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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Many positions in federal service are banned from joining unions—most of the higher scale / subject matter expert and “white color” roles.

    These were doctors and epidemiologists, and were also in a special 2 year program, so they wouldn’t have had the standard protections of competitive service, and might also have been excluded from union membership.

    Worth noting that aside from some lawsuit exposure, fed unions are not allowed, by law, to strike. (Reagan terminated thousands of air traffic controllers when they struck and replaced them with scab labor as an example) And the current admin doesn’t seem to scared of laws or lawsuits at the moment. (Hopefully they’re wrong in that confidence, but who knows)

    I would join a union in a heartbeat, but my position is barred from it.


  • Wow that article really carries a lot of water. Trimming fat and reigning in spending huh? How can any news outlet credibly claim this is about cost savings. The amount of wastage being caused by this chaos alone will likely make it a wash for the next two years. Not to mention the vastly larger sums of money the govt outlays in virtually every other area of govt.

    I also wish they’d discuss how the employees are being laid off. As many keep mentioning, govt is not a business, and it does not operate line one. Was this DOE terminating probationary employees? Was this an RIF procedure? Because those have strict guidelines about selection and I doubt you’d end up having essential nuclear security workers included. Even if it were probationary employees, the OPM memo allows leeway at the agency level to preserve some amount of these essential positions/departments. Were all of those nuclear security workers part of a woke DEI initiative to increase minority visibility in the nuclear protection workplace?

    Given the scale of fuckup here, I’m guessing DOGE just said fire these list of people based on who knows what and the agency leadership appointee-stooges just sent out the emails, oblivious of regulation and worker protections, or even their own best interest with respect to guarding nuclear stockpiles and radiological materials. Mostly because no person involved in that loop HAS A FUCKING CLUE WHAT THEY’RE DOING.

    AFAIK you simply can’t just “lay off” competitive service / excepted federal workers. Of course, as we know, laws and regulations mean nothing to the current admin so that very likely wouldn’t stop them or their lackeys installed in leadership at the agencies.

    If any of the laid off can afford it, I hope they ignore the recall. Sue the govt and hopefully it works out. No one should consider doing new business with the federal government. It’s clear that no contract will be honored and no promise kept, if it doesn’t suit the admin/admin minders’ aims.


  • Yeah it’s really been making my mind melt. The constant malicious lies that musk keeps tweeting for instance are treated as credible, when he clearly hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, etc.

    I still can’t figure out if there’s like an actual protocol for engaging things like RIF / downsizing where you have to show rationale and evidence… it blows my mind that any president could just decide to unilaterally shelve agencies, etc.

    But I guess it’s kinda a moot point if there isn’t any enforcement of laws or if congress doesn’t have any interest in maintaining their power portfolio.


  • The article could be incorrect, but they state that OPM is directing all agencies to terminate their probationary employees. OPM is the source of all these agency directives that come from exec orders. The exec order is created and then OPM issues “guidance” to all the other agencies about what they are required to do per the order.

    So no, this is not just OPM, it’s every agency that has not been exempted (based on the memo, which we haven’t seen yet). The RTO guidance and DEI removal guidance also came from OPM. There is some per-agency leeway provided (again we’ll have to see the memo) but my understanding is agencies generally have to comply with OPM direction unless it’s unlawful (this may or may not be, I don’t know).






  • They have been uniquely open about their plans to make economic experience worst for most people, but even so, I still suspect it will end up badly for them. We might say “hey the voters were informed” but a.) they almost certainly assumed that it would not be them who felt pain and b.) the voting public as a mass consciousness tends to operate on fairly simple stimulus-response dynamics, and the most important of those dynamics is the “feel bad about economy> vote out incumbent” pathway. So basically just, you can be honest about nuking the economy and promise some promised land on the other side, but if said promise land does not materialize well before elections, you’re probably cooked.


  • Well but who decides that they’re our adversary, if not things like the president and the state department and other elements of the executive? Congress could put up a stink, but they certainly haven’t yet and they’re even more tilted in trumps favor right now. The president also commands the military, so Trump could literally just say, we’re friends with Russia now and we are turning our back on NATO and Ukraine and that would now be the paradigm. Kinda fucks my brain over but honestly who’s a friend and who’s an enemy is something very fluid and can simply change…




  • Yeah I mean there are sooo many products that this would affect, but for instance this is kinda like applying a 10-25% cost increase to residential construction, including multi-family structures. So much of the lumber used in the construction industry comes from Canada. We have our own production in the US, but this will drive the price up across the board whether it’s foreign or domestic source, I don’t think we have enough production to meet demand.

    Add in some forest fires that we are definitely going to see going forward, and it could be pretty rough on housing pricing.

    I feel like we’ve had tariffs on Canadian lumber in the past and they took us to the WTO over it.




  • I haven’t used competing apps to know, but as a forced teams user it is very sluggish, seems to break other ms apps half the time and has some strange and persistent design choices that irk me. It also crashes on its own, when I’m not using it 2-3 times a day.

    It has improved in terms of features lately, but still feels very bloated and WIP most of the time. It still won’t let me control where video windows are, and I’ll never understand this.

    This is our replacement for Skype, which was obviously feature deficient and getting old, but does what it’s supposed to do and doesn’t cause problems.

    Not sure if there’s a good competing app in terms of video and slack functionality, integration into outlook and onedrive (both of which also annoy me and seem to be performing worse-over-time, but are unavoidable and sometimes useful.)


  • It’s a real fear, but they can’t outright fire most federal employees. It’s why they’re so into the schedule f thing, because it allows them to reclassify a ton of jobs as at-will appointment jobs and that would allow them to summarily terminate and replace those positions.

    It’s why they’re planning so many other moves like arbitrary relocation (they say ok your agency is now gonna be based out of Iowa, you can move or quit) blocking and cutting funding so that hiring is impossible and people don’t get raises, can’t find projects, etc.

    But based on the rhetoric I would agree that there are some very nasty things brewing, and being reclassified and then terminated for being a democrat isn’t a crazy outcome, which is bad.

    I have read that at first they’re gonna tread lightly, because if you outright destroy major agencies it causes huge visible blowback. So it may be slow at first. But on the other hand, it’s pretty clear after this election that no one cares about what people want, and they may be assuming that there won’t be more elections that they can’t fake so they don’t have to worry about people being pissed off after they get rid of all the agencies that work to keep things functional.