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20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

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Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#411

Post by jcrites »

Shank wrote: post #15

I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…

Doesn't the budget to pay these people already exist? They are current employees, after all. Their terminations will still shrink the budget, just not as soon as a termination without a severance package.

Maybe there are some legal differences in offering what would otherwise be wages as a lump-sum payment, but the budget for those wages already exists (else they could not be employed).

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#412

Post by UncleOxidant »

ryandrake wrote: post #161
bigmattystyles wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds illegal

Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx. EDIT: I'm not making any judgment about whether this particular thing is le…

True. The rule of law died on Jan 20. Musk is likely doing a lot of things that are strictly illegal, but it seems quite likely that Trump has assured him he has his back with pardons if need be. Also, Trump controls federal law enforcement agencies that have likely been told to look the other way. The only legal vulnerability would be at the state level and they're not doing things there.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#413

Post by forgotoldacc »

dehugger wrote: post #310
tencentshill wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is a lawsuit if He decides to ignore it and not pay? One side of that battle is ultimately backed up by the military.

Military members are government employees. I imagine they would be extremely circumspect of being deployed against other government employees who were cheated by a bad-faith deal.

That rides on the assumption that there's considerable sympathy for them solely for the reason of checks coming from the same source.

Having spent most of my life surrounded by military dudes, they support other military dudes. But they very much do not support anybody in DC.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#414

Post by acomjean »

kfrzcode wrote: post #296
Shank wrote: post #15

I think the main issue for anyone wanting to take the offer is simply: this was never authorized by congress, so the money to pay people to September is questionable if it exists at best. Meanwhile, there's a government funding deadline on March 14, 2025. So there's a very real chance at this deal offering something closer to ~1 month of pay before it suddenly gets dropped due to budget negotiations. It would be an i…

The list of expenditures never authorized by Congress is staggering. You're spot-on about the authorization risk but it's just the latest in a perpetual issue. Congress has normalized funding "zombie programs" through autopilot appropriations rather than proper reauthorizations. Notable zombie programs include VA health, women's health spending, NIH research... House Rule XXI (blocking unauthorized spending) gets wai…

As someone who worked on a NIH funded project whose funding wasn’t renewed last fall after 10 years. Those 10 years included a bunch of renewals. NIH projects aren’t zombie and need constant attention. Plus all research done has to be put in the public domain.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#415

Post by bushbaba »

robocat wrote: post #250
reaperducer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Twitter workers still trying to get their severances and they took the offer when Twitter actually had the money to pay. Considering that SpaceX is so far behind on its bills that dozens and dozens of companies in Texas have had to place liens against the company, my guess is that neither the Twitter people, nor the SpaceX people, nor the federal buyout people will ever see a dime. For some reason, links to st…

The article mentions $2.5MM liens which is drastically less than 1% of expenses of $1445MM ("[SpaceX] generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023") It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying. I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company. Their costs of…

Sadly, it's super common in business to delay paying up.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#416

Post by emusan »

ben_w wrote: post #299
renewiltord wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These guys are idiots, fucking morons, and can’t get anything right. Somehow they’re also outcompeting us on everything. It isn’t clear why, but it must be because we are smarter.

China very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing despite this being deliberately made difficult by ITAR, suggests there's a lot of room for the American (and ESA) competitors to be structurally inept without needing Musk's staff to be demonstrating an unusual (as opposed to industry standard) degree of genius.

They have copied the external look of the rockets (which is, for obvious reasons, not protected by ITAR), but to my knowledge no one, China or otherwise, has managed to match the internal engineering prowess nearly a decade later.

To say that China is "very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing" is quite the stretch.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#417

Post by Spooky23 »

ben_w wrote: post #292
robocat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions $2.5MM liens which is drastically less than 1% of expenses of $1445MM ("[SpaceX] generated $55 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2023") It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying. I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company. Their costs of…

While interesting, I don't see how it might make any difference to any federal workers' decisions? Musk doesn't pay "because he can get away with it" isn't better or worse than "because there's a money shortage"; and in any case, the federal government being delinquent is a very different kind of catastrophe, as is it making promises it refuses to keep.

Many things are based on the assumption of the impeccable credit of the US government.

Elmo being a shitty business partner isn’t the same as the US.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#418

Post by abduhl »

infecto wrote: post #380
dghlsakjg wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who give a shit what their revenue is. It tells me nothing about how they pay their vendors. 2.5mm in liens is just how much they have proveably shorted construction workers in Texas. It doesn't count other vendors doing work that isn't elegible for a lien, or how many workers got shorted, but it just wasn't enough to worry about. If you were one of the 70+ businesses that held a lien against them, you would think di…

Sigh, these rage bait style of responses are as bad as the original article. Reuters was not even able to figure out what % was due to contractors as opposed to Tesla itself. Everything you said says nothing of how they pay their vendors. $2.5mm is not exactly breaking news for construction projects. Most large projects have some percentage of total project value in liens. I know we all want to get upset but its too…

>> Most large projects have some percentage of total project value in liens.

I hate to be this guy but please provide a source for this. I’ve been involved in the construction industry for quite a while, almost exclusively on large and mega projects, and “most” of my jobs have not had any percentage of their total project value in liens.

One company that refused to pay for work my (then) company performed is SpaceX. Our work did not permit filing a lien.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#419

Post by bagels »

jdross wrote: post #194
_qbxi wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal acts should be called out, even if our government is failing to enforce the law. Otherwise it will become easy for the acts to get ignored entirely.

It would be nice if anyone would state a law being violated. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of assumptions too about what DOGE/Elon are doing vs what the president or directors of the agencies (for instance) are doing

Here's some reading after a quick googling.

https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-...

Definitely in uncharted territory, but these are some possible laws that have been violated:

Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Internal Revenue Code’s Section 6103.

Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says

#420

Post by edm0nd »

psychlops wrote: post #253
afavour wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us in tech also get paid far, far more than anyone in the public sector. It’s always been my perception that the reliability of the job is a perk that makes up for the subpar salaries. I don’t think public sector workers are as spoiled as you make out.

How does your job security and pension compare?

I work in private industry (cybersec) and we have a pension + 401k w match. It's great. I dont think I would ever work for the state or federal gov. Their pay sucks.
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