Government Shutdown Day 11: Thin Gruel

Us Feds are still hanging in there

The WaPo is running a long End Of Week Two Story about the government shutdown (here), and I fully agree with this part:

The federal government has become the behemoth that cried wolf. For more than two decades, budget brinksmanship has been such a mainstay of Washington politics that many Americans long ago grew skeptical of claims that if one deal or another weren’t made, the Statue of Liberty would close or the nation’s highways would seize up in the mother of all gridlocks.

-- snip --

But the reality is that the government is too large and too complex for something as dramatic as a shutdown to cause anything as dramatic as an actual shutdown. At the peak of this latest closing, 800,000 out of about 1.9 million civilian federal employees were put on ice. Many arms of government still had half, three-quarters or even nine-tenths of their workers coming in every day, despite the closing of the money spigot.

"The government is too large and too complex for something as dramatic as a shutdown to cause anything as dramatic as an actual shutdown." Um .. okay .. if that means what I think it means, I agree. The administration has to dramatize the real shutdown - that is, the budget impasse - by staging a phony shutdown. Hence, the passive-aggressive nonsense of roping off open air monuments on the Washington Mall and scenic overlooks in national parks to make the impasse visible to Joe Citizen.

Would Joe Citizen otherwise notice the shutdown that some parts of the federal government are not at work? Truthfully, no. Not unless he's employed by the feds either directly or via a contractor, or married to someone who is, or gets a check from some social program or other, or works for a business that gets regulated. That's a lot of people, but not nearly so many as the Washington hive assumes.

Meanwhile, I'm warming up my soup.

The Crisis Continues 

Government Shutdown Day 4, And It's Pretty Much Total Apocalypse

It's bad, all right. The National Park Service has closed its parks and monuments. The National Zoo's beloved Giant Panda Cam has gone dark, even though it says it's sponsored by the Ford Motor Company Fund, and I didn't think Ford was shut down, too. U.S. Embassy Twitter feeds are not being regularly updated "due to the lapse in appropriations" necessary to do so (what?).

Finally, last night, packs of mountain lions were seen roaming the abandoned streets of Washington DC. That's right. As government retreats, nature, red in tooth and claw, advances.

Government Shutdown Theater aside, my sympathy goes out to anyone experiencing financial distress. All you can do is be prepared to ride it out, and remember that these lapses in appropriations rarely last more than a week or two. As a commenter told me, it's time to practice the ancient art of home economics until this shutdown blows over.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"Man Crushed To Death By 1,100 Pounds Of Weed In Police Chase" (Da Hora Bataguassu, via Jalopnik)

Relax, My Fellow Feds, Relax

Some colleagues, taking a break from work

NPR ran a calm and measured short history of government shutdowns yesterday, which I thought was a most welcome change from the otherwise hysterical media coverage of Washington's budget impasse. Did you know that these shutdowns used to treated with a big yawn? They were.

"In the '60s and '70s down until 1980, it was not taken that seriously at all," says Charles Tiefer, a former legal adviser to the House of Representatives, who now teaches at the University of Baltimore Law School. In the old days, he says, when lawmakers reached a budget stalemate, the federal workforce just went about its business.

"It was thought that Congress would soon get around to passing the spending bill and there was no point in raising a ruckus while waiting," he says.

Ah, the good old days. "No point in raising a ruckus" about a passing event that is, in any case, an inevitable consequence of our system of divided government. Such an adult attitude. But then, we didn't have the internet back in the 60s and 70s, or even cable TV, so how would you raise a ruckus in the first place? By the time you did that with print media, I suppose a new budget would have been approved.

It was Jimmy Carter's administration that invented Government Shutdown Theater. Turning Boy Scout Troops away from a closed Washington Monument, predicting that airplanes will fall from the skies and farmers will wander the earth not knowing what to plant without their Federal controllers and extension agents, and all that. I don't see how that was an improvement, but maybe it took people's minds off of the economic stagflation and 'odd/even' gasoline rationing that Carter had going on.

"They [Carter's Justice Department] used an obscure statute to say that if any work continued in an agency where there wasn't money, the employees were behaving like illegal volunteers," says Tiefer. "So they not only could shut off the lights and leave, they were obliged to shut off the lights and leave."

In the years leading up to [AG] Civiletti's opinion, budget standoffs lasting a week or more were commonplace. But after the opinion, no standoff lasted more than three days until the epic government shutdowns of 1995.

The WaPo has a list of the 17 previous government shutdowns since 1976, when the current budgeting process took effect. These things are not that unusual, and are normally over in a few days. Until then, it's best to remain calm and carry on, as the posters say. Complaining to your Congressman, bitching to the newspapers, and - most of all - picketing either Congress or the White House, are silly and counterproductive.

Fellow Feds, I say, don't be a bit player in Government Shutdown Theater. Refuse to raise a ruckus while we wait for a resolution. It would be quite pointless anyway. Outside the bubble of Washington DC no one, but no one, feels any sympathy for a class of people who make more than the average American, have better employment benefits than almost anyone else, and are least likely of all to be affected by the severe economic downturn that's going on out there in Real America. Those of us who don't get out of the bubble much need that tough love message occasionally.

I know it's easier said than done, but really, the best course is to relax, light up a smoke (at least metaphorically), and ignore the breathless panic-mongering that feeds the 24-hour news cycle.

Not Someone Detached From the Details

The House Oversight Committee has released transcripts of its interviews with Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen, co-chairmen of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board. The interviews were conducted on June 4 and June 19, respectively. The Pickering transcript is here, and the Mullen transcript is here.

No big revelations in there, but it is clear the Oversight Committee majority was looking for an opening to go after Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

My favorite quote is on page 114 of Admiral Mullen's transcript, in which Mr. Castor, majority Chief Investigating Counsel, questioned Admiral Mullen about the extent of U/S Kennedy's involvement in making decisions concerning Temporary Special Mission Benghazi:

Q: Under Secretary Kennedy is not, by everyone's account, is not someone who is detached -

A: - correct -

Q: - from the details.

U/S Kennedy will be interviewed by the Oversight Committee himself later this week, I believe. Maybe we'll hear more then.

Fake Bomb Detector? No Harm In That, So Far As I Can See

For the ADE-651, the test can cost $40,000 to $60,000

Apparently a news outfit in Beirut is only now finding out that those 'bomb detectors' with the swiveling antennas - the ones that are in use all over Lebanon and beyond, the ones that have been exposed as bogus again and again, the ones the Iraqi Ministry of Interior got (some) of its money back from, the ones whose British manufacturer and salesmen have been convicted and sentenced for fraud, those ones? - are fake.

Better late than never, I suppose, but really, how many times does that fraud have to be debunked before the reality sinks in? Folks, the 'bomb detector' known as the ADE-651, among other names, consists of an antenna and an empty box. Let me repeat that last part .. an .. empty .. box. How hard can it be to figure out that it couldn't possibly detect anything?

Al-Akhbar English, from Lebanon, has not-so-breaking news today about the The Great Explosives Detector Hoax:

After the recent car bombs that killed dozens in Beirut and Tripoli, Lebanon’s public and private security forces armed themselves with a simple device that allegedly can detect explosives in a car. Al-Akhbar put the detectors to the test. Here are the results.

All over Beirut, you inevitably come across security guards carrying a plastic device, with what looks like an antenna extending from it, much like an old radio. You are asked to stop your car, and they run the scanner from front to back. If the metallic rod turns in the direction of the car, then it has sniffed a trace of explosives.

But is this kind of detector genuine? Does it in fact protect thousands of lives by finding explosive material? How does it actually work, and how effective is it? Do all the security outfits use the same product or are there a number of different models available?

I'll skip ahead a bit. Al-Akhbar's correspondent next describes loading explosives into his car and driving up to several Lebanese Army and Hezbollah security checkpoints in Beirut where they screened him with the ADE-651 explosives detector, and then  ///  SPOILER ALERT  ///  SPOILER ALERT  ///  SPOILER ALERT ///  pulled him out of his car and busted a cap in his dumb ass. No, just kidding! Actually, nothing happened, because the ADE-651 is only an empty box.

The story concludes:

Given the possibility that there are more effective models being used elsewhere, we decided to consult a security officer who is an expert in explosives. When we asked him about the detector, he laughed, saying it was a big hoax. He told us that the army had tested one machine, and upon opening it, found nothing more than what you might find inside a child’s toy.

It is worth noting that the BBC aired an investigation into this type of “antenna” detector, enlisting the help of experts from Cambridge University and specialized laboratories. The results revealed, according to the report, that the device is completely ineffective, and the cost of the materials it contains is worth no more than a few dollars.

Why have government agencies all over the world bought the ADE-651, and why do most of them continue to use it? It has no favorable test results, or successful track record, or credible theory of operation, or technology, or even any components other than the box and antenna.

That whole credulity thing keeps bothering me. I think the sales genius behind the ADE-651 must be Irwin Mainway, the deliciously sleazy late night TV hustler portrayed by Dan Aykroyd in those SNL skits back in the 70s.














"Johnny Fake Bomb Detector" sounds like it would fit right in with the other great Mainway toys, like the Invisible Pedestrian Halloween Costume, the Bag O' Glass, the General Tron Secret Police Confession Kit, Doggy Dentist, and the rest.

Mainway said he was only packaging what people wanted, and he always had reasonable-sounding excuses for his dangerous toys. Even warnings right there on the label. If people buy them, hey, you can't fix stupid, I mean, so far as I can see, you know?

The Longest Day, But Not the Longest Memory

We're too busy to remember now, but please call us next year

Last year on June 6, the White House sent out a lousy tweet to commemorate the 68th anniversary of D-Day, a cheap gesture which I thought was deplorable. This year, it hasn't even done that.

I know someone was using the White House Twitter account on June 6, because he or she sent a tweet decrying the lack of free Wi-Fi in our schools. But nothing about 10,000 men being killed or wounded on that day to begin the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation. I'm partly disgusted, but also partly relieved that at least no political hack or intern used the occasion to promote the bombing of Syria.

Next year will be a round-number anniversary, and maybe our politicians will pay somewhat more attention then. At least, the French are already paying attention to the the 70th anniversary.

Something happened here 69 years ago, and it was - arguably - the most momentous event in world history. Shame on us that we don't commemorate it every year.