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The government goes back to work. Or not.

Well, it’s nearly over.

I speak of the government shutdown that this part-time government employee has struggled through and will continue to do so until my finances and my expenses match each other. The Senate passed the law to re-open government, pay the employees back pay and extend the debt ceiling. The funding for keeping the government open and the debt ceiling extension are, of course,  temporary. These will be revisited at the first of next year.

The House still has to pass the bill and it requires the President’s signature. Something could put a monkey wrench into it all but hopefully it will happen soon. My question is when?

When these measures take place, the government should open the next day. Since the House won’t look at the bill until tonight it is unknown whether the “can” will be officially kicked once again. It matters because if it happens before midnight we go to work tomorrow, at least I do. If it happens after midnight, then one would think this means the government would re-open on Friday. With the congressional propensity for stepping up to the plate at the last minute, the House may wait until 11:59 p.m. Our elected officials don’t give a rat’s ass for their employees. I’ve known this now you know for sure.

While emphasizing my part-time status that doesn’t mean it is an insignificant part of my life. I live off my part-time salary. It would be a pretty fair salary, $40,000-something a year, if I worked 40 hours a week. But I don’t. The most I can work is 32 hours per week. So you do the math, minus the deducts. Often the job seems like it is more full-time than part-time. Add my voluntary union duties and I stay fairly busy. I need to do more freelancing but my part-time job plus a few health problems all conspire to limiting the time I have to write (for money.)

So there you have it. If we go back to work, then yaaaaa. But I am still struggling to survive and will remain that way for some time. But, I am ready to go back to work, so bring it on Congress and President Obama! We may now plan for the next shutdown showdown in February.

 

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The lockouts, they’ve been many. Those I remember, few.

Going through the government lockout now going on 15 days — as a part-time employee — it sort of amazes me that I recall very few of the past 17 times a shutdown has happened. I suppose I shouldn’t be totally surprised.

Even though I have long been a student of politics I didn’t always give newspapers a thorough study in younger days.

The first of the 17 happened, literally, on my watch. A detail of each shutdown is profiled in this “Wonkblog” piece in The Washington Post. During the 10 days in late September and early October of 1975 in which the government ceased operation I was a young Navy sailor and Gerald R. Ford was in the White House. The cause was a budget showdown in Congress over funding the then-Department of Labor, Health, Education and Welfare. Thank heavens they eventually took Labor out of that bunch. I suppose that even as callous that the American public was during those days about the military — the Vietnam War aftermath — Congress must have seen fit to keep the military up and running. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I was at sea, mostly poking around New Zealand and Australia, when a series of shutdowns took place in the fall of 1977. I don’t remember those. Can you blame me? Also, unlike these days of email, we received very little news from the U.S. during the time I was overseas for those seven  months.

Maybe I recall a bit of the funding gap during the next year since it was over funding for an aircraft carrier. But I don’t remember what fully transpired.

For those Reagan years during which some five or six shutdowns happened I was going to college and living la vida grande. I read newspapers and watched TV news somewhat during those years and was a journalism student. But my life in the Navy had kind of soured me on following the antics of government. So I probably knew what was happening, but I just sort of let much of life go in one ear and out the other.

A couple of one-day shutdowns happened in the late 1980s. I don’t remember much about the one over abortion. But I do vaguely remember the kerfuffle over Contra funding for Nicaragua. I was interested in the whole Contra scandal involving Poppy Bush, Oliver North and others. I thought we, our nation, was headed headlong for a war in Central America. I didn’t want to see another Vietnam for a number of reasons.

Finally, the two Clinton-Gingrich era shutdowns were memorable. I was a reporter by then and i likewise highly amazed how the Republicans had a blinding hate for President “Bubba” Clinton and the First Momma. Maybe the rage that was heaped upon the Clintons subsided a bit in more recent years. There was a logical reason over this. First, another Republican Bush was in office during eight years that time. The wars that George “Dubya” Bush began also captured our attention. And, of course, the first black “Kenyan Muslim” was elected president. I am joking about the Kenyan Muslim, in case you for some reason didn’t figure it out.  I never though the Republicans and ultra-right could “out-hate” Bill Clinton. But with, President Obama whew!

So here I am, working part-time for the government. Involved a bit in a public employee’s union. And I have been furloughed 15 days and got a check for the first time today. A partial paycheck with a grand total of $430. I’ve got rent covered for a little longer. But it’s time to re-evaluate the other bills. Oh and my TV is on, watching the drivel on TV that passes as governing.

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Work, no work, there’s always a song

Today’s theme is “laziness.”

As some of you know I am furloughed from my part-time — which might as well be my full-time — job. You might guess why if you don’t know and may just come up correct.

A friend just sent me a text saying he received his partial check — he’s full-time — and it hit him that the furlough was real. And not real fun. Well, what do people do when they feel the despair of unemployment? They drink. Well, some do but drinking is for good times so you will wake up feeling bad the next morning. Or else, drinking is for boredom, of which there is plenty of boredom in unemployment. What I was going for was music. Music soothes the savage beast and takes you to, hopefully, a better place.

So I am presenting my top 10 songs for unemployment. Some might make you feel better about unemployment, some may make you psyched about going back to work — if and when that comes — or it will bum the crackers out of your arthritic neck. A note here about the songs. I am not placing which is my favorites from 1 to 10 or 10 to 1 or 5 to 1 and 10 to 5. That would be a lot of work for something which I am not getting paid. I also am not linking the songs to You Tube. I could do that. But all you have to do is copy the song, put it in search along with the words “You Tube,” and you will be likely to find it. Really, I could do all that since I am unemployed temporarily but I think I will just instead sit around and listen to the music. What a putz, huh?

Get A Job – The Silhouettes 1957

Working Man – Rush 1974

Working Man Blues – Merle Haggard 1969

*Carmelita – Warren Zevon 1976

Workin’ For A Livin’ – Huey Lewis and the News 1982

Banana Boat Song – Harry Belafonte 1956

Maggie’s Farm – Bob Dylan 1965

Bang The Drum All Day – Todd Rundgren 1983

Two More Bottles of Wine – Emmylou Harris 1978

9 To 5 – Dolly Partin 1980

 *Technically, this song is not about working or specifically regarding the state of unemployment. Instead, it’s about the pain and suffering of heroin addiction. It just goes without saying, after listening to the song, that the narrator does not hold steady employment.

To my brothers and sisters who are furloughed, I wish you the best. Here comes the weekend and maybe better things will come soon. So relax. Take the rest of the day off. LOL, as we say online, meaning “laugh out loud.” Or is it lemon or lime?

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I can walk only so far from the insanity of Congress and the lockdown

Update: Cantor sounded optimistic, said Wolf. But why didn’t the GOP House members go outside to talk to the media instead of sneaking out the back door?

The gorgeous and not-so-hot day of early autumn has given me an added incentive to get outside and walk.

Walking is needed for my health and my sanity in normal times even though my health prevents me from those treks of a length I once enjoyed. I also find myself needing more walking in these maddening days of the government lockout. I call it a lockout and not “a partial shutdown” as some of the mealier-mouths in media have muttered simply because many of us government employees are locked out. I sit around in my tiny abode with little more to do than read what I find on the Web and what I can see on TV. Somehow it is though that everything I see or read takes me back to news of the lockout, which is in turn increasingly frustrating.

“If ands or buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.” -- John Boehner, starring in "It Takes One To Know One,"
“If ands or buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas.” — John Boehner, starring in “It Takes One To Know One,”

Today’s big headline is that Speaker John Boehner and other top Republican House members will meet with President Obama later this afternoon and talk over the latest GOP proposal. Boehner wants Obama to agree to hike the debt ceiling for six weeks. Apparently, the Speaker has no provision for keeping the government open simultaneously. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, after repeated questions, sounded as if he found such a proposition absurd. However, some of the media and chowder talking heads seemed to interpret Carney’s remarks as indicating Obama might find such a proposal agreeable.

Whether my interpretation is right or not, I have to say that if an agreement was reached by the President temporarily hiking the debt ceiling with or without re-opening the government then Obama needs to have his head examined. Hell yeah, I want to go back to work. I want to get paid. If, in fact, I am ultimately paid unemployment it will be a very small amount. But the thought of traveling down this same crappy old road another six weeks depresses me to no end.

For God’s sake man, will government workers and veterans and the war dead’s spouses and kids have their money held up a week before Thanksgiving? Will we all go through once more in six weeks? I don’t know where you live but from where I come — Planet Earth — this is just plain insanity!

I just saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after a small presser say the six-week debt hike deal is a non-starter, that is what I thought I saw at least. I have also read that Boehner might be such a sweetie that he could go for the six-week deal with the government re-opening.

It’s driving me nuts, I tell you. Well, perhaps nuttier.

When this all will end, well, your guess is as good as mine. But I predict I will be taking more long walks in the immediate future.

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This is no fun vacation. Of course, it isn’t really a vacation.

It has been a week since the government shutdown and many of us who work for the feds have been furloughed. Time off is good and I planned on taking annual leave next week, but it looks like that won’t be happening. I may be wrong, and I hope that I am, but I don’t see the federal government totally opening shop until at least Oct. 17. That is, of course, when the debt ceiling must be raised or the nation will default on its debts. At least, that is the best I can make out of it.

I have always enjoyed time off from work until lately. I can’t remember the last time I took off just to go somewhere and enjoy myself. It was maybe one or two years ago.

If I had the money, I would go somewhere for a week or a few days. Maybe I would visit a friend in El Paso, or another in Mississippi. But I have very little money and that little money I have I am trying to determine what I will have to use it for.

Never in my life have I seen a group of people – and I am speaking to Congress and my President – who seem to have a total disregard for the employees whose welfare they are charged to oversee. I still support the President, but I truly hope he gets something done and soon. I am headed toward a place I never wanted to be again, that is homeless. Wouldn’t that be a nice “visual” for Congress or President Obama?

I have a “Donation” button on my blog page that goes to my PayPal account. Please feel free to use it. Your help for this furloughed government employee is much appreciated.

Note: I work part-time for a government agency. In the last couple of years health problems have forced me to rely more on that part-time job than on my dream of freelancing. I ask those whom I know who read this to please give me a hand so both that I and this blog can continue. — Thanks, Dick