There’s been a lot of talk this week about ‘furloughed’ federal workers who are currently at home on unpaid leave because of the US government is technically bankrupt and forced to shut down. But let’s clarify a few things…
So we hear reports that Obama (photo, left) is golfing this week – and no one is surprised, of course… and why should they be? It’s the measure of the man.
Assuming all of these ‘furloughed’ workers will be paid – which, as history proves, they will – then why aren’t they out doing their jobs?
In a normal corporation or business, if pay checks are late – even up to months at a time, workers will still show up to work for various reasons – loyalty, career incentives, and a general lack of laziness which typically prevails in most entrepreneurial endeavors. Clearly, this is not the case if you are working for the US Federal government. 
It’s expected that all of these so-called furloughed federal workers will be awarded back-pay at some point in the future – so we must ask the obvious question: why are they sitting at home on their fat asses? The answer is twofold:
1. They work for the state – so they are part of the entitled class, so you expect many will be happy to stay at home.
2. The White House has told workers to stay at home in a narcissistic attempt to score cheap political points that will be used to sling left-wing mud back at the Republic opposition. In other words, workers are being used as a political football in Washington’s all important blame game.
Number 2 is the stronger answer in this case.
OK, we know that most of these furloughed people cannot go into work, partly because of the Antideficiency Act of 1870, but our point is that the political cut-throat types – in this case it’s the protagonist party controlling the White House, are using this staged crisis to play bad cricket.
Overall, the US federal government is a bloated, and corrupt organ of the state. Not all government workers are deadbeat, jobsworth pension monsters, however. Some of them do useful jobs – and are good at doing them. But judging by the swollen ranks of those now classed as “nonessential staff” currently languishing in front of their 72″ inch plasmas at home – is it possible that nonessential also means not necessary? This question needs to be considered thoroughly.
The up shot, if there is one, is that the NSA furloughed over 6,000 domestic spies and snoops, but have still kept the remaining 34,000 at their listening posts in order keep track of all your important emails, Facebook comments, SMS messages and phone calls. At least the shutdown has slowed them up a little.
NEW NSA DOMESTIC SPYING CENTER IN UTAH: Due to open this month.
First, the good news. During a Senate hearing earlier today, Gen. Keith Alexander (in charge of America’s Secret Cyber Army) said:
“We have over 960 Ph.D.s, over 4,000 computer scientists, over a thousand mathematicians. They are furloughed. Our nation needs people like this.”
Now the bad news. While the number of NSA employees is officially classified, in 2012 the NSA said more than 30,000 employees work at Ft. Meade and other facilities. In 2012 John C. Inglis, the deputy director, said that the total number of NSA employees is “somewhere between 37,000 and one billion” as a joke, and stated that the agency is “probably the biggest employer of introverts.”
In 2013 Der Spiegel, likely using source data from Edward Snowden, said that the NSA had 40,000 employees.
More from The Hill:
A government official familiar with the military’s plans told The Hill last week that the shutdown would be unlikely to affect “core” National Security Agency operations.
According to the Defense Department’s shutdown plan, intelligence and surveillance activities necessary for national security are excepted from the shutdown. But the document notes that “general political and economic intelligence unrelated to ongoing or contingency military operations” are not excepted.
So, the bottom line, the NSA has publicly furloughed about 6,000 people. It has about 34,000 more. We wonder: are the “introverted” NSA workers that spy on Americans (not to mention on their significant others using every method known to man), aka the truly “essential” ones among the 6,000 currently playing Call of Duty or downloading porn at home, or more likely, still in the comfortable and ultra secret confines of their Fort Meade headquarters?
