Period of adjustment

At time of writing, we’re closing in on 17 days of partial federal government shutdown, with more than 800,000 workers affected—either furloughed without pay or working without pay. Most of them are likely to be paid eventually, although this is not guaranteed. Additionally, tens of thousands of contract workers—from cleaning staff to software architects—are sidelined with no expectation of recouping their wages. They only get paid for hours worked; lost weeks can’t be made up.

This #TrumpShutdown is all down to the Kleptocrat’s demand for funding his cockamamie wall along the border with Mexico, and down to the Repugnants in the Senate (primarily McConnell, but also Graham and some others) who suddenly are “unable” to vote on a Continuing Resolution they’d previously approved, because they’re afraid of the big baby in the Oval Office. We’re 17 days into it, and we’re told that that baby is willing for it to go on for months until he gets his bloody, useless wall and proves his balls are bigger than Ann Coulter’s.

But here’s the thing—those hundreds of thousands of people who are either working without compensation or involuntarily idled are either dipping into their savings or moving into the red to make the mortgage, buy the groceries or pay the doctor bills that are all due now. The Office of Personnel Management advising furloughed workers to arrange with their landlords to swap repair or maintenance work for rent and Orangina breezily assuring everyone that creditors will “make adjustments—they always do” is just master level fuckwittery, although unsurprising coming from someone who’s spent decades systematically stiffing workers and contractors.

By way of demonstrating, I give two examples from financial institutions with which I have relationships.

My credit union, headquartered in Manhattan Beach, Calif., has a banner across the home page stating that if you’re affected by the shutdown, they’re ready to help. But click through and you’ll see that all the “adjustment” they’re willing to make involves a very limited no-interest 12-month loan ($2000 would not even be a month’s rent in a lot of cities), $5000 credit card limit (with “normal” interest) and two months of deferred existing loan—but interest accrues during that period. (I expect they basically repurposed the accommodation they put up for victims of the California wildfires last autumn.)

They’re still going to make a profit, and this is a credit union.

CapitalOne (where I have a credit card) didn’t have any indicator of “adjustment”, nor did Bank of America. I through no fault of my own have a mortgage with Wells Fargo. If you want to find out what “adjustment” they’re willing to make, you have to call them.

That’ll be deep joy. It’s a wonder to me that WF is even still in business and its entire management structure isn’t in prison after it’s well-documented policy of fraud against its customers that went on for decades.

We the people face another assault this evening: Kleptocrat has announced he’ll “Address the Nation” and expects all the fake media enemies of the people to give him airtime. My fear is that he’ll use the occasion to declare the “state of emergency” he’s threatened as an end run around Congress, and we’ll have something much more serious than a government shutdown.

Can you say Constitutional crisis?