When federal employees are retroactively paid for the days missed when they were “furloughed,” what was the point of President Clinton’s moronic government shutdown charade? Was any money saved or was the taxpaying public simply inconvenienced (extremely and radically for some) by this political folly? I was surprised that the Bangor Daily News and others in the media didn’t pull out their common sense meters when this happened in November, especially when so much fuss was made in the news over the dire economic plight of these workers. With another “shutdown” looming on Dec. 15, will we see another bout of this silliness?

Call your congresspersons and demand that federal employess stay at their posts if they going to be paid retroactively as they always have been in every other previous federal government shutdown. Gerrard W. Rudmin Dexter