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Samantha Bee on Roger Stone: America's Athlete's Foot [VIDEO]

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teleskiguy1/31/2019 1:38:02 pm PST

Republicans want to destroy government. It’s working in places like Colville, WA.

In Colville, Washington, a town of about 5,000 in the northeast corner of the state, not everyone was upset about the longest government shutdown in history.

“I say, shut it down forever,” Thomas Carpenter said as he stepped out of a Main Street shop and into an SUV. “From my perspective, if it hasn’t changed for me, then a lot of the unnecessary stuff can just go away.”

Carpenter’s words were echoed in results from an online poll published by the local newspaper, the Statesman Examiner. While the early January poll was by no means scientific, it gives a snapshot of anti-federal sentiment in a county where President Donald Trump carried two-thirds of the vote and federal employees are among the highest-paid employees. Here, two-thirds of poll respondents replied, “Even with the partial shutdown, there are too many federal employees,” or “The feds aren’t working? I didn’t even notice.”

[…]

“If it was a true government shutdown, it would have been felt a long time ago,” said one furloughed Forest Service employee: The timber industry would have lost work, and timber companies would be on the phone with Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the local Republican congressional stalwart, complaining about the impact on their businesses.

That furloughed worker and another mid-career Forest Service employee, both of whom work on projects related to forest health, said the shutdown has made them question their career choices. “Morale is low and is going to be low,” one said. “We’re going down a road to bitterness.” Both workers, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak with the media, felt like they’d be playing catch-up for months to come. They both wondered out loud about their future job stability and the chances of finding outside employment.