Reign of Pain Update: FCC to Shutter

As Instapundit notes: SINCE WE WERE ALL KILLED BY THE REPEAL OF NET NEUTRALITY, THIS REALLY ISN’T TOO BIG A DEAL: FCC to shutter ‘most operations’ if government shutdown continues.

The Federal Communications Commission said it will shut down “most operations” in the middle of the day Thursday if the partial government shutdown continues.

“At that time, employees will have up to four hours to complete an orderly shutdown of operations. However, work required for the protection of life and property will continue,” the federal agency said in a statement late Tuesday.

In another document, the FCC offered details of what would happen during a shutdown.

“Consumer complaint and inquiry phone lines cannot be answered; consumer protection and local competition enforcement must cease; licensing services, including broadcast, wireless, and wireline, must cease; management of radio spectrum and the creation of new opportunities for competitive technologies and services for the American public must be suspended; and equipment authorizations, including those bringing new electronic devices to American consumers, cannot be provided,” the agency said.

The FCC said that after the four-hour wind-down, of the 1,442 workers “on board” before the shutdown plan was activated, only 245 employees would remain working — the rest would be furloughed.

OMG, we're all gonna die (again).

Imagine a government shutdown, even a 1/4 government shutdown, during a holiday. If one side stayed in Washington, extending an open-ended invitation to negotiate, while the other vacationed in Hawaii, what should the coverage look like?

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 1, 2019

Actually, I'm getting a "day off" thanks to the shutdown. Because the Smithsonian nominally ran out of "old money," it is closing the museums and research centers, including SERC, where I play in the band, and normally practice on Thursday.

A curious fact about the Smithsonian. It was founded using private funds of James Smithson, an Englishman, who after the War of Independence, bequested the funds "to found in Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Since then the Smithsonian has evolved two halfs, one half paid for by the annual federal appropriation (subject to the shutdown), and the other half a private trust, owned by the Federal government if you can figure that one out. Federal employees and Trust employees work together, and do many of the same jobs, but Trust employees are funded through a variety of means, including proceeds from the endowment, grants and contracts which are not dependent on the Congressional appropriation.

The Smithsonian has two sources of funding - federal appropriations and income generated from gifts, revenue-generating activities, and investments (referred to as Smithsonian "trust funds"). The Smithsonian also has two different categories of employees, "federal" and "trust," as determined by the source of funds used to pay an employee's salary. However, the Smithsonian is one legal entity. The various museums and operating units within the Smithsonian have been created in different ways, some by Congress, some by the Board of Regents, but the museums and units (including Smithsonian Enterprises) have no separate, independent legal status: they are all part of the same legal "whole," the Smithsonian Institution.

So, while approximately half of the ongoing labor costs of the Smithsonian are not covered by the shutdown, all the "non-essential" staff at the Smithsonian are being furloughed. While the half of the employees covered by the feds will likely have their lost wages restored by Congress, historically, the Trust employees eat the cost. I was a Trust employee. So don't tell me about the unfairness of the feds having to wait to get their winter vacations paid for.