Bill Calls For Federal Furlough

[Ben]

As a Federal employee, I'd be all for this. If states are doing it, we should be too. Not that it's more than a drop in the bucket compared to what this administration is spending, but it would at least be a good faith effort. Probably what would happen if the bill passed is that the furloughs would go through, but the 10% pay reduction for Congressionals would get stripped.  

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2055749

[Monkeyleg]

It would be interesting to see what happens. In Milwaukee County, county executive (and now gubernatorial candidate) Scott Walker proposed a one day per week furlough for county employees to reduce costs. The union wouldn't go along with it, though, so workers with the least seniority lost their jobs.

So much for "brotherhood". 

[charby]

I think if this bill makes to the President's desk unamended it would be a good thing. Just about everyone but government has felt some pain associated with the current economic circus.

[grampster]

You should see what school boards and administrators are doing here in Michigan.  Many districts are "finding" dollars they "didn't anticipate".  All most universally they are giving teachers raises with the money!!

[AZRedhawk44]

You should see what school boards and administrators are doing here in Michigan.  Many districts are "finding" dollars they "didn't anticipate".  All most universally they are giving teachers raises with the money!!

I'm surprised they're not hiring "Teachers-on-assignment" or other similar silly BS.  This is where they take one of their senior good old boy or gal teachers, give them no classes to teach, and pay them to do God knows what for a year or two.

No, it's not a sabbatical.

Seems to always be the special ed teachers that get it, rather than the math/science teachers.  Always catering to the *expletive deleted*ss-end of the curve.

Our school districts around here love that trick, and then also hiring a bunch of soccer moms with only HS degrees as teacher's aides.  I think we're 48th in the nation in educational quality, and it's because we keep throwing bad money after bad money, rather than cutting infrastructure and creating performance based reward systems for quality educational results in the classroom.

I approve of all government non-paid holidays.  I think government should be non-paid from Jan 1st to April 15th.

[HankB]

When government workers aren't on the job, it's amazing how FEW people miss them.

Some years back when I lived in MN, most state workers went on strike. Except for students at U of MN who had to wait in longer lines during registration, few people would have been aware of the strike if not for news reports; the absence of so many government employees simply didn't impact most folks.

[Tallpine]

What if NICS is one of the things they choose not to fund anymore...? 

[Monkeyleg]

Some of them are missed so little that they got paid for not working for over 20 years, like a friend of mine. He went on disability with the city of Milwaukee back in 1985, and never went back to work. Near as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with him.

Here's a bit of an email exchange between us recently:

Him: Oh yeah.  I'll tell ya, no way could I go back to a 40 hour week w/o damn near dying.

Me: The last time I worked a 40 hour week was sometime in the early 1980's, except on my annual vacation that I haven't taken in 7 years. 50 hours is minimum.

Him: Well, come on now Dick, you gotta put me into a different group here cuz I was a government worker!
You 'certainly' can't even begin to put a government worker on the same level as a self employed, private sector worker!
Wow..... not even close!!!!

[AZRedhawk44]

What if NICS is one of the things they choose not to fund anymore...? 

No response from NICS in 3 days = automatic approval.

[Tallpine]

No response from NICS in 3 days = automatic approval.

That's only after calling in the info in the first place, right...?

No NICS, no answer, clock never starts running.

I've been delayed more than 24 hrs because the system was "down" - not delayed as in they need to do more research, but delayed as in they get a recording to call back later.

[AZRedhawk44]

That's only after calling in the info in the first place, right...?

No NICS, no answer, clock never starts running.

I've been delayed more than 24 hrs because the system was "down" - not delayed as in they need to do more research, but delayed as in they get a recording to call back later.

I believe there is a provision that if NICS (as a system) is unavailable for 3 days, transactions began within the NICS outage are to be processed by the local FFL after 3 days from the attempted purchase.