What is normal for Turkey is unclear to me, but I’m pretty sure we’re not above it.
You may need to take that graph with a grain of salt. Per Paul Krugman, earlier this month:
The key quote:
In 2023 independent academics credibly accused Turkey’s government of doing the same thing.
The link embedded in the pull quote has the official government inflation rate almost 2 1/2 times less than the independent Inflation Research Group- measured rate.
It’s a good post (by Krugman) for anyone who thinks this purge of the civil service is a good idea.
So I heard this interview on NPR this morning with Republican Rep Pete Stauber
You should take a listen. Basically, he says Trump’s pause on federal grants (and other things) is perfectly reasonable because the President needs to make sure government spending isn’t out of whack.
What struck me was his willingness to assign Congress’ responsibility to the executive branch. Which is absolutely maddening.
I found myself yelling to the radio “But that’s YOUR Fucking job,” and when he talked about the madness of some of the spending “That’s spending YOU authorized!”
Sadly, I am powerless because here in MA all my senators and reps are Democrats, so I have no voice. But I’d urge everyone in a Republican district or state to email your Republicans and beg them to remember their role in the checks and balances. Maybe an appeal to their being humiliated will have some effect?
Reading this with the Trumpian Benefit of the Doubt (none!): This is how they’ll screw you.
You take the deal. You’re “working from home”, and without any actual tasks to do, you go out for the day. Shopping, lunch downtown, a movie, whatever. You arrive home to an e-mail: “Your failure to timely respond to an e-mail sent at X o’clock today indicates a failure to ensure “a smooth transition”. You are terminated immediately, with your pay being terminated as well. In addition, we’ll be commencing an investigation into your actions for the last Y months, to determine if you should be sued to recover wages that you received fraudulently, Libtard.”
Fair point; I wouldn’t put it past them to pull something like this.
I don’t think the Daily Kos article is accurate. It sure looks like a buyout.
But with that said, the email that was sent to Federal employees is inconsistent with the FAQs. So who knows?
As I posted elsewhere:
I quoted an article from the New York Times in the other thread:
But they’ve paused everything, almost. That’s not how you fix things, it’s how you break them.
Reviewing every grant the US funds is a massive task. It will take months, at least, and maybe years to complete. Meanwhile, those grants near the bottom of the review queue are getting nothing. There are people relying on that funding for their jobs. Seeing the prospect of months to years without reliable income, how many will seek employment elsewhere?
So even if Trump’s minions finally decide that Program X actually is (was, really) a good idea, the people who used to do that job have moved on. Will they up-end their lives a second time to come back to a job that they now know can be disrupted so easily? Of course not.
So even the “good” programs will be trashed.
Whether or not any of this holds up (and I completely agree that almost all of it shouldn’t) it’s amazing how much power Trump apparently has while Biden couldn’t do anything.
That’s because Trump doesn’t give a fuck about following the law. It’s not about having legal power / authority. Surely you get this?
Also, Trump only cares about destruction. Biden wanted to build things to last, and you can’t do that if you’re violating the laws.
But even if some day months or years in the future the Supreme Court rules it was illegal for Trump to freeze all this funding, the damage will have already been done, as I discussed above. It’s like commuting a death sentence after the guy has already died of natural causes. Sure, it might look good on paper, but it doesn’t have any actual effect.
Sure, but not the point. Trump is going to get away with it because the Republicans are in agreement, the Democrats are useless, and the courts are compromised.
My analogy to my Nurse Practitioner wife was: I think we should get you to stop eating and drinking altogether while we work on the optimal long-term diet for you.
It could take a couple weeks, so … gird your loins.
I’m not talking about the flattened part of the graph, I’m talking about the pre-Erdogan years.
Sorry, probably should have had an @PhillyGuy on that post.
The thrust of Krugman’s argument is that the numbers reported in the Erdogan era should be taken with a grain of salt, so that flattened part of the graph might not correspond with reality. I think @PhillyGuy may have been taking the official government numbers too credulously. Since your post went up with the data, that’s the one I responded to.
With regard to Trump’s firing of all the DOJ attorneys who worked on the cases against him, out of nothing but pettiness and spite: have they sued yet to block the (blatantly illegal) firings?
It is going to be interesting to see when the pause/end of funding and firings/reduction of employees results in some very real implications for folk - including folk who voted for the Chump. I’m kind of of mixed minds WRT employees wh. remain dedicated to do whatever it takes to continue providing services they believe necessary.
Yeah. It is easy for folk to complain about govt delay and inefficiency. But a good portion of that “inefficiency” was the direct result of a government that followed established laws and procedures, and treated people equally and fairly. Toss those out the window, and see how much better folk like the results.
He and his minions said they wanter to take a blowtorch to the bureaucracy. Well, it looks as tho on this, at least, they are being true to their word.
Everything is going according to plan. First week of Trump results in chaos. Just as they wanted. “Governmnet does not work.” If it did, it would be too expensive. Three million government workers are asked to quit. The sooner you do it, the more the severance pay.
I got one of these. Ironically, I have already filed my retirement paperwork, and will retire in February.
Note that “mission critical” positions will not be allowed to resign, and this may be determined on a department-by-department basis. For example, I got an “update” from someone that said that I should not reply (the instructions are to reply to the email with “Resign” in the body of the message if you want to accept the deal) until it is determined if it applies to the Department of Defense.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the email was, “I wonder how many people like me are planning on retiring before 9/30, and are going to change their retirement date to 9/30 and resign now so they can continue to get their full pay and benefits until then.”
Note that there is nothing new about this sort of thing; there have been Separation Incentive Payments (SIP) for decades to get people to quit “early,” especially for jobs that might be removed in the near future. It’s just that, I doubt that the payment was anywhere near eight months of current salary.
Sounds efficient to me!
As noted upthread, you wouldn’t be resigning now, you’d be resigning on 9/30 (thus the “deferred” in “deferred resignation”). A careful reading of the email suggests that you might be expected to telework until 9/30, with an expectation that you’ll be on duty and able to respond to email and phone calls in a timely manner during normal business hours, whether or not you have any other work assigned to you - and you might face severe consequences for a misstep.
IOW: full pay and full benefits, yes, but you’d actually be expected to work.
Looks like SIPS can be as much as $25K. How many months that works out to depends on your base pay.