DOGE Catch-All
- Thread starter nycfan
- Start date
- Replies: 809
- Views: 27K
- Politics
- Messages
- 1,882
These are the same people who were saying that Trump's denial of Project 2025 was sincere and it was a smear to associate him with it, and now claim that he ran on doing this and people voted for him to do this.
They know they're morally bankrupt raging hypocrites, but they do not care.
They "know" God will forgive them. After all, they're only doing the things he's too powerless or had forgotten to do.
- Messages
- 29,149
“Unintended consequences”?
“At Veterans Affairs facilities in Detroit and Denver, staff reductions have led to canceled health programs and left homeless veterans without their dedicated coordinator to help them find an apartment and line up a deposit.
In Alabama, job cuts at the Education Department have slowed efforts to get disabled children access to classrooms.
And in California, Yosemite National Park paused new reservations for more than 500 campsites during peak summer months because of staffing uncertainty.
An unprecedented effort to shrink the federal labor force is impeding work at government sites across the country and spawning unintended consequences for services Americans rely on.
…After facing years of bipartisan criticism from Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services late last year hired a transplant surgeon to help implement fixes to the system that regulates organ transplants.
Dr. Jayme Locke, who left her post at the University of Alabama Birmingham for the federal job, was recently fired as a probationary worker. Transplant experts had hoped she would preside over a new era of making improvements instead of just studying them. Dr. Locke declined to comment. HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
…Weather balloons, which capture information on temperature, humidity and wind, aren’t going up regularly in Albany, N.Y., or Gray, Maine, and launches have stopped altogether in Kotzebue, Alaska, due to staffing shortages at the National Weather Service.
National Parks and other federal lands are cutting hours at visitor centers. More than 700 Park Service employees took the government’s resignation offer, according to an email to supervisors seen by The Wall Street Journal. Roughly 1,000 probationary employees were fired, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit advocacy group. …”
I hate it for them. But what the fuck did they expect? He told them he was going to do exactly what he is doing. Why should they be surprised?
- Messages
- 3,950
"Almost 90 percent of voters in this Appalachian county in Kentucky’s southeastern corner voted for Trump,"
- Messages
- 2,083
They are going to learn the value of good government the hard way. At least those that survive will.
- Messages
- 29,149
“ .. “Simply put,” the officials added, “we are quickly heading toward an environmental and life-threatening catastrophe.”
They received no response from Washington, according to three people familiar with the situation.
… Instead, Rubio and Peter Marocco, another top Trump appointee, have not only ordered the work to stop, but they also have frozen more than $1 million in payments for work already completed by the contractors the U.S. hired. The company overseeing the project is Tetra Tech, a publicly traded consulting and engineering firm based in the U.S., and a Vietnamese construction firm has been tasked with the excavation work.
Then, on Feb. 26, Rubio and Marocco canceled both companies’ contracts altogether before apparently reversing that decision about a week later, agency records show. As of Thursday, the companies had not been paid.
…
Now, after losing several weeks because of the administration’s orders, the companies are scrambling — at their own expense — to secure the Bien Hoa site before it starts raining, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica and several people familiar with the current situation.
The USAID officials who would typically travel to the air base to provide oversight have been placed on administrative leave or prevented from traveling to check on the work. They’ve also been forbidden from communicating with the Vietnamese government or the companies working at the base, sources say, though they believe that directive was lifted after the contracts were recently reinstated. The confusion has left many at both the embassy and in Washington in the dark about where the situation stands. …”
- Messages
- 29,149
“… To ascertain the current status of the work, ProPublica hired a reporter to visit the air base on Friday.
Workers are laboring in 95 degree heat, surrounded by toxic soil. The site has a skeleton crew of less than half of what they previously had, according to workers and documents reviewed by ProPublica. Some staffers found new jobs during the suspension. People working at the site told the reporter they are worried about completing the work before the rainy season descends and are terrified the U.S. will pause the work again.
Since 2019, the U.S. government has collaborated with Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense to clean up the Bien Hoa air base and agreed to spend more than $430 million for the project.
Unlike other foreign aid programs, addressing Agent Orange is more akin to restitution than charity because the U.S. brought the deadly substance there in the first place.
“The dioxin remediation program is one of the core reasons why we have an extraordinary relationship with Vietnam today,” a State Department official told ProPublica, “a country that should by all rights hate us.” …”
- Messages
- 1,180
They were hoist(ed) by their own petard.
- Messages
- 2,083
I can understand their frustration. Why didn’t the Democrats adequately warn them?
- Messages
- 3,950
While Trump slashes jobs, his golf trips are costing taxpayers millions | Mohamad Bazzi
The US president is condemning ‘waste’ and firing workers – while cashing in by traveling to his own resorts
Since he took office, Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and tried to shut down agencies, part of his effort to unilaterally dismantle the government. He has also made seven trips to Florida and the golf courses he owns there.
This weekend, Trump made his seventh visit to Florida and his sixth to his waterfront mansion and private club at Mar-a-Lago since his inauguration on 20 January. As Richard Luscombe noted in the Guardian last week, Trump’s frequent trips to his own properties not only cost taxpayer funds, but they benefit him directly – his businesses have charged the US government to house Secret Service agents and other White House staff. In other words, American taxpayers pay the Trump Organization for the right to protect Trump and his family.
During Trump’s first term, his properties had a history of overcharging the Secret Service, by as much as 300% beyond the authorized government hotel rates, according to a report issued by Democrats in Congress last year. The report found that the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service as much as $1,815 a room per night to stay at the Trump International hotel in Washington DC – billing the US government significantly more than the hotel did for “rooms rented by the Qatari royal family and Chinese business interests”.
...
The cost to US taxpayers for Trump’s jaunts to Mar-a-Lago, which he calls his “winter White House”, far exceeds renting rooms for the president’s security entourage. A 2019 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which examined four trips that Trump took to his Palm Beach resort during his first term, put the total cost at $13.6m, or about $3.4m for each visit. That includes flying Air Force One, along with a separate cargo plane that carries the presidential motorcade, between Washington and the Palm Beach international airport. With seven trips so far into his current term, the US government has likely already spent more than $23m on Trump’s golf outings.
...
The Palm Beach county sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, has said that his department spends $240,000 a day to help the Secret Service protect Trump. Bradshaw recently asked county commissioners for $45m in additional funds to provide security for Trump’s visits through the rest of this year – and the county is asking Congress to reimburse those costs.
lawtig02
Inconceivable Member
- Messages
- 4,948
Sad. That’s a whole bunch of people who will never leave Harlan alive.
- Messages
- 29,149
DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.
“They handled the secure transport of nuclear materials — dangerous, demanding work that requires rigorous training. Four of them took the Trump administration’s offer of a buyout and left the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A half-dozen staff members left a unit in the agency that builds reactors for nuclear submarines.
And a biochemist and engineer who had recently joined the agency as head of the team that enforces safety and environmental standards at a Texas plant that assembles nuclear warheads was fired.
In the past six weeks, the agency, just one relatively small outpost in a federal work force that President Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk aim to drastically pare down, has lost a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation.
The nuclear agency, chronically understaffed but critically important, is the busiest it has been since the Cold War. It not only manages the nation’s 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, it is modernizing that arsenal — a $20-billion-a-year effort that will arm a new fleet of nuclear submarines, bomber jets and land-based missiles. …”
- Messages
- 29,149
“… Since the last year of the first Trump administration, the agency has been desperately trying to build up its staff to handle the added workload.
DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.www.nytimes.com
“They handled the secure transport of nuclear materials — dangerous, demanding work that requires rigorous training. Four of them took the Trump administration’s offer of a buyout and left the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A half-dozen staff members left a unit in the agency that builds reactors for nuclear submarines.
And a biochemist and engineer who had recently joined the agency as head of the team that enforces safety and environmental standards at a Texas plant that assembles nuclear warheads was fired.
In the past six weeks, the agency, just one relatively small outpost in a federal work force that President Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk aim to drastically pare down, has lost a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation.
The nuclear agency, chronically understaffed but critically important, is the busiest it has been since the Cold War. It not only manages the nation’s 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, it is modernizing that arsenal — a $20-billion-a-year effort that will arm a new fleet of nuclear submarines, bomber jets and land-based missiles. …”
Though it was still hundreds of employees short of what it had said it needed, it had edged up to about 2,000 workers by January.
Now, with the Trump administration’s buyouts and firings, the agency’s trajectory has gone from one of painstaking growth to retraction.
More than 130 employees took the government’s offer of a payout to resign, according to internal agency documents obtained by The New York Times that have not previously been reported. Those departures, together with those of about 27 workers who were caught up in a mass firing and not rehired, wiped out most of the recent staffing gains.
…
Among the departures: At least 27 engineers, 13 program or project analysts, 12 program or project managers, six budget analysts or accountants, five physicists or scientists, as well as attorneys, compliance officers and technologists, according to internal lists.
The agency lost not only officials deeply steeped in the weapons modernization program, but also a noted arms control expert at a time when President Trump has said he hopes to restart talks with Russia and China about limiting nuclear arsenals. …”
ChileG
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 2,401
Ahhhh…THIS must be the thing that those who support “some” of what DOGE is doing are referring to.
DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting the federal work force.
“They handled the secure transport of nuclear materials — dangerous, demanding work that requires rigorous training. Four of them took the Trump administration’s offer of a buyout and left the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A half-dozen staff members left a unit in the agency that builds reactors for nuclear submarines.
And a biochemist and engineer who had recently joined the agency as head of the team that enforces safety and environmental standards at a Texas plant that assembles nuclear warheads was fired.
In the past six weeks, the agency, just one relatively small outpost in a federal work force that President Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk aim to drastically pare down, has lost a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation.
The nuclear agency, chronically understaffed but critically important, is the busiest it has been since the Cold War. It not only manages the nation’s 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, it is modernizing that arsenal — a $20-billion-a-year effort that will arm a new fleet of nuclear submarines, bomber jets and land-based missiles. …”
- Messages
- 29,149
Especially this sort of obvious outcome of the rash buyout proposal:
“… Governmentwide, a disproportionate number of the roughly 75,000 federal workers who have taken the buyouts so far are those whose skills are in demand in the private sector and will be hard to replace, according to Max Stier, the president and chief executive of Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies governance.
… The field office that oversees the agency’s laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., where plutonium pits are made, lost nine staff members, according to the documents reviewed by The Times. Budgeted for 97 employees in the fiscal year ending last September, it is now operating with 76. Among those who left was the deputy facility operations manager, a top job.
… “Those are such hard jobs to fill, because people could make as much or more money working for the plant or laboratory itself,” said Jill Hruby, who led the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Biden administration.
… Some of the agency’s workers who left were on the verge of retirement anyway. But because the offer to leave came so suddenly, several former officials said, those employees did not get the chance to properly prepare their replacements. Even a junior employee at the agency can take a year to train, officials said.
…The nuclear agency has struggled for years with understaffing, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency. In a 2022 report, the nuclear agency said it faced “tremendous work-force attraction and retention problems.” One problem is that the agency is competing with the private sector over workers, including the agency’s own contractors. Another is finding people for such highly specialized work.
Officials were so worried about the loss of employees who transport nuclear materials that they denied the buyout to more than half of workers who signed up for it, according to agency documents.
“We were already understaffed there,” said Ms. Hinderstein, the agency’s former deputy. “Because how do you get people with extremely advanced security skills to be able to defend a nuclear weapon on the road and are willing to be long-haul truckers?” …”
ChileG
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 2,401
Yes, several us pointed out at the beginning that this is exactly what would happen with such an idiotic way of downsizing the workforce.