True, but Melz did specify independent contractors who usually don’t have health insurance coverage through the companies via which they provide government services.
You raise an important point. Independent Federal contractors, numerous though they are, constitute but a fraction of the contractors who work indirectly for the Federal government. We’re going to be paying for years for so many people getting shafted.
it’s not like people need to see, or eat /s
well, as weeblur explained, its only 0.3% of our GDP, so they don’t count… /s
It’s not like dental neglect can actually kill people if their gums get infected or anything…
/s
Heart disease and now…
I’m stealing this.
Let’s call it a loan.
Steal away. If you do something fantastic with it, let me know.
(eidt) Here’s what I came up with.
(edit) When they talk about the Free Market, they aren’t talking about the grocery store, Don.
i’ve been reading “the fifth risk” by micheal lewis. as i’ve commented in another thread, it is making me more frightened than i already was by the current president. he and his people truly had no conception of what government is. if they thought of government it was as a collective of societal leeches who got paid to interfere with businesspeople. their approach to the department of energy was, when they got around to communicating with them at all, to ask for lists of scientists who were involved in alternative energy resources, in climate change, as well as any staff who had been involved in funding or supporting international climate change negotiations so they could be fired. they didn’t send over any staff of the prospective nominees for energy secretary or any of the undersecretaries. the entire 150+ presidentially appointed staff from the department in charge of maintaining nuclear weapons and monitoring nuclear proliferation all left with no replacements and no one to brief for the replacements except for the head of the department because someone in the department called some republican senators and told them what was happen and they frantically called the transition team to keep them all from leaving. all because these people have no idea what government does or is.
it is no surprise he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what is happening to the federal employees because he doesn’t understand anything about any of it. for creating the shutdown he should be impeached because he has demonstrated he is unfit to hold the office.
edited to add for clarity–the head of the department in charge of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation (a retired 3-star air force general with a ph.d. in political science from oxford) was asked to stay by the transition team because someone in the department called senators on the committee they briefed to tell them what was happening. he was the only one asked to stay.
Man, I forgot about Wilbur Ross’s earlier stint in the news.
He probably thinks that furloughed workers should just steal a million dollars from a business associate to make ends meet.
Unlike the steel workers, who are so significant, he’s been leading the trade war for them…
“When federal employees have to show your ID at the market, they give them free groceries. That’s how it works.”
It’s really amazing how these guys, who have lived their entire lives wrapped up in so much privilege, they have absolutely no idea how reality works for 99.9% of the population, at all. These dudes might as well be Martians, given how little they know about the world.
Yep. That he remotely thought saying he might shut down the federal government for “months or even years” made any sense at all indicates he still has zero understanding of what any of it does. That level of ignorance is totally breathtaking to think about (in the “oh god, I can’t breath” sense).
I was around for the 2013 furlough so can speak from that experience–the backpay was calculated as one payment and got taxed at a higher rate than the normal, separate paychecks would have. Not sure how the math worked out at tax filing time though.
I just had an idea for a new ‘reality’ tv show; take a clueless, rich person of privilege who is completely out of touch with the rest of humanity, and record them trying to live a regular cog’s life, with no assistance whatsoever.
ETA: I can’t believe they censored the word “screw” in this video. How times have changed.
It’s an even worse taxable no-no, if that money is in a retirement account and the worker is younger than 59.5 years old. There’s a 10% early withdrawal penalty to consider.
Especially in the context of this story about an extreme “free” marketeer like Ross, the possible identity of the girlfriend in the song is delicious:
I really hope he winds up like these guys in Trading Places…
Indeed. And as we find them in Coming to America, too.
somewhat ironically, perhaps, this song is said to have been inspired by Danea Stratou, who is presently married to good guy economist ( if I may ) Yannis Varoufakis . My favourite cover of this tune, with Joe Jackson and Ben Folds producing (really, you’ll like it 
)
Someone like Ross would probably see the Duke brothers on the street and advise them to use GoFundMe instead of giving them cash.
