doreen
July 16, 2019, 1:30pm
41
Urbanredneck:
Well duh, in most companies and government services you HAVE to move if you want to move up in the company. So if say you live in Indiana and there is a mid level management job opening in Kansas City, you move there to take it. Or say if they close your branch in Scranton Penn. you might have to move elsewhere.
This is why many people rent apartments rather than own a home is because its easier to up and move.
But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t moving for a promotion - I’d bet many of the people involved moved to Washington for a promotion to begin with. It’s not like closing the branch in Scranton. It’s more like leaving the corporate headquarters exactly where it is and moving all the finance people to the other side of the country - or moving for a demotion. Perhaps not in terms of pay or title but in terms of access to people who are still in DC.
This is not an individual moving up in the company. This is relocating an entire division so Trump can just gut it and sidestep congressional oversight. Well duh.
Andrew Yang is running on a platform to relocate many Federal agencies outside of DC:https://www.yang2020.com/policies/relocatefederalagencies/
Many members of congress, on both sides of the aisle, support the idea of moving agencies to other parts of the country: https://www.commongood.org/views/congress-considers-moving-federal-agencies-dc-advocated-common-good/
friedo
July 16, 2019, 11:55pm
44
BLM is at least one agency where it makes sense to move people out west, since that’s where nearly all BLM land and facilities are located.
The USDA move is going swimmingly well: Many USDA employees decline to relocate to Kansas City as deadline passes :
On Tuesday, a USDA spokesperson said that after a midnight deadline Monday, 72 employees had notified the ERS they were accepting the transfer, while 99 employees either declined or didn’t provide a response.
The department estimates that 76 ERS positions will remain in Washington.
The numbers were more stark for NIFA, where 73 employees accepted transfers compared with 151 employees who either said no or didn’t provide a response.
Twenty-one NIFA positions will remain in Washington.
Scientists flee USDA as research agencies move to Kansas City area :
Estimates tallied by employees show 70 percent of ERS employees designated for the Kansas City office will not be moving. For NIFA, 45 percent of those surveyed said they will not move. Overall, the move was expected to impact 547 staff between the two agencies.
But the numbers of staff refusing to move may grow. Some employees said staff at both agencies are trying not to tip their hands, saying they will move only if they do not find another job in the D.C. area.
So far, just 27 ERS staff out of 250 have committed to moving to the Kansas City area, according to the employee tallies.
Mission accomplished then! Drain the swamp! Don’t need no stinkin’ scientists! MAGA! :dubious:
This just a pointless move of headquarters. Most BLM employees are already located in the field . This move will have an impact on BLM leadership’s access to legislators and the White House.
Kate Kelly, public lands director for the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, questioned in an email why the administration would reassign nearly all of the bureau’s D.C. staff when 95 percent of them already work out in the field.
“The true impact of this move is to make the agency and its leadership invisible in a city where — like it or not — the decisions about budgets and policies are made,” she said. “The constant shuffling, shrinking and disassembling of BLM’s workforce will have long-term implications for the health of the agency.”
How many times do we have to repeat this? :smack:
Apparently there is no upper limit.
Until it’s all dead and the rich people can re-write the Constitution. What part of “they don’t want to share control with anyone” is confusing you?
ETA: Sorry. That comes across very harshly, and I don’t mean to rebuke you: you’re good people and on the right side here.
But this is their long-reach time. They intend to inflict permanently crippling injuries on agencies they don’t like and on laws they don’t like and on social institutions they don’t like and on people they don’t like . If they can’t gain permanent control now they will seek to inflict mortal wounds that would take longer to recover from than Democrats will have in power in the coming years. This is sabotage on a scale unheard of before, and it’s prolly going to work.
Snowboarder_Bo:
Until it’s all dead and the rich people can re-write the Constitution. What part of “they don’t want to share control with anyone” is confusing you?
ETA: Sorry. That comes across very harshly, and I don’t mean to rebuke you: you’re good people and on the right side here.
…
No prob. I was really addressing Dopers who keep refusing to see this for what it is. I expect the general public to be stupid, but generally, the crowd here is smarter than the average bear.
Except for a few.
…and those who see it for what it is and approve.
I’ve been sitting on this all day. And it was pointy and sharp.
For anyone who still thinks that the relocation of these departments out of Washington is just routine.
** ‘It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie’**
One of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how rice loses nutrients due to rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who’s worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for more than two decades, told POLITICO he was alarmed when department officials not only questioned the findings of the study — which raised potentially serious concerns for the 600 million people who depend on rice for most of their calories — but also tried to minimize press coverage of the paper, which was published in the journal Science Advances last year.
“You get the sense that things have changed, that this is not a place for you to be exploring things that don’t agree with someone’s political views,” Ziska said in a wide-ranging interview. “That’s so sad. I can’t even begin to tell you how sad that is.”
The departure follows several other government officials recently resigning from their posts over accusations that the administration is censoring climate science — reports that have raised alarm about scientific integrity in the federal government.
Last week, an intelligence analyst at the State Department said he left his post after administration officials blocked his testimony to Congress about the wide-ranging national security implications of climate change. A National Park Service employee also stepped forward, alleging she lost her job after refusing to scrub mentions of human-caused climate change from a peer-reviewed paper that was set to publish.
A POLITICO investigation revealed last month that USDA has routinely buried its own climate-related science and other work on climate change that continues. POLITICO also recently reported USDA suppressed the release of its own plan for studying and responding to climate change.
The USDA has repeatedly denied having any policy to discourage dissemination of science or the use of any climate-change related terms.
My emphasis.
Doubletalk, doublethink, denial of reality. :dubious: Get them out of D.C. so they can be more easily ignored.
Hundreds of USDA employees to be removed from their jobs in September
The Agriculture Department is preparing to issue hundreds of termination letters to employees who have not agreed to move from the District of Columbia to Kansas City. The notices, arriving sooner than some workers and their supporters expected, will accelerate a controversial relocation process that has already stripped two USDA agencies of key research staff.
Last summer, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced he would relocate the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which manages a $1.7 billion portfolio of scientific grants, and the Economic Research Service, an influential federal statistical agency. The agencies rent office space in Southwest Washington near the waterfront.
In June 2019, Perdue declared the Kansas City region as the site of the new offices. …
On June 13, USDA sent reassignment letters giving workers until 11:59 p.m. on July 15 to respond. Those who declined or who did not respond would lose their jobs, the letter warned.
The American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, the union that represents the agencies, requested an extension for the deadline. …
In a phone call with Sen. Christopher Van Hollen (D-Md.) on July 14, Perdue told the senator the deadline would be extended until Sept. 30, according to the senator’s description of the call.
Two days later, Van Hollen and 18 other Democratic members of Congress wrote a letter to Perdue to confirm the Sept. 30 deadline. Also that day, USDA announced that 250 USDA employees, two-thirds of those reassigned, declined to relocate and would lose their jobs.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recently praised the USDA attrition as a way to “drain the swamp.”
On July 17, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) wrote a letter to Perdue asking why he had not yet responded to the extension request. “We have heard from numerous federal workers who have requested personal extensions to this July 15 deadline, yet none has been approved,” Wexton wrote. “One such extension request would allow a current employee undergoing chemotherapy to continue their treatment with their trusted team of physicians.”
My bold.
“Drain the swamp.” :smack:
fedman
August 9, 2019, 9:44am
55
kayaker:
First world places?
so what is your complaint about KC which has better BBQ than you have, not to mention jazz/blues
Location, location, location. Food can be prepared anywhere, and jazz/blues performers tour.
kitap
August 9, 2019, 1:39pm
57
I’m really very surprised Trump hasn’t tried to outright shut down the BIA.
Here in NC we have a smaller version of this issue. The GOP has decided to move the HQ of the DMV out of Raleigh to the next county. Which means some people will have a much longer commute and some have said they will quit.
asahi
August 10, 2019, 9:49pm
59
I don’t have a problem moving some of the bureaucracy out to different parts of the country, but it’s the real underlying motives that are the issue. Trump and the Republigarchs just want to kill the federal bureaucracy. They want the civil service to be disrupted, disbanded, and broken by bad morale.