Cirrus
19d ago
Good write-up. I’ll just offer my own personal experience here, as a federal government employee of many (10+) years.
- In my office (outside of DC), about ten percent took the voluntary buyout in February. One was a staunch conservative and Trump supporter, who is competent to get a private sector job. Another was ex-military. These are not #Resistance types. My guess is that those who took the buyouts are disproportionately more competent and able to land on their feet with a private-sector job. Animosity to Trump was not a motivating factor. This kind of evaporative cooling will make the surviving federal workforce weaker.
- My workplace is being offered a second round of buyouts, but this time it’s targeted at the more politically charged functional areas. If enough of those positions don’t get buyouts, then there will be a RIF (reduction in force, i.e. layoffs), again starting with the political areas and then moving to the general workforce as needed to get up to a certain percentage of employees gone.
- The more damaging, long-term policy is the hiring freeze, which applies to the entire federal government. Every agency needs a pipeline of new employees to replace those who retire, quit, etc. Recruitment will also suffer especially if Congress cuts federal benefits like pensions, in addition to remote work curtailments.
- Increasing the scope of Schedule F is the only thing I really agree with the Trump administration so far. Most of the federal employee workforce—contrary to popular opinion—are not Democrat slugs entrenched in #Resistance ideology. But many of the top policymakers and agency heads are, and they should go. (And many have gone, through early retirements of their own accord.)
When you disrupt people’s workplace culture and benefits, they become resentful. Apolitical and even pro-Trump employees will become opposed to the administration, and DOGE is a stupid idea for this reason. It plays to the Fox News audience well. But this will undercut Trump’s long-term efforts to reform the bureaucracy. Government services will suffer and the voting public will blame him for it.
Cirrus
23d ago
the fact that these tariffs are self-destructive.
This is an opinion, not a fact. The United States government received most of its revenue from tariffs until the Civil War, and they still played an important role until the corporate and income taxes were imposed in the early 20th century. The US existed for 125 years with this ‘dumb’ idea without self-destructing. As always the question should be: who benefits? Some people certainly will, and some certainly won’t.
Cirrus
1mo ago
Christians blamed the Jews (the civilians) and not Pilate, who ultimately sentenced Christ, for his execution.
Because the New Testament correctly attributes the cause of Jesus’ death to the Jews who instigated His crucifixion. The Romans were the useful golem who achieved the Pharisees’ ends; the Roman provincial leadership were never much interested in what they perceived as internal Jewish squabbling over another potential Messiah. To wit, from 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15.
“For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind…”
Cirrus
1mo ago
What’s traditional about offshoring a nation’s manufacturing base to a foreign (and potentially hostile, like China) country? The EU couldn’t produce a fraction of munitions needed to keep pace with Russia during the beginnings of the Ukraine war. Visit American post-industrial hovels like Youngstown or Detroit and compare those images to the protectionist bogeymen of 100 years ago. And ask yourself why nations dependent on free trade have significantly low fertility levels.
Chesterton’s fence was demolished decades ago, and the rich beneficiaries of free trade policy are finally forced to notice thanks to Trump.
Cirrus
1mo ago
See, the key word you used that needs some unpacking is economies. Do all players in the economy benefit equally from free trade? Certainly not! That’s the whole point of Trump raising tariffs, and why he had an autoworker introduce him at yesterday’s speech. Blue collar labor has fared poorly since the 1990s when NAFTA really accelerated free trade in the United States. Trump is the first President in my lifetime who actually cares about unskilled American laborers. It’s why the head of the Teamsters spoke at the RNC last year.
I don’t buy the idea that tariffs are a net negative for everyone in an economy. Sure, there’s inefficiencies in domestic production of certain goods. But man shall not live by bread alone. I thought people cared about equity? I guess not when it impacts the price of cheap imports from China or Mexico. Shows how little the PMC class actually cares about Joe Blue Sixpack.
Cirrus
2mo ago
Well, it seems like it was an unconventional proof-of-liveness check on the federal employee base
This is not accurate on their part. I heard from someone that, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the “HR” OPM account sent a test email asking federal employees to simply reply “Yes” to confirm that the email address was valid. So they already know which email accounts are valid.
Perhaps there’s a simple reason for this anti-British deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Philippe Sands and Lord Hermer, are both Jews. You even mentioned that Lord Hermer harbors anti-British sentiment. Subversive Jews are trying to undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Starmer, though not a Jew, fits the role of the useful idiot here.
Since you’re looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.
Cirrus
3mo ago
Unironically, this is why we need to bring back earmarks. Congress needs to go back on the record and be more prescriptive in specifying where and how appropriated funds should be spent. Congress did away with ‘pork barrel spending’ over a decade ago and the result hasn’t been a decrease in federal spending. Rather, it just relieves Congress of accountability and permits the kind of opaque ‘fraud’ exemplified here to take root.
Cirrus
3mo ago
Well said. Especially this part:
I still took roughly a 100k pay cut to come to my current job. Largely, it was because of stress and hours worked, and because my wife, who works here, liked it so much, although with the commute (I had to come in 5 days a week prior to the EO but worked from home in my private industry job), it ends up being a long day anyway. The first time I was a federal employee, I was a theoretical physicist at a DoD lab--unlike DoE national labs, where the employees are contractors, DoD lab employees are federal employees--but I made a lot less money than I do now… The general sense I get when I talk to people at other agencies about the "buyout" is that there's a lack of belief in it's legitimacy. If you reply "resign" to an email, is there any gaurantee that they have to pay you for the full 8 months? Can they fire you or lay you off in that time? Can they require you to come into work?
As someone in a similar situation (former private sector, now federal employee who received this email) I made the change and accepted a pay cut because of the better working accommodations. If the Trump administration wants federal employees to work like private sector workers, will they be paid like private sector workers?
The ‘resign’ email is poorly worded and leaves a lot of open questions, like you said. Where will the money come from? Does it require Congressional appropriations? Which agency will pay it? Like you noted, will employees who accept the offer be expected to work through September 30, or will they be placed on admin leave immediately?
This idea has Elon’s DOGE written all over it. It’s a bold move, using the OPM to communicate directly to all federal employees and circumvent their various agencies, but seems easy to be challenged in court.
Cirrus
3mo ago
Getting multiple W-2’s and having taxes withheld for the IRS would show you have multiple jobs. Also, all federal employees have to sign annual ethics forms that, among other things, require them to list all sources of income outside their job.
Cirrus
4mo ago
The pardons only absolve the accused from being indicted, right? They don’t restrict Fauci and Milley from being investigated, do they?
Fauci is old enough at this point that sentencing him to a jail term is meaningless. Destroying their legacy and reputation would be much more enduring; no lobbying firm will touch Milley with a ten-foot pole if he’s the subject of a Congressional investigation, even if it doesn’t result in an indictment. Fact finding, getting to the bottom of it, etc. That’s what voters wanted when they pulled the lever for Trump, isn’t it?
Cirrus
4mo ago
Don’t believe every claim you read. A post-election survey by the Associated Press shows that Trump won 55% of the white vote in 2020 versus 56% in 2024. He improved with Latinos (35% in 2020 to 43% in 2024) and blacks (8% in 2020 to 16% in 2024), but these remain small segments of the voting population compared to whites. Do the numbers suggest a racial reckoning for Democrats? Hardly—they just failed to turn out the non-white vote. In 2020, whites were 74% of the voting population; in 2024 whites increased to 75%. This in a country where the white population is declining in both percentage and real terms.
Trump won in 2024 for the same reason he won in 2016: the Democrats picked a terrible candidate who failed to inspire non-white voter turnout. The Democrats have a long-term formula for electoral success, they just have to get their heads out of their asses and pick someone personally likable. I am amazed at how hard this has been for them.
Cirrus
4mo ago
Jobs and border security are topics safely within the Overton Window, yet correlated to racial identity politics fairly well. Politicians are allowed to talk about them while maintaining plausible deniability about being white identitarians. That’s the upside to civic nationalism, if you subscribe to the idea that Americanism is closely associated with European/white heritage.
How many of those criminals waltzing across the border are ethnic Swedes, Poles, or Irish?
Cirrus
4mo ago
As others mentioned in this sub-thread, racial identity is an important consideration but by no means is it the only factor supporting one’s quality of life. Economic prosperity counts for a lot as well. A rising economic tide is enough to cover a multitude of sins. But when that tide recedes, racial preferences remain.
For example, George Floyd wasn’t the only black man to have died in police custody. Nor was his death the only one recorded and sensationalized in the media. But the reaction to his death was so much larger—why? Because the COVID economy crushed people and they wanted a reason to vent their frustrations. The unemployment rate was something like 10 percent at the time, and people were locked in their homes and going stir crazy.
Cirrus
4mo ago
I expect this view won’t be popular on here, but I think the fact that Fridman is a Jew helps a lot. Fellow Jews like Netanyahu and Zelenskyy feel more welcome on his podcast rather than going on Joe Rogan, for instance. “Fridman is one of us.” That gives Fridman entreé to a lot of interviews with powerful Jews that non-Jewish interviewers might not get. Hence why his podcast has accumulated so much popularity.
Cirrus
4mo ago
Indeed, the adults are back in the room. The clown show of the past is over and the incoming administration is more competent and laser focused now than ever before. Now is the time for Republicans to come together for unity around the policies that Make America Great: infinity low-wage legal immigration, continued funding for Ukraine and Israel, continue the Trump corporate tax cuts, increased military spending to counter threats from China and Iran, and Trumpian shitposts to make sure that the Woke Left never transes the kids again! Tired of winning yet?
Cirrus
5mo ago
Remember that this is happening as (officially) inflation is 2.7 percent, the unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, the S&P 500 has had a gangbuster year-to-date return of 24 percent, and housing prices have increased by 4.4 percent year-over-year.
Now imagine how much more violent and disorderly the people will get when the economy contracts into a recession next year. A Middle East oil shock, a government shutdown, a tariff war, there are lots of ignition points…
Cirrus
5mo ago
A $1 million donation and some obsequious praise for Trump, in exchange for Trump not going after Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act? Sounds like a pretty darn good return on investment.
Cirrus
6mo ago
I am also so glad they do not seem to understand what happened to them.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
Money in elections is such a curse, sometimes.
Cirrus
6mo ago
Deepwater Horizon happened due to onerous regulations that crowded out terrestrial oil drilling in favor of offshore drilling, which is inherently less profitable and far more dangerous. A foreign E&P company (BP) outsourced its well driller to a firm that bungled the job and had lax safety standards. That sounds a lot like the circumstances behind the COVID-19 lab leak. Regulations caused the job to be offshored/outsourced… foreign entity screws the pooch…
Cirrus
6mo ago
Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing of Trump for his felony convictions happens later this month. And who’s to say that another Trump assassination attempt won’t happen between now and January?
Harris and Biden mouth the words required of them. Now they can have plausible deniability if the left’s shock troops act to stop Big Orange Hitler from taking office. We’ll see if Trump actually gets to January 20, 2025.
Cirrus
6mo ago
(Meta: why is it that Trump is rarely referred to by first name?)
I’ve thought about that too. Referring to people by their first names invites a sense of closeness and familiarity, maybe makes them appear more approachable or likable even. So it could be strategic on the part of ‘Kamala’ supporters. Alternatively, the name ‘Kamala’ is more unique and memorable for most people than ‘Harris’ as a way to identify her—many Harrises but only one Kamala. A few politicians also are commonly referred to by their first names: Lula (da Silva) by is an example. I don’t think gender has much to do with it.
Cirrus
6mo ago
Why should Americans care about what Chinese do to Uhygurs, or what Turks do to Kurds, or what Israelis do to Palestinians? (I noticed you left out the current administration’s tacit approval of that genocide. What a bunch of Nazis!!!)
America has a proud history of making trade and diplomacy with authoritarian dictators. The problem is with the arrogant internationalists who want to impose their neoliberal capitalist pride-flag agenda on the rest of the world against their will. It’s cultural imperialism… and yet Trump is the Nazi for opposing this. Because 2024 became the year that up is down and 2 + 2 = 5.
Cirrus
7mo ago
The GOP’s 2028 nominee won’t be any Republican that people are talking about today. It won’t be a white man. Given the inexorable demographic trends, it will be an Hispanic populist outsider. Think Nick Fuentes but with greater respectability, and who has ties to the military. America will want a military leader to deal with challenges posed by China or Iran. Someone Trumpian and with a bio that could fill out a webpage like this.
Respectfully, this comment smacks of the kind of naïveté expressed by progressives worldwide at the turn of the 20th century. Mankind is perfectable, we can use science and reason to deduce optimal ideologies, organizing society is like a mathematical problem with a solution, etc. And that thought process produced fascism, communism, and the deadliest conflicts in world history. Difficult and dangerous work, indeed…
I used to put my trust in man, now I put my trust in God.
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