There’s a lot of waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption in the federal government. But I question the way it is being addressed. Firing all “probationary employees” is certainly not the way to go about it. For those that don’t know, a probationary employee is not someone who has been deemed a “poor performer.” It simply means the person is a new-hire or has been promoted to a different position. An argument could even be made that probationary employees tend to work harder vs. the longer-term employees.
Aiui, he’s been making a lot of chops that’re advantageous to his business interests. Wtf is the oversight?
Those in charge of oversight are among the ones whose jobs were eliminated.
Congress would step up their oversight game if they cared about the separation of power. They should be offended if things they funded for a reason are cut just because of this nazi.
I think that an appealing but somewhat problematic sentiment.
-How much is “a lot”?
-In terms of percentage, or $?
-Is it spread evenly throughout the government, or concentrated in some areas (like the military?)?
-Can fraud, abuse, and corruption defined objectively and agreed upon by everyone?
-How costly is is to try to eliminate what portion of such fraud/abuse/corruption?
-How does the incidence of all 3 - fraud, abuse, and corruption - compare to that found in non-governmental organizations and institutions?
-How much fraud is caused by the government, as opposed to non-governmental actors?
-Wouldn’t the best way to cut down on all manner of fraud, abuse, and corruption be to hire MORE inspectors?
And that is just quickly off the top of my head.
Elon Musk posted on Twitter that federal employees need to explain what they did last week. Many agencies have pushed back on this. But even if everyone responds as requested, who exactly is going to read and review all of those responses? That’s millions of replies.
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
Did the message really contain a reference to non-governmental social media site? Consistent with DoD internet security training, that e-mail should be reported as spam and deleted.
No one.
Whether or not anyone replies is irrelevant. It’s just to impress Trumpists. Later, when they lay off a bunch of people, they’ll say it’s because they didn’t answer the email, or did not answer it adequately. That will be a lie, of course, but Trumpists love this stuff.
Artificial intelligence, of course.
One of the innumerable asinine aspects to “Defend your life: what, exactly, did you do last week” is systems theory.
Explaining to me what the lower control arm on my car does is worse than worthless without understanding the totality of my front suspension.
Maybe I don’t need both kidneys, but I’d like there to be a damned good reason before I consent to having one removed.
These people are evil AF.
Well, there’s this guy:
The CEO in question? Senator Rick Scott, Senior Senator [R] from Florida.
Yeah - was just reading about him in Gladwell’s new book. Only the best! 
But even in his case, I’m not sure how much of the fraud was committed by government employees.
i think shit will hit the fan, when people reckon that stuff that miraculously always worked, is no longer working … even from not-too-well-liked-agencies, like IRS … sorry, but we cannot calculate your tax return in the same timeframe as always, b/c we are now only 50% of the staff. Call back in october… → that kind of shit … or not getting a car related certificate for 6 months and insurances not accepting a claim / repair b/c of this.
IOW: lots of leopards will be roaming 'murica in the future … and I hope to read a lot of those human-interest stories of “I voted for trump 3 times and now I cannot sell my car or house or get my inheritance b/c he fired all the people who do x, y and z”.
Well, in the spirit of efficiency, DOGE has involuntarily downsized itself! 21 tech staffers quit, saying they cannot in good conscience continue helping with this bullshit.
A genuine change of heart or rats leaving a sinking ship?
How about we cut the billions we give drug companies and energy companies for starters. We get very little in return for our tax dollars from either of those entities. It makes more sense than depriving people of their livelihoods without any notice while still pumping millions into the coffers of the richest fucking corporations on the planet.
Channeling my inner Doge,
Great, we’ll start with Medicaid and the Home Energy Assistance Program.
How about neither? These 21 people were technology staffers at the United States Digital Service, which was modified into becoming the Department of Government Efficiency.
In other words, they were existing government employees, not true believers or “rats”, as you so eloquently put it.
Yup.
I’m going to retire in a little under a year. I’m writing code that will help people find out where the hell things are. And that’s just a corner of my world. 32 years of it. Most of this info is gonna be where other people have put stuff (that’s not a good explanation, but it works)
Sure, we all know how to search for this stuff, but to update what would be in effect a spread sheet full of services and directories would take days. This should be done weekly.
My code IF I can get it to work, will save countless hours of frustration.
Run the code, anytime you want, and bingo, nice new sparkly spread sheet created in 10 seconds that has all the latest information.
Explain THAT to these morons.
Jon Stewart at his best. A bit over 20min, but … IMHO … time well spent:
NB: there’s a very brief scene where Stewart has cut his hand. It’s at about 20m15s if you’re squeamish.