I don’t really understand. I went to a census webpage today and got a message that it was suspended because of the shutdown. Why? If there is still electricity to run the site, and there is because I got the message, there is no additional cost to leaving the information accessible. In fact, it probably cost more to put up that message than it would to just leave it alone.
I am still working, since overseas diplomacy is considered crucial at least for now. My Brazilian colleagues cannot be furloughed because of Brazilian law, which applies to them. Since we are on the job, I think we should do our jobs to extent we can given that our resources have been cut.
We are shut down due to lack of appropriations. It isn’t like being on strike; it means that we still want to work but don’t have money and I cannot spend money on new things. But we still have a lot of not new things that we can use or do and we have our skills, talents and time. I don’t want to stand down until I have nothing left to stand with. The work we do is valuable. It was worth doing last week and is worth doing now. There are rules about these things, however, and perhaps protean interpretations. I just want to do the job that they are still paying me to do and I think most of my colleagues do too. We should do our best to minimize the pain and mitigate the damage. That is what I intend to do as far as I am allowed: maybe even a little bit farther.