What do governments have – that no private sector company has?

Employer-designated “non-essential personnel.”

Merriam Webster’s dictionary offers up the following “non-essential” synonyms:

“Dispensable, gratuitous, inessential, needless, uncalled-for, unessential, unnecessary, unwarranted.”

Thank God governments hire oh-so-many of these people.

We are in the midst of a federal government shutdown.  A result of which – is ~850,000 non-essential personnel are furloughed.

A result of which – is we have been subjected to a rash of panicked Leftist media (please pardon the redundancy) “news” stories.  Where they freak out about the prospective recession a prolonged government shutdown might cause.

My favorite tidbits therein?  The frequent mentions that “Virginia and Maryland will be hardest hit.”

Yes, because that’s where the vast majority of the ~850,000 non-essential personnel live.  It is in those states the vast majority of the federal government’s nauseatingly large $4.4 trillion annual budget is spent.

The other forty-eight states?  I’m fairly sure they nigh ubiquitously haven’t been affected at all by the shutdown.  And certainly not adversely.

Want a shutdown that will be debilitating to all 330 million Americans in all fifty states?

How about bringing an end to oil production…anywhere in or around the US.

No one with an IQ above nine on a warm day wants that.

This woman does:

“Cherri Foytlin is an indigenous writer, organizer, advocate, activist, photographer, speaker, and mother of six who lives in south Louisiana….

“Bold Louisiana was launched by the state’s director, Cherri Foytlin, in 2016. Its main agenda was to stand against Bayou Bridge, Energy Transfer Partners that threatened the bayou ecosystem.

“Bold Louisiana was also responsible for preventing the offshore drilling in the Gulf and protection against wastewater dumping. Cherri Foytlin has bravely led the water protectors group at Standing Rock against big companies like that of TigerSwan, a powerful security firm.

“She is one of the most ardent fighters of humanity in the state of Louisiana who has always stood first to protect the land, water, and the people of the state from outsiders, especially from the oil and gas companies, who are looking for ways to exploit the land of Louisiana.”

Translation: Foytlin is a hard-Left, anti-people-driving-their-cars-or-eating-food environmental whack job.  Who loathes America producing any oil from anywhere.

She is an ardent campaigner for a continuation of the Barack Obama Administration’s titanically awful petroleum policy.

Wait a second- she’s even worse than that.

As her bio says, she was a Standing Rock shock troop leader in the blockade of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  A pipeline that was so un-problematic – the anti-petroleum Obama Administration approved it.

And in case Foytlin missed it – We the People elected someone to do the exact opposite of the Barack Obama Administration’s anti-energy policy.

And oh look:

The U.S. Has Reclaimed World’s Oil Crown

Great news for America.  And Americans.  Bad news for Cherri Foytlin.

After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil platform tragedy, the Obama Administration imposed a six-month moratorium on all deepwater offshore oil drilling in the Gulf.

Economists estimated that shutdown – just on deepwater drilling, just in the Gulf – cost $2.1 billion in economic loss to the Gulf states, more than $700 million in lost wages nationally, and about 8,000 lost jobs across Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

But that’s just the tip of any oil shutdown iceberg.

Unlike the DC shutdown – oil prices affect everyone everywhere.

We all drive – or get driven.  We all eat – and all food gets delivered.  We all buy stuff – and all stuff gets delivered.  Etc, etc, etc….

Nigh every aspect of our $18-trillion-per-year economy – relies on petroleum.  Any rise in oil prices – results in higher prices for nigh everything else.  For everyone.  Everywhere.

Oil is, as talk show impresario Rush Limbaugh likes to say, the fuel of capitalism.

And aye – there’s the rub.  Foytlin is a hard-Left environmental whack job.  And hard-Left environmental whack jobs – loathe capitalism.

The old saw:

“Environmentalists are watermelons: Green on the outside, red on the inside.”

Green – as in plants.  Red – as in Communism.

International Earth Day – just happens to coexist with Communism co-founder Vladimir Lenin’s birthday.  An amazing coincidence, I’m sure.

So of course hard-Left environmental whack job Foytlin – spends her time advocating against the fuel of capitalism.

Oh: And the word is Foytlin does all of this anti-petroleum annoyingness – driving a Chevy Suburban.  A truck with an average gross weight – in excess of 7,000 pounds.  Three-and-a-half tons – requires a LOT of gasoline to pull down the road.

And that’s what I’m told hard-Left environmental whack job Cherri Foytlin drives.

To protest petroleum.

Because of course.