>>>>It's happened.
>>>
>>>If you only just found out you're probably the last person in the western world to do so :-}
>>>
>>>Must admit, although things looked tougher than usual, I thought they would still scrape in under the wire......
>>
>>I think they'll fix this soon enough, or else the people would notice that they don't notice much difference between functional and non-functional government...
>>
>>Look at Italy - during the 2nd half of the XX century, they had an average of one month a year without a government. Nobody remembers those months as different from others.
>
>Italy is not exactly known as a smooth operation.
>
>The American late night host David Letterman had a good observation last night. He said if there are 800,000 non-essential government jobs maybe that's part of the problem.

But you know it's not that simple. For example, I heard someone from the FAA explain that while air traffic controllers are (of course) considered essential, the folks who train them are not. That works in the short run, but not the long run.

Tamar