Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> I imagine they would be extremely circumspect of being deployed against other government employees who were cheated by a bad-faith deal Why would they be?
20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
481–490 of 579 posts
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's ever really been a problem for Trump. Everyone I talk to who supports him expects him to be a hail-mary grenade thrown into DC—a big middle finger to the powers that be. They feel completely disenfranchised and want a shake-up. Amazingly, so far, it hasn't hurt his approval numbers.
The numbers are irrelevant. It is a second term presidency. What matters are the numbers for those facing reelection in less than a couple years. Even the burn down crowed don't want to remain on a wagon heading for a cliff in four years.
For one, if they dip as low as they might given the expected economic hardship and the other cultural issues, you might start seeing rioting.
For another, I don't think it's a given this is Trump's final term. There already is a congressman trying to get in legislation to change the constitution to allow a third term. Even if that fails, the SCOTUS has already taken some egregious decisions in relation to Trump (full presidential immunity even for political assassinations) - what they might think they can get away with in the next four years is anyone's guess.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's ever really been a problem for Trump. Everyone I talk to who supports him expects him to be a hail-mary grenade thrown into DC—a big middle finger to the powers that be. They feel completely disenfranchised and want a shake-up. Amazingly, so far, it hasn't hurt his approval numbers.
> Amazingly, so far, it hasn't hurt his approval numbers. He started with (I think) the lowest approval numbers in modern records so to an extent it was probably priced in from the outset.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump...
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#484Earlier 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.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they were not paid because they were on "admin leave", does that look bad for Trump, or does that look bad for Congress? And who in a Republican Congress will want to do that anyway? They're mostly on board for this bullshit aren't they?
> If they were not paid because they were on "admin leave", does that look bad for Trump, or does that look bad for Congress? It would be Trump/Elon. Someone told me the details of how they could not pay people. It’s administrivia. It will go unnoticed by most just like how the twitter folks not getting paid went unnoticed by most. > And who in a Republican Congress will want to do that anyway? They give zero fucks a…
The idea in Project 2025 is mostly to take this to a whole new level and apply it to the majority of the federal government.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
Federal employees are not allowed to strike
Confidently incorrect. Federal employees marked as "mission critical" cannot strike, but other federal employees can. Unions take this into account and have workers strike on-behalf of mission critical employees.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unwise from the company perspective The goal is to destroy most of these federal agencies, so doing things that are "unwise" for the future of those agencies is exactly the point.
Yes, indeed, in this particular case it is exactly as you said. However, I've seen this in the tech industry, that's a surprising bit for me
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Burn down and loot
Can you please be more clear on what is being looted in your view? I can see how a lot of money can be made from having the government fund a project that you benefit from. For example DOGE uncovered that Senator Lindsey Graham sits on the board of International Republican Institute which was funded by USAID. I don't see how someone benefits themselves financially by cutting government spending since the revenue stre…
You can also see the filings that show that Lindsey Graham doesn't get paid for being on their board, nor do any of their directors, and you can go see what they did spend money on. There's a more or less equivalent org that draws its directors from Democrats like this one does Republicans. Speaking of "uncovering" you can go read the press coverage from 2018 when the first Trump administration pushed to cut the funding of the National Endowment of Democracy (which sits above these two party-associated organizations). Of course this was in a time where the Trump administration actually behaved as if Congress controlled the funding.
For an amusing detail you can read the letter sent by senators at the time defending the NED's funding, and observe the signature of Marco Rubio, who now purports to have taken over USAID in his capacity as Secretary of State.
As far as I can tell there's not even any evidence that DOGE did anything specifically relating to this group beyond just that they killed USAID. DOGE fan Twitter accounts have posted about it, just linking to those same already-available filings. Fans just reading down the list of things USAID funded gets you this same result. It's definitely a good place to go if you want to see a bunch of incurious people posting "head exploding" emojis.
Re: 20k federal workers take "buyout" so far, official says
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I imagine they would be extremely circumspect of being deployed against other government employees who were cheated by a bad-faith deal Why would they be?
Because the paychecks come from the same place. If your boss publicly cheated your coworker and then sent the mob to break his kneecaps for protesting, wouldn't that concern you? For purely selfish reasons if nothing else.