Whenever something bad happens, some bozo will call it a learning experience. I've had a lot of learning experiences, ask my wife. But with the shutdown it's true, for example, I learned that 93 percent of the workers at the Environmental Protection Agency are non-essential. Now I didn't major in math, but I'm pretty sure that's more than nine out of ten.

Of the 16,000, roughly 1,000 are essential making the EPA about as necessary as shoulder pads on a snake or another hangover sequel, or Vermont. And so we learn the difference between essential and non- essential in government. A non-essential employee is what you get when a citizen foots the bill and the government doesn't care. We are the wallets, they are the spoiled brats.

In a private business, a non-essential employee would be a non- employee. He or she would be home eating funyons, which are delicious, in their undies scratching the luck he would like Andy Dick. A non-essential employee is what you get when you feed cash into a bloated bureaucracy, without ever designating its necessity. So those EPA jobs are there simply because they can be but also to ensure the survival of a ravenous bureaucracy. It's a lot like the movie "The Blob," but without the happy ending.

And that's "The Memo."

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