aGDevil2k
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Power battles everywhere
Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread
- Thread starter nycfan
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Flashback Quote of the Day
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.” — Trump budget director Russell Vought, in a private speech
politicalwire.com
1moretimeagain
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I nearly posted the same thing about an hour ago.
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What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments
What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments
The OPM's recent email and online threat by Elon Musk demonstrate that resignations and layoffs will continue — whether lawful or not.
www.justsecurity.org
“…The [OPC] email did not repeat Musk’s threat equating a non-response to a resignation. Nor did the email provide any consequences about what would happen if employees missed the Monday evening deadline.
Screenshots sent by some anonymous federal employees showed that the email was marked as “suspicious.” Other anonymous federal employees reported they had not received the email, but it was unclear whether OPM intentionally excluded these employees.
What’s more, some individuals outside the executive branch reportedly received the email, including at least one federal judge and some law clerks. Some agencies have reportedly told employees to “pause on any responses” as of this writing.
… The OPM email does not specify how the agency intends to use the information it collects from employees. One possibility is that OPM intends for agencies to use this data to implement Executive Order 14210. Executive Order 14210 instructs agency heads to “develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas.”
The Director of OPM is in charge of overseeing the creation of these plans. The same executive order instructs agency heads to initiate “large-scalereductions in force (RIFs).” RIFs are governedby specific rules, which require the agency to classify employees and remove them based on their order of tenure. It is possible that agencies may use the data collected from these emails to make retention and removal decisions.
Yet these emails alone would be an insufficient basis for an RIF because the process requires significantly more information about the functions performed by each employee.
More broadly, the email raises concerns about the efficacy of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut the federal workforce.
Five bullet points describing one work week—a week that included a federal holiday—cannot capture the importance of the work performed by most federal employees. And it certainly cannot capture the functions of those federal employees already placed on administrative leave, who were explicitly prohibited from performing their job duties during the week in question. …”
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“…What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments
What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments
The OPM's recent email and online threat by Elon Musk demonstrate that resignations and layoffs will continue — whether lawful or not.
“…The [OPC] email did not repeat Musk’s threat equating a non-response to a resignation. Nor did the email provide any consequences about what would happen if employees missed the Monday evening deadline.
Screenshots sent by some anonymous federal employees showed that the email was marked as “suspicious.” Other anonymous federal employees reported they had not received the email, but it was unclear whether OPM intentionally excluded these employees.
What’s more, some individuals outside the executive branch reportedly received the email, including at least one federal judge and some law clerks. Some agencies have reportedly told employees to “pause on any responses” as of this writing.
… The OPM email does not specify how the agency intends to use the information it collects from employees. One possibility is that OPM intends for agencies to use this data to implement Executive Order 14210. Executive Order 14210 instructs agency heads to “develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas.”
The Director of OPM is in charge of overseeing the creation of these plans. The same executive order instructs agency heads to initiate “large-scalereductions in force (RIFs).” RIFs are governedby specific rules, which require the agency to classify employees and remove them based on their order of tenure. It is possible that agencies may use the data collected from these emails to make retention and removal decisions.
Yet these emails alone would be an insufficient basis for an RIF because the process requires significantly more information about the functions performed by each employee.
More broadly, the email raises concerns about the efficacy of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut the federal workforce.
Five bullet points describing one work week—a week that included a federal holiday—cannot capture the importance of the work performed by most federal employees. And it certainly cannot capture the functions of those federal employees already placed on administrative leave, who were explicitly prohibited from performing their job duties during the week in question. …”
Could an agency treat an employee’s failure to respond to the OPM email as a resignation?
No. The resignation of a federal employee must be voluntary. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has stated that “[t]he touchstone of the analysis of whether a retirement or resignation is voluntary is whether the employee made an informed choice. A decision made ‘with blinders on,’ based on misinformation or lack of information, cannot be binding as a matter of fundamental fairness and due process.”A non-response to an email—especially an email with a deadline of one business day—does not evidence a “choice.” Moreover, a resignation must be requested by the employee—not the employer. The MSPB has jurisdiction to consider whether a resignation was, in fact, voluntary. I fully anticipate that the MSPB would not classify a removal pursuant to this email as a “voluntary resignation.” Were the Board somehow to fail to do so, the federal courts would likely overturn that decision.
Moreover, classifying a non-response as a resignation seeks to evade the civil service protections for performance-based firings. The MSPB lacks jurisdiction over issues arising from voluntary resignations except for determining whether the resignation was, in fact, voluntary. Yet employees removed from their position by the agency enjoy certain due process protections. The agency must provide notice and an opportunity for the employee to respond. The employee may then challenge their removal before the MSPB. The Trump administration cannot deprive employees of their due process rights through loopholes. …”
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How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler“… Musk is part of the “PayPal mafia” of libertarian billionaires with roots in South Africa under white rule now hugely influential in the US tech industry and politics.
They include Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, who was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated.
Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programs and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. A 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”.
David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young.
A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk.
…
The acclaimed South African writer Jonny Steinberg recently calledattempts to explain Musk through his childhood under apartheid “a bad idea” that resulted in “facile” conclusions.
But for those looking to join dots, there is fodder from Musk’s early life with a neo-Nazi grandfather who moved from Canada to South Africa because he liked the idea of apartheid through his high school education in a system infused with the ideology of white supremacy.
Musk’s formative years in the 1980s came amid a cauldron of rebellion in the Black townships which drew a state of emergency and a bloody crackdown by the state. Some whites fled the country. Others marched with the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement against any weakening of apartheid.
… In schools, Christian nationalist education sought to forge a South African identity around a singular version of the country’s history. Musk and Thiel were taught that the Afrikaner, mostly the descendants of Dutch colonisers, was the real victim of South Africa’s strife whether at the hands of grasping British imperialists or treacherous Zulu chiefs.
…
But white society was itself divided and the historical narrative embraced in Afrikaans-speaking schools could often became the basis for an implicit rejection of apartheid philosophy in English-speaking ones.
Musk attended a Johannesburg high school and then the Pretoria boys high school, an institution whose other alumni include students who went on to become leading anti-apartheid activists such as Edwin Cameron, a South African supreme court justice after the collapse of white rule, and Peter Hain, who moved to Britain, where he became a leading campaigner against apartheid and then a Labour government minister. …”
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“… Thiel got all that and more at schools in South Africa and its de facto colony, South West Africa, which became independent as Namibia in 1990.
South West Africa had been a German colony until the end of the first world war and Thiel lived for a time in the city of Swakopmund, where he attended a German-language school while his father worked at a nearby uranium mine.
… At that time, Swakopmund was notorious for its continued glorification of Nazism, including celebrating Hitler’s birthday. In 1976, the New York Times reported that some people in the town continued to greet each other with “Heil Hitler” and to give the Nazi salute.
… Thiel, who moved to the US when he was 10, has described his schooling in Swakopmund as instilling a dislike of regimentation that steered him towards libertarianism. …”
StrangePackage
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Thiel isn't a libertarian.
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Continued [and this makes some sense if you follow Maye Musk’s statements the last year or so]
“… Errol Musk [Elon’s dad] has said that he opposed apartheid and joined the Progressive Federal party but then left because he didn’t like its demand for one person, one vote, and instead favored a more gradual reform with separate parliaments for different races.
That was the liberal position inside the Musk family.
Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because he liked the newly elected apartheid government.
In the 1930s, Haldeman was the Canadian leader of a fringe political movement originating in the US, Technocracy Incorporated, that advocated abolishing democracy in favor of government by elite technicians but which took on overtones of fascism with its uniforms and salutes.
The Canadian government banned Technocracy Incorporated during the second world war as a threat to the country’s security in part for its opposition to fighting Hitler. Haldeman was charged with publishing documents opposing the war and sent to prison for two months.
After the war, Haldeman led a separate political party that among other things promoted the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When that went nowhere, he moved to South Africa because he said he liked the core National party philosophy of Christian nationalism that Vorster likened to Nazism.
Errol Musk described Maye’s parents as so extreme he stopped visiting them.
… “They were very fanatical in favor of apartheid,” he told Podcast and Chill. “Her parents came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathised with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.”
…
Haldeman was killed in a plane crash when Elon was three years old but the boy remained close to his grandmother and mother. He is estranged from his father, whom Maye has described as abusive of her and their children. Errol Musk once claimed to have shot and killed three people who broke into his house.
Musk has described his father as a “terrible human being”.
“Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done,” he told Rolling Stone without elaborating in 2017.
What is indisputable is that Musk and Thiel grew up amid incredible privilege where the racial hierarchy was clear. Those who claimed to reject apartheid sought to explain this privilege not as the result of systemic racial oppression but the natural order of things thanks to their own abilities. That in turn led some to regard all forms government as oppressive and true liberty as an individual battle for survival. …”
[Article also notes that by taking his mother’s Canadian citizenship and moving to Canada in 1988, Musk avoided two years compulsory military service in South Africa, where he could have been thrust into border battles in the “low level civil war” in South Africa at the time.]
“… Errol Musk [Elon’s dad] has said that he opposed apartheid and joined the Progressive Federal party but then left because he didn’t like its demand for one person, one vote, and instead favored a more gradual reform with separate parliaments for different races.
That was the liberal position inside the Musk family.
Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because he liked the newly elected apartheid government.
In the 1930s, Haldeman was the Canadian leader of a fringe political movement originating in the US, Technocracy Incorporated, that advocated abolishing democracy in favor of government by elite technicians but which took on overtones of fascism with its uniforms and salutes.
The Canadian government banned Technocracy Incorporated during the second world war as a threat to the country’s security in part for its opposition to fighting Hitler. Haldeman was charged with publishing documents opposing the war and sent to prison for two months.
After the war, Haldeman led a separate political party that among other things promoted the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When that went nowhere, he moved to South Africa because he said he liked the core National party philosophy of Christian nationalism that Vorster likened to Nazism.
Errol Musk described Maye’s parents as so extreme he stopped visiting them.
… “They were very fanatical in favor of apartheid,” he told Podcast and Chill. “Her parents came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathised with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.”
…
Haldeman was killed in a plane crash when Elon was three years old but the boy remained close to his grandmother and mother. He is estranged from his father, whom Maye has described as abusive of her and their children. Errol Musk once claimed to have shot and killed three people who broke into his house.
Musk has described his father as a “terrible human being”.
“Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done,” he told Rolling Stone without elaborating in 2017.
What is indisputable is that Musk and Thiel grew up amid incredible privilege where the racial hierarchy was clear. Those who claimed to reject apartheid sought to explain this privilege not as the result of systemic racial oppression but the natural order of things thanks to their own abilities. That in turn led some to regard all forms government as oppressive and true liberty as an individual battle for survival. …”
[Article also notes that by taking his mother’s Canadian citizenship and moving to Canada in 1988, Musk avoided two years compulsory military service in South Africa, where he could have been thrust into border battles in the “low level civil war” in South Africa at the time.]
WaynetheDrain
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It used to be. But no slurs are off the table in Trump’s America.
Mulberry Heel
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Truth. Although I suspect it won't go over very well with our resident Trumpers and bosiders.
PTOHeel
Well-Known Member
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I have received this email. I have also received instructions not to respond until I receive further guidance from management. FWIW, the forced resignation for not responding is not included in the official email. It’s simply a request for information on what I did at work for the last week. I’ll just wait to see what communication I receive from union and management on Monday. What a strange time it is.
Silence Dogood
Exceptional Member
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Well if you're not leeching off the system it should be easy to respond. Alot of govt workers show up everyday and add no value to govt work, and are wasting money.
EyeballKid
Distinguished Member
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Where’s your proof?
DantesHair
Well-Known Member
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Ohio states offensive line had 0 rushing touchdowns, 0 rushing yards, 0 passing yards/touchdowns, and 0 sacks. Worthless bunch of leeches.
WaynetheDrain
Honored Member
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Oh, shut the fuck up, you waste of DNA. Imagine if your manager at the Waffle House made you defend your performance every week to retain your job.
Silence Dogood
Exceptional Member
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Its out there, I'm not going to keep babying you. I also seen it with my own eyes. And I know that you know it exists, you just don't like who's leading the charge.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
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Fixed it for you.