Monday, September 30, 2013

Oh Noz! OMG!

Apparently the USDA website is shut down due to the government funding crisis.

This prompts two responses from me:

1. Oh no! How will we ever possibly survive without whatever the hell it is the USDA website is meant to do. It will seriously impact the ability of the USDA to deliver key services in...er...um...

2. These people apparently have such a low opinion of your intelligence that they think you aren't aware that it doesn't actually cost any money to leave a web page in the same state it was in. Quite the contrary - it costs money to change the web page. If the web server were shut down due to lack of money, you wouldn't get any page at all.

I can scarcely think of a better advertisement for firing everybody who signed off on this absurd stunt. Or, you know, just fire the whole USDA. Be honest, do you even know what these clowns do? Have you noticed the lack of services from them in your life recently? If US farmers stopped making milk, I wager you'd notice that pretty quickly. If the USDA stopped interfering in this process, it's far less obvious that you'd miss it.

Thanks to Hector Lopez for the pointer.

2 comments:

  1. I actually needed to get onto the USDA website...

    The SEC has spent some time thinking about this:

    http://www.sec.gov/about/sec-plan-of-operations-during-lapse-in-appropriations-2013.pdf

    Good to know more govt resources used to plan for the shutdown. I would like to know how much all of this is going to cost, and who is going to pay for it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha, really? What on earth for? Maybe you can be our poster child counterexample of why the USDA isn't totally worthless.

      This kind of thing is pure theatre. These clowns always threaten to shut down their services at the threat of the tiniest budget cut. It's like if the software department in Microsoft reacted to a threatened budget cut by announcing that it was no longer selling copies of Word. Except that if you tried that kind of crap in a corporation, you'd get kicked to the curb in 15 seconds flat.

      Delete