I don't want to get on a rant, as Dennis Miller would say...

        I'm in my fourth day of retirement after 30 years of serving the
public in national parks and a BLM museum.  I went out in the middle of the
current fiscal debacle, the sixth (as best I can figure it) that I've been
caught in.  Of course, the others were all very brief, but in each case it
seems to me that a leadership vaccuum paralyzed both parties and both
branches of government till they endedup playing chicken at the last
millisecond.  In this case, management is divided on which way to take the
people's business,...so they close the business!  Disgusting!

        A teacher called it a "theater of the absurd" when, during the
November shutdown, I called her from home (illegally) to tell her she would
have to reschedule her class visit to the museum I worked at.  They were
planning to learn about their heritage; instead they got a lesson in how
important history is in our elected representatives' priorities...quite a
ways below funding more bombers than the Pentagon wanted!

        The people deserve better than this (not to mention the Federal
workers being used as footballs).  One repercussion should be a groundswell
of outrage that lets all parties to this fiasco know convincingly that this
must not go on, and this must not be allowed to happen again.

Tom Vaughan

Tom Vaughan                    \_   Cultural
The Waggin' Tongue             \_    Resource
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