs.
2
So sorry for your predicament. Millionaires and billionaires never felt the pain, and they have no idea about reality.
Only continuing their ideology, which is hurting others to comply with their right wing media talking heads.
Please do whatever you need to do to live. They have no respect, nor understanding of humanity. Whatever you do, please remember 2020. The continuation of our democracy depends upon it!
And thank you for your service!!!
2
Policy disagreements should NEVER shut down our government. If you are not aware of the value of people who work in our federal government, and the value of what they do, and the pay cuts over time = low salaries, I encourage you to learn about this. These people and these jobs are vital for the functioning of our country.
Do you know how many bank loans in small towns and rural communities are funded by the USDA? Yes, business loans.
Do you realize your food is inspected to ensure its safety so you don't get sick or die from it? If you think companies would do this on their own at the expense of profit, I would like to sell you a bridge.
Have you ever had to wait for a long time to get help from the IRS? Congress cutting funds mean less people trained and available to help you.
Where do you think many business ideas come from? Private sector? No. They don't pay for research, that isn't "profitable" in the short term. The bulk of research comes from government which private businesses profit from: the internet (you are using it now), insulin for diabetes among other pharmaceuticals, weather forecasts, electric cars, ... the list goes on and on.
Exactly who do you think collects the data to forecast the weather? Who gives you tornado and hurricane warnings?
Who inspects airplanes to make sure you don't crash on your flight?
Ever heard of FEMA?
Disease outbreaks? Who manages those so they don't become epidemics where millions die?
etc. Learn!
4
Repeated shutdowns of Federal government demonstrate how actually governing would solve our problems, except our biggest problem - the inability of the GOP to govern - blocks solutions to other problems.
1
Putin must be delighted with the outcomes of his work. First he takes over the executive branch, and now he uses that power to turn congress on itself, and have the government bureaucracy self-destruct. (Not to mention the FBI, TSA, etc.)
Not going to be much left by the time he’s done with us.
4
“People have forgotten what public institutions do and the roles that they play."
This line precisely sums up the problem with conservatives and to a much greater extent, the GOP as it is now. While they're crying and whining about how government is the problem and less regulations are better (notwithstanding the fact that they've apparently no problems with restricting access to women's healthcare), they forget that government does play a role in our country. And in every country. Always has, always will.
But no, these people are so far up their little la-la land where low taxes and privatization can solve all the world's problems, conveniently ignoring the lack of mandatory paid leave, maternity leave, the cause of the subprime mortgage crisis, etc. Oh, plus someone bailed out General Motors and other car companies, I wonder who? Oh yeah, us, the taxpayers.
But privatization solves all problems, right?
3
Federal employees will be paid for lost earnings when they return to work. Federal Contractors? Not a penny.
1
My first thought is for those who have been caught up in this political quagmire. There should be no point at which honest and hard-working civil servants of any professional level should be paying the price for politicians' intransigence. Secondly, though, I think there is a broader international tendency to denigrate those in science who work for government (the Brit. derogatory term is "boffin"). The men and women who happen to be science-based in their careers and be employed by governments seem to bear an inordinate share of disdain from civil society. The people in government who generate and provide basic data such as drug, food, environment, earth, climate, and space-based knowledge are among the first to be shut down, muffled or castigated for not towing the government of the day's political or moral agenda. This is not just an American phenomenon, it happen in my own country, Canada. Some political regimes are more aggressive than others in shutting down science and fact-based information. However, the current American situation has added more aggravation to a longer, ongoing frustration for government scientists from many disciplines. Maybe industry and academia are the only realistic environments left to carry out honest research, applied or otherwise.
"there are usually companies willing to offer them much higher salaries — double or even triple in some cases — on top of the free lunches and stock options."
If these folks are so valuable to private industry as full-time workers, why aren't they doing lucrative consulting work during this furlough period (for which they will eventually be fully paid)? If the NYT is correct about the market-clearing wage for a science Ph.D., shouldn't this article be about brilliant NASA scientists making $500/hour solving problems for delighted customers?
(Note: I used to work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, writing software to support the work of physicists. That was some years ago, but I don't remember recruiters from private industry knocking on the doors or besieging the scientists with phone calls.)
6
The current state of affairs of expecting and, in some instances, requiring federal employees to work without pay can be considered holding them as "hostages" being used as pawns or bargaining chips by our elected representatives.
These employees are told by a Commerce Department official to "take out a loan" rather than accept donations from a food bank or similar support.
Ask yourselves what is the rest of the world thinking about the United States - the leader of the "free world". Our nation will pay a high price for this behavior.
7
Basically, I have no sympathy many of the government workers, especially, the scientists. Why?
First, from many of the press reports, there are stories that they can't make ends meet. (i.e. ran out of money). From this it means that they can't save or even manage their own personal finances. How can I expect them to manage a billion dollar space budget?
Second, in industry there are always layoffs, shutdowns, businesses sold. etc, with the result that people lost their jobs. Being without a paycheck for 30 some odd days is nothing compared to the private world.
Third, a lot of the government jobs pay well and are rather cushy, even in recessions. 30 days without pay is nothing to what industry felt during the 2008 recession.
5
@Peter
In the industry, people get severance pay with lay off and such. Some of the scientists might still have student loans, maybe they are taking care of elderly parents. It takes awhile to save up 6months of living expense. Some of these people work in areas with a high cost of living.
2
@Peter I don't think it is accurate to say "30 days without pay". They are guaranteed to get paid eventually. It is more like "a paycheck delayed by 30 days".
(Separately, some of the government employee credit unions seem to be offering 60-day interest-free loans via their web sites, so I'm not sure why these resourceful workers are going to food banks (if the NYT is to be believed).)
1
Educate yourself about what the salaries are and what the cost of living is. Policy disagreements should not put 800,000 people out of paid work. This is different from a recession.
3
Articles such as this always give me pause. Unlike the claims of the liberal Times readers, I am a conservative who knows the value of government employees--having once been one. My son is currently a Chief Warrant Officer in the Coast Guard and going without pay.
On the other hand, I have never encountered a government office with rule-making authority that didn't display some indifference to logic and the real-world consequences of those rules on private industry. On top of which, these same offices always, always have between 10 and 20 percent of their employees who contribute nothing. As anyone who has dealt with such agencies knows, saying "no" carries fewer risks than saying "yes" for government employees. Getting to "yes" is, therefore, an expensive endeavor.
Having been a private consultant for many years, I am grateful for the obtuseness and intransigence of some government employees. Without them, far fewer of my clients would require my firm's services.
This article is cherry picking a bit in that it is focused on high end scientists. The bulk of government employees are not scientists, but clerks, inspectors, etc. who do not have PhD after their name.
It is my hope that this closure will soon cease and my son and others will be paid, but I will not join the Times' chorus of uncritical praise for government employees. Nor will I call efforts to downsize government "evil Republicanism." It's often just good management.
3
I always hear about the other opportunities these federal workers could accept in the private sector. I say go for it. Nothing is holding you back. I suspect they have a pretty sweet job with the feds that they could not get in the private sector.
3
Yeah, it's like they are begging them to come join them. if most of these workers could, they surely would. no one wants to go without a paycheck.
The GOP are paying these scientists all high wages and benefits. I suspect they want them to quit and then pay cheaper labor and have worse working conditions for the new people. Watch for this scenario .
3
What's galling to me is that the people who most ardently wave the flag and profess their patriotism are the same people who attack the federal government and spend all their time trying to reduce their taxes.
How do they think this country gets things done? Roads, bridges, aircraft carriers, rockets, the military, NASA, satellites, the Coast Guard, the best scientific research on the planet, and a whole host of other services and benefits that we receive cannot be paid for by saluting the flag and professing your patriotism. It takes cold, hard cash.
These are the same people who are responsible for this shutdown. That's not a coincidence.
16
@I. M.
Stalin made the same point about collective farms.
Although we are starting to acknowledge that we need new Canadians of all educational and social backgrounds a PhD gets one a lot of points for would be immigrants to Canada. Our government scientists, engineers, economists and sociologists have job security and they are listened to because they deal in facts not ideology. That is why we are optimistic about the future. We don't care what race colour or creed, you are welcome to be part of our family.
Toronto is a minority majority city but if you learn French our Quebec Government owned financial institution and our Quebec government owned electrical utility are as well run as it gets.
I would like nothing more than seeing your country get its stuff together but when Michael Dell is called upon as a representative of economic thought I am not optimistic. When Paul Krugman and the late Tony Atkinson come up with 70% as a good ballpark figure as the top tax bracket and your nation scoffs at the idea I don't give America much hope at least until AOC is old enough to be President.
6
The diminishment of government and the pushing out of long-term dedicated civil servants from federal government is likely as much the real purpose of the shutdown as the stated reason of building a wall, rather than some incidental consequence. Trump and his masters don't need legislative accomplishments; they accomplish their goals through such diminishments of good governance. And the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" crowd need to start recognizing the importance of better funding government and diminishing the power of the billionaires through progressive tax policies, because Trump is result of the decline of the prestige and faith in government that the pro-corporate, pro-billionaire "social liberal/fiscal conservative" crowd are complicit in.
1
Show them the door. We can replace them with H1B visa holders from India. We will save a great deal of money and improve productivity. After all that is what is happening outside of government and I don’t remember them saying anything about that.
5
My advice to non-essential furloughed federal workers currently anxious about the partial shutdown: Get another job.
Maybe one in the dreaded private sector.
I realize that pension and other benefits are not as extravagant, and you will be held accountable in a way you are not now because you can be terminated for poor performance without years of "process".
But maybe you can find a job that you like more than the one you currently hold, and perhaps you'll find that is one that is really essential.
1
I think the ultimate goal of the GOP and their corporate overlords for this shutdown is to break the civil service and the American people's faith in it. Force the scientists and experts out of the various departments and into the private sector where they can be silenced by nondisclosure and noncompete agreements.
6
For Trump, science, like the press, is only a tool to assist you in getting what you want. Where this is wrong is that both science and the press exist to seek the truth, not to alter it to suit your purpose, which is unethical. But then again ethics is not a value in Trump's play book.
3
the shutdown is part of the plan to degrade and dissolve the federal government if the best and the brightest don't want to work for the federal government anymore that's part of starving the Beast as Republicans call it so it can all be privatized and all those taxpayer dollars will end up in private corporate pockets instead of recirculating in the economy not to mention there's no Freedom of Information Act when it comes to private corporate activities.
5
@christine It’s possible to put an even more insidious complexion on it, too. Michael Lewis wrote about this as “The Fifth Risk”, a brief but outstanding book which charges that politicians (like many commenting here) are stunningly ignorant about what these departments do, and can’t wait to slash and burn their way through what they arrogantly assume to be dead wood. If they do, it trashes a vital reserve of national capital in intellectual property, and possibly irredeemably. Now, if you accept for a moment the paranoid conspiracy theories that seem to be borne out daily by Trump’s bull in a china shop approach to things he doesn’t understand — ie, most things — and supercharge them with notions of an Alien Power manipulating him to cause as much lasting damage to the US in as short a time as possible ... it starts to look scarily like a pretty effective, high pay-off strategy. Can’t recommend the book highly enough — you won’t be able to sleep when you finish it.
[Full disclosure: *NO* interest or acquaintance with the work or its author whatsoever.]
2
"“you at least felt like the whole country was behind you when you said, ‘I work for NASA.’ Now it’s absolutely evident that only 40 or 50 percent of the country is behind you and the other 40 or 50 percent think you’re some sort of fiscal drain.”
It is heartwrenching to see that these Trumpsters, Trumpettes and presumably Republican-leaning 40 or 50% think anything that is good for the society is a waste.
How long before they meet the fate they really deserve?
3
Forcing people to work without pay is called slavery and was abolished with an amendment. So deeming people “essential” and not paying them makes this shutdown illegal.
If all the people not being paid could not show up for work, e.g. TSA, the economy would come to a halt and there would no longer be a shutdown.
1
Having immigrated from India, where govt. bureaucracy is notorious for corruption and bribery, the ignorance of the anti-govt. folks in the US makes me want to scream. These people have no idea how good they have it. A few years ago when I got an IRS notice demanding explanations (I had made errors on my return), my heart sank imagining months and years of being plagued by the IRS and dire consequences. But lo and behold, a month after I'd sent an explanation, I got a letter saying the case had been resolved. My father in India couldn't believe that a tax issue was actually easily solved, without my having to bribe some govt. official.
Americans who believe that federal employees are just layabouts need to spend an year in India dealing with Govt. bureaucracy. They'll quickly realize the value of what we have here in the US.
8
"If public service loses its allure, it will make it harder to recruit and hold onto the experienced and talented."
This is a feature, not a bug. No, the goodwill, sense of duty, and feelings of pride of civil servants is not limitless. Eventually, smart and talented people will get tired of being not only underpaid (or uncompensated) for their hard work and talent. They'll also get sick of offering their services to a government (and a certain segment of the public), that appears to get its kicks from belittling and demonizing them at every turn. They'll leave public service, or they won't enter it to start.
When that happens, what positions remain will begin to be filled by mediocre to poor talent. Important positions will be awarded based upon wealth and political connections, other than loyalty. Whole sectors of government will be awarded to the highest bidder (no doubt with vague promises of producing profitability and improved efficiency, but in reality resulting in poorer service for greater costs). A new spoils system will assert itself.
All the while, Republican politicians will point to the dysfunction such policies have generated and say, "See, government never works. We need to make it so small you could drown it in a bathtub." And the mischief will continue.
5
Good! they would be much better placed in the private sector.
1
When an employer for no reason related to you or your conduct treats you like the Government does its workers right now, it is perfectly and morally OK to fight back, e.g. stay home from 'work' even though your employer tells you you can't do that. By totally ignoring you, your employer ridicules and disrespects all rules that governs your relationship with each other. Why should you respect your employer when he doesn't respect you?
Maybe this is the point of the shutdown.
Convince federal workers to go get jobs elsewhere.
If nobody will work for the federal govt, it'll be crippled.
Remember Grover Norquist said he wanted to shrink the government down so it was so small he could drag it into the bathtub and drown it?
The rightwing GOP has spent decades belittling and insulting federal workers.
Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign manager, said his goal was to "smash the administrative state."
This administration is trying to make sure nobody will feel safe working for the federal government.
That's one way to dispose of the federal govt.
Make it such a poorly functioning unreliable mess so people don't trust it anymore and don't want to deal with it.
This whole fiasco is not happening by accident.
Nobody has ever been as anti-government as Trump and the people around him.
Don't listen to what they say.
Watch what they're doing.
They're pile-driving the government into the ground.
8
Look at this photo. Many non-born in America faces I would hazard. Thanks to them the US has prospered. Now we have a failed President who wants to stop them from coming with a wall. How have we let this happen? Control by the narrow minded leads to failure to thrive. At perhaps the most critical time in our history. Who voted for this man? Why are so many supposedly successful wealthy people like Ann Coulter supporting a future which could be mired in their ill-conceived bigotry?
2
perhaps in the wake of this they and other concerned Americans could run for office, vote intelligently and clean this mess up.
just a thought
1
These guys can get private jobs. Only our country will lose. Who cares?
Ah yes, make America great again. This article and the comments by the brilliant and talented scientists who are leaving government is so depressing. What a profound loss for the country.
4
Trump ordered the shutdown; yet suffers none of the hardships being borne by the federal employees and the public. By destroying our system of checks and balances, Trump and the Republican senators have egregiously attacked our democracy. Tragic
1
Thus ended the American Dream.
1
My husband is an optical electronics engineer. He works at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA; he is a federal employee. He works on astrophysics research.
He has been furloughed without pay under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution. He cannot take side engineering work because it violates the non-compete clause in his contract. He received an email this morning ordering him back to work tomorrow without pay. Refusing to work without pay amounts to quitting.
He took the job at SAO last September after 10 years doing astrophysics research in the private sector, being paid on "soft money;" grants from the National Science Foundation and the Dept. of Energy. He used to get abruptly laid off every time the Republicans in Congress refused to approve a federal budget and the grant funding was held up.
He has been a federal employee for 3 1/2 months. When he decided to take this job he felt that it would be secure, that he'd never be laid off because he was being paid with "hard money" as a federal employee, and he could stay in this job until he retired if he wanted to.
Who we voted for is irrelevant. My husband works for the American people, not for the President.
Donald Trump is a disgrace to every American.
149
@L Nancy Pelosi is to blame much more than Trump. Nancy's position is that a wall is immoral because it discriminates against people of color, whereas Trump's position is to bring in as many people of color as are qualified/educated/high tech etc. by reforming immigration policy. Trump could care less if someone has skin color as black as coal from India or Haiti and only cares about qualifications and merit-based immigration. Who is immoral? Is it Pelosi who does not care about taking low skill jobs away from American citizens and replacing them with low skill immigrants? By the way, many of the Americans who will be replaced if we follow Pelosi's morality are persons of color. Now who really is immoral here?
3
If their resumes look as good as this piece implies--they could be making as much or more in the private sector within a couple of days. No problem. Not sure what all the noise is about.
1
Incredibly surprised that people with skills or phd as they say don't have money for a rainy day. Also, The private economy currently has a labor shortage with the lowest unemployment rate in decades.
2
Perhaps it is time to occupy the White House. No violence, just 100,000 people pouring onto the White House grounds. Let the world see President Trump airlifted to Camp David by Marine One. Bet Maduro in Venezuela is laughing at Trump; his country may be a bit chaotic but his government is open.
2
As a PhD scientist myself, I would warn those government workers with PhDs that most PhDs and especially those that have worked in government roles do not have the personality or emotional makeup to weather the risk in private sector capitalism. Most PhDs in the private sector end up with startups or the equivalent in larger companies, where one has to produce research results fast that work. If you cannot weather the risk of a shutdown for 1 month, good luck in weathering the every day risk of either producing or being unemployed in the private sector.
There is only one safer haven than the government for PhDs. It is a tenured academia job. Tenure-track academic professor jobs are extremely hard to get and pay very poorly, but are very risky because there is no assurance that one gets tenure.
Welcome to real world if you cannot handle the risk of a one month government shut down.
4
@Dan
Tenure track academic positions are hard to get, and tenure is challenging to earn. Nowhere else in the professional world does an individual work on a 5 year trial period and suffer the vote of their peers to determine their future prospects. Security or the adjunct wheel of pain? It's not for the faint of heart or the thin of skin.
After tenure, the endless churn of state and federal governmental interference for political gain is a hard influence to counter. Most of my tenured peers, myself included, are exhausted with keeping up with the constant reporting and oversight we are now required to perform to satisfy the overlords of funding.
Tenure does offer security and a guarantee of survival in old age, but the financial sacrifices many of us make to serve the common good mean that we earn far less than we would in the public sector. Of course, our institutions have to offer something to compensate for the loss of earnings over the course of a 30+ year career as a teacher. Why would we take the jobs otherwise?
As a state public servant, I'm appalled that 800,000 civil servants, dead wood and all, are held in financial hostage to the whims of people who have no idea of the sacrifices those civil servants have chosen in service to the common good.
3
Government workers are going anywhere. They all receive a pension system that is simply unavailable in the private sector, federal holidays off, great health insurance, they accrue time off for simply showing up to work, again you can't find this anywhere in the private sector. The idea that these government employees could double their pay assumes a lot. Government employees are purportedly servants of the people yet none of the people they serve have pensions. You will not see see mass exodus, because their are simply too many benefits. Book it.
7
It’s my understanding federal workers contribute to their pension funds in lieu of participating in Social Security. They do not accrue Social Security benefits, as one would in the private sector.
10
@aristotle My daughter works for the federal government and has a standing offer from a private sector employer to double her salary, whatever it might be. Her skills are much in demand but she is committed to do right by the country she has chosen. And her stock options in 3 years would replace all she has accumulated in more than 2 decades paying into the federal pension system. Patriotism, not payoffs, drives her.
And you?
23
@aristotle
I worked in the private sector and had a pension, a 401K, health benefits, an expense account and a reasonable salary. (and flew business class)
Another step in the eventual privatization (or cancellation) of government services. It’s time for a People’s March!
11
Donald Trump, with the enthusiastic support of the GOP hiearchy, has a short con and a long con. The short con is to focus attention on himself and to get richer despite his bad business judgment. The long con is to destroy government.
The key question is why they are committed to destroy government, especially when the elite have become so rich with things the way they are? My best answer is because chaos makes for more opportunities to loot the economy and compound wealth. I've always remembered a comment someone made to me decades ago: rich people never think they are rich enough.
22
@Bob Garcia "My best answer is because chaos makes for more opportunities to loot the economy and compound wealth."
You are correct. This is an attempt to inflict "disaster capitalism" upon the United States instead of the usual suspects like Haiti or Tanzania or Iraq.
The big question is why so many non-rich Americans are firmly committed to supporting this agenda by people in Trump's income bracket and effectively providing the rope for their own hanging.
16
I couldn’t have said it better, Bob. It is all as you say.
I'm a furloughed fed scientist (28 years, 6 shutdowns). I will be returning to collect my back pay, then will be putting in for retirement instantly. I want it processed before we shut down again after the next pointless short-term CR lapses.
I'm going to go teach . . . and advise my students to stay away from federal service.
34
@Mtnman1963
I can understand your choice...however....we still need good people working for NASA, NOAA, EPA,..etc. and I would recommend rethinking the idea of discouraging your students from government work.
1
@Glennmr When an engineering student who is beginning to look for a job, who I have taught (adjunct at this point) and mentored for a couple of years, asks me what it's like to be a fed, I'm not going to lie.
"If you want poor pay, limited chances for advancement and a system that crushes the soul out of you after 5 years, go right ahead!"
1
"But in the fall of 2013, Congress could not agree about a budget amid a Republican crusade to defund the Affordable Care Act. So, to his astonishment, the government shut down for two weeks." This action triggered the sequester for the military. I was not essential, it turned out, so I was turfed. The only reason I came back in was to complete my time and vest in my pension. There can be no loyalty under circumstances like these. The fools behind this shutdown want federal civil servants to be turned into at-will employees, every one interchangeable, every single one forced to declare loyalty and pay for the privilege of working. There isn't a single civil servant who doesn't know what's going on in plain sight. The ones who can go, will.
10
@GWPDA
I remember that shut down. I have a relative who works for the government - military. Oh, the trauma! The injustice! How, HOW could the president do that to him? How dare he be furloughed! Why, his job was important - no, essential! - to national security! Now, of course, he is a DJT supporter. His department is not shut down, so not a peep from him. Curiously, his social media feed, usually full of “respect our military” flag waving, has also been shut down. Not a word of support for the Coast Guard, for example. The selfish hypocrisy is depressing.
1
In other news, those who are unemployed may want to look at getting a job with Walmart. Walmart hired over a thousand drivers last year and will hire a similar number this year. Applicants do not need a college degree but must have a clean driving record. The drivers will earn about $87,500 a year which is a lot more than many college graduates, including teachers, earn.
3
The loss is just not NASA, but NOAA, NIST, NOAA, NREL, EPA, CDC, FDA, NIH, etc. The United States will fall behind in government funded research to Europe, China and Russia.
Let's face it, while people question research on climate change, genome mapping, drug trials, etc.; private industry does not want to spend the money to fund research. They only spend money to use government research findings, or fund research that will make them huge profits.
And, let's face it, there is no profit in m mapping mice genomes and comparing them the the human genome. Nor, is their profit in smashing atoms to create no matter. Nor, is their profit studying ice bore tubes going back thousands of years to determine climate patterns or changes in the atmosphere. Nor, launching satellites to fly by Pluto or look for extrasolar planets.
By the way, the next time you look at your GPS, or want to know what time it is, there is a shortwave radio station called WWVB, and the atomic clock just about 12 miles from here, which is run by NIST. I personally know the researcher who wrote the software that synchronizes time on your computer, smart phone or GPS.
By the way, if it weren't for NASA, and the Space Race, it would have taken much longer to invent transistors and micro technology to run your computer, cell phone, GPS, etc. Also, the invention of medical technology.
Think about that they next time you say government workers are a waste of money or lazy.
44
the fifth risk by michael lewis asks what happens when the people who start running the government don't know how it works or even whether it is even necessary? (chaos and mismanagement are givens.)
answer: shutdown.
19
Loss of government workers isn't a bug--it's a feature. Republicans have been very good at portraying government workers as overpaid, unnecessary freeloaders. We've seen Trump trying to make them the object of resentment because they have decent salaries and, until now, decent working conditions, thanks to their unions. (No talk about trying to bring other workers up to the same salary) As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, it's the same old routine: 1. Underfund the department you'd like to get rid of 2. Wait for it to become non-functional 3. Privatize the service. 4. Collect donations from the grateful corporate owners who got a windfall. As if we could have better services provided by private companies, who will underpay their employees, and cut corners on pollution control and ethics of all sorts.
22
just remember. it takes 2 sides to keep a shutdown going. trump made a compromise offer and pelosi responded with a no compromise counter offer.
it took until i awoke this morning to come to the stark realization that nancy pelosi cares more about allowing non citizens the ability to enter the country illegally than she does about working american citizens.
6
trump's offer was no compromise. First, it was, as admitted by the White House, loaded with poison pills. Second, it asked for the original $5 billion for a wall. Third, trump offered to undo the damaging actions taken by him towards DACA, even though his administration has taken the issue of executive overreach on DACA to the courts. And now he can undo it, by executive order that he says is unconstitutional? This offer was a poor joke.
2
@bored critic
Perhaps it took you so long to reach that conclusion because it is erroneous. It is DJT and Mitch McConnell who do not care about working American citizens. After all, if they did, they would have prevented this shut down back in December when Republicans still controlled the House and the Senate. But DJT, under pressure from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, suddenly changed his mind. Now McConnell is refusing to negotiate, saying he will only pander to DJT’s vanity and ego. Good for Speaker Pelosi for standing up to the immature bully DJT. Somebody had to have the courage to do so. Obviously no Republicans have the nerve to do so.
4
Trump is misusing his powers to suppress congress. It's not mainly about the wall. It's about how he or others will use his new power in the future.
2
I laughed out loud when I saw the headline.
I work with a GS-14 who has a Doctorate of Education from Harvard who teleworks twice per week and pretty much sits around the other three days in the office whining.
When I suggested that she try working in a different office or agency where her skills could be better used, or even retire and work for a non-profit, she said no. She couldn't get the pay, benefits, and schedule flexibility anywhere else. So, she planned to stay in place collecting a paycheck for the next 4 years, even though she can retire with full benefits today.
Your tax dollars at work ... so to speak.
13
I lived in a 3rd World Communist country and the smartest people became engineers and geologists. Their logic: 1. immune to the whims and dangers of politics; 2. International conferences. Would these folks be so lucky!
2
Government works to prevent or head off problems. Private companies work to clean them up or protect their employers from them or move them somewhere else. The police try to reduce crime. Private security guards just move it somewhere else and make criminals work harder and smarter. Public prisons can try to rehabilitate; private prisons will try to make money and do not get paid for successful rehabilitation (which would eventually shrink their business).
Private companies compete with each other for the opportunity to compete with government (the real competition) to get paid more for doing less. The weaker government is, the more it will lose the competition with its vendors and contractors. Cleaning up after natural disasters is an opportunity for contractors to make extra money; contractors who evaluate who gets how much disaster relief can make more money by stretching the evaluations out and being strict about the rules so that the relief money goes to them instead of disaster victims.
Private inefficiency thus creates good jobs cleaning up messes that could have been prevented. Health hazards create jobs for treatment workers (diabetes is big, profitable business), so government attempts to deal with them are made ineffective.
4
Been there. Done that. When I started work at NASA Ames, 35 years ago, the US led the world in science. When I left to move into industry, 25 years later and several government shutdowns, we'd surrendered. And Trump's shutdown is making things even worse.
This is not the kind of damage you can repair overnight, in a month, or even in a year. And it leaves us bereft of scientific talent at a time we may need it most. The only consolation is that Europe, China, and Japan may continue to forge ahead as America falls behind.
23
For Trump, science, like the press, is only a tool to assist you in getting what you want. Where he is wrong is that both science and the press exist to seek the truth and to alter the truth it is unethical. But then again ethics is not Trump's strong suit.
7
Those of us who have spent our careers in the charitable, not for profit sector, holding together social service programs that serve the sick, mentally ill, disabled, poor, addicted, and disadvantages citizens of this country, know what it’s like to have people question our meager salaries and opine that volunteers could do our jobs. We rarely have the representation, retirement plans, or benefits that public employees have, and we, too, are extremely vulnerable to shifts in public and private funding. Still, society expects us to pick up the slack for the human collateral damage of our society. This shutdown should open the door to a discussion of how much ALL of us who choose the path of service are ill-appreciated and under compensated.
21
@Judith Simpson I worked in non-profits for 10 years and loved it. But I needed to pay the bills, so I got a federal job. I make almost $140k, get 26 vacation days, 13 sick days, 10 federal holidays, a matched 401k-style Thrift Savings Plan and a defined benefits retirement (30% of my salary for life).
What's not to like about that?
8
I'm shocked to read that government employees are quoted as saying they don't feel support from the people in general. Propaganda spewed on television and from the White House should be ignored. Support for furloughed workers has been impressed in the form of food banks, financial concessions (e.g., dropping co-pay charges) by physicians and other medical workers, and other groups around the nation. I believe their work is highly valued by a large proportion of citizens. The rest are too dumb to understand their widely varied and essential role.
12
At a moment in history when the explosion of scientific knowledge should lead to a greater sense of security and more confidence in the future, Donald Trump steers the US ship of state off the edge of the flat earth.
Bon voyage.
19
Trumq and his government wrecking crew are hoping for exactly this kind of frustration: get experienced, motivated and skilled to leave government.
Shrink and hobble agencies' capabilities, efficiencies, oversight and regulations. Prove that government is in the way and can't do the job. Privatize what's left. Then shrink the downsized government in the bathtub.
This is a cynical revolution, determined to undermine democracy and make the US yet safer for our oligarchs and corporate princes.
12
If you’re furloughed, picket GOP Senator’s and Rep’s offices, have sit-ins, make it so they can’t ignore you. Only if you show them will they have to care. They are all billionaires.
2
Trump and the Repubicans are doing lasting damage to the Federal workforce, and thereby to the services of the entire country. This is going to be the worst lasting effect of this shutdown. Also this means the corporate world will have better access to the kinds of bright minds who work for NASA, the weather service, FAA, defense department, etc etc. I used to want to work for the Federal government, but would not consider it now.
3
The trouble with freedom is some people see it as an opportunity to succeed and others see it as a chance to rest easy. Without an educated population it’s two steps forward and three steps back.
2
Is it beyond plausibility to speculate that Donald Trump is knowingly and willingly doing Vladimir Putin's bidding in shutting down the government, and in so doing causing the chaos and weakened security that are Putin's long-term objectives? I think not. A clear pattern is beginning to emerge.
12
I have been a little shocked that the anonymous op-ed in the Daily Caller didn't receive more attention than it did when it was published, especially considering that the President himself endorsed it.
2
looks like another way to get less government is to make it an undesirable place to work.
3
This is what republican voters wanted. They complain about the government 24/7 and want to " shake things up". Congratulations. Now be a good soldier and go work without pay indefinitely. Don't forget to get a payday loan on your way home. And I almost forgot, stop by the food pantry and pawn shop, I don't think a garage sale will be a good idea in this cold.
4
Since their backpay was government guaranteed, all banks should have been loaning money INTEREST FREE
from the beginning!
2
@Marion - you tell the shareholder-owned, private entities called "banks" that they should loan money without interest.
The inequality scale that affects this country economically is reflected also in its intellectual and philosophical range of disparity.
Ignorance and acculturation are way deeper than in western Europe.
The economical pressure with no security makes people follow gurus like sheep at first turning point.
There is no sense of causality in the USA . The mystique of the so called " American dream " ( that was first written by a wise French man who got really abused- Crevecoeur ) fills up the rethoric like a magnetic field attracting people with no sense of direction.
This is exactly what Trump wants: smoke out and bleed out the federal government. In fact, destroying the civilian government is what authoritarian regimes do first as a means to consolidate power. Wreck the courts, FBI, intelligence agencies, oversight agencies. It is not a coincidence that only the military and its arm, the VA, were funded for the FY. This is a low moving coup by the GOP that simply does not want to accept the midterm 2018 election results so they are conspiring with Trump to just overturn the will of the people by just shutting down the government and be done with it.
If people, and I mean everyone not just federal workers, dont start marching and protesting, this is it. Trump's coup will be over and we wont have open and free elections in 2020. That is how serious this is.
1
The bottom line is that if you're a contractor working directly or indirectly for a Trump concern, you're not going to be paid. This is the lesson of Trump before he became president, and now that he is president as well.
5
If the Government here in New Zealand just stopped paying air traffic controllers to force the hand of their political opponents the sense of public outrage and condemnation would be earnest and immediate. There would be votes of no confidence in Parliament, public protests and a media maelstrom. Furthermore, members of our Parliament who are economical with the truth run into big trouble very quickly.
The tolerance the American people are displaying for the abdication of political responsibility implicit in the shutdown is remarkable.
If the affected workers just walked off the job backed by vocal public support and supportive general strike action then the shutdown would end immediately and politicians would be forced to do the job for which they are still being paid - to find sensible compromises.
What’s more a line in the sand would be drawn.
In an era of resurgent nationalism, one has to consider how a fine and educated people such as the Germans were subjugated by the Nazis and whether a similar tragedy could be repeated in America under Trump.
While it is reassuring that Trump is a minority-backed President, it is not reassuring that the majority is so passive in their almost week by week acceptance of the next unacceptable thing.
8
When Trump was a kid, I bet he threatened to break his toys, cause they were expensive, if he didn't get what he wanted cause he knew they could be replaced by his rich parents. The White House is not a daycare facility nor are American lives his toys for him to play with.
2
The GOP is just fine with the shutdown. It meshes perfectly with their little or no government plan. I'd call it a philosophy except calling a elevating the taking of bribes from their sponsors doesn't qualify. The let's kill Social Security, Medicare, Medicare or anything that does not benefit the rich or corporations is nothing more that unrepentant greed and objectively qualifies as treason. Corporations are not people and elevating a non living thing over the interests and needs of real people is the biggest betrayal of all.
2
I work for the federal government. And I am an astrophysics geek. Still fail to see how re-creating the atmosphere on Venus matters. To basically everyone.
Let me guess, astrophysics to you is basically pretty pictures? if you truly were an astrophysics geek, then you'd understand the importance of such research. Given that the Venusian atmosphere is the nearest case of a runaway greenhouse planet, I would imagine studying it would be prudent given our own dire predicament on Earth. Pretty important to everyone really...
2
It isn't just the shutdown. The entire Trump Administration has a demonstrated contempt for education, knowledge, expertise, experience, and indeed for public service itself. These kleptocrats are bent on destroying our government and that's the only thing they are good at.
9
MAGA. We can do that, by shutting our government down over a petty political pique fed by an egocentric president who, according to former Defense Secretary Marine General Jim Mattis (ret) has the mentality of a 5th grader and therefore, by definition, an IQ of 10; a House Speaker with plenty of smarts but apparently unable to concoct a simple compromise that would mollify a two-year-old; and a Senate Majority Leader who lacks even the spine of an earthworm and carries less moral conscience.
We can do that by running off the brightest, highest educated, and most critical public workers we have, and discouraging other motivated similar workers from choosing public service.
We can do that by distorting, even more, an already bloated income and wealth inequality system, and disrupting our tax, federal budget, and national debt system beyond its current state of dysfunction.
We can do that by continuing to rape and pillage our environment and advancing our infatuation with fossil fuels until the impacts of climate change overwhelm us before the end of the century.
We can do that by ensuring that a system which fosters unequal social, legal, and economic justice continues unabated.
Those who ignorantly, or of malice, malign our overworked and under-compensated, and now unpaid federal workers may form a vocal majority but are in a distinct minority. Such reactions do not align with their professed goals of making America great "again". And they call themselves Americans?
4
Those who CHOOSE to work in govt have no right to complain. Private businesses downsize, restructure, freeze compensation, etc. The trade off has been ‘security’. Live the ‘free life’ of capitalism in the private sector!! Academia is largely white collar welfare; sone federal agency offices have academia-govt revolving doors. Check out many of the ‘leading professors’ - they will have worked in govt. these contacts then feed grants to academia — GRAFT!!
3
US' Air Traffic Control is understaffed because of the refusal to sign by POTUS flatus narcissus. Can those controllers who are attending in the Washington DC airspace be shifted to other airspaces, thus making those better staffed? The DC airspace could then be made unavailable. This would improve air safety elsewhere, leaving the only people inconvenienced by this to be Representatives, Senators and those allegedly working in The White House.
1
College students depend on the NSF to provide lab training through summer research programs they fund. With the government shut down, and funding questionable, thousands of students studying stem degrees will miss out on real training and a resume builder for graduate applications
Our country does not benefit by terrorizing those who traditional designed the products and services that fuel our next economy. I guess they can always go to Canada!
2
Did Wilbur’s recommendation for loans include a plug for his money-laundering Cyprus bank?
4
Oh, boy, not a good time to be a scientist in this administration — conservatives don’t believe in science. Just call Wilbur and ask to borrow a few million until the shutdown ends, in 2021.
Destroying American's lead in research and development will please Putin immensely and free his spies to spy on Europeans and his friend the Chinese.
1
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
George W. Bush
1
Haiku
What is the problem?
Manafort "worked" without pay...
Why can't fed workers?
Vlad is absolutely loving this self-destruction of American might. The judgement of history will be harsh.
10
New Rule:
Anytime our elected officials shut down the government, they don't get paid either.
12
That would quickly end this nonsense!
1
I doubt that - almost all of them are wealthy enough to get through a shutdown that went on for years. Not paying their staff might work.
1
Civil servants should speed up their protests, and cease working while unpaid.
4
“Shutting down” the government over petty political squabbles has simply got to stop. It is cruel, wasteful, and incredibly stupid. Republicans (who have been the cause of all the shutdowns since 1990 - yes, Newt Gingrich triggered a shutdown while George HW Bush was president) obviously feel that abusing US citizens is a valuable tactic. They need to be voted out; and then two new laws need to be passed: one that says in the event of a funding gap, the current budget levels will remain in place by default, until such time as Congress can agree on a new budget; and another that says in the event of a funding gap, no one working for Congress and the White House shall draw pay until the budget issues are resolved, nor shall they be awarded back pay, nor shall they accrue benefits for that time. This applies to all employees, elected and non-elected. Time to put the lid on stupid games and force Congress and the White House to do their jobs.
7
Putin couldn't have made a shrewder pick than Trump and today's Repubs to destroy American leadership.
4
It is quite evident that RepubliCONs, and in particular, Kaptain Kaos, don't believe in dedication to the United States and, therefore, can not fathom that anyone else could be dedicated to the betterment of the U.S. Their whole goal is to "drown government in a teacup". So why should they want to end the shutdown. This is getting them to their goal more quickly than they thought possible. They all need to be replaced ASAP.
2
America: Getting Greater Every Day!
2
Frankly, I'm starting to believe our President maybe intentionally committing political suicide.
He obviously HATES his job. Not nearly so much as I hate him having it, but that's another story.
Why else would he discard 800,000 potential votes so casually and cruelly. (Oops! I just remembered --- casual cruelty is his trademark.)
If there are any federal workers out there who plan to vote for Agent Orange in 2020, please give us your rationale.
'Cause here's the thing. I am more than willing to "feel your pain" and commiserate with my fellow citizens.
But, were you to turn around and vote for this clown two years from now? Sorry, these days I choose to spend my empathy more wisely.
5
@Maurice S. Thompson
Nah. He figures one of two things:
1. Most of the 800K out of workers are the Dem and Repub base so he won't gain votes (Dem base) or lose votes (Repub base.)
2. Who cares as long as he doesn't lose votes in PA, MI, or WI?
Take heart! I just read where the Republican government is recommending you all just take out loans! See how easy that is? Quit your bellyaching. Problem solved. (sarcasm)
What I don't understand is what will the government do if all the furloughed federal employees simply refuse to show up. Can't incarcerate them all...
4
Exactly. Wait until air traffic controllers go on strike or quit because they’ve gone a month without pay. Never mind TSA workers who only make $35k a year quitting. Won’t just shut down airports and airspace and effect travelers both domestic and international, but will shut down air cargo as well both domestic and international. That will quickly grind a lot of commerce to a halt, collapse the stock market etc.
There are four times as many government IT workers over the age of 60 than there are under 30. What hot-shot recent college graduate with a computer science degree would want to go to work with a bunch of geezer COBOL programmers? No wonder the government has difficulty attracting and retraining tech talent.
4
What’s your point and did you just make that up?
3
@Son of liberty - Oh yeah, why work for NASA when you create targeted advertising algorithms for Facebook instead? Woohoo, how kewl!
3
@Jim I teach college computer science. My students go into the workforce eager to work with the latest technology. Yes, complex machine learning algorithms beat 1950's COBOL hands down.
1
OMG I just solved the whole thing!!! Furlough all the politicians. Of course, they -- like air traffic controllers, coast guards, TSA agents, etc. -- still need to report for work...THEY JUST WON'T GET PAID!!!!!!!!!! :-)
1
The only ones who benefit from this shutdown are China and Russia.
How can ANYONE think Trump is not a Russian Asset? Everything he has done from the day he came down that escalator in 2015, has benefited Russia in some way. Even when sanctions were applied, Trump fought them all the way, then immediately diluted their impact, or worked to repeal them.
Then this shutdown. It’s a Russian Fever Dream of pure joy! Enough!
2
GOP is working hard to destroy America. People who are educated and can think for themselves are enemies of Republicans. GOP/Putin is very happy with the chaos Trump/GOP has created.They win; America loses. Ray Sipe
1
“It’s a great time to be a con-man in America” -Hulu Fyre Festival Documentary
This mistrust of our government employees, began under our nation's first and thankfully only elitist milquetoast hollywood actor ronald "Bedtime for Bonzo" reagan.
The "man" who lied about liberating Nazi concentration camps during WWII.
Fact is, reagan never left Culver City California for the duration.
Occasionally the gop's favorite president would go out on War Bond fund raising tours with hollywood actresses.
They'd raise funds for real Americans like JFK who actually fought America's enemies in REAL LIFE.
And don't even get me started on the right's other hollywood hero...john wayne.
Somehow john wayne avoided fighting for America in real life too.
But on screen, john wayne acted like a real man.
4
Meanwhile Trump’s lazy Trustafarian offspring fly to their vacation homes on government aircraft and eat cake
5
Their pay is just deferred. It's like unearned vacation for them, except those compelled to report to work.
They're overpaid & unproductive. Let 'em go get real jobs.
3
Easy to say. And overpaid and unproductive? Those are the people who do the complaining.
1
I have studied and worked in the USA, which still stands as a second home for me.
Government shutdowns are plain stupid. We don’t know what that means back here in the EU. No one would ever tolerate such an ignominious capitulation of common sense.
Lessons must be drawn from the present crisis to put a definite stop to this malpractice for good. Unite against the evil, bros!
2
And I just read the statement of the nice young City Council member in my town who hopes to challenge the Democratic Representative in our state. She's a Progressive, and "wants to be an advocate in Washington D.C. for progress on issues including universal health care, free college tuition, comprehensive immigration overhaul and “real and meaningful climate action,” including a green new deal." It may be that if the Democratic party embraces these unaffordable but heart warming values, and wins, there won't be any funding for federal science research. Please remember that there are budget cap negotiations coming up in March: maybe that will be a good time to contemplate reality.
1
The salaries for PhD researchers seem far to low for quality workers. Having been involved in the STEM based discipline for several decades, I can assure those who aren't familiar with typical graduates, only the very best can ever get hired by commercial enterprises. The rest shift, squirm and eventually move on to other careers . . . or alternatively the U.S. government.
1
Says the arrogant, smug old man who can’t understand how anyone could ever be motivated to work for other things than money.
2
@David Mangefrida
I know hundreds of fine individuals who are motivated for things other than money. NASA has been aware of the difficulty of hiring quality individuals for several decades. If you've read the Congressional transcripts, as I have, you'd find that NASA executives believe that they're falling behind in hiring the people with the right intellectual qualities. Yes, salary is obviously the issue. But when NASA officials testify to Congress about the falling quality of their hires . . . it's time to step up and provide more funds.
And yes, obviously there are individuals who are qualified and accept low salaries. But I'd sure like to see NASA get the number of exceptionally qualified STEM graduates. Direct knowledge gleaned from the Congressional records is not smug and doesn't show anything but a keen interest in our nation.
It will take generations to repair the US Government's reputation as a stable employer.
If they want to hire people with in-demand skills it will be much harder to do without paying a premium instead of offering "stability" or "benefits".
Having established with the labor market that any old notions of the government's credibility as an employer is shot, prospective employees are less likely to join unless they get the cash to compensate for the fact that they will occasionally not get paid for weeks on end in an unpredictable fashion.
1
And yet the feds are inundated with applications for every single position that is filled using an opaque and ultimately unmeritocratic process. I provided research consulting services to the government for 10 years. My staff were the cream of the crop. The PhDs we supported were not.
If they walk, there is massive supply of better qualified people willing to replace them.
2
At my current job, I have talked to several people who told me that they worked for the federal government. Every time one of them has told me, I have asked about their work and thanked them for working in the public interest.
The institutional damage wrought by this administration generally and this shutdown in particular will last decades, and too many of us have no idea what the repercussions will be. Unchecked, this is what will shake the foundations of our nation until they fall into the dust.
4
My friend works for the US Geological Survey. All people in his office have been furloughed. While this affects him by putting a freeze on all the on-going research they are doing, he also supervises three contractors who work in his office. He has said that these three people, because they are contractors, will not be reimbursed for time lost and it is having a serious affect on their ability to survive in a very expensive area. They are all young, just starting their careers and low on the pay scale to begin with. This is just so wrong.
6
I have a number of highly-educated friends who work for the federal government. They are not political appointments and they are not on TV. Most people would not have heard of their positions, and most would not understand what they do. But, their roles very important. They serve US citizens at home and US interests abroad. They came from the private sector - and took over a 50% pay cut - with a willingness to serve. These individuals have savings that make this shut-down uncomfortable, but not catastrophic (unlike, say TSA workers, etc.). But, I wonder how many are going to stick around and lend their considerable talents to political leaders who use them while serving an uninformed constituency that complacently allows those political leaders to abuse these workers. At a certain point, there is an issue of human dignity, and, believe me, these highly-skilled employees have options.
7
Please, do not lie to the American public. I am familiar a bit with the Ames research Center (my late hubby worked there for years). Some of the people working there are indeed high-tech (and by that virtue would have hard time working on space-related research anywhere outside of the Govt), but most people are not - they are the support people, many without degrees or with dismal ones, whose GS-12 to GS-14 yield them $110K - $140K a year with great bens, retirement, telework galore, 5-6 of vacation a year, and even commute costs payed by the US taxpayers. They won't walk away - nowhere else in the private sector would they find anything nearly as good.
4
I don’t think I have much faith in your estimation of these people given that you seem unaware of the fact that half a dozen private space companies now exist who are hiring people as well. Perhaps they do have somewhere else to go besides the government.
1
Well, the long-term demonization and denigration of civilian-sector federal workers is evident in the mixed comments uploaded thus far. The U.S. will not survive as a unitary intact country if so many millions of its citizens view civilian-sector federal workers as some kind of enemy class.
No country called the United States of Capitalism or the United States of Ayn Rand Land has ever existed, and for good reason. Countries have something called vital national infrastructure, i.e. public goods like sewage treatment facilities and roads and railways and airports and bridges and so forth. Handing over full management of this infrastructure to private entities motivated by profit is and will always be unworkable and a recipe for destroying any chances of a decent life for the non-wealthy majority.
5
Going forward it is easy to imagine that anyone contemplating a career in the public service will have to consider the risk of a shutdown and whether or not it is worth it if other options are available. Similarly, recruiting and retaining scientists, accountants and other professionals will prove to be more difficult. Who would want their life disrupted this way by political whim?
3
@Henry's boy
Agree, but it's not like the private sector provides any greater stability. It's more that the public sector is, to a limited degree, catching up with it. And I say that with sorrow, not at all with schadenfreude.
1
@Wine Country Dude
While it's true that you can be laid off at the drop of a hat in the private sector, I've never been legally required to work for several weeks for $0 paychecks like some of folks getting impacted by the shutdown.
2
Scientists and engineers can find interesting jobs in many sectors around the world. Few - save Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher - have become politicians, but based on their records more scientists should. Since the historians, lawyers, political scientists and, ah, the business folks, that bathe our government with their talents are mostly failures, it time for a few scientists to step into high places. Maybe one or two government employees, instead of moving to other country's labs, will jump into the political arena.
4
Why should economics not apply to the government and its workers? My job (that funds those workers in the first place,) wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t profitable to my employer.
3
@Roy "Why should economics not apply to the government and its workers?"
In my case, among other things I don't want the people at sewage treatment facilities who are in charge of making sure drinking water is potable to be motivated by the desire to turn a profit.
Do you want some sleazy private entity taking charge of such vital national infrastructure? Go ahead, move to Ayn Rand Land, and take your chances drinking water containing microscopic or even visible particles of human waste if that's your preference.
18
@Roy -
Because it is not the function of government to be "profitable".
It is the function of government to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
7
@ Roy
Because lots of valuable activities are not immediately (or ever) profitable and civilizations are judged on more than their revenue creation. See, for example, the last 5 decades of biological research funded by the NIH- the fruits of which are the reason we have all the fancy new drugs we do to enhance health span and, I might add, why for-profit biotechnology companies are making money hand over fist. Indeed, perhaps they should pay the government back for funding the fundamental science that allowed their formation to begin with!
3
That Twitter op-ed was written by someone describing himself as a "senior Trump Administration official" and he writes "roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots ...But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results." From what I have heard and read about the senior levels of the Trump administration, particularly in the White House, that may well be true!
As a university scientist, however, I know how my scientific colleagues in government work and how dedicated they are to scientific discovery. It was their hard work got us to Pluto and now to Ultima Thule.
Where have senior Trump administration officials gotten us?
10
@Bill White - it's also weird that the writer differentiates between "patriots" vs "feel no pressure to produce results". I'm always wary of people who toss in appeals to Patriotism, or Freedom or other loaded terms when they're not part of a conversation about, supposedly, worker productivity.
The current President loaded political hacks into every executive department shortly after taking office, party purity types - not administrators. Which reminds me, I wonder how many key positions in the Executive Branch still lack at least nominees for filling the positions?
I am glad speaker Pelosi is fighting for federal workers.
first person since the Reagan era to go to the mat for them.
Best speaker ever.
Maybe save a space for her on mt Rushmore
she is fighting for democracy.
9
Is this the plan for Republican Ayn Rand followers to privatize as much as possible government functions?
5
With all due respect, if you work at NASA, live in Cleveland and you don’t have 2-4 weeks reserves while waiting to get reimbursed, you’re doing something exceptionally wrong and this is a great opportunity to re-evaluate life choices. Not where you work, but rather spending and savings habits. Those failures will follow a person where ever they work.
No one hates people that work at NASA. You’ve just been spending too much time on the cesspool known as social media and the internet.
2
@David
Looks like the “all due respect” you mention is in fact contempt and derision.
1
@David - perhaps they're overextended with student loans they're still paying to get those PhDs, along with funding the job of raising a family, and if they were reckless enough to spend for Christmas, or foolishly let someone get ill during winter, well, you're right. Lecture them, because blaming victims is fun and easy, right?
And when you finish lecturing the 800,000 workers our President put out of work as a game of chicken with the Democrats (after his own party wouldn't fund the wall), go and lecture the tens of millions of other households that are also stretched thin, because survey after survey shows that that is the case here. Flat wages over decades contributes. Medical bankruptcies pre-Obamacare contributed.
PS - how long do you want them to wait for re-imbursement before you might think that someone who happens to be complaining about missing his golf should instead stop trying to get US taxpayer money for a wall he promised time after time after time we wouldn't pay for it?
I'm tired of people being hostage to 45's whims. It's bad for the country.
Good point. I had a friend who was an engineer with NASA and retired to a seven-figure dollar home, surrounded by more expensive homes on Casey Key in the gulf.
1
It is clear that Donald Trump is Putin's handmaid based on his treatment of federal workers. What Russia and other enemies of the United States could never accomplish on their own, Trump and the cowardly cohort of Republicans have done for them: to destroy the people and the institutions that have made America great. Many of the people idled by this senseless shutdown have a dedication to the strength of the Republic and to the well being of its citizens. Sadly, that dedication is lacking in what is termed our "political leadership". By weakening the governmental institutions which have been the backbone of our Republic, Trump and Friends have weakened the Republic itself, probably for years to come.
9
To all of the commenters extolling the virtues of putative superior immigrants' contributions to our country, just remember that we need all of these putative superior immigrants because our pseudo leaders have abandoned tens of millions of citizens by criminalizing and underinvesting in these marginalized citizens' human capital, in addition to selling them on the false idea of the American dream by saturating them in trillions of dollars of student loan, credit card and medical debt that is unparalleled in a modern industrial economy. Now, you know the hidden reason why we need immigrants of all social and economic statuses.
5
Federal Government Workers and private contractors
- It pays to save for emergencies!
- Get a loan from your thrift savings account!
- Apply to your state for unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other assistance !
@Sam Freeman,
For most it pays to save for an emergency.
But, if you are in insolvent red state from the old confederacy or the midwest, you don't have to save for anything.
Because year after year, decade after decade insolvent red states get free money from solvent blue states.
I guess it pays to be lazy.
3
Not difficult to connect the dots. The Republicans/Corporations benefit from hobbling government services and forcing educated talent to look elsewhere. Their aim is only to make money for these corporations and their friends. They don’t understand or value working for the public good. Short term gains in their lifetimes is their only interest. The exodus of this talent benefits these corporations not the American people - - and also opens doors for these public servants to look outside the US and seek opportunities in other countries which value and treat their people with much more respect. Love the quote “Minds bear no flags”. It’s a travesty and it all sits at Trump’s chubby little toes.
3
There are no scientists nor science inside the Trump Organization nor the Trump White House Cabinet nor White House staff.
Neither Donald Trump nor any of his spawn have ever been scientists nor known any science.
Thanks to Fred Trump Sr.'s New York City
real estate empire neither Donald Trump, Sr. nor any of his spawn have ever had to work for a living wage.
2
I pray the air traffic controllers stop working and the country comes to a sudden stop, and the GOP dreams come true.
2
They are all getting a fat paycheck to cover all back pay when this is done.
This would not happen in a corporation, you simply get laid off and you’re done.
Thank your lucky stars you will get back pay.
4
Governments will always be threatened by corrupt, greedy, selfish, people without ethics.
They can only be successful if they will stand firm against moneyed interest.
4
I have had several younger mentees in the public sector leave the industry because the salary is not enough to pay for housing, student debt, and plan for a family. The educated staff and tenured staff are leaving, good people with OPTIONS are leaving.
3
Solar panels, the internet, scratch resistant lenses, memory foam, image sensors, to name but a few are all a result of government funded research. The private sector simple does not have the resources to fund research that may lead to nothing - or in the case of the above mentioned, to inventions that transform our lives. We need NASA and all the other government agencies that provide things about which we can't even dream. End the TRUMP SHUTDOWN now and fund research that will solve the problem a wall cannot.
13
“What are they going to do next?” he asked on a cold morning in his quiet living room. “Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
No, Dr. Costa, they do not know, or care, what harm they are doing.
Aside from damaging the existing programs and the American people who rely on them, (and if this Trump Shutdown goes on much longer, many more people will be hurt), they do not understand that they risk convincing well educated people like you that working for the government is a lot riskier than anyone expected, and for which one has accepted lower pay for the presumed "security" of a steady paycheck.
I speak from personal experience. As a Ph.D. scientist working as a civilian for the Navy many years ago, I decided that I was better off giving up my federal job after 7 years for opportunities in the private sector. That was not pure nirvana, but I did well enough to get to a point where retirement is possible. (And I am well aware that I have been fortunate, but I took control of, and responsibility for, my career, and did not leave the path to "Mother Nature" or the whims of others.)
8
For Trump, science like the press is only a tool to assist you in getting what you want and should be there only when you want them to be. Where he is wrong is that both science and the press exist to seek the truth and to alter it is unethical. thus accounting for Trump's relentless attacks on ethics.
10
I just read that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said "“Put it in perspective, you’re talking about 800,000 workers,” he said. “And while I feel sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases, 800,000 workers if they never got their pay — which is not the case, they will eventually get it — but if they never got it, you’re talking about a third of a percent on our GDP. So, it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall.” The Commerce Secretary does not seem to know that there is a large work force of contractors that have lost their paychecks. And, unlike the federal employees, the contractors are never compensated for the lost pay.
How can the Commerce Secretary be so uninformed? Trump promised to hire "the best people" when he was running for office. The only people impressed with Trump's hires have either been Hannitized or received Limbaughdomies.
16
@Gary the Contractor - Wilbur Ross is a very wealthy man, who simply has forgotten (if he ever was familiar with) the concept of financial hardship.
So he doesn't care. He's now advising these people to take loans, with the collateral being "the government promises they'll pay when the tantrum's over". He didn't offer to cover the interest payments, or to cosign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/business/wilbur-ross-shutdown.html
5
this article makes me so sad for America, so very sad.
15
At the NIH, the petri dishes go unattended. The groundbreaking Alzheimer experiments set back months.
Did I mention the petri dishes?
15
This is the republican plan. By making it miserable to be an employee, good workers find a good job outside of Federal government. It is an insidious and almost unbelievable plan. But it's the truth.
Look, Reagan hated government workers. His infamous firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers rather than negotiating in good faith with them is one example. His "government is the problem" lie is another.
repubs do not want government to work because the billionaires who payoff the repubs do not want government oversight of their companies. That interferes with their monopolistic cartels that they wish to use to overcharge and underserve the citizens that they want to exploit.
7
“What are they going to do next?” he asked on a cold morning in his quiet living room. “Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
The lack of agency is stunning! The right question is: What are WE, the people, going to do next? America is not a cafeteria! That’s the bloody problem! Right now—as inverted as it gets—Federal workers are being asked to sacrifice for the greater good by preventing Trump from legislating by hostage taking.
800,000 workers being laid off for no good reason must rejected! Refuse to listen to its excuses.
It must be understood, the real problem is NOT the 800,000 workers; that will end. The real problem is our democracy's staves are variously giving way. What is happening, on numerous levels, cannot be stopped without historic self-sacrifice, the kind you read about in history books. I seriously doubt we have it in us to redefine and defend a new commonweal.
Any man or woman ever cheated on will tell you, beyond anything having to do with sex, money, etc., what hurt the most was the breach of trust and the resultant emotional vertigo, the feeling of utterly not knowing who it was that betrayed you.
I'm not reading any feeling of vertigo about the shutdown; just anger, fear, frustration, anxiety, etc., but not a lover’s sense of betrayal. No heartbreak is being expressed because there is no expectation social love.
It’s a cafeteria, America, not a lover: it's get what you can get, forget each other. We're reaping our civic philosophy.
4
When Trump was a kid, I bet he would threaten to damage his toys, cause they were expensive, if he didn't get what he wanted knowing that they could be replaced by his rich parents. The White House is not a daycare facility nor are American lives his toys.
2
This even applies to lawyers. I was offered twice my government salary to work in private practice and refused it because of my belief that we should have the best in government. We are the good guys. It was tough being disparaged as a lesser lawyer because I worked for the citizens of my county. Ordinary civil servants have kept our government and country going while Trump flails , pouts and spouts nonsense . Thank them. They do a hidden but essential job.
10
Unfortunately, the effects of Trump will last long after he is gone.
5
The relentless yelling into the abyss about this issue echos hollowly. Press coverage about the shutdown and immigration policies and issues have largely been devoid of critical thought and analysis. Linking border security and DACA is a promising start to a sensible compromise.
Unfortunately, our elected officials appear to be too interested in the optics of "winning" than actually governing. Once again our leaders (and the fourth estate) are playing red team vs. blue team instead of playing for our team.
3
The republicans don't believe in science unless it is from the Bible! They and Trump believe Alex Jones--Sandy Hook and the moon landing were faked to push a liberal agenda.
4
As quiet as it's kept, most of today's medical and technological breakthroughs have been funded by government research, not private industry. By crippling government funded research, we cripple our collective health, safety, and security. Unfortunately, by the time this fact becomes obvious (because of rising sea levels, floods, intolerable temperatures, undrinkable water, epidemics, etc.) it will be too late to do much about it. Only then will the rich and powerful come to grips with the fact that they are just as mortal as the rest of us.
5
This attitude is not new; my father worked diligently for the State of California Dept. of Air & Industrial Hygiene developing the science to clean up auto, coal and wood industrial pollution. Through the '50's and '60's the Dep't. made great strides working with industry and significantly improving air quality in the LA Basin and Pacific Northwest pulp plants.
When Reagan was elected governor in 1968, he repeatedly expressed disdain for state employees, ignoring the excellent work done in education, public works, transportation, agricultural research, public services, and set the trope that they were just collecting salaries on the taxpayers' back.
The attitude continues to this day so that unfortunately a huge part of our populace has no appreciation for the hard work and dedication gov't. employees bring to their jobs, or for the importance of their contribution to our economy and society. Gov't. can't all be outsourced to the private sector and the lowest bidder. If we continue down this road, we deserve to become the backwater swamp that we seem to be willing to settle for.
7
Draining the government of the good people who keep the engines of America churning no matter who sits in the Oval has always the goal. This shutdown is a feature not a flaw.
2
Since Ronald Reagan delivered this evaluation at his first inaugural: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." The Republicans have done all they can to demean government service, to condemn public education, and to promote substituting private services to replace government at nearly all levels. For the President to shut down the very government he leads and get approval from most in his own party shows what is now "this present crisis."
3
I've set up a Slack messenger group to connect scientists and engineers affected by the shutdown with employers who would like to put them to work. Sign up here: http://bit.ly/sos-signup-1
2
Lets not get carried away here. The damage done to people who are contractors for the government, waiters and waitresses, daycare providers, small businesses, etc. that dont get paid due to the shutdown, is immense. But to say that government work, with its pensions, good healthcare, civil service protections, stable salaries and unions, is less attractive because a handfull of people with Phds can find work elsewhere for more money but less stability, is misleading. I also take issue with the lack of reporting beyond calling people and asking how they feel. Research into statistics, academic studies, and interviews with experts in the field of the economics of government employment are conspicuously absent. All we have here is allegory, which I could find on some bored, out of work government employee's blog.
3
@Matthew
Yes, this one piece is not a multi year, double-blind study. But the point that government service has been denigrated by our “profit over people” officials and fellow citizens is not particularly in dispute.
The public sector, studded with luminaries who could have made much more for less fanciful work, is to be lauded. As a contractor, I work with many of these highly educated and (in my view) poorly compensated persons. They work in the public sector for a number of reasons, including job security, research funding, etc., but many reject private sector positions because of the difference they believe they can make working in the public interest.
I suggest that the dullards who would suggest that we have a cushy and ineffective public force to go and see how well the public sectors perform in other countries. They will soil themselves considering the poor condition of regulatory oversight on matters as diverse as aviation safety to food preparation guidelines. Sometimes, it takes a kick up the backside to learn that your next pacemaker will not be as good, the internet not as fast, or the ability to reach the stars not available unless you pay for it.
So, at least to my public sector colleagues, I have been advising them to leave. Why work for insults and low pay, especially when much of that is coming from the callous president himself?
4
Our policy makers just keep making one short-sighted mistake after another. It HURTS our country to erode our scientific capacity, just like ignoring climate change hurts us. It HURTS us and will hurt our children and grandchildren, in ways most of us won't even realize until the damage is done.
Losing our top government scientists is a really, really stupid thing for us to do. Add it to the list.
2
Being a "civil servant" is hard. You are required to put up with inane rules, and to try to run your life around arrogant bureaucrats who have little grasp of reality.
To this toxic mix, add an idiot. Or two, if you count McConnell.
I am a former republican . I feel horrible that I EVER supported the idiocy that they, (and Russia) now promote as "America First". What a joke trump is.
9
Party principles putting PhDs into POVERTY.
Nice work Dems and Repubs, all of you make too much money for the amount of work you produce!!
2
Good will and good intentions have a shelf life. I accepted a Federal Job during the Obama Administration because they asked. The CIO I worked for joked that he "needed a $ 300K a year guy but could only pay $ 150K.
They needed help and I was able to accomplish a remarkable amount. I had a great team of well educated, committed professionals.
I left Federal Service when The Donald decided that my MBA and 25 years of IT Leadership experience in the private sector wasn't enough to earn a pay raise, have a budget to work with (instead of being stuck in "Continuing Resolution Hell") and the general disdain shown by the White House for Federal workers.
Yes, like any large business, a small minority of federal employees do just enough to keep from getting fired. The vast majority of Federal Employees are caring, dedicated professionals who are focused on "the mission".
Unfortunately, The Donald and Mitch think they can play their childish games and their employees will "take it."
They're wrong - and the country will be much worse off for their childishness.
Upon entering Federal Service, all of us took the same oath to "Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution. Its about time for Mitch and The Donald to live up to their oath.
6
Many of these workers by law cannot go on strike. Perhaps it's time for the airline pilots union to go on strike in solidarity with the 800,000 people that keep this country running. The domino effect might at long last get the attention of the cretins in Washington.
Trump could care less about Americans and their security. Traitors have that same personality. Trump builds towers for his ego, with a big gold “T” . It is good for his ego to have such a tower in Moscow. How much better a wall across the southern border. He thinks no further than his ego.
1
Time for a full government walkout. Time to show The Con Don who really runs America. WE THE PEOPLE.
Say the word, Good People working for OUR governments. WE will hit the streets with you and demand that Traitor Mitch McConnell is thrown out as supposed "majority" leader. He represents the International Mafia - not the 99.9% of us who value OUR government and the people who manage/work for us. Let's all get back to work preserving/restoring democracy in America.
4
Consider also that, as a result of this, government employment now presents an underwriting risk, likely making it harder for public servants to get the best credit terms for mortgages, cars, tuition, etc. Smart people will realize that soon enough.
3
I began my work life as a lab tech working on a government grant that was given to my supervisor to delve into melanoma. This was back in the 1980s just as the government was deciding to cut funding for research of all types. Our politicians couldn't be bothered to grasp why research funded by the government would be helpful to all Americans or the business sector. After I saw how my supervisor and others like him were treated by the government, by the workplaces, and by colleagues who didn't want to allow differing points of view into the mix I decided not to pursue a graduate degree in science. I know of others who left research entirely and used their skills to help pharmaceutical companies. When I tried to apply for jobs at NIH I was sent long confusing forms to fill out. Even after I filled them out I received no response.
I continued to work in research but it was for some well known corporations who cared less about the science than they did about marketing. Anytime jobs were cut the cuts were in the scientific areas not the marketing.
Other countries are luring away people who want to do research, who have ideas worth pursuing and who will decide that pursuing their passion and questions elsewhere is a fair trade to see what they can learn about or contribute to their fields. Corporations do not have the patience to pursue an odd line of research yet those "odd" lines often lead somewhere unexpected and rewarding. It's America's loss.
12
" ...as one administration official said in an op-ed shared on Twitter by the president, the workers offered “nothing of external value” and were doing “errands for the sake of errands.”
A POTUS laying around his residence, watching TV, and calling it "Executive Time" seems to me to be "nothing of external value" as well.
33
“There are opportunities in Canada that have a lot of great scientific potential.”
Come on up here, we'd love to benefit from all of America's smart minds!
18
And you would never have to worry about health care.
1
“Before 2013,” Mr. Linton said, “you at least felt like the whole country was behind you when you said, ‘I work for NASA.’ Now it’s absolutely evident that only 40 or 50 percent of the country is behind you and the other 40 or 50 percent think you’re some sort of fiscal drain.”
First, the whole country wasn’t behind NASA employees before 2013.
Second, if Linton is thinking that, this time, either all the Republicans or all the Democrats think he is some sort of fiscal drain, he is totally mistaken.
3
Sometimes I think that waiting for the Mueller report feels like it might have been, when Americans were waiting for a radio report, any information on the Normandy landing in WWII. Such is the seriousness of the Putin/ Trump Republican Party coup d’ etat.
9
Given the utter confusion, chaos and absolutely unnecessary strain trump's shutdown has caused hundreds of thousands of federal workers, their families, and the American public, there is only one response: REMEMBER. VOTE!
10
I hate to say it.
Because we need them.
But ANY federal worker who can afford to quit their jobs should do so now.
it will destroy our country.
But a country that allows a person like Trump to be president deserves to found into ruin.
And we're getting their quickly.
Even a lot of rich republicans will be hurt because they are too stupid to see how THEY are destroying the very house in which they live.
5
Republicans believe the private sector is the answer to all our ills, and driving talented people out of the government will be seen as a plus to them. More commercial monopolies in it solely for the profit will be great - right?
5
If a civil servant is "non essential" then why are they on the public dole (in essence) as a government worker?
It doesn't help the discourse to tar the GOP with a broad brush and claim that they "disdain" government workers or that they and only they are responsible for this shutdown. Trump warned the legislators for months abut the necessity of making the border secure, which necessarily means a "wall" in places, and the Democrats passed a bill that explicitly stated no funding for the wall -- and, adding insult to injury, explicitly funded $54 billion to foreign countries to make *their* borders more secure, including a wall in Jordan. The $5.7 billion sum Trump is asking for is peanuts in the scheme of things (about a tenth of one percent of the budget) and his own experts at Customs and Border Protection want "walls" (howsoever framed) as impediments to illegal border crossing, human trafficking and, whatever the reality of the actual figures are, the flow of illegal drugs. To respond that "most drugs come through legal points of entry" is no reason *not* to erect an impediment to the illicit flow of drugs that does *not* come through legal ports of entry.
3
A highly skilled paid job is “the dole”? And people like you want to “make America great again”, eh? Good luck with that, @phred....
2
@Phred
If this was so essential, why didn't the Republican House, the Republican Senate, and the President pass this in the past 2 years when they were in charge of all three of those parts of our government?
2
Let’s open government and then discuss the merits of your arguments. Surely if your position is the correct way to deal with border security you can argue your case convincingly. Why must hundreds of thousands of people be held hostage to force acceptance of your proposals? A strong and just cause doesn’t need to use extortion to prove its virtue.
1
"‘We Didn’t Get Ph.D.s Just to Sit Around’
No need for a PhD "just to sit around" - you can always read technical journals.
5
@Amy,
Why do technical journals show PHDs how to turn off cellular respiration to stave off starvation until bone-spurs trump decides to pay them again?
Grow up child.
1
I have friends at NASA, lamenting about what to do next. Bills are piling up, savings have been used. They feel the President has betrayed their trust as a government employee. Those, where both spouses work at NASA have it the hardest - mortgages, tuition, healthcare - all this for a wall determined by all analysts that will not serve the main purpose of keeping illegal immigrants and/or drugs out of the US.
This furlough will have long-lasting impact and the Trump Administration can carry that legacy and be reminded in every historical analysis of the future. Shame on you!
17
I can't help but think that this, along with so many other potentially long-term destructive effects of Trumpism, is all part of Vladimir's strategy to bring our country to its knees....
17
@Peter
a destabilized U.S. and Europe is good for Vlad.
Since Saint Ronnie declared that government is always the problem, never the solution that has been the shibboleth of the Republican Party. The Trump administration is doing its best to bring about the Republican goal of a nonfunctional government. The only break with the past 40 years of Republican doctrine is that this administration does it more openly.
7
THIS is the true long-term damage that will be done. The loss of this kind of talent, and the resulting inability to attract top talent in he future will cost the US dearly.
When you look at some of the most far reaching innovations, and technologies, they originated as government/military research, research that engaged some of the best minds in each field:
Computers
The Internet
Weather forescasting
GPS/Sat Nav
Digital photography
Microwaves
Epi Pens
Drone technology
....even duct tape
While private industry has furthered and capitalized on the concepts ...the enabling incubator for them was the government. Without non-commercial investment in innovation, and support of the talent to bring them to life, the US will be the primary victim of it's own short sightedness.
15
Donald Trump is definitely setting records for being a breathtakingly irresponsible, as well as undignified, president. And the Republican leadership is as irresponsible and despicable as Trump is. The Republican mantra that greed is good, government is bad, and the free market can do no wrong is being played out across the public sector. Their goal seems to be to wreck all of the safeguards put in place to protect the citizens and the environment so that their donors have an easier time financially preying on the rest of us and maximizing their profits at whatever cost to the environment. Some of Trump's cabinet appointments have been downright Orwellian: Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt and Rick Perry heading Education, the EPA and DoE? Vilifying government employees and crippling government agencies are Republication strategies, continuing to erode public education is another. This seems to be working, no educated populace would have elected this administration.
13
The door to the privates sector is always open.
Oh, you can't get the income, job security, vacation time and fat pensions in a competitive world.
Than be quiet and wait for your checks to show up. You are getting a paid vacation at taxpayer expense.
In life, there are always consequences to each decision. So, leave if you are unhappy. We need the wall!!!
1
@Piper Pilot
We need a wall like we need cannon balls, if another war were to start.
3
@Piper Pilot
I hope you can navigate your Piper better than you apparently do the realities and needs of border security, Vast majority of illegal entries and drugs are through official border checkpoints.
Signed
B36TC Pilot
3
Did you even read the article? Federal employees are working for 1/2 or 1/3 of the pay they could get in the private economy for love of country and the desire to contribute to the public good. That is what is being destroyed here.
3
Looks like they can all get jobs teaching women and minority students how to code, according to another NYT burning issue. Only problem is that being an adjunct with one’s PhD won’t pay the mortgage.
3
Should the Democrats again control government it will be imperative to rewrite budget guidelines that never allow this hijacking of services and operations by a totalitarian president. As we all know many departments are free from Trump's style of extortion, it is not unthinkable for all departments to have their budgets rolled over from previous cycles and then let the negotiations fine tune the bottom lines. Currently Trump is committing nonfeasance at best and more to the point malfeasance and should be prosecuted for such. Elect a lousy businessman to president, thanks republicans, you'll always be remembered for this one.
4
Unlike Donald Trump, people who work for the federal government know the meaning of public service.
Many of these people can get jobs in the private sector making three times what they make working for the government. But they understand the importance sacrificing to serve our country.
They're patriots, unlike Trump, who only ran for president to enrich his business (which he has yet to divest from).
This shutdown will discourage good people from taking federal jobs in the future and creates a national security problem.
Congress must pass legislation which ends shutting down the government.
12
I hope that when the government resumes, that the next "Bill of Order" is to amend the law that says government workers cannot strike to include the government CANNOT SHUTDOWN! If workers cannot strike, then government should not be allowed to "shutdown" and force the Armed Services, and everyone else to work without pay!!!
11
This result is, of course, one of the GOP goals for the shutdown - alienate people further from the government, reduce the power of the Democrat-supporting union, and get rid of as many government workers as possible. Starve the beast at its finest. Why isn't anyone writing about this?
4
Please -- if you want to help end the shutdown, call your representatives in Congress in Washington and at their home offices in your state. Also call your state legislators and governors, asking them to put pressure on the President, Mr. McConnell, and Congress to vote to end the shutdown.
Politicians really do count e-mail messages and phone calls. If you care, let them know. If no one picks up the phone, leave a message. You can call after 5 p.m. and leave a message. If you're an unpaid federal worker, tell your story.
Find your Senators here: https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Find your Congressional Representative here: https://www.house.gov/representatives
6
All those anti-Fed citizens who voted for Trump --- I assume the only time you might rethink the necessity of government workers if your Social Security payment is either late or doesn't arrive at all. If it comes to that, then you are well-punished.
6
Can our democracy survive until 2020? I wonder.
3
Human capital is real, but intangible. Money capital is real and tangible and can swell the coffers businesses and business owners. Which kind of capital does the Trump crowd consider real?
Just a reminder: government research gave us the Internet.
5
There are Republicans who see the shutdown as a good thing for the reasons highlighted in this article. They want to drive the talented, educated people out of government. They want to eliminate everything about the government except for the agencies that benefit them. Listen to the comments coming from Lara Trump, Wilbur Ross, Kevin Hassett.
Why on God's green earth did anyone believe that Trump is a populist who will help the common man? People who voted for him should be the ones to suffer from his destructive policies.
7
I am so sorry you feel that way. But, that is exactly the train of thought the Divine Vladimir wants too many of us to go down. As I consider it. This is the same Trojan horses he has implemented in other nations, not just our own. And having only one more party than the likes of China has made us even more vulnerable I am afraid.
3
This is what happens when the executive branch of power gets involved where it should not be involved, by principle. Created out of war efforts and fueled by cold war, non-regulatory agencies end up being used for political leveraging by the federal executive. A lot of jobs, a lot of money, a lot of appointments.
Over time science and research should follow its natural course to re-establish its roots in academia. Upper levels will inevitably end up tied to private initiative because this is the USA after all. The current shutdown is shocking the system, and - dare we say? - draining some well-known swamps.
2
It’s a disgrace that federal employees—regardless of their education level—are expected to continue working, but without getting paid.
Who among us would do that?
I won’t blame either Trump or Pelosi. As my mother used to say when my sister and I were
fighting—it takes two.
But folks, regardless of ideology, we’ve elected all of you in Washington to do the People’s Business. That’s why you’re there.
Let’s get this stuff worked out like grownups. Re-open the government, and start paying our civil servants again.
5
Thousands of federal law enforcement officers are working without pay, the coast guard is working without pay
4
Thanks for this article. The leadership's contempt for those who serve their country in these critical roles is appalling.
14
Massa Ross is concerned for y'all. He suggests taking out loans instead of standing in food lines. What's wrong, his 81 year old brain wonders with several millions of dollars as back up. Speak up Wilbur! Those unpaid Federal workers should take out 25% interest loans until Trump chooses to let them have their salaries? Many of "those people" are your white homies Wilbur. They voted for your boss. Let them eat cake, Wilbur? You deserve the boss you have; we voted for him.
6
Having spent 8 years at a federal lab, I can strongly recommend that young scientists AVOID working for the federal government, and have done so at every opportunity. Between the poor management, lack of commitment to young PhDs in the form of federal hires (most young researchers are contractors through companies and university, which is just legal money laundering), and the multiple shutdowns experiences over the last decade, not to mention the low salaries, there just isn’t much that the feds can offer. I make considerably more with greater stability at a non-profit research organization.
10
Gee, this can’t be right. Saint Ronnie taught us that government is the problem.
7
Funny thing is, he was for free trade (not tariffs, and not govt handouts to replace agricultural customers abroad), and he was against allowing Russian autocrats dictate and meddle in American government and politics. This president on the other hand, gets his inspiration and aid from an ex-KGB officer. Plus manages to cut exports. Go figure.
3
Some government jobs are not replicated in the private sector - such as working for the forest service or maintaining our national parks. The private sector only wants to exploit and destroy these remnants of wilderness North America
22
The government is the means for people to address common needs and opportunities, not some instrument of a ruling elite imposing its will upon a subordinate majority of the people. That is the basic dishonesty in the current right wing argument about the role of government in a liberal democracy based upon the rule of law.
Treating the central organizing and unifying institutions as trivial and disruptive of free markets and of personal liberty is a fundamentally ill-considered attitude. Over four decades it has depleted our common assets and deprived most people of their opportunities to prosper. We require a cooperative spirit to enjoy the optimum of freedom and prosperity. The right is disrupting that cooperative spirit without having the enlightened self interest to realize that what they are creating is a state of affairs where personal wealth and power not the rule of law determines who are free. I
6
This is what happens when a country elects a self-proclaimed, "self-made billionaire"(?) buffoon wanna-be socialite—born with a silver spoon in his mouth, an unbelievable allowance, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account before he was of double-digit age—and who puts his million/billionaire henchmen/women into his cabinet. They cannot empathize with hard-working, tax-paying, average middle-class workers who believed in the American dream of getting an education in order to get a piece of the upper-middle-class pie but discovered it is actually more of a nightmare.
The truth is: those who lie and cheat their way to the top resent those who achieve honestly, and because they resent them, they call them losers because they follow the rules and contribute to the communal well-being. They don’t want honest, hard working tax-payers to succeed because they didn't get ahead by being ethical and compassionate human beings and so choose to make it impossible for others to do so. They think anyone who gets a degree by studying rather than cheating, writing their own papers rather than buying them, and paying off their college loans rather than reneging on them cannot accomplish as much as fast as a petty criminal can.
They're thugs. They won’t compromise. They won’t negotiate.
Their thinking: get a loan and renege on it later. Eat cake and have liposuction later. Fight your way to the top the way I like to say I did or suffer in your poverty.
12
Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.
3
It is also worth noting that, for the large portion of the Federal workforce with advanced degrees, Federal benefits are not "gold plated", but are in many ways less than available at universities, R&D, and consulting firms. Pay is usually less as well.
This is balanced by the opportunity to do good work. NASA Ames is a good example of where there are opportunities to do unique types of work.
But in much of the government increasing bureacratic conservatism has made it hard to do good work. Fear of criticism from politicians. Bureaucracy has always been part of government, but since September 11th even the most mundane fears have ruled. Accountability is proper, paralysis serves no one well.
6
Many gov't employees enjoy a job without the stress of performance metrics or the consequences for failure that is common outside the gov't paid for world. That is the bargain they made. For you with STEM degrees ... be happy the taxpayers make your fun jobs possible. Quit and try industry if democracy puts a bump in your otherwise pleasant worklife.
2
@Jeff Morse
Contrary to what you may have heard at a Trump cult rally, you are misinformed. Performance reviews, which measure against defined goals are a standard feature of government jobs.
4
Kudos to the GOP, whose goal has been a crippled Federal government -- to make Big Business and robber barons happy with no regulations and to make white supremacists happy with no welfare or services to blacks or minorities.
Kudos to Putin and Russia, whose goal has been to avenge the defeat of the USSR by the US-led post-WW2 order.
Woe to the over 100 million (many who are apathetic, cynical, and ignorant) Americans who stayed home on Election Day in 2018 and 2016. So much is at stake from the environment and climate change to women's reproductive rights to NATO because of our terrible voter participation. We deserve the govt we elect, and we can't entirely blame voter suppression for this.
6
Try making a living in a private sector, where a "furlough" could mean being unemployed for months, years, or permanently...without the opportunity of receiving any government benefits, like healthcare, or pension guarantees.
4
Federal employees have been the go-to whipping boy for Republicans for decades. The GOP will create huge budget deficits to provide more wealth for the wealthiest among us, and then blame “lazy, overpaid” feds for that same deficit.
A (small) silver lining in the current Trump/Republican Government Shutdown is that millions of Americans are waking up to the realization that the services provided by civil servants are crucial to our nation.
These folks would fare better financially in the private sector, and I’m certain they and their contributions would be vastly more appreciated by those for whom they work.
As Joni Mitchell once sang, “don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”
America is crumbling while the Trump Administration paves paradise.
15
This is the way America ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
4
@Harris Silver Shades of the Soviet Union in 1991. If America is still intact by the time the 250th anniversary of the Declaration comes around in July 2026, I'll be surprised.
How can the country stay together when so many millions of people clearly despise civilian-sector government workers? Do these people dream of living in the United States of Ayn Rand Land? Remember, Donald Trump is a symptom and not a cause.
2
Dear NASA and other public employees,
Please don't confuse how the majority of Americans feel about your service with the vitriol spewing from Trump and his anti-government associates. There are millions of us who greatly appreciate your work, skill, and dedication AND the benefits this work provides to the country. We are standing beside you and hoping for a resolution to this pointless situation.
The sadness, and anger, many of us feel right now, of course, arises from our appreciation for how difficult this shutdown must be on you and your families. Many of you (especially those with experience and advanced degrees) are likely to land on your feet elsewhere, but many others may not. The long term public impact is the inevitable hollowing out of agencies and programs that, in some cases, have taken decades of your lives to create. If we lose the men and women who do the work of building our space program, researching and developing new technologies, ensuring our safety in the air, keeping our food and air and water safe, and so much more, the country will be all the poorer.
15
I worked in corporate America. So did my husband. Neither of us found our organizations especially cost efficient. In reality, our companies had a profit margin that allowed them to be profitable regardless of their productivity. For example, millions of dollars were spent at my firm purchasing modern art. That provided no return on shareholder investment though staff enjoyed having it on our walls. My husband's company invested millions in research that was never used.
So why do politicians wage war on our government and promote the private sector? One reason is to give politicians' friends the opportunity to run businesses providing government services. Those are guaranteed profits. Another is that politicians and their wealthy donors want to reduce the government's involvement in Social Security and Medicare. If they don't, taxes have to go up to care for Baby Boomers. Once the responsibility for SS and Medicare is farmed out to the private sector with a cap on government expenses, watch access and quality of services plunge.
The truth is we need government and the talented people working for it will move along. The loss to American society will be enormous.
22
This is self-inflicted damage. It is also permitted by decades of propaganda by right wing talk shows on radios throughout the rural United States. People in the non-urban US are exposed to little else than conspiracy theorists, Limbaugh bombasts, and local preachers. In addition, the GOP has turned its back on its own history and pandered to anti-intellectualism throughout the country. We are hurting ourselves.
Our best hope is that the US will become a thoroughly educated nation from the urban cores to the heartland.
To do that we need to reverse the trend that takes us backward in a competitive world that is marching forward.
Most Americans do not want Trumpism. We want an expanding white collar workforce and more pay equality.
We want education for the next generation and we want to benefit from the world's greatest medical science. We want to continue to invent, explore, and create solutions for intransigent problems.
Trump is an anomaly, an outlier, a ghoul from the past demons that have haunted world civilization. He is a fascist in mind and spirit. We need to exclude him and his minions.
The Constitution protects us by the rule of laws. Use them.
15
The wall is an excuse. If Republicans wanted a wall they would have funded it when they controlled both Houses of Congress.
The shut down is the point. Attacking government workers is the point. Driving talented people away from public service is the point. The wall is an excuse for the real plan-attack the federal government, cripple the investigations into Trump, and cripple regulations that keep Trump's swamp billionaires from looting the national wealth.
Republicans keep saying that "the government is the enemy." Obviously that means they are the enemy of our government, Our Republic. That is why they attack the Constitution. That is why they attack the institutions of democracy. That is why they shut down the government.
If someone calls you the enemy, compromise is not wise, it is appeasement and surrender. When someone calls you the enemy, the wise thing is to believe them.
Oppose the traitors that oppose the Constitution!
32
Excellent comment, @McGloin.
4
Who, besides Putin, is happy about this?
2
@B Right-wing Americans who have been conditioned to demonize, denigrate, and outright hate civilian-sector federal workers. Among these people, not much difference between how they view federal workers and immigrants.
3
I really admire NASA and the work they do, but this article completely misses the point. You can’t expect someone with a high school education who just got laid off from the coal mine to sympathize with a PhD holder, and complaining that you’re being “forced” to take a cushy six-figure salary at a Silicon Valley firm “instead” of your government dream job is a good way to get these people to not vote to fund your agency. It is not reasonable to expect 40 to 50 percent of the country to support basic research until a factory worker has as much of a future as an aerospace engineer, and the other 40 to 50 percent of the country stops displaying open contempt and condescension towards the “uneducated”.
2
@Kelvin Ma - sympathize instead with the low-paid federal workers - including the Border Patrol - who are also sitting there looking at their Christmas bills with no paychecks coming in.
Many of them aren't highly educated, but I still think it's stupid, thoughtless and wrong for a President who couldn't get funding from his own party to take it out on 800,000 workers, their families, and people who benefit from their services.
Especially consider that if you go to the airport during this purposeless, needless disaster, that the security scans are being done by people forced to work without pay. Many of them aren't highly educated, and I don't feel contempt for them - our President does, if he thinks about them at all.
1
@b fagan You didn't read the article, did you. This is about NASA, not the TSA.
1
@Kelvin Ma - to another part of your comment, please take note that a lot of the manufacturing in America IS because of federally-funded R&D and the availability of technologies, methods and materials developed by NASA, DARPA and other research agencies.
Look hard at the breadth of technology here in NASA Tech Briefs, which publicizes federally-funded developments for licensing to the private sector (creating jobs).
So a lot of manufacturing today is due to initial work by the PhD's who got their educations, took on debt for years of extra schooling, and took jobs in the agencies, despite the opportunity to get higher pay in private industry.
Regarding the coal miners, the Clinton platform included millions to train them out of a dying industry - where jobs were being destroyed by automation and natural gas fracking long before the Republican Party invented a fake enemy.
Yes, it is theoretically illegal for federal employees to strike. But a massive "sick out" by ALL of them tomorrow through the weekend should do the trick to get Mitch McConnell to stand with Speaker Pelosi against our do-nothing/don't-care President.
Federal employees could not realistically be prosecuted for not complying any longer with a requirement to work without pay, which is involuntary servitude (prohibited by the 13th Amendment of the Constitution). Workers, unite for TOTAL shutdown: nothing runs, nothing is processed or protected. Non-governmental labor leaders and their memberships should stand side by side with them. We don't tolerate slavery here anymore.
This is cruel and abusive treatment of our hard-working, talented federal workforce. They work for us, not for Mr. Trump alone.
The shutdown, he assured us, was totally his doing, but Congress can end it without him, by voting to do so and then overriding any veto by Mr. Trump. Just do it.
4
@oh really
Choose a day for the national action and add a "buy nothing day" component to the general strike. If consumers stop spending (even beyond the furloughed federal workers who MUST stop spending), it might get the attention of the plutocrats who control the country, and force the government to re-open.
3
Looks like many government employees are starting to get it. A friend who works at OMB said to me after Trump won but hadn't been sworn in, how will they fill all the necessary jobs?
I said that maybe they didn't intend to fill all those positions, and he was befuddled.
Now, with the landscape changing, and focus on the pensions they receive, and a more focused and smaller workforce, it's not as appealing. Now they have to go out and get real jobs.
2
@Ray Ozyjowski Given your attitude, I'm surprised you have a "friend" who works at the Office of Management and Budget. Do you like telling your "friend" that her/his job is not "real?"
9
who do you think handles vaccinations, air traffic safety, national security, food and drug protection, my God, be careful what you ask for.
I think we're all learning just how much long-lasting genuine damage a single stupidly-cast vote can really do. Trump is on his way to doing more deep damage to American society and America's standing in the commercial and scientific world than the Russians (a.k.a. the "commies" during the cold war) ever did in half a century. We are on a slippery slope straight down to a nation soon to be beholden to almost everyone else.
13
I am sure if the folks at this facility can get a job that pays 3X their current job plus stock options they would.
More likely: As PhD's they are highly specialized in the NASA technology and cannot get a job someplace else.
Plus, they have government retirement gravy train which NOBODY else outside the government has anymore.
So, I hypothesize that they are staying in the job because of LACK of mobility and the awesome prospect of early and well paid retirement.
I hope it works out for them. Nobody else in America gets 80% of their pay for life upon retirement anymore. Nobody.
3
Feds don’t get 80% of their pay in retirement now either. Try 30%.
5
Federal employees who began their careers after 1985 do not get “80%” of their pay upon retirement (they pay into social security and can pay into a 401k plus get a small pension which they also pay into). Nor do all federal employees who started before 1985 since the retirement percentage is dependent on years of service. Furthermore, if federal employment is such a “gravy train,” why is it a huge challenge for federal agencies to find qualified employees? Why haven’t you applied?
5
@Michael - to your misconception that NASA technology is a job dead end, you must be completely unaware of NASA's obligation, by law, to makes R&D developed by or for NASA available to the public for licensing and commercialization.
Browse this link - https://www.techbriefs.com/tb/techbriefs
Staffers at NASA are inventing industries. They have transferrable skills as the innovators that come before commercial firms would think something worth investing in. If you think a researcher who develops an improvement in electronics, or a better tracking system, or software for remotely controlling complex devices doesn't have transferrable skills, again, look at the link I gave you.
So there are a lot of people, working at NASA and other federal agencies, because they love their work, their job, sometimes the thrill of doing something nobody had done before. And they take less pay to do it, and yes, they haven't had their pensions torn away like private industry did to the rest of us.
4
Ronald Reagan’s dream has come true.
He successfully convinced the American People that the job of our government wasn’t “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . “
He convinced the American People that they are “rugged individuals” competing with each other for survival.
His dream was to divide and conquer, and we are paying the price.
6
My son is in college for Cybersecurity and I explained to him when he graduates he can work for the government or the private sector. There are pros and cons to both. I must say after this shutdown, why would a talented college student risk a paycheck for this government? More dumbing down of the government sector and a strong push to private. Hence why we have Trump.
3
Why bother to emphasize STEM to our students? Besides excelling at the hardest classes of physics, electrical engineering, mathematics, they typically makes less than those on Wall Street ( toxic mortgages - no responsibility ) and are treated poorly by government.
Scientific problem-solving is critical to address global warming and other massive challenges. Respect and funding of scientists would be a step towards MAGA. The medicines many elected officials depend on are developed by biologists and toxicologists.
US scientists are an asset to the economy and quality of life. Shame on Washington DC.
15
The sick irony is that when things eventually fall apart because of this administration's gross mismanagement, Republicans will use that as further evidence that government is broken and should be replaced by the private sector.
Governmental employees are heaped with abuse and derision by people who don't know how much they actually do to make all our lives better. If you work for the government, please know you have my thanks and appreciation.
23
The plutocrats don’t care. Indeed, they rather like the prospect of destroying the concept of public service and getting the best and the brightest to trade their ideals for survival and the bottom lines of the already too rich. Their deplorable minions who can’t get or hold a job enjoy the sight of those uppity government workers suffering, because they are too stupid to realize that those workers help provide many of the government benefits they depend on for survival.
This is the legacy of our founders. Needing the slave states, they created an electoral system, epitomized by the Senate and the Electoral College, now assuring minority rule. Unless we, the people of goodwill of all persuasions, throw the GOP out of the Presidenct and the Senate in 2020, our country is lost. The Dems are far from perfect. But next to the typical GOP elected official and voter today, they are far and away the better alternative.
Most importantly, we need to get money out of politics. How we can do that is the key question. So long as our legislators are beholden to the bribers, meaning plutocrats and lobbyists, there is no hope of that.
My ancestors were here long before the Revolution, and who fought in all of our wars, and I am horrified. I can’t leave now, but surely wish I had been born Swiss, Canadian or a Kiwi. I am ashamed to call myself a U.S. citizen. So now I say I am a Californian. I remain proud of that, at least. Maybe change will come when old white guys like me fade away.
5
It's time for a general strike, with a comprehensive and fair immigration platform as the demand. I'm a nurse, and I'm in.
4
Republicans always complain government is incompetent. Time after time they just prove they are the ones who are incompetent. They cannot govern. All they can do is obstruct.
7
Te smartest minds in government felled by the stupidest in government.
We are indebted to the scientists who track hurricanes, monitor flu outbreak, prevent further E-Coli outbreaks.
The Trumpies who stand behind him, many who don't travel so have no sympathy for air traffic controllers working without pay,would be whining if a flu or EColi outbreak killed their children, or if NOLA did not track tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods and they lost their homes.
This country has devolved to the stupidest people running our country and only the stupidest people cheering Trump .
Vote Democratic 2020
6
There is a bug in the software that runs our government and our way of life. Who planted it remains to be determined.
"Or, as one administration official said in an op-ed shared on Twitter by the president, the workers offered “nothing of external value” and were doing 'errands for the sake of errands.'"
In other words, the Trump Shutdown is the longest one in history because his racist Wall is not his only dog whistle to his supporters. Federal employees are another prime target for Trump's base.
But while they clap their hands for Trump, his ignorant voters should look upward. Because while Trump promises them his 13th century-era Wall border solution, China is getting ready to do who knows what on the far side of the moon. THAT'S an imminent crisis.
7
To the NASA team: please don't believe the disparaging words this administration and its sycophantic admirers throw at you. No matter where you end up at the end of all of this (back or at NASA or in the private sector), you and your work are valued. There are still many of us who look at the stars and marvel in your achievements.
7
@TD - excellent, thoughtful comment! I'd add to the end my own personal concern:
There are still many of us who look at the stars, marvel in your achievements, and want your expertise at work, not on furlough, as China executes its mystery plan for the far side of the moon!
2
As has been said many times, this is the Republican playbook. Get elected by preaching the lie that gov't is incompetent by its nature, and when they win, go right out and prove it.
7
I was a Fed from Carter through Obama. It's always a Republican tactic to weaken government control by causing brain drain and killing morale among the employees. Democrats need to educate people about what government does for them and how widespread the national security effort is. I rarely if ever hear them talk about it. For example, the banking regulators and Treasury contribute a lot of resources to fighting international money laundering, which in turn helps fight drug trafficking and all kinds of cross-border crimes. Pelosi's doing a good job of bottling up Trump but no so much in the way of showing how self-destructive this mess is.
5
When and how are federal workers going to organize a mass walk out? If planes were grounded and the Secret Service didn’t show up to escort the President and his family, the powers-that-be would be forced to respond. And the public would back the workers.
9
The beauty of the scientific method is that it is agnostic in its search for scientific knowledge.
A quality of the minds that choose the scientific methodology, is that they tend to be extremely creative minds in individuals who feel a need to satisfy their curiosity.
Their scientific methods teaches them to postulate a way to test their thoughts and hypothesis, to verify or negate the validity of ongoing dogma, regarding the edges of unknown facts, about how the physical world works.
Such minds a rare within any population and are free to move where they can find the freedom to exercise their curiosity.
We become a lesser Nation when we make the USA a place that is inhospitable to scientists.
9
I am an investigator on an international scientific proposal which was selected last summer for funding. The entire project is now in jeopardy because the National Science Foundation, which manages the U.S. component of the project, does not have a 2019 budget. Even if the government reopens today, it may be too late to keep the project from being cancelled (for all partner countries, not just the dysfunctional U.S.). I do not compare my personal hardship to that of furloughed workers lining up at food banks, but if the work is cancelled, the sheer amount of wasted effort, and the negative effect on post-docs and students who would have been funded, is maddening to contemplate.
7
@Lola
You describe one of the many lesser noticed "trickle down" effects of this shutdown, and how it is damaging careers, research, progress, the longterm economy, international collaboration, etc. I hope the government reopens in time for your NSF grant to be fully funded, and for your work, your colleague's work, and your post-docs and students's work to progress forward.
We all know there are other advantages in being federal employees despite these occasional setbacks like the current shutdown.
2
@Khaganadh Sommud OK, but that does not justify demonizing federal workers as an "enemy class" deserving of a culling as if they are a bunch of overbreeding deer. That is exactly how right-wing Americans tend to characterize federal workers.
The United States is unique among the advanced industrialized capitalist democracies in having a large number of citizens who are conditioned to view public sector workers in such a negative and outright hateful manner. Doesn't strike me as a beneficial thing for the country as a whole.
5
All federal agencies are vitally important to the well-being of Americans, but NASA is the "crown jewel." Trump (and his family, who should be advised to keep quiet about sacrifices unless they are willing to share their personal fortunes with those who are suffering) and the GOP are truly destroying everything that our country stands for.
From humanitarian aid for the poor to scientific discovery processes that have no equal, smooth working of our government is essential. These are not and should not be matters of party politics. We must have rational interpretation and implementation of policies that benefit our people and that provide a shining bacon for the rest of the world.
Trump really has put us in a place where it is important to make America great again, as it was before he got elected.
4
@Robbbb
"... shining beacon," of course. Auto-correct? Probably a typo.
Observation of a professor emeritus from an excellent US university - Disgust with trump and the GOP is initiating an exodus from the of the best and brightest young scientists and engineers with PhDs from excellent US universities or are now graduate students or post-docs in these universities that is approaching the exodus that occurred as a result of the Vietnam War. Competitors of the US including China will be the beneficiaries of this exodus.
4
When more skilled government employees become demoralized and leave, the Republicans will eventually achieve their dream to “drown government in a bathtub”. More pollution, tainted food, tuberculosis, typhoid. Less storm warnings. This is more terrible than “sad”.
4
“Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
No, Trump, the GOP, and their big money donors have no idea. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, who are the puppeteers behind the GOP do not understand either.
The Executive Branch and the Senate are currently being run by right-wing fearmongers who have no interest in listening to or understanding actual facts. They rely on Fox News to shovel propaganda on an unsuspecting public and then go on destroying the American middle class and poor in the name of greater profits for the rich. This wall is meant to keep uneducated voters, who work all day and don't have time to get educated, in fear so that they continue to vote against their interests. In the process, America becomes worse.
4
Right wingers have been trying for decades to destroy the government. What better way to ruin an organization than to scare away all the competent people making it run?
10
@ChrisH,
More power to them!
These rightist Mensa members are under the mind boggling delusion that they don't need the government when the fact is they could not survive without it.
If you have the guts, go look at what states bilk the most from the feds and who doesn't.
Blue state juggernauts like California, New York, Massachusetts, etc. would be unstoppable if they weren't constantly hobbled by having to pay the bills of worthless perennially insolvent red states too.
Go for it Kochs and your John Birch followers
Destroy the government and the shiftless red states will finally dry up and blow away...as they should have done decades ago.
2
Leaving the government because of a shutdown is similar to cashing out of the TSP's C Fund today because the stock market plunged yesterday. All of these "I gotta go" types should weigh carefully the pros and cons of working in the private sector vs working in the federal government.
1
The failure to recognize the value of the important, varied and exceptional work of much of the federal government is a consequence of the overall dumbing down of America. People just don't understand how things work any more, as if its all magic.
7
Who does this benefit? Russia, China. I've been saying for years that movement conservative politicians are, to all appearances, on the payroll of our geopolitical rivals. This shutdown is the best illustration of that yet. Shrink government down till it can be drowned in a bathtub? You know that's not Putin's approach. He wins, the rest of us lose.
2
Incredibly embarrassing and damaging to any prestige the US had left.
4
“Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
In a word: ‘no’.
We have an administration packed with people like Betsy DeVos, who doesn’t seem to recognize that luxury yachts aren’t engineered by vocational school graduates.
And then there’s the open question of Donald Trump’s literacy, and the fact that he reportedly believes that reading is for suckers.
This is the tragedy of the commons. Again.
7
Totally predictable outcome from Trump's Make America Weak campaign.
Putin must be pleased by the effectiveness of his puppet at the Kremlin by the Potomac.
3
All part of the master plan to destroy government outlined by Bannon years ago and endorsed by the cabal of crazy billionaires now running the GOP and feeding Trump his lines.
9
Do not despair you service to the United States is appreciated by most American's. The efforts you made to complete your education and grow as a professional employee are significant. You may take your expertise and move into the private sector. The politics of public employment is significant and at times indescribably frustrating. When I was eligible to retire I did so after 34 years of combined military and civilian service and two furloughs. I know these words will not pay your bills, send your children to college, help you care for an aging parent and much more. Remember this too will pass. Also remember there is an election in less than two years, vote the bums out!
3
Trump's backhanded swipe at our Federal government and it's workers by using 'a wall' as his trumped up reason to keep them all scrambling is about as nasty as it gets with him and his well-paid, fully benefited civil servant GOP enablers McConnell, Tillis, Paul, etc...
He and his wrecking crew could care less about a wall. It's all about forcing, squeezing government workers backs against the real wall of poverty and humiliation to the point that either 1. they start siding with him, 2. they resign, or worse, are kicked out from their federal jobs, leaving vast holes of taxpayer cash on the table for the GOP to salivate over how to divide it up among their friends and themselves.
This is truly dark stuff. Question is- when and where does it end. I fear the worst.
5
Yep. One of the long-term goals of the GOP since Reagan has been to privitize as much of what the government (Federal, State, Local) through our institutions and common wealth e.g. basic scientific research that yields value beyond products for Wall Street hedge funds. Parasitical "thinkers" such as Grover Norquist have long pushed to shrink government small enough to "drown in the bathtub."
If and when this shutdown ends, expect not only trouble recruiting talented, dedicated people who see life's meaning as more than how much money you accrue, but attempts to expand privitizing for profit even more government essential functions. Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer are grinning on the money well spent to install their sociopath celebrity playing "President" on Twitter, Fox and Breitbart.
5
I find it sad that many in America seem to value government employees so low.
5
Is it really about a wall or has it become an additional means of weakening America? The government is shutdown, the economy is slowing, many important positions are temporarily filled or not filled, the president spends his time tweeting and watching tv. Trump is not doing his job and neither is Mitch McConnell.
10
I am a skilled professional and am glad now more than ever that I left federal service at the end of 2012 (fortunately, I got out before the sequester in 2013 that saw many of my colleagues laid off).
One can only take so much of a beating from policymakers willing to throw the government workforce under the bus. "The mission" doesn't pay the bills.
3
I look to NASA and the heavens to escape to world as it is now. You are my inspiration. Please stay...just maybe it will get better.
3
Time to end secret service protection for the pres, his family, Wilbur Ross and the rest of the thugs! Also no White House employees unless paid by Donald personally. Of course that means they will join the line of those unpaid by him.
4
This is why I continue to think it's time for the US to split into two countries. Blueland would promote and fund science, and would attract the best minds from Redland - and from China. The good people of Redland could all get together and pray for prosperity. That is, if they can find someone to organize the group prayer, having no government.
7
Another example of how our recovery from Trump’s administration (if it even happens) will take many years. The best brains will have gone and fewer are being trained. The air and water pollutants won’t go away. The contributions to global warming can’t be undone. The mined and drilled landscape is ruined for generations. Americans’ hatred of one another will not heal quickly. Nor will international respect for the nation recover with merely a new election: the world has seen what so many Americans actually want. RIP, USA leadership.
6
This, sad to say, is what happens when public service, and the public servants who perform it, are politicized. This has been going on for several decades, now. I say this as a former federal Civil Service participant, and as a retired state (Ohio) public employee. Teachers, public librarians, and others experience this, as well.
5
This was Bannon, Mulvaney, and Miller’s plan all along. Govt is the enemy.
It started with Reagan.
19
@Larry - It started with Reagan in the States and with his buddy, Thatcher, in the UK. Now look at the chaos and damage that is overtaking both countries because of the politics of "small government". Civil servants keep the country running. No democracy works without them and the concept of public service. We denigrate it at our peril.
3
@Larry,
Reagan, the war mongering draft dodger and labor union buster who was the president of the Screen Actor's Guild...a labor union.
Reagan was a gigantic hypocrite.
5
What an absolute tragedy. What a disgrace.
Unfortunately, when an ebola or other outbreak finally makes it to our shores, without the scientists, doctors, and researchers here to stop it, the disease won't limit its destruction to republican districts.
4
I have just considered that a shut down like this may shrink the government by attrition. Which may well be a desirable (I'm not saying planned) outcome for the White House. However, the irony is that the attrition will more likely be those with more and better options, which tend to be the brain trust of our technologies... including those that maintain advanced military and space programs... which are also goals of this administration.
4
It may not have been their particular goal, but surely some of them realized it would be a benefit as they see it. There are all kinds of "subtle" or "neutral" ways the Rs throttle government and chase out talented people. E.g. assigning countless people to endlessly fight over the wording or length of regulations. Holding up every minor piece of correspondence or public information issuance while some hotshot know-nothing assistant to the agency head reviews it. It's not at all a new game, just a more extreme version.
Long ago my parents taught me that one who appeals to the lowest common denominator is the one to suspect of nefarious motives.
And he was elected.
6
Elections have consequences. when we elect somebody as erratic as President Trump, we should be surprised when we get erratic behavior. These high level people salaries are no more important than the IRS customer service people or the contract employees custodial workers. just because they don't expect to be in this position doesn't mean it won't happen. If they are so upset, go to the private sector. Government service is not slavery.
1
For just about my whole voting life all I can remember is the Republican Party attacking "government." It always hit me as pretty ironic since they were the ones who made it "terrible" when they were in power. They appear absolutely clueless on how to run it so of course to them, it is bad. I've seen their incompetence from local all the way to Federal levels. it appears they truly are the party of "no" and "lets make the rich richer." For the life of me, I do not know anything else they really stand for today. Oh yeah, anti immigration and anti abortion, a couple of more "no's." Take a look at the Republican Presidents back to Reagan. A pretty sad bunch. Take a look at "red" states today. I think it is slowly sinking in that the Republican Party is the greatest single threat to us and the world today. It is going to take a good while longer, but there is hope. Unfortunately the Democrats are hardly ready to assume the mantle and the oligarchy is not going away any time soon. The pain we are suffering today, to include the Federal work force being abused, is unfortunately only the beginning. People like Republicans never go away and they will keep coming back.
15
Sorry but many of these Ph Ds work for the government because the grants are many & great. I remember one such important study on the bees that were nesting on top of the shuttle launch pad. Why spend millions studying bees that wouldn't survive the first launch?
They should really have to find jobs in the public sector to justify their educations. Many of those complaining got their educations with loans from taxpayer dollars & many are not paying the loans back yet. Many Masters & Ph.D. degrees are unemployed because they are overeducated for many jobs.
Grants have really shriveled over the past decade and longer. You are talking about a past era.
2
I don't think you really know what you're talking about.
The bee experiment was to see how flying insects act in a zero-g environment, and what happens to their hives as a result. next, it didn't cost anywhere close to millions of dollars the shuttle doesn't launch with just a single Glenn experiment, there's multiple and if the shuttle wasn't already planned for use on a certain date they wouldn't just send it up for funsies. They've also done this with frogs and found that the tadpoles raised in zero-G drowned. These experiments tell us huge amounts about how multiple generations of living things can be effected by space travel, how much it effects their organ placement, their senses etc.
These are extremely important things to research if we ever want to be a multi-planet society, are you willing to have your child born in space without knowing what the effect of zero gravity is on organism development? The people who's job it is to research these things know how limited and valuable space for their cargo can be on the shuttle, they aren't going to waste it on useless data.
1
State employees here didn't have to endure furloughs or go without paychecks under Scott Walker, but we did have to endure eight years of being demonized as underworked, overpaid "haves" that were somehow responsible for the plight of working class Wisconsinites ("hard-working taxpayers" in Walker's formulation, as if state employees didn't pay taxes, too) who had suffered job losses or pay cuts in the wake of the Great Recession. I and my co-workers were visited the other day by the new Governor, Tony Evers, and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes (something Walker never did, by the way). They made sure we understood we would no longer be treated like enemies of the people, and that our expertise and dedication to service would always be respected and appreciated. Why it should take a Democrat to understand that civil servants are motivated by more than money, and that it's wrong to exploit their dedication by not paying them what they deserve--let alone not paying them at all--is beyond me.
21
Under prevailaing circumstances, a career working for the government should be the last option for anyone who has opportunities elsewhere. When so many Americans are agressively anti-intellectual why would any rational person chose to apply their intellectual gifts to public service. The public does not deserve such sacrifice.
4
Trump is a sham who pretends to be a savvy businessman. But he only gained wealth through inheritance, multiple bankruptcies and failure to pay contractors the agreed upon price when projects began.
Now he is applying those same methods as CEO of USA. It is catastrophic for the families of more than 800,000 federal employees, for federal contractors, for our safety in the air and ports of entry, for our food safety, plus health endangered by CDC and NIH being crippled.
We paid for our government and it is a breach of contract for the prez as CEO of the nation to ever shut it down.
His work ethic stinks, and this is one more example.
END THE SHUTDOWN NOW!!!
Throw out every politician in next election who stands in the way of ending the shutdown!
11
If there were a government agency required for tractor pulls, chewing tobacco, and single-wide mobile homes, the shutdown would not continue. But funding scientists - those eggheads that think they are smarter than us, doing who knows what? No way.
6
I'm a geologist and was watching last night's NOVA episode on the Kilauea eruption. (NOVA, for all you red-hat people, is a PBS show - it's one of those things you flip past as you run from Fox and Friends to Monster Truck rallies while reading "Guns and Ammo").
What I noticed on the program was the high percentage of people interviewed who worked for gov't agencies - particularly the USGS and the integral part they played in forecasting, monitoring and advising civil and state authorities. Over the period of four months and change over 13 square miles had been covered by lava and ZERO PEOPLE DIED. Most of that is because we had skilled scientists with the appropriate equipment in place to warn civilians ahead of time.
I mention this because, right now, nearly all those vulcanologists are sitting on their couches waiting for the government to do it's job so they can do theirs. Kilauea is still a danger to erupt, but we wouldn't have the ability to be proactive right now.
That, in a nutshell, is what the Trump administration is doing to this country every day, everywhere. Rolling dice with our lives. Some of us actually would like him to stop that.
67
"“Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”"
This is certainly the most interesting question about this train-wreck of a shutdown.
I used to think it was all due to Donald Trump's fixation on his wall and his stubbornness that in his past made his cut off his nose to spite his face, financially speaking.
But I've been struck by articles I read about the sheer delight that Vladimir Putin is taking in watching America destroy itself.
It remains to be seen whether or not this president could possibly taking actions that don't directly benefit him, but his patron, who would love nothing better than to see a second Civil War break out in this country.
Or, worse, a lessening of its scientific excellence that has allowed the US to stay the most technologically advanced nation in the world.
Even a year ago, I would certainly have been called nuts for thinking about a nefarious motives for this shutdown. But I'm increasingly hearing pundits whisper about darker rationales for the president's intransigence --potential explanations I try not to think about because they are so chilling..
17
It's time to put an end to shutdown culture in DC.
Pelosi should remain firm that no discussion of border security, immigration, or anything else will be made until the government reopens.
It's time to start treating the people who truly work for us with the respect and consideration that they deserve.
14
This is how contact with Donald Trump destroys: He kills the will to work for a common good because he demands obedience. In the end, the less selfish or venal people go away. But when he became President, he reached the ultimate number of people he could antagonize or turn off.
Unfortunately, there will always be a relatively small percentage of people who share his disdain, his superciliousness, his resentments and sense that they know best for everyone else and his drive to beat others into submission. THEY will never abandon him. And unfortunate, too, is the flaw in our electoral system that gives rural states, where most of these supporters live, equal voices in the upper house of Congress where only Senators can convict in an impeachment.
The Senate is where Party loyalty, corporate money and rural angst and resentment bind the nation into a death spiral — tied to a wannabe despot, intent on undoing Constitutional democracy. Unless Mitch McConnell is willing to untie Republicans from Monsieur Putin-light the nation will find that its Constitutional norms have been destroyed along with their democracy. Democracy will be the last to leave, but citizens should not kid themselves into thinking that it will not go. You might continue to have elections but if the person at the top is allowed to drive all outcomes, my friends, you are living in a tyranny.
9
Trump is an incurable disease. He needs to go before he lays waste to our country. He lacks intellect and purpose; a fliberty gibbet flailing in the wind, writing twitter message to his base. If we cannot summon the energies to put forward a disease slayer as his opponent, he will get another four years, so he can lay wate to the parts of our country he didn't get to in the first four.
6
The quality and number of applicants applying for federal jobs has also plunged over the least 10 years or more. Politicians don't do their jobs but it's federal workers who face the public's wrath for the shutdowns and are blamed for them by many people.
One example, national park rangers who are forced to staff entrance stations, aren't being paid and have to tell people who may have traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to get there that the park is closed and they cannot enter.
Ranger jobs used to be among the most desired positions in the government and the most difficult to get. Now? Parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon have difficulty getting quality candidates to even apply. They can find better paying jobs with a lot less stress involved. Current employees count the days until they can retire and you'd have to dig a hole to find any morale.
These shutdowns have lasting effects beyond the obvious that are difficult to quantify. But have no doubts they are happening and will affect the country for years.
3
@Lou Good
That's mot my experience in DC with two agencies. We get hundreds of applications for entry-level GS-9 support positions! Look at USAJOBS. Many vacancy announcements explicitly say they will stop accepting applications after some astronomical threshold (200 or 500) is reached. These are fungible admin jobs on GS 9-11 or GS 9-12 ladders, not elite ones.
We see many with graduate-level credentials, refugees from the precarity of the private sector, as well as student loan "debt slaves" seeking stability.
And these scientists and engineers, all extremely skilled in their field, are exactly who Trump voters hate. You know, these "elites"? Trump voters don't care about them. After all, these people had the nerve to go out and educate themselves, and work in fields that advance the lives of all of us. The nerve of those folks getting doctorates in science, medicine or engineering. They should have just "known their place" after high school. No need to educate oneself when the Bible is the only book you need.
Folks, we may rail all we want against Trump for causing the shutdown -- and it is his fault -- but we would be aiming at the wrong target.
It is Trump voters who are behind this, and Trump voters who have caused the horrific damage to our country these past two years. They have had plenty of time to show that they were "conned". They have had plenty of time to show their disapproval. Instead, they remain in lockstep with him. His approval ratings are still at 40%, and with the Electoral College enabling this vicious, racist minority of voters, we are now in their thrall.
But you ask, how can they support a man who causes their families so much harm, too? The answer is easy. Because he continues to tell them that they're superior to brown-skinned Americans and the only ones entitled to our Constitutional protections. Trump voters will gladly go hungry as long as they continue to hear this. That's all they want. That's all they've ever wanted.
45
If there were any justice in this world, this shutdown would have effected trump's hairspray and makeup suppliers first.
4
Whipping boys for the conservative right for the past three decades, it is little wonder educated, dedicated and talented people would get fed up. Accused of being lazy and greedy at the people's expense, rarely are good efforts and results noticed. In fact, most are ignored and the worst held up as "typical".
But don't look for appreciation in the private sector. There talent and education are looked on with suspicion and distrust; people who know things are considered uppity.
We are killing ourselves.
6
Bad as this is for civil servants, it's even worse for contractors and their employees, who are far more numerous and who face layoffs and no back-pay. And in the long run, it's worse still for all Americans. Being the scientific world leader has paid immeasurable benefits for the country over the past few decades--attracting the top talent, being first to market with all kinds of new technologies. That loss will be a lot harder to measure, but very real.
What a colossal waste.
2
Let him deliver the" State of our Disunion "at the Kremlin
Putin's enjoying the spectacle of a USA governmental shutdown
Totally unpatriotic Republican president
Our government's loyal workforce and family members are suffering for naught!
Con Man- in- chief's cruel folly on full display
8
As offered by Dr. Costa:
“What are they hey going to do next?” he asked on a cold morning in his quiet living room. “Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
The answer is anything they want and can get away with to achieve political goals. In this case both Republicans and Democrats are equally to blame. They do not WANT to talk to each other. There are no concessions.
Our political leaders have so polarized the political process that it can hardly be recognized. The rules now include imposing pain and embarrassment of the other party at all costs. Even self-inflicted pain upon their own constituents, their valued base.
This is exactly what Trump, Pelosi and all the other members of the political leadership are currently engaged in. It is a struggle of wills and who can absorb/ inflict the most pain. The welfare of ordinary citizens is not considered.
The only way this will end is when citizens rise up and demand change, not conflict. Unfortunately the pain is too limited so far and few besides the laid off government workers are affected. Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi have both tuned in to this and refuse to budge because they have nothing at risk. When their exposure to risk changes that is when the current stalemate will end.
The voters can change this by sending a message to both sides: We care, we want change, we want workers recalled and government reopened and we want it now. If there is no improvement in the status quo we will vote all you out.
1
Talk about false equivalency.
Both sides are not remotely equally to blame here, and to think so is to succumb to precisely the kind of cynicism that Putin is trying to sow.
It’s very easy to wave one’s hand, cry “A pox on all your houses!” and disengage.
Far harder to remain checked in, acknowledge the reality of the situation, and work to change it. And that reality is that the Republicans in Congress, led by Mitch McConnell, and following the lead of Trump, are working very hard themselves to undermine our democracy.
5
And then what would you have? You'd have people with no experience and intentions that, however well meaning, could prove disastrous.
And you use too broad a brush to paint Trump and Pelosi together. Pelosi is still working within an existing structure that has stood the test of time even with some moments that are less than praiseworthy. Trump, however, wants to rip it all down, trash the ruin and make it up as he goes.That is how we got in this mess. (And I say "we" even though I am not an American because what happens to you eventually affects us. We really are all in this together.)
2
@David Salter
Sorry David. I strongly disagree. I am a 71 year old registered Democrat for life. My party has literally gone off the rails. I am ashamed and embarrassed by the candidates they offer (like Hillary, Bill and Obama) who have no idea of what government should do and can do. The Democrats created the Nafta fiasco and our military, economic, political and industrial decline. Don't tell me they didn't as I witnessed it. My industry, the apparel industry, among others was literally dissolved and shipped overseas. So were so many others. The Democrats have created as many tragic consequences as the Republicans. Neither party can claim the moral high ground. The Dems cost our family everything. We lost 9 apparel factories and 400 workers. Millions of other blue collar workers, educators, scientists and medical personal and researchers also lost, because of the trade and tax policies of the Democrats. Take off your rose colored glasses. The Dems are no angels. But, I agree the Republican are morally and ethically bankrupt. They gave us Donald. What a tragic disgrace.
1
I am finding harder and harder to believe that this destructive chaos is not planned and deliberate. If one reviews Trump's actions since taking office (whether firing clearly competent advisors or creating situations where rare talent may choose to leave government), it is beginning to feel like a well-developed strategy to destroy our country. Deep effective relations with allies are gone, Russia and China are stepping in to build strong relationships with India and the Middle East. Tariffs are eroding American business relationships that may never be recovered. I can not believe this is not deliberate. I even consider the explanation that wiser minds than our President's have planned all of this and then found a way to get it done. As he, himself, said, only he can make America great and maybe only he can destroy America forever.
11
For anyone who ever wanted to live in Brazil, here you go.
For we will very soon be just like Brazil. Almost there.
Right now we are operating at a Second World level at best.
7
"this is the damage that could last. If public service loses its allure, it will make it harder to recruit and hold onto the experienced and talented..."
The longer the shutdown lasts the more it supports the conservatives in the shadows (who pull Trump's strings) with their long-game to destroy what they see as "deep state" (NASA? NIH? FDA? EPA?)... a cause championed by Steve Bannon.
9
Donald Trump fouls the water wherever he goes.
And Mitch McConnell says: "Yessir, Yessir, three bags full."
9
The Trump administration and his voters have made clear there disdain for science.
Whether it be global warming, fracking or alternative energy the mantra has been science is phony and coal, coal, coal, drill, drill, drill.
No clue why any scientist would want to be involved with this government.
The furlough is just icing on the cake.
The long term damage being done to this nation by Trump and his voters is immeasurable.
8
@Blue I agree. It may not even register until it hits home. I would never wish harm on anyone, but what will it take? Will their feelings change if a family member were to contract an infection for which there are no longer any effective antibiotics, were in a plane crash because the air traffic controller got distracted thinking about losing their home - and the NTSB wouldn't investigate because they're shut down?
This shutdown effects everyone. All because trump wants to keep us "safe". This is not what safe looks, or feels like.
1
The shutdown is in focus right now but this escalation is part of a long state-sanctioned trend to corral intellectual capital for corporate interests. It fits nicely into the overall right-wing scheme to shrink government, but it also sweetens the deal for buy-in by the .01 percenters. If there are fewer laboratory researchers to substantiate important regulations, then short-term economic volatility right now is easier to accept. If there are fewer PhDs in political history, then rash foreign policy that enables corrupt windfalls is easier to push through.
Meanwhile, promising young adults decide not only to forego work in the public sector but hey, why even bother getting a PhD at all? Why not just be co-opted and led by the nose into the brave new job market?
We're at a tipping point, and the future isn't bright.
5
That may be part of it. In reality the reasons for the shutdown are much less complicated. trump doesn't want to lose his "base", he's worried about getting re-elected, his ego can't stand being criticized by his buddies at Fox, and the citizens of the US are all in danger of being murdered, raped or robbed by illegal Hispanic immigrants.
Apparently this is a time-worn business practice of trump's - force people into a corner and they'll give in & give him what he wants. He wasn't a very successful businessman, and this isn't a negotiation to get his name on the side of a building, which is how he made the bulk of his "fortune", not building skyscrapers. America stands for something - because of trump even that is in danger of becoming a thing of the past - but America is not a "brand".
@Davis Bliss - Trump is enabled by McConnell and crew who in turn are enabled by the donors hiding behind Citizens United, and all of the above are enabled by the GOP-packed courts. Trump is merely the current bully at the front of the pack. (And those of us native to NYC remember in detail that Trump the "businessman" also had his local high-placed enablers all his life.)
Godwin's Law is not far off, but there was once another national movement that enabled its own famed anti-science and anti-intellectual creature. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
Lara Trump “...it’s a little bit of pain...”
Wilbur Ross “...I don’t understand really quite understand why...” in response to question about people going to shelters for food.
The trump elite are out of touch. They don’t value any workers. They only value their own pocketbook.
5
What is striking me most when looking at these pictures is majority of the "PhD's" appear to be from minority racial groups. Aren't they the intellectuals of our country? We should not have a reprehensible impression on people of color, as some of our politicians proclaim.
3
@Don
Most in that photo are not Feds. Most are likely low wage/skill contract support staff represented by SEIU.
@Don The US benefits from other nations' "brain drain" and has for decades. It's a reciprocal process since the American educational system overall doesn't train the mental rigor and persistence needed for PhDs in the hard sciences. (As proof, go to Silicon Valley or any large university hospital and see who's there.)
2
@Lowell
I won't disagree with you. 5 out of 7 of fellow candidates in my biomedical doctoral program were students of color. That was 30 years ago.
Tell you what trumpets, we'll take the NASA scientists, you take the MAGA dropouts.
We'll check back in with each other in 10 years.
See which group is doing better.
20
Will you also be taking those who overstayed their VISAS or who entered the U S illegally. If not why not? Surely you can use their skills.
1
@Robert Windlass,
Gladly.
Can they still be reached at Mar-a-Lago?
Good Will or Goodwill? Not certain myself.
3
This all started way back in 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office and the very first thing he did was fire all of the air traffic controllers and dismantled their union.
Decades later his mission is coming into full fruition.
Prepare for austerity 2.0. We're all going to drown in bathtubs.
Next up will be Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps (EBT) and low income housing support (HUD, Sect. 8).
The lower 50% are all heading to the poorhouse.
12
More like the graveyard – poorhouses cost money.
3
@Observer In the GOP scheme, poorhouses will pay for themselves. Chain gangs, magdalene laundries, child labor ...
3
This is already happening. If the shutdown goes too far into February, NO Foodstamps will be issued in March. WIC is in danger of running out of money in many states. That's baby formula! TANF will run out - emergency aid grants of barely $300/month, the only money some have to live on in an emergency. Some people have already lost their federal housing subsidies because they weren't renewed before Jan.1st. HUD had a chance to make sure that didn't happen given there was serious talk of a shutdown before it actually happened. Others will lose their Section 8 housing subsidies if they expire during the shutdown and can't be renewed. All in the name of keeping us safe from being killed or raped by an illegal Hispanic immigrant, the chances of which are next to nothing.
3
There should be automatic funding for government salaries regardless of any shutdowns.
10
Shutdowns of our government should be illegal.
4
Trump and Republicans don't value education or brain power. Indeed, I suspect Trump's base is suspicious of people with "too much" education. Couple that with Trump's predilection for using people as pawns, and you get the federal shutdown. It is going to be extraordinarily difficult to repair the damage Trump and the GOP have caused with it.
6
President Donald Trump sits around watching television and not doing anything intellectually challenging most days. His own personal experience doesn't allow him to understand that other government "workers" may actually do work that is useful and necessary to earn their government salaries.
20
Talk about white washing, and I mean this in a literal sense. All of these shutdowns, demeaning of the importance of science and evidence-based research, and the casual suspension of good government go directly to REPUBLICANS in Congress and the White House.
The picture painted here in the NYT is yellow journalism at its worst.
The truth is the greatest majority of Americans have no idea what government does and how much it impacts their lives daily in positive ways. They don’t understand the services it provides behind the scene, the research it funds but doesn’t get credit for, or the problems it has solved. Instead of educating themselves, they run their mouths against it in their ignorance, denigrate government employees, vote against their own interests and wonder why the country is where it is. Trump played on those ignorances and his low information followers cheered him on. The lack of understanding and qualifications among those running the government now is breath taking.
Read the book The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis for a small understanding of what government does. I feel I am reasonably well 8nformed about government but it was an eye opener to me.
12
trump has never valued anyone other than himself, not even his three wives. We are witnessing him viciously attacking Cohen his long time "friend", lawyer and confidant like the guy is/was his worst enemy. Why would he possibly have any empathy for the many faceless 800,000 federal workers he put out on the street. trump sees himself as the center of the universe but he's about to be swallowed up by a very large black hole. It is time we all staged a national strike and shut down the economy for day.
12
Chapter 34 in How to Fragment the USA:
- Pour gasoline on the divide between public and private sector employees.
- Turn sustainable careers in the govt. into an uncertain and undesirable career path.
End game: dramatic erasure of the middle class and promotion of oligarchs.
6
Tell Ms Pelosi to stop grandstanding and make a compromise.
3
@Amy
Tell it to Trump. He's the one who shut down the government in a juvenile fit of pique.
12
@Amy She has offered multiple compromises; Trump has not. Your blame assignation is misdirected.
11
Laying off, furloughing and otherwise making life unbearable for scientists and other highly educated people falls squarely into the Bannon-Mercer-Koch realm of strategic reality denial in the interest of advancing authoritarian agendas.
If this were Cambodia in the 1970s, all these troublesome ‘thinkers’ would be lying in fields with plastic bags over their heads.
Americans are closer to a precipice than they think and the far-right Deep State (the real deep state) is pushing hard while they have their foot in the door.
21
You are correct. This is a Western version of what the Khmer Rouge practiced.
Shameful and treacherous.
5
The GOP doesn't believe in the Gov't worker full stop.... Please wake up. They'd contract out all of your jobs to their private contractor cronies if they thought they could, and this shutdown may give them the opportunity. Contractors and their lobbyists are always trying to rob more money from the U.S. Treasury.
This shutdown is just the start of much bigger things and folly to come. We are in the beginning of a revolution by radical GOP zealots and their rural supporters that have nothing and want you in the same hole they're in.
7
They need to do the opposite of leaving the government ... they need to fight for fully functioning government, stand against the anti-government philosophy of the Republicans, who are getting exactly what they want in creating dissent and disgust with this dysfunction, put them into the minority, and bring a decent respect for the essential role of government back to our democracy.
5
In the last quarter century, this country has become increasingly distrustful and contemptuous of science, dismissing the highly educated as "elites". That attitude has now been given the reins of our executive branch, half of the legislative branch, and the majority of the judicial branch at the highest level. This administration has placed former industry executives in charge of the very agencies responsible for regulating them, and they have systematically rolled back protections that took 50 years to put in place.
When we look back in 50-100 years, we will recognize the Trump years as the beginning of the sunset of a once-great nation that led the world in innovation and advancing the boundaries of science and education.
What a sad end.
12
As I studied history in college, I often tried to picture what people felt in the moments when they realized their country was falling apart - Germany in the 20s, Britain in the 50s as the empire drifted away.
I don't have to try and imagine it anymore; I feel it myself, now.
It feels about like I thought it would.
22
These agencies manage and reduce risks to the American people. Is it possible that the shutdown over a wall is merely a ruse, to make the U.S. more vulnerable? On the grand geo-political chessboard, shutting down agencies is equivalent to moving pawns out of the way of higher value pieces. As Americans and the media are distracted by the shutdown, what else is going on behind the scenes? Is the shutdown making it easier for other governments and bad actors to interfere with American affairs?
20
Sincerely, I have tears in my eyes while reading this. So unfair. So unpatriotic. So preventable. What is happening to my country?
17
“What are they going to do next?” he asked on a cold morning in his quiet living room. “Do they realize what damage they’re causing?”
Yes they do! This has been the dream of the Libertarians for 40 years. They got trounced in 1980 (David Koch was the VP candidate) so they moved instead to hijack the Republican Party and proceed that way.
The goals, clearly stated in their platform at the time, included abolishing most departments of the federal government. No government = no one to legislate and no one to enforce any labor laws, environmental protections, education standards, food or work place safety regulations and so on. Anything standing between the miscreants of great wealth and another buck.
And suddenly the ego of the Accidental President provides a perfect opportunity to further denigrate and demean the federal government, try to destroy the public faith in government, in good people doing their best to work for the public good, providing for the general welfare.
The notion that the private sector is always better is an Ayn Rand fantasy. The private sector is private because it furthers private interests. That's OK. But we need public interests served too. That's where government comes in.
End the shutdown now.
17
I don't blame anyone or any country for the shut down but our self. Why did we vote to select Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Schumer? Where is the old "compromise" spirit among politicians? It all suggests that we need to carefully pick our own choices next time for the greater good and not the special interests which are prevail in the government.
1
Sadly this is not a bipartisan issue. We have a president that is holding our federal workers hostage to impress his small base. He was set to sign a funding bill when his “Fox news” friends said it was a bad idea. Now he doubled down on arrogance and is causing more problems.
If the democrats let him get away with it once this would become a pattern for him to get his way.
Republicans have not been reaching across the isle for the last 10 years, their one resolve was to stop president Obama from accomplishing anything, as stated many times on camera.
Republicans make it impossible to negotiate.
12
It really doesn't surprise me that there is disdain for educated scientific and engineering talent. I mean, after all, look at how this country treats teachers. The attitude is the same. There is not only disdain of the educated, but of the educators as well.
22
They are winning, They are destroying a government that, while it is not perfect, is a complex interlocking mechanism that actually does quite a bit right.
Say goodbye, everybody
6
Clearly Trump does not understand, or care about the Brain Drain he is causing. He will always blame others for the mess he alone has caused, it's just who he is.
For many around the world to work at NASA is/was a dream come true. Living close to NASA-Mt. View I've met a few of the scientist and they're honestly excited about their projects and the ramifications it could mean for further explorations and the benefits to humanity.
How this ends, no one is sure. However, I do know this mess was jump-started because of a shallow political slogan.
Oh yeah, MAGA....someday again.
3
I am amazed that the President has this power to shut down the government. Perhaps when it was given, it made sense. But now, ti does not and it should be taken away. Playing with people's livelihoods and well-being is anti-democratic.
7
It wasn’t given. The Legislative branch was created to be an equal and separate branch and check on a rogue executive. But Founders didn’t count on a Mitch McConnell that would abdicate his responsibility.
12
This article underlines why the press' transparent attempts to create sympathy for the working or furloughed federal workers during this shutdown have failed. Because they can quit, and go work somewhere else! The pictures of them demonstrating create only puzzlement, because why aren't they working on their resumes, networking or going to the job centers instead? Of course, everyone knows why they continue to cling to their jobs, many of them, but as this article describes, the highly skilled and the striven will go elsewhere. Congratulations to them!
5
Unfortunately most workers can’t just quit and find jobs elsewhere. That is for the top tier. Many workers have a contract. Military can’t quit! This is ONE PERSON’s responsibility alone. He thinks he is king. He uses tactics that the owner of a company (with no stockholders) can afford to do; if the company goes down, it is the owner’s responsibility. That is NOT how the US government is run.
7
NASA is the real United Nations. The best of the best from all over the world land here from all over the globe. That we treat these great minds without a thought about their needs for existence is beyond callousness or foolhardiness. I wonder albeit very selfishly about my GPS. What happens to all global satellites systems and those orbiting Space that track unholy activity in the world? A stupid wall is endangering the entire Planet. And the irony is this wall would not even be seen from Space unlike the other Great Wall.
5
So this is what government run like a business, by a businessman is like. No thanks!
9
We don't need no Gummint scientists, the truth is right here in the Trump Bible. Right Christians? (pun intended)
11
American voters were warned repeatedly when Trump was running for office that he was unfit, and would damage the country.
We are seeing the carnage in front of us. Government employees bearing the brunt of the Trump stupidity and shutdown.
Seen enough of this idiocy red America?
Say something!!
5
I agree 100% with this article.
But when it comes to law enforcement - especially our nation's civil rights laws - the federal government has power and jurisdiction that no other lawyer or law firm has. (The Supreme Court has taken power away from private parties.)
Civil rights are never considered essential. It is incredibly depressing to watch further deterioration of civil rights and be unable to help people who need it. We all took an oath to uphold the Constitution and enforce our nation's civil rights laws. And despite the challenges of this Administration, some have been quietly doing so, and our work awaits us. (But if this goes on much longer, we'll also sell out to a big law firm because we also have to feed our families.)
The layers and amount of structural damage being done to our democracy are mind-boggling. I hope there will be a breakthrough, and the repairs will be just as comprehensive and then some. I hope enough true public servants will be able to stay and continue to fight the good fight.
10
@Anonymous Federal Civil Rights Lawyer. So exactly what damage is being done to our democracy? I get tired of such dramatic statements and hyperbole with never a detail to back up the claim.
3
This is not merely an unfortunate bi-product of the shut down....it is the actual point of it. Republicans talk about a wall but then do a happy dance in private about how they are attacking government bureaucracy and cutting it down forever. Trump himself, meanwhile, continues to deliver a weakened US to Daddy Putin.....a win/win for the anti-patriots who control our country.
9
As one who cut my R&D teeth at NASA Ames,
this is a sad reminder to one who survived the
shutdowns of 1976-78 (8-17 days). What they
do out there is very unique "pre-competitive"
research which then migrates out to the
more mercenary private companies. (At Ames,
folks remember the giant wind tunnels and
"Hangar 1" in particular.)
But all the NASA centers work on so much more
public-spirited science including "missions to
planet earth" including understanding global warming.
Such is considered anathema by the current GOP
troglodytes, but people's lives often depend on this
good work.
9
When many decades ago I decided to become a scientist and a professor, I knew exactly what to expect and what not to expect (and I never regretted my choice). Federal employees are in similar shoes.
6
If my paycheck were being held hostage for political purposes I would retire from government ASAP, but only after securing other lucrative employment. I would never again give any U.S. politician that much power over me and my well being .
3
This article is so painfully accurate. The shutdown is just the latest example of how the government mistreats its own workers. Both of my parents are high-powered federal scientists who could’ve made triple the money in the oil and gas industry but chose the public sector out of a patriotic desire to directly serve their fellow Americans.
It was always painful for me growing up to watch Congress demean federal workers, portraying them as lazy and a waste of taxpayer money, always cutting budgets. I watched my parents bring their work home at night and weekends, and they reached out and shared their passion for science at local schools.
For centuries, powerful economies have relied upon the strength of scientific discoveries. The United States is risking a key part of what makes our economy strong when our government sabotages its own research. Many government employees put up with the relatively low pay, bureaucracy, and unstable budgets out of love for their fellow Americans, but they are people, too, with bills to pay.
13
The hidden agenda of the shutdown is to dismantle the government and drive federal employees into the private sector, where their efforts wil be used to generate profit, not knowledge. This is one of the primary goals of the Kochs, the Mercers and their fellow travellers.
11
I just called my senators, Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, and referenced this article, and the fact that we are losing a generation of scientists over this vanity temper tantrum. Putin would love to see us go back to the Dark Ages; perhaps the Republicans in the Senate will see the light if their constituents, especially those scientists considering leaving, pick up the phones, and call in.
Calling our representatives is one of the few levers we have to end this idiotic shutdown. Let's use it.
19
Obviously the Trump regime does Putin's work.
Putin can easily cause a major flare up anywhere, if their installed regime is about to be unveiled.
3
Casual space enthusiast here. Only one organization has visited every planet in the Solar System, and that's NASA, funded by the people of the United States. Only one flag stands on the lunar surface, ours, and we put it there.
NASA is a great source of national pride -- more than that, it's representative of the whole human family. "We came in peace for all mankind."
Try to hold on, beloved nerds. Remember, you work for deeply grateful Americans like me, not for whomever happens to be in the White House. #RESIST
12
Trump sees not paying professionals as attacking the deep state.
1
"... the longest shutdown in history is eroding good will that was already wearing thin."
And to anyone who believes there is any other reason for the shutdown whatsoever (i.e., any trump supporters sill remaining); you'll believe absolutely anything.
1
What a terrible and unfair situation. If any good comes of this, perhaps some of them will move to the private sector where their genius would be unleashed and more able to effectively do good for society than working in government positions will allow.
@The Quietist
Working for government does do good for society.
Working for the private sector does good for the shareholders.
Destroy the value of governance?
GOP leaders call this situation "Mission Nearly Completed".
2
Well Newt, you are getting what you wanted, the dissolution of the Federal Government. I think your Georgia background with its election fraud gave you a jaundiced view of life. Cheat, lie and make up conspiracy theories was a way to bring the smarter politicians and scientists down to your paltry level You never did get over junior high school.
6
Blame Limbaugh, too. Another idiot willing to cannibalize America.
These men who lack stability in own family life--going through 3 and 4 marriages--do not care about stability in lives of ordinary Americans.
2
Gov't work has always been susceptible to changing political winds, vs academic work that lives or dies on ability to get funding (which projects are fundable also depend on fickle winds but not ones that depend on the last election)
2
Good government attacked and diminished was always the goal of Trump's brain-washed-by-Fox cult.
5
According to conservatives inspired by Reagan and hammered with propaganda by right wing commentators and lobbyists, civil servants are parasites who suck money from productive uses, enemies of freedom and of the people, stifling economic expansion and the welfare of all. Science seems to be a conspiracy to spread false ideas as well, separating people from Biblical infallibility, so according to the right these scientists and engineers ought to be doing other things.
That’s a third of our population who are so alienated by the changes produced over this country’s experience with liberal democracy that they despise the very knowledge that has bettered their lives just because they feel alienated. Trump simply plays on their perceptions and caters to their lack of trust in the good will of the other two thirds of the country.
4
Welcome to putin’s America.
Destroyed from within by the willing republican slave / puppets putin placed within the branches of its government.
This is (truly) totally on republicans.
19
The U.S. brain drain has begun.
Awful that America’s best years are probably behind us because of the corrupt and cowardly GOP allows this nightmare to go on.
22
These people are no more special than the TSA people, or people in the private sector for that matter.
How is it that when we have mass layoffs in the private sector there is hardly a word about it in the paper, but if it's cushy government jobs, the world comes to an end and we have nonstop articles from the New York Times......
Typical, but this time, no one's listening
4
I see. Getting a PhD and doing good science and engineering for a living is cushy and, of course, anyone can do it.
5
@There
Actually the work these NASA scientists do is incredibly important work.
I flew commercial jet transports all over the world, crossing oceans, and Greenland with valuable wind, weather forecasting , turbulence info and other data, provided by NASA and NOAA scientists. This information allowed us to estimate fuel burn to within a few lbs, not to mention , avoiding turbulence, and obtaining accurate arrival times for metering into say London Heathrow.
Your post shows you have no clue about the valuable work done by these Government scientists, and the network of weather satellites.
6
@There I am glad that people like you are not in charge of NASA, CDC, FAA, etc. The point you are missing is that the highly skilled people at these agencies do things that no others could do. For example, when we had an ebola outbreak, those paying attention were highly impressed with the extraordinary dedication and specialization of CDC people. If not paying attention it may have seemed like the new plague just burned itself out. If we did not have the unusual cadre of epidemiologists and infectious disease people we might well have had a repeat of the 1918 flu epidemic which killed well over 20 million people. Dismissing the contribution of such people is pretty common in our self centered world. We may benefit from them, but it is pretty silent to many.
6
As long as insolvent Southern and worthless Midwestern red states get their billions in blue state charity, they could care less what happens to government employees or their families.
30
Except that they like agriculturalists around the world depend upon knowledge offered by scientists and cannot do without it.
3
@Victorious Yankee
Spot on sir! The irony . . .and, I'm not laughing, is that the red welfare queen states don't even know that they are on the Federal dole paid for by successful blue state tax dollars.
To complete this cosmic joke, Trump's cult resides in the so-called "battleground states, where the president is appointed.
I'm outta here. Thanks for all the fish.
6
Putin couldn't be happier.
6
Republicans are doing irreparable harm to the United States
Just like Putin told them too.
Republicans are doing to our country what Stalin, Malenkov Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Cherenko could not.
Bringing the USA to our knees.
16
The current Republican party is one only of self interest. The rhetoric that government workers are a drain has been promulgated on the public clear back to Reagan. Mitt Romney famously said, "A private sector solution is always better than a government one." Trump has increased the derision by calling people winners and losers. Unfortunately in this case we will all be the losers, in healthcare, in national security, and all things science. The US is a Goliath, but is can be felled by a few spores in an envelope. Next time, lets have a science literacy requirement before installing a president.
12
What will be left of our country after two more years of this cruel nihilist in the White House, a man who seems to delight in destroying anything he can: the environment, the lives of ordinary people at home and abroad, the idea of a community of nations?
How can our children and grandchildren ever forgive us for allowing this slow holocaust to happen on our watch?
When we worked for civil rights, women's rights and environmental protection in the 1960s and 70s, we could never have dreamed the nightmare now engulfing America.
I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and worry that it is already too late for a positive future because the forces of greed and darkness are already so entrenched. At this very moment, a relatively small group of national and international oligarchs are gaining even more power and control of resources around the world.
Who or what can stop them?
I wish I knew.
19
@Samsara
We can remember how to stop them - we did it in 1776.
Is this what all you grumpy old white men meant by Make America Great Again?
28
Nice as it would be to lay all this at the feet of Trump the Wonder Clown and the wider pile of Conservative pundits and politicians, its time to be clear what we're seeing here is the logical end of our perverse economic system
Having been mocked, blamed, patronized and shunned for saying so, I'll repeat here American rich and corporations are literally unable to do anything, and violently opposed to those who undertake to do anything, that does not result in an immediate increase in profit.
They will destroy their future, eat the seed corn, for a few more pennies today.
They'll drive their nation to the pits of political hell if doing so avoid taxes.
They will risk massive (and expensive) social upheaval, enforce the degradation of their fellow citizens (a concept that doesn't really exist in rich world, by the way) not only to save a buck but to avoid the existential pain of care or generosity.
Who needs food inspected, planes to stay in the sky, water that won't kill the kids? Not the rich, people who had the foresight to be born wealthy, white, healthy and without a social conscience.
Trump and his criminal gang of administrators are the proximate cause of this mess, but the problem is us.
Our economy, combined with national temperament tending to perversion and greed, is hollowing out our nation, foreclosing our future, damaging our environment in ways from which we will never recover.
Its sad, because other free market democracies do this so much better.
46
This addresses a general principle of governmental dysfunction, exhibited recently lately:
There are a lot of cultural norms and values which represent the bedrock of society. They are not protected by laws, but which are part of our shared values.
For decades, they were considered precious and therefore political manuevers that threatened them were avoided. Basically "keep off the grass", stay on the path. Now, for short-term advantage, politicians are willing to trample on them, eroding them irredeemably. This is a tremendous loss.
Here, it is the shared sense of the value of science, and of public service being attacked; elsewhere it is courtesy, propriety, impartiality (at least the pretense) and government for all (vs. just a "base", or to "win").
"Do they realize what damage they are causing"? Perhaps, but they don't care. No laws broken; but a culture and a shared purpose being lost.
20
Yet another harm the worst POTUS in the history of the United States has inflicted on our great country.
We can only hope the Trump presidency will serve as a cautionary tale, that it will inspire amendments to the Constitution to ensure it never happens again. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.
9
This article makes one thing clear--it is time to strip a huge chunk of power from the executive branch. No single human should be able to put our national security at such risk. We should have done this after Nixon, but we did not. Why not? Because we like the idea of a John Wayne in the White House who is "one of us."
14
@McCamy Taylor
Congress did it to themselves. They make their own appropriations and performed a self-lobotomy. There are less Hill staff today than there were in 1979 despite massive population growth and a more than 300% increase in constituent casework (this is documented). GAO was slashed by a third, several committees were abolished, and the Office of Technology Assessment, Congress' technology think-tank was zeroed out.
Much of this initial lobotomy happened in 1995 under Speaker Gingrich ... BUT the Democrats did almost nothing to undue these cuts when they assumed power in 2007 and 2019.
In many ways, Congress itself exacerbated the information/resource asymmetry that allowed executive power to balloon.
5
A European mentor said to me that “Minds bear no flags.”
This is a perfect example to illustrate how many of the minds that built the USA’s technological superiority came to the USA from many places near and far away.
The shutdown will do damage far and wide, and the young minds that are now being formed and trained to become part of new technological discoveries might choose to go elsewhere.
We are who we are because of young men and women immigrants from all over the world came together in the USA to realize their dreams.
570
@Truth Is True
it's been long since young/ intelligent minds go to law/med/biz school, rather than basic science.
6
@Truth Is True Yes, these are the immigrants we want to encourage to come here and if trained here to stay here. I remember being young and in a Ph.D. program and that all the foreign students wanted to stay. No longer the case.
16
@Doug
Many still go to basic sciences.
6
The US is a failed state. So be it. The people do not really care. Only those directly affected suffer. The rest are oblivious.
The end is near.
I anticipate a major airline crash with 300 deaths.
Trump.... more dangerous than Al Qaeda.
4
Continuous instability will drive off the best people. Today it’s a government shutdown, tomorrow a debt ceiling fight, soon followed by another disruption from the new age “Manchuria Candidate” President. Enough of the GOP leading from behind. It’s embarrassing.
13
When skilled workers leave the US government and are replaced by ignorant political hacks who are in office just for power and prestige we will be a third world country.
10
@Sherry we are already part of the way there. :(
5
It's tough getting a job in the private sector though. Some government facilities are very specialized. In other areas, there are too many PhDs already trying to get into academia, especially tenure track. Maybe state governments are hiring; maybe think tanks or lobbyists. Spacex probably has all the NASA refugees it wants.
1
Unfortunately SpaceX is cutting staff too. Long term visions need stable planning and execution, sometimes over decades, that are not subject to the whims of profit motives. Many of our greatest space science achievements took decades (Hubble, Curiosity, ...).
2
In Canada it is illegal for force employees to work without pay. I thought the United States abolished slavery 200 years ago. These Federal employees should just stop working if they aren't being paid. Force this disgusting government to stop playing games with peoples lives.
4
@Don M The United States abolished slavery in 1819? I guess we didn't need to fight that Civil War in 1861.
@Dev My bad, funny how time flies. Whatever, the Federal employees are still being treated like slaves.
1
Trump is certainly winning by destroying America from the inside out, just what Putin wanted.
9
great salaries, tagged to market, and excellent benefits, along with standard hours.
Nice puff piece, but I look forward to the follow-up story on how many actually leave.
1
Not all salaries are pegged to the market. High cost centers pay significantly less than local companies. In Silicon Valley a NASA engineer can make only 50% (or less!) of what an equivalent engineer in the Valley makes.
1
This is how good government gets killed by the oligarchs, one drip at a time. People can only take so much. Take the streets while you still can make a difference.
22
My niece’s engineer husband left NASA for the private sector after several of these shutdowns years ago. These folks have families. They take their friends with them.
What a crying shame that politicians like Trump are so reckless with America’s workforce.
9
And the government shutdown fallout fear mongering continues.
1
This is what happens when disdain for government workers is the prevailing attitude of so many of the American public, particularly the Republicans. They/we fail (willfully) to take into account not only the people portrayed in this article, but the entirety of what government workers provides, almost silently, to this nation. Denigrating the very people who allow you to have the benefits of a stable and vibrant democracy is lunacy, but this has been the mantra of the right since President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981. If ever there was a "slippery slope", this is it.
754
@Linda Campbell
Reagan ruined America.
112
Why should government employees be treated any differently than those in the private sector? They already get benefits and retirements much better than the taxpayers whom they work for. Their unpaid status is in the headlines all day, every day. I’ve worked for the same private company for 40 years. Each payday is a miserable experience as the owner and his daughter who manages day to day operations become abusive and in his case, often violent about having to pay people. Over the years I’ve had at least four dozen weeks that went unpaid and many many more with irrational shortages like administration fees to prep the payroll or office fees to submit timesheets or dues to a nonexistent union. No sympathy here for these whiners.
4
@From Where I Sit
I suppose the thought of leaving a "miserable" place to work during a 40-year stint never crossed your mind, eh?
98
NASA’s pitch - Research and technology for the benefit of all.
Elected Politicians’ pitch – anything for the benefit of Me! They are fixated on re-election and enslaved by industry lobbyists doling out money and writing bills to benefit themselves at our expense.
This self-inflicted shutdown will convince many of the best and brightest in NASA and other agencies to move to private industry – possibly to companies supplying technology to countries that are, or one day, will be our adversaries.
We must find a way to hold self-interested and self-enriching Elected Politicians, government officials, their staffers and operatives from both parties personally and financially liable, responsible and accountable for the lies and half-truths they have told US, their gross mismanagement of our county, our $22 T and growing national debt (107% of GDP), and our $80 T in future, unfunded liabilities they forced on US jeopardizing our economic and national security, while benefiting themselves, their staffers, their party and special interest donors.
7
There is no bigger victory for Putin than to have his puppet and the Republican party diminish US scientific and technical capacity. Trump is his gift that keeps on giving.
15
When it comes to their families, educated folks vote with their feet and dollars. My last three years as a Fed, I rec'd outstanding annual ratings , savings the organization millions in cost avoidance. Reward? Salary frozen for those same years - no raises. Personal pride was my only motivation. Republicans continuously attack federal employees pay and benefits , as their favorite whipping boy. Everyone wants their flights, food and drugs to be safe, and not get ripped off by banks and credit card companies. Reagan's applause line: government is the problem. Grover Norquist: shrink the govt to the size of a bathtub, then drown it. Tell that to the hurricane victims in TX, FL and NC.
865
@Marcus said "Everyone wants their flights, food and drugs to be safe, and not get ripped off by banks and credit card companies."
While I whole-heartedly agree with the above statement, I'm beginning to wonder if folks on the right do as well. I shudder to think of what a comprehensive for-profit model looks like for every service and every institution in society, which is what some (Libertarians primarily, I suppose?) appear to be advocating.
Go far enough down that path, and I envision our future Earth looking very much like the dystopian opening scenes of 1984's The Terminator. No thanks.
50
@Marcus
Marcus, you left out who froze our pay for three years.
Answer: President Obama.
He unilaterally did this by EO - not Congress. He also got absolutely nothing in return for this Concession nor did he demand anything.
It had nothing to do with Grover Norquist or Ronald Reagan. In fact, the GOP never previously attempted such a muti-year freeze. Now, it is the "new normal" because President Obama opened the door.
I'm a Fed. We need to be intellectually honest about the past decade of austerity.
27
@Voodoo94
Please remind me what state the economy was in at that time (2010-2012), why it was in that state, and what federal revenues were like. Feel free to include other options then available to the government for addressing these issues. Now compare that to current conditions and relate these circumstances to your previous statement.
50
Donald Trump and his GOP minions are going to destroy public service in this country, not to mention cause avoidable distress and misfortune for hundreds of thousands of government workers. Anyone who voted for DT should be examining his/her conscience right now, because their vote in 2016, whether it was out of exasperation with Washington -- or quite likely -- sexism and racism, contributed directly to this disaster. DT's true colors were obvious well before the election, and now they are blazing in their own odious glory. He will hold this country hostage for his wall, he will commit political aggression against the country for it, and he doesn't care what damage he does to Americans and American institutions along the way. Vladimir Putin must be dancing a jig in the Kremlin. His Manchurian candidate is doing him so proud. And we all pay the price.
4
In-the-mean-time; Uber Billionaire Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says furloughed (and those working free) should just "get a loan [from banks and credit unions]." They'll have to pay "a little interest."(Reuters).
This entire administration is overrun by individuals with no concept of not having available funds at one's fingertips. I doubt this man has a clue how much he has.
No Wilbur, the only loans will be from the strip-mall payday loan shark.
62
Are there government workers that don’t pull their weight? Of course there are, just like in ANY workplace be it public or private. Well in Trump and the right-wing’s crusade to get rid of these “unnecessary” workers, they have picked the strategy that is only sure to make things worse. All the people with highly marketable skills and any sense who are good at their jobs will more easily find stable work elsewhere, while the rest will have no choice but to stay. Perhaps again all part of the Republican plan to prove that government is the problem by ensuring that it has no way of succeeding.
311
@Zoltan Are there government workers that don’t pull their weight? The one in the White House doesn't.
58
@Zoltan
“Are there government workers that don’t pull their weight? Of course”......Trump.
38
@Zoltan excellent point.
5
It's too late to build the wall.
The barbarians are already inside and we are paying them to destroy everything that made the nation great.
Hopefully China will do better as the indispensable superpower when the time comes.
4
Don't lump our scientists, doctors, engineers, mathematicians etc. into the same money grubbing clan as the filthy kochs and trumps.
They don't go into their respective fields for the money.
They do it for the love of it.
Sure they need to pay bills and feed their family's too but to them, working at NASA or the CDC or Walter Reed gives their lives meaning.
I mean designing The Hubble Space Telescope, eradicating small pox or designing the TCP/IP internet protocol makes short selling a pharmaceutical stock to make a few bucks look a sad an pathetic as it is.
I have confidence in our STEM citizens not to abandon their chosen fields all because some petulant draft dodger is having another tantrum.
9
The current shutdown itself, as well as the comments from Trump supporters about government employees, are symptoms of a long festering issue that is now having disastrous consequences for America. That issue is the Republican party's decision decades ago to abandon principle and seek election success through appeals to the lowest common denominator.
When Republicans chose to focus on the Bubba vote and made racism, xenophobia and fear central issues in their campaigns, they opened Pandora's Box. The strategy was successful in terms of election wins, but once in power Republicans mostly governed in favor of the wealthy. Eventually, voters started to notice they were being had, but after years of appeals to their basest natures they had become activated and demanded notice. They ran for office. The Tea Party was born. Suddenly Republican politicians weren't just paying lip service to xenophobia, fear and hatred for electoral reasons, they embodied those traits.
The end result was the success of Trump and the rise to actual positions of power of people like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. So now the Bubba vote holds sway in America. It's government by the lowest common denominator. Stupidity reigns. MAGA.
The inescapably undercurrent here is the hostility much of the American population holds towards scientists. Too much of the country devalues education and distrusts anyone who demonstrates having any of it.
Really, this is not good.
9
Scientists and other brilliant people choose to work for NASA because they are helping the planet and humanity. It is a fabulous job drawing applicants from all over the world because NASA scientists can work in their chosen field of study to apply their talents for the greater good while being supported with fantastic labs and resources. Working for a public company requires these brilliant special people apply their talents to company mission, in other words to make money. Their research becomes company mission driven, not driven by the NASA mission “Drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of Earth“
Losing this unique and international talent pool that is working for our country and Earth to Exxon, GE, Seimans, and other public companies is and will continue to be devastating to America and the world for years to come.
We don’t need a concrete wall, but please we need NASA. And most NASA employees need a paycheck.
503
@Janet most Americans are not interested in why people decide to work for the government. Reagan started that attitude when he said that the scariest words were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Norquist continued it with saying that the government needed to be shrunk down until it could be drowned in a bathtub. And let's not forget the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that every GOP elected official was asked to sign by Norquist which has had an extremely pernicious effect on America as a whole.
Another equally important issue is that most Americans aren't able to understand how research works or why. The best example is climate change and how scientists phrase things. Nothing to a scientist is 100% certain. That doesn't mean that if one drops a penny from the Empire State Building it will fall "up" instead of down 50% of the time. 99.95% of the time it will fall down and, if it strikes someone on the head, injure them. Yet most Americans refuse to understand that, preferring instead to listen to politicians (who are, of course very reliable, NOT) state that they aren't scientists, doctors, physicists, etc. but... and then go on to say something completely stupid and senseless.
We did elect a moron-in-chief. Obviously intelligence and common sense are no longer required to run the country, at least in the opinion of the Electoral College and enough Americans. We're all being told to eat cake.
18
Going to work for the private sector is not solution. My husband and two others started their own R & D company, but they can't make payroll this month because of the shutdown. NASA owes them $600,000, and there's nobody at NASA to cut checks to private subcontractors. I'm going to the bank this afternoon to max out our home equity line of credit and credit cards. If NASA doesn't pay, we're financially destroyed. If this goes on two more weeks, we're tapped out and can't make next month's payroll.
463
@lch I am very sympathetic with your situation. However, I would point out a reality for all of us contractors and subcontractors doing business with the government: we keep a cushion at all times, either savings, credit, or both. There are no guarantees with any contracts and this is a perfect example of how a contract for non-essential services could be terminated by the government due to lack of funding.
18
@lch
As someone in the same boat (my private sector contract relies on government being open), I feel your pain. Good luck.
25
@Alabama,
If only Alabama the state lived by that philosophy.
If they did solvent blue states wouldn't have to keep giving those confederate parasites our tax revenues to pay their bills.
I mean they don't have to change because their handouts ARE guaranteed.
50
The republicans and trump care little for science and its value. Their desire is to hobble the government, then easier to bend the people to their will.
I am ashamed to be an American at this point in my 60 some years. They are destroying the fabric of the country day by day. My apologies to all those who are directly caught in trump's shutdown. I am doing everything I can to try to help with the fallout.
6
This makes me so mad.
We have family members who are airline employees. Their safety and the safety of many people depends on government employees. Government employees who “are paid” to keep the public are going without, their families are going without, but they are mandated to work without pay!
Why? Because of Donald Trump’s insane obsession with immigrants and walls. Insane.
Ever been to LaGuardia or many other airports who employ diverse people? I love New York’s diversity and I love LaGuardia’s employees who keep me, my family, my friends safe every time we step foot there and beyond. Immigrants are part of the populous that work for airports and airlines. They have done none of the things Donald Trump claims, but they are being held hostage.
How dare this president demand they work without pay! Employees are members of a workforce, not freeloaders, not beggars dependent on taxpayers. I am indebted to these people who keep the US safe. They deserve so much better. Let us hope they will get their deserved paychecks and this whole mess will come to an end before we have people saying “I told you so” and strife and grief become the result of this horrible govt shutdown.
366
@MIMA
“not freeloaders”
But they are being harassed by the biggest freeloader in the country who never worked a day in his life.
56
@JKile
King Louis XIV said “let them
Work for free.” His wife said “Let them eat cake!” Entitlement, in its extreme and most abusive forms, can lead to revolutions.
16
Sad, but not surprising. Just like the corporate executives who make decisions that ruin peoples lives, our elected and appointed officials of the Executive and Legislative branches are immune from the effects of their decisions.
Personally I'd love to see a law that freezes all of the assets and pay of those in the executive and legislative branches when they fail to fund the government. In addition no more government provided transportation including Air Force One or those big limos and SUV's - walk like the rest of us.
Of course that isn't going to happen because they make the laws and assure that they never feel the consequences of their decisions.
I feel that we have a nation with a Royal Class who are above all us peasants who they consider to be a nuisance when we aren't being used a props and photo-ops.
258
@George N. Wells My only disagreement is that the Democrats are acting in good faith, while Trump and the Republicans are shredding social and political norms to obtain what they can't at the ballot box. Republicans are slow-walking an end to the shutout because they covet the ability to circumvent the democratic process and foist their anti-democratic wish list on the rest of us. Every time someone supplies this thoughtless "both sides are doing it" commentary, they play into the hands of extremists that are guiding this political car crash/slow-motion coup d'etat. Don't be that guy.
10
Half of Americans believe the earth is 10,000 years old and that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. The Republicans and Fox News did a great job convincing people that science and reason is the enemy, not corporations. Those folks should put their money where their mouth is and give up such contrivances as air travel, medicine, and mobile phones, too.
Meanwhile, as another reader suggested, scientists should look overseas. There are great opportunities in countries that admire science.
20
Trump, like his fellow Republicans, view the government as an arm of the people that gets in the way of Republicans' ability to exploit people. This explains why they don't care about the government and the effort needed to sustain it. For Republicans, a weaker government means more ways capitalism can take advantage of citizens.
Republicans view science in the same way they view the rays of the sun. Both shine the light on their darkness.
270
@mrpisces
Government inhibits the GOP plan to enslave us.
6
@mrpisces
And which is why so many Republicans hate science and scientists - Grrr!
4
Most of the best and brightest actually earned their elite status.
We are attacking the elites in this country led by a man who earned his place in this world through nepotism and swindle.
America is great when we all have the opportunity and confidence to achieve our potential. We are sidelining the best and brightest out of fear and loathing for the dystopian future we are being sold.
The seas are rising, the stars await are arrival. Our leader wants to build a wall as a tribute to 21st century American achievement that will stand for generations. "MAGA" is a hoax.
32
Are these antics going to "Make America Great Again?"
3
@schurman
America was great. It's on a long slide down. I see a great similarity to the fall of the Roman empire which began when the emperors took over quashing the republic
2
In the President's "Deep State" there exists a cabal of advisors who for years have been trying to shrink the government. The likes of Grover Nordquist, Steve Bannon and others. They see all government as evil and wasteful and have been adept at propaganda based on the principle that a lie told often enough becomes accepted as fact. Their agenda is to cripple oversight and regulation to the point where their backers can pollute and trespass on the American public with little chance of being caught and even less of a chance of prosecution.
The majority of Americans will be the victims and instead of government working for them it will stand by while their lives continue to deteriorate in quality and health.
209
@AusTex
Trump is an unpredictable loose cannon, that we all know.
But part of the reason this shutdown has gone on as long as it has is that it plays right into the hands of those oligarchic libertarian "government is always the problem, never the solution" types who are seizing the opportunity to not only drive people out of government employ and not replace them, but to use the breakdown in service provision by the understaffed agencies to say "see, government is wasteful and inefficient" and then reduce it further, especially in those agencies that involve overseeing and regulation of the areas these oligarchs like to freewheelingly make money in (drugs, food products, energy). And a lot of lawmakers are in the pockets of those oligarchs and are in no hurry to help government workers, because that might threaten their campaign coffers.
Trump is likely not aware how he's being used as a stooge in this process, but you can bet the Norquists of the world are rubbing their hands together delightedly.
20
@Glenn Ribotsky trump absolutely knows how he's being used. This was the plan. Go into government to breakdown regulations. He's doing it on purpose so his friends get the contracts or lose the oversight so they make bigger profits. He's the fox in the henhouse. And Americans wilfully voted for him. They did it to us. On purpose. Sigh.
2
A mark of ambition, competence, and self-preservation would suggest it's time for them to switch to the private sector … and leave the DNC Politburo behind because it doesn't seem to care anymore than the RNC Politburo about whether they get paid or not.
Nonetheless, without secure borders, no nation, no taxes, no reason for federal workers.
Either way, future doesn't look bright for federal workers.
1
@Alice's Restaurant:
Where is the data showing that the border isn't secure?
3
@Valerie
Border Patrol estimates average of 20,000 illegals enter U.S. undetected each month--excludes the 60,000 caught. Sovietized mass-media has no desire to promote this--doesn't fit the DNC Politburo open-borders thesis. Come to TJ et al. sometime and check it out for yourself.
@Alice's Restaurant:
Your verifiable source for those figures? Who reported the "Border Patrol estimates"?
And can I get that without the political jabs? Those only weaken your argument.
2
This was always my biggest fear of GOP politics and the Trump presidency in particular. It's no secret that Republicans have no real interest in science, in fact, many have contempt for it. Basic research can only be supported from two sources, universities, and the government. The private sector will only invest what it considers valuable to its bottom line. As long as big money governs politics, corporate interests will always come first, and we are at serious risk of losing our leading position as an innovator for the longer term.
Conservatives are often psychologically limited in their ability to be big picture thinkers. Their "smarts" tends to be in the form of short term pragmatic goals, governed by immediate self interest. Science is too abstract for most of them to grasp, and as a result, they simply see it as a waste of money and time, if not have outright opposition to its mission, as many are also existentially fearful that its discoveries will contradict their narrow worldview. What they fail to see, in terms of even their own self-interest, is that a loss of basic research will have serious economic impact to most of even them that work in the corporate world.
These are very dangerous times.
399
Do NOT work for the feds , the pay is NOT competitive in urban areas. There is no tuition reimbursement program, you have to pay for your medical and dental in a similar program of any large company. I urge any young people to look elsewhere if you live in any large city. The pay does not keep up with the cost of living and the pension is a pittance.
1
@Bill Lombard
While the pension (annuity) under FERS may be less than what CSRS retirees have, the actual Federal pay scale is fantastic compared to others in the public sector (state, local). Have you seen what New York State and NYC pay their employees with comparable credentials? Those are truly poverty wages.
I would advise a young person interested in gov't service to take the Federal compensation package any day over the truly abysmal Tier VI benefits package that New York State offers its new employees.
@Bill Lombard
You are doubtless correct, on a transactional basis. Believe it or not, though, some people work (in addition to the rewards of salary and benefits) because they think the mission is important; or because they feel that it can't be done as well somewhere else. This kind of non-financial reward is real, but fragile and easily corroded.
2
there are many specialized and sensitive sectors in federal government that need to be supervised by knowledgeable experienced people with guarantied long term plans and directions.
most of these areas of government (NIH,VA,FBI,TSA ,energy and many more)have nothing to do with day to day politics and for the good of the nation representatives of these organizations should have direct voting rights that is at par with political appointees(the basic idea of checks and balances!).
@hlk
I would disagree with you because VA is a case study that undermines your proposal. Because of an arcane statutory provision from 1989, VA has a hard statutory cap on the number of Presidential appointees it can have on board. With 340K employees, only 38 (including the Secretary) are political. The enormous Veterans Health Administration ($65B annual budget and 305,000 FTE) has a single appointee at the top and the entire bureaucracy is an ossified civil service structure. In contrast, HHS has about 72K employees and 161 appointees. Education has about 9K FTE and over 100 FTEs.
Don't be so sure that fewer appointees means a better run Federal agency.
@the idea is to involve the people working in these institutions in decision making.Voodoo94
1
@hlk
HLK,
Career staff run the VHA. There were no appointees involved in the 2014 access scandal that exposed widespread (system wide) ethical corrosion and lying at multiple leadership levels. I would submit from experience that VHA's culture that contributed to the scandal could not have taken root as it did in agencies with a greater density of appointees
I can certainly see why they look elsewhere, the US shuts down a couple of weeks every year it seems.
There is a case to be made for not allowing the previous budget to continue indefinitely if the government bodies can't agree on a new one. But at this point I think the USA has shown that it isn't mature enough to handle it that way.
Just let the budget roll on from the previous year, keep the nation working while you work out your differences among politicians.
3
The disdain for government workers is apparent even in the government. I used to work as a ranger at a national park. I was the person gave the nature walks, created and presented the evening slide shows, roved the campgrounds answering questions and staffing the visitor center front desk, where we felt the full brunt of the tsunami of park visitors all showing up with questions. But even the maintenance staff and law enforcement folks thought we were lightweights, not really working. If you've ever tried being on your feet for 8 hours answering the same question over and over, you know it's work. And you know the public values and expects it.
21
@Syliva
This goes back long before 1/20/2017. Let's never forget that President Obama unilaterally froze Federal pay for 3 years and neither demanded nor received anything in return from a oppositional Congress in return.
I submit that this awful precedent, which the GOP never attempted pre-Obama - even when it had all levers of power from 2002-2006 - opened the door for the now annual cut in Federal benefits as concessions for annual appropriations bills or increases to the debt ceiling.
@Syliva. Thank you. I appreciate the help you and your colleagues gave us.
Putin couldn’t have picked a better man.
The damage to America will last for a long long time. The beacon of hope, the force for good, the champion of values, the powerhouse of higher education and innovation - are all steadily eroding away.
I would argue that entities like NASA are far more essential than troops on the border.
54
This is an important aspect of this shutdown that is rarely publicized. With the job market as it is who would choose to work for the federal government when these shutdowns or threats of shutdowns happen every year or so. The other aspect is that the Republicans have been so willing to silence accurate scientific findings to serve their political beliefs, mainly in the realm of climate change but im sure they would be perfectly willing to attack and stifle any science that doesn't support what is in their or their backers interests, i.e science surrounding evolution, opioid addiction, forest management, fracking, hog farms, tariffs.
9
Both of the PhD scientists at my workplace are retired career government employees. When they speak of those days they talk about mismanagement and waste and that it is worse now than ever. One day a priceless chunk of raw material was being thrown away. They couldn't take it home, because its extreme value might land them in prison. So, out it went.
My work too, is becoming impossible. Our government-sponsored project requires all components be purchased from US companies. There is a very specialized component without which the project can't be completed. The only company still making them is in China.
Two weeks ago our government representative was asking us, very upset, why does China have this technology and we don't? The newspaper article gives the answer. If we won't fund the research here, we won't harvest the results here. There is no question research money is drying up, if not already gone. For every action, there is a reaction . . .
16
I don't think this temporary partial shut down will scare away anyone who is currently affected by the partial government shut down. With unemployment for all Americans being at the lowest level in a long time and the private sector hiring at all time high levels, some may seek a job in the private sector and these government workers would have done so anyway. The federal government is the best employer in the country at the current times (not including the period of shut down) because the salary and benefits package is optimal for most people hired by the federal government and commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Yes federal government spends a lot on designing space crafts, fighting epidemics, keeping America safe and doing their level best to secure the borders even without the full repertoire of tools and means to do their jobs. But there is also colossal waste and poor returns for some of the government spending. So far I am not impressed with the Trump administration which like all other previous administration has not been successful in trimming the fat and the waste in government spending. That is something the new congress budgetary over sight committee aught to do so that the budget are balanced and a massive dent is made in the national debt without raising tax on the middle class working Americans. In fact an additional 10% tax cut for the middle class may be in order to keep the economy stable and warding off a recession.
2
After several decades of top down micro-management of the science agenda by Congress & the Executive there is little left of the core values that once made American Science great. The agenda for scientific research should be set by discovery and not political considerations, but that idea has been forgotten by our political leaders. The destructive force of this shut down, ruining ongoing experiments, disrupting projects that took years to be realized, and dashing the hopes and enthusiasms of the men and women working at the bench should be seen for what it is, a disaster.
The most salient comment in this story is the attitude that Civil Servants do not engage in important work and are themselves little more than errand boys and girls who could not find better paying jobs in industry. Few in Congress or in the Executive Branch has the detailed knowledge to guide science. Congress’s & the Executive’s role should be to overarching policy: manned space vs robotic exploration, a focus on cancer or dementia, etc.
Many scientists and engineers are motivated by the joy of discovery and the excitement of being at the forefront of technical innovation. They are less interested in a fat paycheck and more interested in the freedom to explore and invent. That freedom is being destroyed by the gridlock and dysfunctional government that has become our government today.
10
@J. Larimer
Only one party denigrates and distorts science, so it doesn't infringe on their narrow worldviews.
Behold, the banana Republicans, and their full throttle crusade to dumb-down America at all levels.
Sadly, they appear to be winning.
2
This is the added "benefit" that Trump gets from the shutdown. The Republicans goal is to end government except for the military. No health care, no old age assistance (Social Security), no protections for clean air or water, no FDA to protect our food and drugs. Shutting down the government gives Trump a basis for saying, "See, most of you are still breathing, paying your mortgage, etc." His argument will be that we don't need the government to provide these missed services since nothing horrific happened. Then, as this article addresses, the best and the brightest shy away from a career in government service since it unappreciated, underpaid, and exists at the whim of the President and Congress.
Trump won't live long enough to see his wall built. The actual Congress members who represent the border counties of Texas do not support a wall. And if you think any Texan with property on the border is going to willingly give some of it up for placement of a wall - you don't know Texans. They will fight to the last breath to keep their land.
3
Why ANYONE would work for the government after this clear showing of its dysfunction is beyond me. But, that’s really the GOP/libertarian dream isn’t it?—No government, no ability to enforce laws and regulations = no laws and regulations.
6
I know several people who work in tech recruiting. Companies are scrambling for good hires — tech is baked into everything a business does, from data management to marketing to security. They are throwing perks and bonuses and higher salaries at candidates.
At a government office you'll likely work in a decrepit building with old equipment and little prestige. At Google, you'll get on-site dry cleaning and a free cafeteria. Which would you choose?
3
Trump is doing what the Republicans have long wanted: to run government like a business. Pay the employees when "the Boss" wants to and not on a regular basis for work done.
Democrats believe an American should get paid for work performed. Remember this in 2020.
4
Where are these people going to work if not for the federal government? They are life long bureaucrats who are used to guaranteed regular pay raises and benefit packages that would choke a horse. The private sector does not work that way; it requires performance for pay, and jobs are not guaranteed for life as long as you play the game. In other words, it is real life, not the fantasy world of federal employment.
Malarkey.
The good work that federal workers--particularly researchers highlighted in this story--do is unquestioned. They are valuable, good people. But to suggest that this government shutdown will dissuade good folk from working for the federal government is preposterous.
A federal job comes with good pay, a pension and job protection. Yes, there are downsides, as there are to any job on this planet. But, on balance, if job security and generous funding for research is a priority, as it understandably should be, then it's hard to figure a better gig than NASA or other departments of the federal government that employ scientists.
A Trump comes along once in a century, likely less. Tone it down, NYT. Don't buy into the hysteria. To run a story like this is to, again, fall into a Trump Trap. Lordy. Haven't we learned that lesson yet?
Can you say "brain drain"? The US used to import the scientists, engineers, and other high tech people from other countries. Now we are exporting them. Smooth move.
10
We would do well to remember section 1 of the 13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Right now federal workers are being required to work without pay in a form of indentured servitude (work now for the vague promise of eventual payment). It is unconstitutional and immoral and the current squatter in the White House needs to stop holding them hostage.
7
The country needs a national general strike. The wealthy need to be shown where the power truly resides. Workers of the world unite!
1
Another example of the ripple effect caused by our President's temper tantrums.
Can pull out of this slide into the abyss?
How can anyone not believe at this point that Trump is not in the pocket of Putin?
5
This is a crisis. Our country cannot afford to allow any further delay in designing subsonic aeronautics for recreating the atmosphere of Venus.
1
I vividly remember sitting in a packed TV room in my fraternity house watching Neil Armstrong go down that ladder. There were thunderous cheers and more than a few tears. Had the emblem on that lander had been "SpaceX" rather then the American flag it would not have been the same.
Some things need to be done by the American people for all of us, not for the financial benefit or ego gratification of a few.
The Republican Party has for decades been poisoning our national spirit by its contempt for government and public service, and as this article documents the damage is now massive. It is truly a tragedy.
22
@Richard Williams MD
Dr. Williams,
I couldn't have said it better. The irony is that it was the Obama administration that relentlessly accelerated NASA's privatization and outsourcing of core missions to SpaceX.
1
@Voodoo94,
That's a lie:
As a federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the annual federal budget passed by the United States Congress.
The facts are these; the hollywood actor reagan and the gop controlled congress shortsighted gutting of NASA's budget was so severe that we no longer even have a functioning space vehicle.
The country that put a man on the Moon now has to hitch ride with the filthy russians thanks to the ignorant right.
3
@Victorious Yankee
Those are very selective "facts." The fact is that NASA Administrator Bolden aggressively accelerated outsourcing to SpaceX and other assorted vulture capitalists. The decommissioning of our last space vehicle and decision to cancel its replacement were made on his watch Reagan left office 21 years before.
Good lord!!! At this rate, they may leave government and work in the private sector instead!!! That would be disastrous for the economy! Everyone knows how inefficient and unproductive the private economy is. I mean, look at Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Uber etc! Let’s hope they stay in government which is well know to spend money wisely and has world-class efficiency, so they can retire at 55 with nice pensions.
Let’s be real- the government is way too small as it is. Let’s hope these workers stay, and let’s hope more people work for the government. Raise my taxes, please.
If ALL Americans were required to perform 9 months of public service after high school, most would then also recognize the importance of a competent workforce of career public servants.
Public service is a necessary part of any viable democracy. We need to treat public servants with at least as much respect as (often very selfish) private sector capitalists.
8
Bigger issue is the continued lack of gov't funding for core research. Much of today's technology and mutli-billion industries (GPS, internet, cell phones, Wifi, etc) came out of 1950-70's gov't funded research driven by the Cold War and Space Race. Most corporations aren't moving forward the needle, they are just commercializing this foundational technology. The constant gov't shutdowns are just "bayoneting the wounded".
5
Realistically, public trust has been declining for generations. The present administration has aggravated it, to be sure, but the trend was in motion long prior and laid the groundwork for what's unfolding now.
So the question is, realistically, how does the nation adapt to stay competitive? Ever since congressmen like Gingrich stoked the partisan divide and presidents like Reagan chortled government was the problem, government has lost efficacy, leaving real change to the private sector. In some cases that has been to the nation's detriment (mortgage bubble and credit market collapse), but I'm optimistic when I see energy companies devoting resources to work the global warming problem, as Al Gore predicted.
Young PhD's and engineers, your future is in the private sector, with the spaceX and companies that supply engines and systems. No, there's not employment security, but engineers have long, long been migrant workers, even in the government. We migrate to the programs that have funding. Engineers are always adapting to new problems. If there ever is another "moonshot," and I'm extremely skeptical that there ever will be by this nation anyway, the work will be outsourced to private companies. And yes, it will cost more.
Will this make us stronger as a nation? No, of course not. But it's realistic.
1
I was born during the administration of John F. Kennedy and grew up in the era when NASA was preparing to land a man on the moon. It was a time of optimism and confidence in America and there was a true respect for scientific research funded by the government. Much of this "useless" research had many unforeseen benefits benefits and that knowledge was then adapted and resulted in many beneficial products used today here on earth including solar cells, water purification systems, artificial limbs, and radial tires to name a few. It saddens me to see how shabbily these scientists are being treated and how small minded our government has become. America will pay the price for this down the road while China is investing in the future and silently laughing at our stupidity.
458
@Tony Re China, I think they're applauding and worried too re the lack of restraint in the white house. It is one planet.
15
@Tony
Good point, Tony! Thanks.
6
There’s plenty of lower paying jobs available for them in other countries. They should do what they believe is best for them.
Assuming you aren’t actually speaking from experience here.
The fact is, there are many high paying jobs outside of the US in countries that value science. Know much about where your medicines are designed and manufactured, for example?
Asia is rising as a science power, the US is in decline. This will just accelerate as the Republican emphasis on religion over reason has the unconscious effect of discouraging students from considering scientific careers.
If I were an early career scientist now, you can bet that positions across Asia would be top of my list. As is, very happy I made the leap over a decade ago.
I don't think many Americans fully appreciate the costs associated with the uncertainty surrounding possible government shutdowns -- much less the shutdowns themselves.
Every time there is TALK in Washington about a possible shutdown, agencies are obligated to draft plans for how to deal with that possibility -- i.e., who will be furloughed, who is "essential". How certain tasks will be covered, and by whom, and with what justification. What the Plans A, B, and C will be for covering costs and addressing our basic responsibilities to the public if the shutdown doesn't end in one week, or two weeks, or in one month. Et cetera et cetera. Multiple meetings must be convened to discuss, multiple conference calls, multiple e-mails to (potentially) affected employees.
It is all a massive time-sink and waste of people's skills and time .... even when the threatened shutdown never materializes. So now that threatened shutdowns seem to be becoming 'business as usual' in Washington at least once a year (rather than the exception to the rule), more and more government worker time is wasted on preparing for all possibilities. It is frustrating, wasteful, and unnecessary.
Like more and more of my fellow federal government workers, I am beginning to wonder whether accepting federal government employment was in fact a good decision. It gets harder and harder to just do the job I want to do, and signed up for.
84
@Blazing Don-Don. as a taxpayer, i would be grateful if you left government and work for the private sector. the government is a mind-numbing behemoth of inefficiency and waste and is nothing what our founding fathers had in mind. an example- since the dept of education was created, ya think our kids are any smarter?? the dumbing down has actually gotten far worse.
1
@Ari Weitzner
As a taxpayer, you will rue the day when the "mind-numbing behemoth of inefficiency and waste" shrinks to what you have in mind. But then it will be too late.
Incidentally, I'll take the "inefficiency and waste" of Medicare and the SSA any time, compared with private sector.
25
After years, decades really, of watching helplessly while the GOP continues on it's unabated single mission to convince the dumb public that we don't need no stinkin' civil service/government workers and laws, and taxes, this entire shutdown/showdown charade seems to me to be less about 'a wall', (the cover) and far more about the GOP giving the middle finger to the very people, our hard working federal workers, they prefer to see suffer. This is purposeful, but most disturbing, it's personal.
And, the dumb public goes along. After all, who wouldn't want to side with the gang who they erroneously believe will get them off the hook paying their own taxes. It's really that simple. This kind of assault by the GOP on our civil service system has been being waged for eons. Question is, when will we, the people, tell them we've had enough.
68
Even physicians are hesitating to work for government jobs!
12
@Steven of the Rockies
That's been the case for over a century. Prior to the introduction of Title 38 hiring authorities immediately after WWII, Federal physicians were viewed as pariahs in the profession and excluded from membership in the AMA.
See: Paul B. Magnuson, "Ring the Night Bell" (1960). It's out of print now, but it is a great read that showcases true governmental innovation and entrepreneurism in an era when the government focused on what it could do rather than what it can't.
Even today, VA has thousands of physician vacancies and the Army has only a 25% fill rate in several key specialties.
2
Some of our erstwhile 'public servants' would do well to remember that Government is for the benefit of all.
2
@KEF - What is your point here, that erstwhile employees should return to NASA from the private sector jobs they took?
1
It's supposed to be for the benefit of all. But step back and think; the government is the enemy of the people. Both parties (but especially the Republicans, and heading the top of the list of nefarious characters are McConnell and Trump) they are responsible for untold suffering of millions of our own largely helpless citizens.
I remember that Bastille Day is July 14. Our cake supply is depleted. We need millions out on the streets before that major airline crash I have been predicting.
Let him have his Wall so that the suffering of millions, yes millions, will be relieved. Recognize that Trump's days in power are limited. The Democrats can tactically retreat from this current battle out of compassion for the suffering victims.
The sun will come out tomorrow, and Nancy Pelosi and the new women in Congress will in the final scene of this horror show joyously sing " The Winner Takes it All".
This freak of nature called Trump may have a chromosomal or genetic abnormality that explains his lack of empathy, his narcissistic nihilism. This presents an opportunity for scientists to study his DNA profile to find this gene. We can utilize this knowledge to prevent thru genetic engineering the inheritance of a major cause of evil ( psychopathy). There must be someway we have can have access to his genetic material.
A political party and a president who deny science can hardly expect to attract scientists into government work.
115
Basic science, research and development, advances in a lot of fields (not only engineering, science, maths and others) is originated in government, unfortunately the GOP thinks that the barrier is the solution to US troubles.
The constant fight to make government smaller and specially diminish its capacity to regulate, it's going to take a deep toll on the future of the US, the people who are thinking how to combat global warming are going to go to other countries, those who fight against diseases will do the same and the technological advances, for example, the folks who created the internet in the 1960's, will not appear again and the edge that the US has in basic science and engineering will erode, transforming the country in an old memory of a more glorious past, the same as the UK, which today is just another country, which in the past created a lot of technologies that we are using today, but that in the present is nothing more than a forum for stupid political debates, like brexit.
In the end history will tell the outcome, but the truth is that the US is on the road to lose its leading post and it is transforming in a distant follower of China, which has a clear understanding on what its needed in order to become a global champion...
44
For the modern Republican Party skilled workers quitting govt work is a feature not a bug. They don’t want government to work, the shutdown is just another tool to burn it down. Which is why it is accepted by pundits that a shutdown is leverage only for Trump and republicans. One party has no interest in actually governing.
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@Sam Weidenbach
Amen. Exactly.
4
This is so sad. We need these government employees and agencies to provide the public goods that private companies won't.
“Now it’s absolutely evident that only 40 or 50 percent of the country is behind you and the other 40 or 50 percent think you’re some sort of fiscal drain.”
These are the people that help make America great. Why are we not valuing them? Why are we driving them away?
31
Why are we squandering this?
We are squandering so much that makes this country great these days. We are driving away the best parts of the civil service, we are making those of us who pay our taxes feel like suckers instead of Americans, and by making foreigners look elsewhere for their educations, destroying a world-class industry.
I don’t know when this shut down will end, but I’m fairly certain the bad guys won.
33
@Lydia Some don't appreciate what the past generations have built up. People like Trump who got all their money from their parents. Born on Third Base and thinking that they hit a triple to get there. Like Trump, they will squander the gift of our parents and grandparents. Trump ruins everything he touches.
7
This is the end game of the far right. Tear down the system. Drive people out of public service. “Shrink government until it fits in the bathtub and then drown it”.
These are very dangerous times. Ahead may well lie the end of the republic. Brought down by a gang of fools.
217
@Truthtalk - why do you call them fools? They are accomplishing exactly what they and Putin want
2
@Truthtalk
They may be a gang, but they are not fools. They know exactly what they are doing - launching the next assault wave on the authority of the federal government.
2
People have not forgotten; those mentioned have never known. We are now in an environment that has been socially engineered to disrespect and dismantle higher education, to eliminate critical thinking from K-12, to treat propaganda as news and actual facts as "fake news". Ignorant, hateful and angry they march to the drum beat of their childlike leader. Mission accomplished, Mr. Putin.
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@OmahaProfessor
And mission accomplished, Mr. Reagan.
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@OmahaProfessor
Oh, the irony.
After decades of unwavering hostility to the Soviet Union, the Republicans now embrace its successor state, little understanding that they are one and the same.
Only some labels have changed; for communism, substitute crony capitalism; for KGB, substitute FSB. But it's the same people, privileged Soviet apparatchiks who plundered state assets and became even more privileged super-rich oligarchs.
The ghosts of Putin's predecessors must admire the way he brought the GOP to heel by blandishments and money rather than by the brandishing of weapons.
10
@Jim
Oh how that little known, arcane former law known as the Fairness Doctrine has become so important.
8
The Congress and Executive Branch should be the ones
who don't get paid during a shutdown, with no chance of
revovery pay. They're the ones that didn't do their jobs. And that would make it very unlikely to have a shutdown at all.
35
@seattle expat
Of course most of them are millionaires so they will weather any such gap in pay quite well.
1
@seattle expat I support Pelosi and the Democrats in resisting Trump's cynical hostage taking because he can't justify his outrageous campaign promises. This "stable genius" has ad-libbed this country into a crisis. Hopefully he is the rock bottom. Never thought I would miss old George Bush, who looks like a genius compared to 45.
4
Let's call this- the Trump effect.
1
@Patrick S. Oh, it predates Trump. He exacerbates it, but he didn't start it.
2
"Long after the government reopens, this is the damage that could last. If public service loses its allure, it will make it harder to recruit and hold onto the experienced and talented......"
Think of it this way. You don't have to campaign on shrinking government, you don't have to legislate to shrink it, just shut it down for weeks and government workers and potential recruits will vote with their feet.
What could be dearer to the heart of the small-government crowd?
A Banana Republic brought to you by Banana Republicans.
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We need to have a nationwide strike to bring home to the Republicans that Federal workers are American workers and without these workers, America cannot function.
42
@V - Federal workers are forbidden from striking by law, even the ones that are working w/o pay right now. When Reagan fired all of the aer traffic controllers and replaced them (temporarily) with ATCs from the military, he was entirely within the law.
@Davy_G
We can have a national sick out. It should involve all American workers not just federal employees.
1
That is going to be the long term damage from this. At a time when even Walmart has been forced to increase wages to attract workers, this will induce a lot of people to look for alternatives to their "safe" government jobs. I hope congress will act fast to pass a law guaranteeing that all workers who are forced to work must also be paid. Furthermore, they should also make sure that the budget and appropriations bills are one and the same. No more passing a budget but then not agreeing to pay for it (same with debt sealing, it should always be whatever it needs to be to pay the bills).
8
I read The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis, this weekend. The theme is that there are serious risks to this nation of having Trump at the helm. An esteemed Risk Management expert in the book shares what he worries about with Trump and his appointees. He talks about nuclear accidents and espionage and the fifth risk is simply "project management." We are now seeing the consequences of having people in charge who don't know what their doing, don't respect the institutions and don't care if they break what they have been entrusted to care for.
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@susanb
Yes, a thousand times: we are seeing the consequences of having people in charge who don't know what they are doing...don't respect...and don't care what they break. They can abscond with their billions and move elsewhere.
Hopefully, the ICC is waiting and takes on white collar crime.
4
@MJB
They know exactly what they are doing. They are attacking the Constitution because they want to turn the 99% from citizens into subjects again.
Stop measuring Trump's competence by what the Constitution says a president should do. That is not how he measures success.
The Party of Trump is trying to destroy our Republic and make it a monarchy. They are making great progress.
They want to MAKE AMERICA GROVEL AGAIN.
Don't underestimate your enemy.
8
Stuff this. I do safety systems for nuclear reactors, most of which go to sea.
Qualifications include PhD, PE license, various other certifications. I can make a lot more money with a lot less heartburn by finding another employer - and I have two offers in hand as I write this.
Nancy Pelosi has to do what she is doing - nothing less than the survival of our form of government is on the line, and I wish her well, and ask her to stay the course.
On the other hand, I have a mortgage, children to feed, and bills to pay.
What is going on is not necessary, and I place the onus squarely on Trump. But if I don't get paid he can go do his own safety systems. And I tell you this, those ships won't leave port without them, so good luck with that.
New job starts Monday.
723
@Alternate Identity
This is depressing beyond words. And completely understandable. Perhaps we need to crowd fund our scientists? It seems to be the Republican dream to drag us back to the Dark Ages.... or at the least, they are going along with Putin's dream that we go back to the Dark Ages.... aaaaargh!
78
@Alternate Identity: I don't blame you. My wife has a PhD in data science and was considering taking a (much) lower paying Govt. job to help optimize traffic flows. Now she can make 3x as much in the private sector, while Republican voters in the Midwest sit in grid lock for hours. Hey, I see it as a win win!
54
@Alternate Identity The long term damage of the Trump Administration's denigration of public service is incalculable. I fear that when things crumble, breakdown or explode it will be too late.
Good luck in your new endeavor. And I'm sorry for OUR loss.
25
The long-running Republican dream of destroying the United States government is slowly and surely happening.
Vladimir Putin and China couldn't be more thrilled as America's right-wing radicals destroy basic decency, competency, morale and respect for the necessity and common good that is government.
The Grand Old Pyromaniacs are reducing America to 3rd-world status for a few extra dirty dollars in their bank accounts.
Good people simply do not vote for such destructive anarchists who consistently aid and abet the destruction of government.
Remember in 2020.
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@Socrates - worth repeating: "The long-running Republican dream of destroying the United States government is slowly and surely happening."
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@Socrates Looking back at the last two years, Trump will have totally destroyed the U.S. by 2020. This clown dictator needs to go now.
34
@Socrates. Couldn’t agree more. But I am not at all certain that Constitutional democracy will survive for two years after the onslaught of Trump, Mcconnell, and the money of the corporate elite.
19
As a young scientist working at Goddard Space Flight Center, this article definitely rings true for me. It is incredibly difficult to see friends and colleagues who graduated with their PhDs at the same time as me making more than twice my salary AND having more job security. I was told many times by the Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers that a government job would never pay as much as the private sector, but would afford opportunities and security that private industry could not. After 6 years at Goddard, it seems like the only thing better about working at NASA is being able to say you work at NASA.
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@M
NASA has been around since Eisenhower. It'll be around for, at least, another 60 years. You're a scientist. Do the math and plot the probabilities.
If you want to grab a quick buck, then go work for Space X or whatever, and power to you. Does Elon Musk offer pensions? What happens if there's some sort of sordid affair at the office Christmas party and you end up the scapegoat?
Here's the deal: Any element of the private sector can go kablooey tomorrow. That isn't true with government. Count your blessings. And thank you for your service. Otherwise, if you're young and bright, get a job somewhere else. Indentured servitude was outlawed a long time ago.
9
@M
I worked for a time in private sector aerospace. In one multi-faceted project for NASA/Goddard, we built the launch vehicle, three separate satellites as payload, and was set to provide mission control services for the production life of one of the satellites. It all ended up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. I was laid off a few weeks later. So much for job security on the other side.
10