During one video meeting with a representative of Mr. Musk’s team, civil servants at the technology arm of the General Services Administration even bombarded an online chat with spoon emojis to express their displeasure at the deferred resignation offer known as the “fork in the road.” (Their bosses responded by removing spoons from the list of searchable emojis permitted in their videoconferencing platform.)

I heard about that, it was a Teams meeting so the emoji’s pop up on the video conference screen, and it was just an avalanche of spoons.

They’re going to try and make it sound like lots of people are taking the fork, and it’s saving money

But they’re letting people who took it in February extend to 12/31/25 and then retire…

Getting paid and benefits the entire time.

The vast majority taking it are people who were retiring before that, and probies who likely would have been let go anyways.

It’s going to cost agencies a shit ton of money, which is the point. Republicans don’t care about the actual funding, it’s just the excuse that’s easiest to defend. They’re fine spending the money if the work isn’t done anyways

The music is because those trucks drive around.

You can’t make tacos on the move, or any other kind of hot food really.

Which is why food trucks park in locations and operate

In a rare turn of events, Gerry Connelly is actually making some noise over that.

Absolutely nowhere near what AOC would be in his position, but I was surprised to see Connelly even released a letter about it.

But the reason they want this is to claim an AI going over the responses counts as an “appropriate review” necessary before DoD RIF of probies.

But there’s already multiple lawsuits over how DOGE/OPM have zero authority to be acting like every agency’s HR and sending out this shit

Man…

Crazy how much power a president has.

A shame we wasted the last four years on someone unwilling to use any of that power because he thought a president couldn’t…

Unfortunately for everyone, Biden also believes a president didn’t have the power to limit future president’s power either.

Like, there’s a lot of shit we should be paying attention to, but it’s important to remember that solidifying behind a moderate fixing absolutely nothing, and that voters won’t turn out to keep someone like that in offense.

We’re taking the hardest path to victory that has no rewards at the end.

Why not take the easy path where we run a candidate dem voters agree with, who will at least put a good faith effort into fixing stuff.

They were fine with Musk’s first two.

They didn’t like when Bannon did it tho, which is when this statement was made.

Then there’s already been a third person doing it.

All just ammo for the appeal.

The shooter calmly walked away, and Luigi was arrested calmly in a McDonald’s.

At no stage was there some crazy escape or shootout where something like this would be warranted in court, and things like this have been argued to have influenced potential jury members in past cases.

Like, it’s one straw on a giant pile of better examples so far, but it all adds up. They’re gonna OJ this shit and go so hard it ends in a mistrial or something crazy.

Especially since the trial is going to be a media circus and Trump won’t be able to keep his nose out of it, it’ll kill him that he won’t be the main attraction.

The thing is, support for Luigi crosses party lines. It might be what causes a maga fracture if everything falls right.

How would they “just do it”?

Federal taxes do not go thru states. They go from taxpayer to federal government at tax time, and from payroll processor to federal government for withholdings.

You want states out there hacking transactions?

Most payroll providers aren’t based in the same state, and most corporations don’t only operate in one state. Hell, most are headquartered in Delaware.

For the vast amount of Americans that money doesn’t touch any states besides Delaware.

Like, there’s a lot of reasons why what you’re suggesting just can’t happen.

No.

…

If people stopped buying stuff, it wouldn’t translate to immediate loss of wages except for gig economy workers.

It’s not like production or stores would no to stop immediately counting on starting back up at the exact right moment.

and making a coordinated attempt to close land trade thru America…

What kind of logic are people using where that sounds like a snap decision with immediate results?

I genuinely am curious because apparently multiple people are coming to the same wrong conclusion.

Like if a 12 year old says they want to become a doctor, are you back the next day asking what the hold up is?

Is planning ahead just that foreign of a concept these days?

I never understood why the N word is racist because of history, but then being black makes it fine to say

Context.

I have the complexion of a brand new piece of printer paper, one of my friends who legit could have gotten a job as a Wesley Snipes impersonator constantly called me the n word. He called all his friends that, and eventually I used it in the same context he had towards me for like the 50th time that day without me even realize I was saying it.

It wasn’t a big deal, but it’s not like that magically gave me permission to say it anywhere at anytime.

I mean, it’s 2025 man, there’s white people all over who have been saying the n word. The context is what matters. I just don’t get how someone could think it’s a (pun intended) black and white issue.

Hell, the most popular rapper in America has been publicly complaining about how another black rapper says the n word. Flat out saying that it’s not a race thing it’s a culture thing. It was literally the outro to one of the biggest diss tracks of the biggest beefs in modern rap era.

https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-euphoria-lyrics

it still wouldn’t happen instantly

And if you look up you may be able to catch a glimpse of “the point” waaaaaaaaay up there as it passes over your head.

But your gonna have to ask someone else to point it out next time buddy

My bad, I forgot “moderates” the world over pretend there’s no way to plan ahead and when something happens there’s no time to react properly…

It’s all bullshit, I just forgot a moderate will show up to repeat the same lie.

At least it takes longer on lemmy than other social media.

Humans are just naturally racist

No they’re not.

Like, I wrote an indepth explanation, you completely missed the details, and then posted a summary that’s completely wrong…

I wonder where this movement started where people overly obsess about this

Evolution.

As a toddler you form your “in group” based on the people you see. Mostly that you are actually around, but also just exposed to on TV.

Anyone that you’re not exposed to is “out group” and you can use conscious thinking as an adult to include others in your ingroup but when you get old and lose mental ability you’ll fall back into “did I see people like that as a kid” distinction for “us” vs “them”.

For the vast amount of human history, if you ran into a group of different looking humans, they were a competitor and you either boned them or killed them.

People want to act like 10,000 years of human society makes us better than other animals, but that’s a blink of evolutions eye, we’re still animals and if we’re not socialized we’re gonna act like animals.

Can’t we already just treat people for who they are/their personality and not judge them by their skin color and also not prefer some ethnicities over others?

We do that by integrating society and children’s TV with integrated casts of diverse people.

Which is why conservatives and even some moderates opposed things like school busing and Sesame Street.

They’re not picking random shit that doesn’t matter, they’re planning decades in advance to make sure the next generation can be manipulated into thinking along racial lines rather than realizing there’s no just war except a class war.

Quick edit:

We can see it in modern day with the obsession of preventing kids from learning LGBTQ is a thing, they want kids to form their “us” group as just heterosexuals so that when that generation grows up they’ll view anything LGTBQ as “them”.

If he really wanted to show trump he’d have allied with Mexico to prioritize both their sea trade routes and making a coordinated attempt to close land trade thru America…

Instead he tried to appease fascists, which never fucking works.

As Snotty Nose Rez Kids love to say:

Fuck Justin Trudeau

He says he still was kicked “to the curb” by Trump and Musk.

He was kicked to the curb by his agency leadership bowing to pressure from trump and Elmo.

We just went from “the president has zero control over any agency” to “the president has ultimate control over every agency”.

Neither are true, and we desperately need people to actually understand what is happening, and why nothing could happen in the four years between trump terms.

Republicans pressure agencies to do what they want, and fire agency heads who dont.

Neoliberals say they can’t do anything. And nothing gets done.

The result is sometimes we move really far right in very short amounts of time, then neoliberals normalize it.

In 2012 people would have said you were insane if you claimed the 2024 Dem candidate would want a border wall, be against healthcare reform, profracking, and actively supporting genocide.

But due to the ratchet effect of neoliberalism that’s exactly where we ended up.

We care more about capitalism than anything else and he threatened the rich…

Like, not saying I agree with it, but the answer for why they’re labeling it terrorism is really obvious

About 75,000 workers have accepted buyouts,

That’s OPM’s count…

And it was 60k when applications closed.

Agencies themselves literally just found out yesterday who had applied, and because the email was sent to literally everyone, lots of the people who applied weren’t eligible.

They’re also saying people who took it can set a retirement date out to 12/31/25 now. Getting paid up till then, and letting it count towards years of service with retirement.

Pretty much the only people taking it were set to retire before then, or brand new low level employees.

None of this is saving really any money. But the point isn’t to save money, it’s to prevent agencies from doing their jobs. And if you can’t cut their budget, you make them light money on fire by paying employees to stay home.

The don’t care that the money is being paid, they care that the work isn’t being done.

Trumpism has an unlimited amount of money to throw into its efforts. Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, put more than $270m into Trump’s campaign, a tiny portion of his fortune. Other multibillionaires will join Musk in spending whatever it takes.

This is why neoliberals working with Republicans for 30 years to completely dismantle campaign finance regulations never was rationale.

The wealthiest will always side with the furtherest right party, doesn’t matter if they give to both, the check to the right will always be larger.

We spent 30 years digging our own grave till that was possible.

With the Republican party in the House having only a three-vote majority we can defeat draconian, anti-working-class legislation if just two Republican members of Congress vote no.

I’d also like to point out that the “victory fund” shenanigans is defunding state dem parties (literally by design) and costing us a shit ton more than two House seats.

We’re throwing everything at a presidential race instead of down allot races, and then when we did win the presidency, immediately said it didn’t fucking matter.

If that’s the case why didn’t we spend that $1,500,000,000 on down ballot races?

That shit couldn’t win 3 house races since Biden spent four years telling us presidents were powerless?