The police department in Milwaukee is a little short-staffed after a round of government layoffs. County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. has just released a radio ad in which he tells Milwaukee residents "I need you in the game" (the game is "being police offers").

Governors across America are finally acknowledging that deep, painful budget cuts are unavoidable. But there's no one-size-fits-all prescription for state budget cuts. That's so stupid! For patriotism, we've composed this highly specific listicle noting exactly what each state in the union can cut back on. Is your state included? (Yes.)

The Way We Live Now: cutting corners. Corners are expensive. You want a 90-degree angle? Pay up. Otherwise you get a ragged, crumbling edge, just like everyone else.

At the end of December, the Washington Post will close its bureaus in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. This is the biggest write-off of on-the-scene domestic news coverage by any major paper yet.

Weep, struggling members of the creative underclass, for your secret aspirations are drawing to a close: this may be the very last month of Conde Nast, Luxury Version. Coming soon: Conde Nast, Wailing Version.

For weeks now, a scary number has been floating through the hallowed halls of Conde Nast: 25%. That's how much the gossipmongers speculated McKinsey would chop the company's budget. Evil rumors! Now it looks like that frightening number was correct.

Twenty-five percent! One fourth of the whole pie! This scary number's being kicked around everywhere as the worst(?) case scenario for the looming Conde Nast budget cuts. Every perk is being trimmed—even the ones for little old ladies.

In solidarity with the suffering American people, Nancy Pelosi has graciously agreed to limit her taxpayer-financed private jet fix to four brand-new aircraft totaling $220 million, as opposed to the $500 million worth of new jets she so richly deserved.

Just last week, Hachette cut pay across the board and increased work hours. Today employees got the memo below, telling them that "certain functions" in IT and finance are going to be outsourced by the end of the year. We also got a tip that Hachette is notifying freelancers that it's cutting their rates—by 3% in one case, although it may vary.

Unthinkable: a tipster tells us that over at Conde Nast—where the good times are over—all the "regular" secretaries have been laid off. What now—freelance secretaries? Irregular, damaged secretaries? Email us with info.

Times are tough. Stupid corporate cost-cutting tricks are rampant. Even within the hallowed confines of media companies! And the situation is growing more dire—no more free gyms, babysitting, good coffee, food, or toilet paper:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who spent much of last fall declaring the search engine unaffected by Wall Street's crisis, has admitted that the company is "not immune." But is he being honest about its plight?

Burns, the meticulous documentarian who chronicles various lives and movements in American history, has been cut loose by the extremely imperiled GM, after twenty-two years of sponsorship. He's not the only American dreamer they've dropped.

"That's business," said Balek when Valleywag reached him by phone.

That's not a "major" layoff, as one Valleywag tipster maintained this morning. As Eric Savitz points out in Tech Trader Daily, Apple would have to file through the WARN Act if it was going to conduct major cuts. But the WARN Act does not generally apply to layoffs of fewer than 500 employees.

International trade is what powers the modern, global economy! But Google's bean-counters have taken a horrid protectionist turn by insisting on domestic beer for the search engine's Friday "TGIF" events.

Googlers, used to being coddled by the luxuries of the Googleplex, now worry they'll have to pay to ride the company shuttle bus. It's the latest sign of the giant search engine's nervous breakdown.

Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google's advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google's long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs.

How did Fortune decide Cisco was near the top of its "Best Places to Work" list? An unhappy tipster at the networking-equipment maker leaked this report from a company meeting happening now:

The latest cut in the ever-shrinking kingdom of Larry and Sergey: Google Print Ads, a program which brokered ads in newspapers and magazines. So much for the notion of Google saving the printed word.