I see the grepos at TSA are in the news this week. Apparently, they aren’t getting paid because of the government shutdown and theyre just one step away from being homeless.
First off, I have no sympathies for anyone at the TSA. When the revolution gets here and they’re handing out blindfolds and lining people up against the wall, I will happily reload the rifles.
Prior to the nationalization of airport security, airport screeners were minimum-wage flunkies similar to what you’d see doing security guard jobs at the mall. When the .gov nationalized them, they all became federal employees with federal payscales and federal benefits…but they kept the uneducated, lower-class mindset that originally had doomed them to minimum wage obscurity.
As a result, while every other ‘non essential’ government worker seems to be muddling through, the savages at TSA are flirting with homelessness.
Here’s my point: this little shutdown is three weeks old. Three weeks. These …people…did not have the foresight to have enough money in the bank to cover them in case of emergencies. They make federal money, with federal holidays, bonuses and overtime, and no one thought to put some away for a rainy day. And these short-sighted mofos are the ones who are touted as our ‘first line of defense’ in airline safety.
Also, this whole ‘non esential’ thing…if they’re ‘non essential’ why do we have them at all?
Worth noting, ATF and their related asshattery are not included in this shutdown. Neither is the NICS system for doing background checks. But I wouldn’t put it past a future administration to dump NICS into ‘non essential’ as a way to punish those evil gun-loving republicans.
Me, I love political gridlock. The government that governs least governs best. If there are hardships being experienced by people because of this shutdown it seems to me that means that those services shouldn’t be gov’s responsibility to begin with, or people shouldnt be depending on gov for them.
Anyway…thats my two cents worth.
ETA: Im less annoyed at the people who shut the gov down than I am at the ones that turn it back on.
I found two things here worth commenting on:
– TSA has had so much trouble finding people to do what they want done that they are one of the few, if not the only, agency in the federal government with a waiver from the rule that all federal employees must have a high school diploma or GED. I’ve heard that they have a tremendous turn over rate, which does not surprise me.
The Democrats are fighting hard to limit the existing federal program that allows airports to opt for private screeners instead of TSA employees. Some TSA employees are fighting hard for unionization, which so far hasn’t happened. A couple years ago, I heard that over 400 TSA agents were in jail for crimes conducted while on the job – I suspect from other things I’ve read that many of the sentences were for stealing from luggage.
– There is much confusion over what “non-essential” means. It means that the person’s job does not have to be done right now; for the most part, security, customer service, law enforcement, and similar jobs are considered essential. As a federal employee, all but one person at my facility is considered ‘non-essential’ since our jobs do not have short timelines when they MUST be done.
A few thoughts…
As they said in Blazing Saddles.
https://youtu.be/XId-xFT9Txc
The smaller the government the better for the citizen’s who live under is megalithic bulk.I am old enough to remember when GM was the largest employer in the US. That ended in the seventies. And it is common knowledge that it takes three government employees to do the same amount of work as a worker in the private sector. The bureaucracy is 40% bigger than it needs to be.
By your own accounting, it is 200% bigger than it needs to be.
I think the country would be best served by making the turkeys in Congress forgo their paychecks until they actually do some work.
The poor Bast*rds would DELIBERATELY starve rather than EARN their salary!
Today, Rush said that this will be the first time ever that any federal worker will miss a paycheck during a shutdown.
Nope, I and many others missed a paycheck during the 2013 shutdown. This shutdown happened a the right point in the pay cycle for checks to go out near the beginning of the shutdown – if the shutdown had started a few days earlier, this weekend would have been the second missed check of the shutdown.
Bear in mind, 75% of the government was already funded and appropriated.
If this were the prior years, where the whole enchilada got lumped into one giant Porkulous Reconcilliation Agreement, everyone would be sent home by the Secret Service, the FBI, DHS, and active duty military.
Here in the UK on the (Channel 4) news yesterday there was a woman from CA who had flown to DC to protest at the white house that she had not been payed and was broke. She went on about how she was going to lose he home for none payment of the mortgage, and did not know where the next meal was coming from.
I had two thoughts pop into my head. First she flow to DC to say she had no money so hows she pay for the flight and her hotel room? Second what bank would take a house when the payments were less than four weeks late?
Answer: fake news!
Keep in mind that Friday (though officially next Thursday, which hasn’t even come yet) is the first missed paycheck – as I mentioned above, the timing of those sob stories is very suspicious!
So true dude. Great points made I never considered. It makes sense now why they are all complete goobers. Great stuff
Personally, I hope the keep the shutdown going, declare a national emergency and take the money from the disaster funds. I really don’t want my tax dollars paying for some stupid fucks loss that built in a flood plain. Take the farm land by imminent domain and build the wall. then shoot any asshole that climbs over it. Better yet, why are we not rounding up all of the illegal assholes and put them to work building the wall. If you come to our country illegally, automatic six months hard labor on the wall.
I’m not sure if the miners here in Nevada are Union, but they sure are paid and bennied like it, and at their huge wages you’ll find most have no savings and no comprehension lay-off’s are new-normal. These private sectors folks are just as clueless and low speed as the TSA Das Homeland Security. You live in a state full of ghost towns, and your job will last as long as your thirty year mortgage the trophy wife insisted on? Clueless.
well, there are two sides at least…. not a tsa, but retired federal worker….the vast majority of tsa jobs are “entry level” meaning just over minimum wage after they get thru paying for their supposed benefits. then they split their shifts up over the course of the day so they are on duty for 2 hours,off for four, back on for two, off for 6, back on for one etc etc etc. when i retired i looked into tsa since it was the only federal job around my area. the shifts killed it, but then i saw what the idiots in homeland make them do, things that have absolutely nothing to do with travel security….well you get the picture. now, i agree to a point on the idea that they are already broke but then i thought about it and realized a whole lot of america is living paycheck to paycheck and i did for many years myself and i’m not too damn far from it now in “retirement”. the govt takes so much of my pension back, and even my wife’s social security, that i have to work a full time job just to pay my taxes and insurance. but you’re right, we never lost a paycheck due to a shutdown, not even during the clinton’s reign.
Clearly, they haven’t goof-shifted it enough: people still keep applying.
Next, they need to also schedule them to work at airports 50 miles apart, on the same day, and different shifts.
Now, where’s the president’s private phone number…?
Why are so many people upset about building a wall?
After all – it worked SO well for the Romans and the Chinese! (I would have included the “Iron Curtain”. but that was built to keep people IN not OUT)
If Trump wants to waste money, he could use troops to defend some other armpit nation that hates Americans!
The situation with the TSA warms my heart. A few years ago, I went on a trip with my wife to visit some friends. It was my first and last experience dealing with these individuals. After being felt up in the name of security I swore, never again. It’s been around 6 years since that groping pat down and I will be damned if I ever volunteer to do it again. For me, there really isn’t any reason to visit the land of the brave and home of the (not so) free anymore.
Non-essential government worker furloughs happen periodically. Enough that if I were in one, I’d make sure I had a backup plan, especially after an election.
I saw that they passed or signed something that said furloughed workers will receive back pay. Is this only for those who worked during that time, or all of them?
It’s for all of them, those who worked and those who didn’t. If I understand the law right (and I may well NOT), those who worked through it get extra pay above and beyond their normal pay.