In my October 1 posting I predicted that the government shutdown would last for 8 days. So it looks as though the risk of me having to buy everyone a Taco Gigante is increasing.
How is the shutdown affecting my friends? Here’s a note from one who lives in Concord, Massachusetts:
The Minuteman National Park has cordoned off all of its parking lots. Busloads of people are still showing up, but now the buses are parked on the sides of Monument Street, creating, well, monumental traffic jams. They don’t chain off the lots at night or on holidays. Why do they do it now? Because a central bureaucrat in the National Parks Service or in the White House told them to. Our public servants feel it’s their job to make our lives difficult to prove how important they are. This is what happens when Americans vote for more and larger Government …
The aircraft is sold, pre-buy [inspection] done, money in escrow… but the registry at the FAA is closed and we can’t finalize the transaction. Hope they open up soon so that we can fulfill the government mandate they came up with which is to register with them. An amazing example of government overreach and self-sustaining politics.
First you pass laws that require anyone to deal with you… then you provide bad service and ask for more money to do so… then you close down the one office (probably no more than one person!) that handles billions a year in airplane registrations to prove to the public how powerful you are.
And finally this story from a charter operator:
The [$10 million jet] is sitting because the FAA took ten weeks so far to conduct the required conformity check for 135 [charter or “air taxi” operations]. When they did they supposedly found a sticker that was missing. Now they won’t do anything.
Separately, has anyone heard what federal workers are doing? They don’t have to go into work, but those who aren’t living paycheck-to-paycheck shouldn’t have any financial fears (since the government should eventually pay them). I know only one furloughed government worker and asked his wife what he’d been up to lately. She said “Oh, he’s been biking every day. The weather has been beautiful here in Washington.” This USA Today article says that golf courses and gyms are doing well. Has anyone heard of anything exciting? A government worker building a life-sized LEGO model of the Fontana di Trevi?