Thursday, October 17, 2013

Every government agency that works to protect the citizen and improve their lives suffered significant furloughs during the shutdown. OUTRAGEOUS, MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE AND BLATANT CRONYISM.



 
Posted by Lauren Morello
Posted on behalf of Sara Reardon.

Not only are government researchers barred (click here) from their own labs during the government shutdown, but they cannot travel anywhere else, either.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who were in San Francisco, California, attending a meeting on cytokines found their trips unexpectedly cut short when the government began shutting down at midnight on 1 October.  As soon as the news broke, NIH officials told the travelling researchers to come back immediately “by any means necessary”.
The organizers quickly rescheduled the meeting so that all the NIH employees could give their talks before the agency officially shut down. “They told us giving a talk after that was a federal crime,” says one NIH immunologist who asked that her name not be used, as she is not authorized to speak to the press....
  1. Andrea Coutu said:
    As a Canadian, I didn’t think this shut-down would affect me much. However, I was surprised to find out that it is affecting my consulting business. I often do consulting for US firms or organizations and I sell books on setting consulting fees and running a consulting business through a major US bookstore. Because of the shut-down, I can’t fill out the necessary paperwork about the reciprocal tax agreement Canada has with the US. So my clients are now able to hang on to 30% of my fees for tax purposes – and I have to remit Canadian taxes too. I will be glad when the IRS is up and running again. I feel for all the people in the US who are obviously harder hit by this shutdown than this Canadian who already has universal healthcare.
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