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Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

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Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#121

Post by benmmurphy »

rayiner wrote: post #117
txru wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government. I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position. > Aaron Burr I find myself more and more often in the position of having to look back many decades for…

> I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position I think that’s true! It’s another reason why the federal workforce has come to be dominated by one party. But both point to the same result. > I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and s…

Comey was also involved in the Flynn setup. If Comey is convicted of procedural crimes it will be difficult to feel sorry for him when he used those or similar statutes to pursue other people.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#122

Post by burnte »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #80
burnte wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality there aren't that many jobs that exist but don't have to. The overwhelming majority of employees are paid to do work the employer needs to be done.

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. It takes 10 different offices at the Department of Health and Human Services to run programs addressing AIDS in minority communities. Autism research is spread out over 11 different agencies. Eight agencies at the Defense Department are looking for prisoners of war and missing in action. And Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado has eight different satellite cont…

I stated there are actually few jobs in the world that are not needed. I didn't say government was perfectly efficient or that process changes are not needed.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#123

Post by bigbadfeline »

rayiner wrote: post #44
buran77 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Then the people currently in power and their cronies will come out of the woodwork "saving" the country with their private companies and interests. Competing with an empty shell of a government is the easiest way. As a side effect, if they're to lose the next e…

There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…

> There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is.

If you admit that the administration is up to "ulterior motives", you have to admit that they are likely to have more than one. There's no reason to assume there's only a single one and we should disregard everything else, no matter how well supported by the facts - looking at the composition of this admin, a drive to corpocracy is a a rather well supported assumption.

On the other hand, if a re-balancing was justified or required, it wouldn't be an ulterior motive, it would be up, front and center because it helps to paint the admin in a good light. The scope and reasons for the imbalance would be widely discussed... something that isn't happening. Also, to avoid disruption, it would be done gradually and absolutely NOT under the diabolical slogan "The Government is Bad".

I think, I practically proved the point of the parent of your comment, and disproved yours.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#124

Post by rayiner »

amalcon wrote: post #113
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an ulterior motive for these cuts, but please be honest about what it is. The federal bureaucracy is completely dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe... . No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors.…

The military is similarly dominated by the other party. Somehow, we expect them to be professional. Professionalism here means to faithfully execute lawful orders even when a Democrat is in the white house. There were no personal loyalty tests for the military under Obama, or loyalty purges. That went fine (in that the military did in fact follow lawful orders under Democratic presidents, not in that those orders wer…

The military is uniquely disciplined and socialized to follow orders in a way the ordinary civil service isn’t.

And in comparison to previous republicans, the difference is two-fold. First, the government has been affected by the same politicization of the workplace that’s happened in corporate America over the last decade.

Second, previous republicans are aligned with neoliberal democrats on certain key cultural issues. Reagan publicly opposed affirmative action, but his government kept implementing and expanding it. Reagan and Bush supported immigration and Reagan granted amnesty. Highly educated democrats were willing to play along with certain issues, but see Trump’s issues as fundamentally moral ones. E.g. Even today, there is almost no partisan politics within the FCC. The career folks will happily go back and forth on net neutrality all day long. Nobody sees it as a moral imperative the way they see immigration.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#125

Post by bigbadfeline »

rayiner wrote: post #119
fabbari wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually look at the numbers? You should give it a try. The best you can get from those numbers is that people are more likely to donate to the Democratic party than the Republican one. For example: true, 99.4% of the donations from the USDA employees went to the Democratic part. 99.4% of how many donations? Less than 3,000. - Source [0] - and that's an overestimate, since that filter will include donations f…

Why wouldn’t donations be a reasonable proxy? 3,000 samples is more than enough to have a statistically significant analysis of a population of 100,000.

> 3,000 samples is more than enough to have a statistically significant analysis of a population of 100,000.

It's not a valid sample because it's not a random selection - statistical sampling isn't only about sample size.

One reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the above numbers is that the Democrats in government are less stingy about donations, or that the Republicans there don't really like the GOP and are there for the money alone.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#126

Post by rsynnott »

> Speaking to Newsweek, Scott Lucas, who teaches international politics at University College Dublin

It perhaps says a lot about the current situation in academia in the US that they had to go _outside the US_ (albeit to an American working outside the US) for comment.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#127

Post by rsynnott »

koolba wrote: post #79
cjs_ac wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Westminster system, if Parliament can't pass the budget brought by the Government[0], the head of state dissolves Parliament and issues writs for a new general election. This is because raising taxes and spending money is most of what the Government does, so an inability to do this is a constitutional crisis. In the US, this is impossible, because the head of state leads the administration that prepares the bu…

In most such systems it’s a simple majority vote of a unicameral legislator. The uniqueness of the USA is the bicameral legislature with de facto veto by the minority by refusing cloture. Without at 8-10 members of the minority breaking ranks (depending on the actual split), a unified minority can cause complete gridlock.

Nearly all democratic countries have bicameral legislatures, though some do exclude the upper house from money bills.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#128

Post by rsynnott »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #36
0xffff2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the 100k are those that took the "deferred resignation program" at the beginning of the year. They have been getting paid to not bother showing up to work all this time, but are finally coming up on the date where they will all officially resign. Those people are choosing to leave.

Took? Or got placed on? Genuine question, because I don't know the answer. Was it actually voluntary at the time?

It was essentially a "jump or be pushed" sort of thing. Realistically, it wasn't voluntary.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#129

Post by AlexandrB »

robin_reala wrote: post #46
AlexandrB wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't bother with nuance, in 2025 everything bad[1] is "fascism". The idea that authoritarianism can have any other form seems to be forgotten. [1] Often defined as something a poster doesn't agree with, thought sometimes genuinely bad things as well.

Under Umberto Eco’s definition of Ur-Fascism[1] (the usual one I reach for, though others are available) what GP is referencing is most closely aligned with #13 Selective Populism, which at least from my viewpoint outside the US is seemingly correct. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

At the risk of sounding dumb, I've never found this list of traits particularly illuminating. Many of these are found in the left political faction in the US as well (4, 7, 8, 13[1] and 14 immediately come to mind) and some are absent from the right. How do you weight which ones are important and who's really "fascist"?

The whole exercise feels like going on WebMD and diagnosing yourself with cancer because of some vague symptoms. Doesn't mean that nothing is wrong with you, but it's not necessarily cancer either.

[1] This one happened in this very thread where someone accused the Supreme Court and Congress of being complicit. Like, ok.

Re: Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

#130

Post by mindslight »

buran77 wrote: post #101
at-fates-hands wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> That's the intention of this administration. Destroy any service that the government could provide until people can genuinely think the government is useless. Not really sure ANY government service runs well. There are maybe one or two but as a whole government run anything never seems to be done well or at a decent cost. Just scan the comments about the massive overspending and poor service we already get as tax…

> Not really sure ANY government service runs well I don't think you have perspective on that. What I'm telling you is that it can be a lot worse. I don't think you realize how much less accountable any private company is and that if you are ever ruled by one you will effectively be under a very abusive dictatorship, for all intents and purposes. Random example. Google can cut you off from everything Google related a…

I've got this theory that people think government service must be so terrible because it was poor compared to corporate service in the 80's (the Golden Age of Boomerism), corporate service shamelessly got so much worse, and they simply assume government service must also have.

I've called the federal government a handful of times (IRS, Savings Bonds, Social Security). The people I spoke with were knowledgeable and empowered. A bit comic promulgating bureaucracy and delays (I think I was once told something like oh your case is only 10 days late being processed so it's not a priority yet), and of course some wait on hold/callback game. But the people I would end up speaking to had my paperwork in front of them, readily answered questions in an intelligent manner, and were empowered to make binding decisions for the government.

There was none of the "your ticket is still open so the only thing I can do is add a note that you called", or "sorry you've reached the wrong department, I can transfer you" buck passing bullshit that permeates corporate phone mazes. It was actually a breath of fresh air compared to dealing with corporate banks and financial institutions (at Vanguard I was told I had reached the wrong department, transferred, and waited on hold again five times before reaching the "correct" department).

I've also represented myself on the phone to my state's tax authority, and they were eminently reasonable as well. On the scheduled phone call (with me, their agent, and his supervisor), we agreed to an amicable solution on the spot. (I had really wanted to hire an attorney but they all played the equivocation game!)

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