Governmental stress

[feliciakw]

I'd intended to write about our weekend at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the great movie we saw there. But I just haven't had the energy, I guess.

Right now, there's a wee bit of emotional stress going on. If the government doesn't get their act together (I won't go off on a tangent about how neither party is worth a hill of beans), George won't be going to work on Monday. He's part of the non-essential 800,000 who will be furloughed until the government is running again.


I really need to stop reading user comments on the internet. 99.9% of people have no freakin' clue what they're talking about. "If they're non-essential, get rid of them." Sure, and while you're at it, auction off all the national treasures in the National Archives, as well as every book, photograph, audio recording, and film saved and stored in the Library of Congress. Who needs a record of our national and cultural history, right? What good is that scrap of parchment thing called the Constitution? Or the Declaration of Independence? Don't need George Washington's musty old diaries, or John Adams' correspondences. Abraham Lincoln? That was over 100 years ago. Who cares, right? WWI and WWII? We don't need records of those.

Then there was the comment about national parks being a waste of space. Sure. Let's wipe out all of our green space and turn it over to developers to cover with concrete. Who needs an appreciation of nature and the world around us? Who needs things like clean air and blue sky and nature? Let's all just live in our sterilized, over-processed, hermetically sealed homes and shopping malls. Nothing wrong with ending up like the people on the spaceship cruise liner in Wall-E.

[/sarcasm]

It's infuriating. It's infuriating that people lump average joe employees like George with the millionaire congressmen and women. One random person commented that all federal employees should be forced to live like "the rest of us." Newsflash, dude. A lot of us do. I'd venture to say that most of us do. Your average citizen does not go into government employment to get rich.

It's the same misconception we ran into when we moved here. The locals thought there was going to be an influx of highly-paid government employees, and that the facility was going to offer hundreds of high-paying jobs.

I had to ask where on earth they got such a delusional notion.

The last time this happened, in 1995, Geo and I were on our honeymoon in Chicago. It only lasted for four days, but some of his co-workers had started applying for unemployment. It's a scary, depressing thing when you have people come to your office to train you in how to apply for unemployment.

Basically, I'm just fed up with the people running our government--on both sides. Stop the friggin' grandstanding and do. Your. Job.

Comments

[leelust.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I know the feeling. I hope everything will be ok.

[ficwriter1966.livejournal.com]

My mom and dad had been married just a few months when all the rank-and-file workers at their company went on strike. (They'd met at work.) I've heard throughout my life how scary at time that was for them. So I completely hear what you're saying, and send massive hugs to you and Geo. With luck all this head-butting will end quickly and things will be back to "normal."

[mlevins.livejournal.com]

As an archivist I'm really glad I haven't seen any idiot comments like that about our cultural heritage. Heck, I was thrilled last week to get a *photocopy* of a letter from a soldier in the D-Day landing.

Being a public employee myself, I also agree totally on the misconception people have. Nope, you sure don't work in the public sector to get rich. This will be the third year with no raises (and technically, since we had furloughs last year that was a decrease in pay). But thankfully I love my job and think it is important work. And knowing what George does I *know* what he does is important. Hoping that the game-playing and posturing ends quickly and people get back to business

[just-ruth.livejournal.com]

Being a public employee who has been caught in the middle of the state budget debate I can't help but agree.

I think I even said at the time "you fight all you want; let those of us who do the real work be left alone."

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering where Geo and his co-workers fell. :( They'd better get it together--this is all we need after the past 3 years.

*hugs*

[sarcasticval.livejournal.com]

One random person commented that all federal employees should be forced to live like "the rest of us." Newsflash, dude. A lot of us do. I'd venture to say that most of us do. Your average citizen does not go into government employment to get rich.

Man, don't get me started on all the teacher hate that's currently going down in Ohio. People drive me crazy.

[cherrymmm.livejournal.com]

I'm a "non-essential" fed too. This sucks. I hate the misconception about fed employees. As you can tell, I can barely articulate at this point. Good luck to us both!