I know this is kind of reviving a dead thread, but I really wanted to thank you for this recommendation. I'm not quite done with it yet, but it's really good so far.

“Wingnut welfare"? I've never heard that phrase before, but it's perfect and I love it.

This is excellent stuff. I've got a lot of interest in this topic, but I've read very little about it, so I'm really looking forward to thise book recommendations.

“including CEO Bobby Kotick (whose salary in 2017 was roughly $28.6 million).”

I’m more surprised that 90% of TSA employees are showing up for work, because I promise you, I would not. If these employees are really that important, they should be protected from government shutdowns, and that goes extra for the Treasury employees who are just getting called in to protect some dipshit’s polling…

If only Fred were still alive to cover for this.

We’re having a shutdown that’s not really a shutdown, because everything public-facing is still open, being (under-)manned by unpaid federal employees for the entire purpose of buoying the President’s poll numbers. What a country.

That peoples’ livelihoods have become political footballs pisses me off. I always thought that getting a federal government job would mean I had arrived, but I wouldn’t take one now if they begged me. At least at my current job (which is in local government) I know I’ll get a paycheck every second Tuesday, regardless…

I know that feeling. I spent a year un- or underemployed recently, and now that I’m comfortable, I’m scared as hell to move out of my shithole rented room. I could probably afford a place where the landlord always pays the water bill, but I worry that things will go to hell again.

I actually read an interesting article about that a while back, which, sadly, I didn’t save. It talked about how white citizens on benefits would support slashing of those benefits just because they were worried that other people were somehow getting more or not deserving of it.

Is this news to anyone? It’s nice to have a high-level official acknowledge it, but the dude has been trying to back down on this since day one. He just wants to be able to call it a win when he does. I won’t be surprised when he tweets out how we “need a Wall (Caution tape) strung across the Border” to protect us.

As a local expert, with five years’ experience living there, I think you’ll find that it’s pronounced “begs,” and they are small cloth packets of beads, thrown at a board in a nearby parking spot. This definition may only apply to a stadium parking lot sized portion of Milwaukee, though.

Don’t think I don’t see you, Shep McAllister.

“UHS’ CEO Alan Miller makes 541 times as much as the average UHS employee, with $21.6 million in total compensation; the average employee makes less than $40,000.”

“it is important for us to build on our traditions here in the United States”

Norsepower is an excellent name. I don’t have anything else to add to this discussion.

Right? That wasn’t a comedy bit; it was just a transcript from the time you had a beer with a particularly unpleasant relative.

But if they did that, they’d have to rename it the Kilofactory.

I would go one step further, and say that even the ones that are doing well have that problem. A conglomerate picks up a website that was doing okay, and the first idea is always”change everything! Pivot to video! Alienate the old audience while desperately grasping for an entirely different one!”

From reading the article, I get the feeling that those employees generally just generate mottos. It seems like every paragraph had a new, different, and totally empty “corporate vision” handbook filler.