Lockheed To Furlough 3,000 On Monday, Layoffs Also Kicking In 341
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Lockheed employees are the latest casualty in the government shutdown, with the defense contractor announcing Friday it plans to furlough 3,000 workers on Monday. But what they didn't mention is they are laying off workers too, says a Lockheed source on the hush-hush. Lockheed, of course, isn't the only defense contractor taking it on the chin. Other contractors include United Technologies, which has furloughed 2,000, and BAE Systems which cut 1,000."
The government wants you to hurt. (Score:3, Insightful)
They want to make you think that if you don't give them what they want then you'll suffer for it. Legal extortion from the ring masters.
Defense (Score:4, Insightful)
Defense spending needs to be reduced, but this bullshit isn't the way to do it. If anything these shenanigans are going to end up costing the American taxpayer more.
Your (dipshit) Congress in action.
Hey Silicon Valley! (Score:1, Insightful)
Looking for those "qualified Americans"that you can't find?!
Well, heeerrrre they are!
And they have have been working on much more advanced technology than your dipshit advertising/push/ïnterests/ or whatever the buzz word is for basically saying "we're advertizing shit"; which is what everything I have seen in the Valley is selling.
These guys can do everything you want.
But here is the catch - they have been paid well, they are Americans, and they know their worth.
So what's it gonna be?!
Didn't think so. You are all a bunch of lying hypocrites. Fuck You!
I hope we get Eisenhower era level of income taxes - you sacks of shit.
Re:Defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Our dipshit congress......
Re:Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally most of the people intent on shrinking the US budget as much as possible do not want to shrink defense spending. They consider an overwhelming defense/offense force with pie-in-the-sky projects to be vital, but health care and social programs are unnecessary (or should be handled by the states/counties, at which point they'll gripe that the states/counties spend too much).
Re:Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Defense spending needs to be reduced, but this bullshit isn't the way to do it. If anything these shenanigans are going to end up costing the American taxpayer more.
Your (dipshit) Congress in action.
This is not going to reduce spending one bit. When the Congress gets done with 'shutdown' theater, everything that was put on hold will be restarted. The delays will cost more and some of the people who were intimately knowledgeable of the projects will move on, to be replaced by people who do not know as much of what is going on. None of these projects will stop, which is the only way that they would cost any less, they will continue and the interruption will make them cost more. And the Congress will continue appropriating while citing the interruption as a "need" for more money.
Brilliant PR (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Who shut down the government? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bravo for laying this all out so clearly, and my heartfelt condolences for being laid off. I would add one thing: that Congress, like any parliament or legislature, is designed to be inefficient. A king or dictator is much faster at implementing new policies; a bicameral legislature is supposed to fight itself and the magistrates who execute the law. Putting the power of the purse into the hands of the lower, larger, rabble-aligned and both frequently and directly elected (remember, the Senate was not originally) chamber was the Founder's way of ensuring that fights like this would happen and keep the government from running efficiently. The House especially was intended to check the administration; that's why they control the money. Now, if only the Senate would do its job and check the military...
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct but you're still an idiot. Now that you are unemployed and have no healthcare and potentially have pre-existing conditions, you better hope and pray for a change in attitude from the remainder of the House majority. A few days of slow business didn't get you layed off - it was going to happen anyways, this just happened to be a convenient time to do so.
So where does that leave you? COBRA for a few months if you're lucky under existing law and then you get to be a single person (or family) negotiating with a multinational insurance corporation. Have you done that before? If not I'll tell you a trick, lube up real good before you go begging, cause you're going to need it.
OTOH come Jan 1st, you'll get to join up with millions of others just like you and with your combined negotiating power you will be able to get a much much better deal, better in fact than any Corporate plan. Better because you will be paying less than what you plus the Corp would pay (yes they pay for some percentage of the policy, the individual typically pays less than 50%, depending on the size of the group).
Don't be an idiot. Realize that economies of scale are real and that group plans are better than individual plans, regardless of who manages the group enrollment policy.
You partisans crack me up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:5, Insightful)
When/if Democrats/Libertarians get in power of the House, you have basically stated that they are allowed to "defund" any part of the government they wish. Don't like drone strikes, just defund it. Don't like the whole damn military, just defund it. Don't like national parks, just defund it. Don't like border patrol, just defund it. Don't like the FBI/CIA/NASA/etc., just defund it. Don't like a single program within any of those agencies, just defund it.
You have basically created an end-around to the entire democratic process and made the House the most powerful group of people in the country. Screw the Senate, the Executive branch, the Judicial branch and the People... it's all up to the House to decide what is law; after all if they don't like, just defund it.
Where is the check of power on the House?
Re:Defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh huh. Sure. At some point, you're going to gave to realize that the founders' political theories were flawed. The whole point of a constitution is to anticipate tyranny and then dissipate it.
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:2, Insightful)
You just lost your job thanks to a bunch of tea party freaks and you still support them! How much of a fucking retard can you be? You support the tea party but work for the government in a non-essential capacity! You fucking idiot! Tell me who is in favor of "reduced government"? Looks like you just got reduced, bitch. Have fun being unemployed you fucking loser.
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Senate and the veto power of the President are the checks on the House's ability to defund programs. They can refuse to pass or can veto budgets that the House passes. That's exactly what's happening. That's exactly what's supposed to happen. The Constitution is not a blueprint for efficiency; it's a set of rules for political warfare designed to keep the politicians at each others' throats so that they're less able to choke the people instead. The government works as intended when the House, Senate, President, and Supreme Court are all trying to undermine each other and build their own power, because the people who designed the government didn't trust human nature to provide in perpetuity the kind of leaders who would observe moderation and remain within the bounds set upon them. The Founders knew that power attracts the ambitious, and that the only way to check ambition was to pit the ambitious against one another.
The Democrats (except for the fringe left) aren't going to try to defund the NSA or drones (Obama arguably makes too much use of both to give up either willingly), but one could imagine the libertarians (the fringe more-or-less right) doing so if they ever went mainstream, and that would be in accord with the system of checks and balances. The Senate and the President could try to stop them, and eventually the administration shuts down unless a compromise is reached. This weakens all parties involved and shows the people that their leaders are more interested in ambition than service, and that large swaths of the government are truly nonessential. The people, outraged at their leaders' incompetence and the waste of money that goes into nonessential functions, should then rabidly demand more efficient service for less tax money; that's the cue to kick out the incumbents. Once upon a time that happened, but the people have lost their ambition.
Re:Damn (Score:3, Insightful)
95 Americans have won Nobel Prizes in Medicine. That's about half of all such prizes awarded over the entire planet.
It seems to me that the chief US export is life.
Not only that (Score:5, Insightful)
But the budget isn't the time to fight things. The way to get a law changed isn't to say "Let's stop paying for the law!" but rather to change the law. The ACA can be repealed, just as it was introduced. That is the right way. However there isn't the votes for that.
What's worse is that there IS the votes to pass the budget in a straight up and down vote but the leadership won't let it happen. That's why people are, rightly, calling "taking hostage". The unmodified budget could and should pass a vote, but they won't let it go to vote because they are mad. A minority trying to force things on a majority.
I also can 100% support the president in saying "No we won't make concessions," because it is in the same vein as "Never negotiate with terrorists." If they can get away with whatever they want just by threatening a shutdown, then that'll happen every single time.They continue to force more and more radical agendas saying "Do this or we shut things down!" No, no negotiation when you play hostage with the budget. Do it right or fuck off.
Re: Defense (Score:4, Insightful)
The IT community tends to go to both extremes. There's a libertarian faction that's larger than in the general population. There's a liberal faction that's much larger than that, and again larger than the population. The rest seems to fall more or less in the middle. The tea party and neo-con factions tend to be smaller than normal.
The thing is that the IT libertarians are vocal, and used to be numerous on slashdot. But go into any IT department and poll and you'll see more liberals than anything else.
Re:Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans lost the overall vote in the House, but have many entrenched politicians thanks to excessive gerrymandering. They only can't do that for the senate because they can't manipulate state boundaries!
And yes, Democrats gerrymander too, but clearly Republicans have done it more, since they can drastically lose the popular vote for the house and still hold the majority of the seats.
So yes, MINORITY.
Re:Who shut down the government? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Weaponized keynesianism (Score:4, Insightful)
for what it's worth, a large part of what our defense industry does is pry money out of the hands of the super wealthy and spread it around the economy.
The decision to pry money from the super wealthy, and the decision of what to spend that money on are two disjoint decisions. For instance, we could still tax the rich, and then instead of spending a billion dollars on a single B-2 bomber, we could spend $11,000 each to improve every single one of the 88,000 elementary schools in America. Which of those two expenditures would be more likely to improve the long term strength and security of our country?
Re:Damn (Score:2, Insightful)
You know you can't cancel murders out with medicine?
I mean, it's great and all, but it's *totally* not germane to the point. You could coherently argue that the US didn't actually murder and things were just and all that, but it's extremely irrelevant to argue that the US isn't exporting death by pointing at medicine. That's like saying there aren't starving people in the world because there's so many overweight people.
I can only imagine that you saw something vaguely negative about your home country and couldn't help but fall over yourself saying the exact opposite.