Category: government

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I have been laid off twice in my career.

There is a way to do it that benefits the company eliminating the jobs while also minimizing the upset to the people losing their jobs. Donald Trump, a business genius no less, is doing it in the most careless and obnoxious way possible.

First, he and his DOGE stooges are laying off people and then discovering that they need these employees still. Musk, in his storied career, has repeatedly made this mistake. Most companies take a little time, particularly when there is no emergency, in learning what people do, assigning the tasks to retained employees so there is no gap in service and trying to put the laid off employees in the best position for a new position. Planning for the company’s sake, compassion for the people losing their jobs. Trump is doing neither. It is a shoddy mistake that gives retained employees and customers the impression that you don’t know what you are doing.

Planning requires a little more effort than looking at a spreadsheet and eliminating jobs. Doing this so quickly and without consideration to the repercussions is a costly mistake especially for businessmen of Trump and Musk’s supposed caliber. The abruptness could lead to rehires, gaps in services, and law suits. What money you saved from the layoffs will be eaten away in the chaos created by the layoffs. It isn’t they way to run a business successfully but then I doubt seriously if this is Trump or Musk’s intention. Destroying the Federal Government is much more like it.

The unalloyed glee that the DOGE boys are taking with their job is unforgivable. Laying people off is a sad task and it should be approached as a regrettable but necessary task. These guys are having way too much fun. People are losing their jobs. The DOGE boys may not like them, they may think their jobs are unnecessary, and they may think it is the right thing to do but they should respect the people they are putting out of a job. It is the very least they can do. Instead they are acting like a bunch of mean girls in high school who get to say who is in and who is out.

Trump and Musk are bullies. They enjoy laughing at others but are unable to take any ribbing at their own expense. They demand respect without giving any. The extraordinary number of people who have turned on them speaks volumes about their character. Nobody much likes Trump and Musk once they are free from their orbit. Let’s hope we all learn how to stand up to bullies in the ensuing few years.

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So Elon Musk fired some people who are actually necessary. This is hardly surprising. He has done this before at Tesla and at Twitter. That he keeps doing it, however, is becoming a bit of concern. I mean once is a mistake, twice maybe forgivable, but three times, well this is showing a real character problem. He fails to learn from his mistakes and this is the genius who is responsible for overhauling the Federal Government.

Furthermore, he should take into consideration that just because he is looking at a bunch of numbers on spreadsheet doesn’t mean he understands anything about the business this agency does. He might consider doing a little more investigation than a cursory glance at a spreadsheet.

Also, and most importantly, he and his team might take a less gleeful approach to the elimination of jobs. He might even consult corporations who have laid off staff in the past as they do a remarkably civil approach to this unpleasant task. They usually don’t scream you are a waste of space and we are eliminating job. Now you may think it. Fine but saying it is unnecessary particularly when you are sitting in the catbird seat.

In the meantime, the cabinet officers who are responsible for these departments might take a little time with any recommendations Musk offers. He shoots first and asks questions later. Not a terribly intelligent approach.

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Marko Elez, one of Elon Musk’s young DOGE stooges, resigned for making clearly racist comments. A day or so later, Musk rehires the poor thing as he shouldn’t have to suffer for his racism. What? Am I hearing this correctly?

This would have been perfect situation for Trump to prove his concern for racism. Elez is a low level employee who would be easily replaced by another young more discrete racist. Trump wins for not putting up with racist assholes. Musk gets to carry on cutting jobs and government agencies.

And for what? They didn’t want to ruin the life of a young man. What? How is Elez life ruined? He would have surely gone on to some other job where he could lay off people. Corporations are chockablock full of these dudes.

Now Trump is stuck rehiring a racist asshole. Everything Elez does will have a taint. As it should. Trump is more interested in showing he is in charge and he doesn’t care what other people think. He is so obsessed with showing his macho-you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do side that he misses these opportunities of showing some grace to his critics.

Elez is an asshole. There was no reason to hire him back. His life won’t be ruined by leaving Musk’s DOGE budget cutting fiesta. This was no great matter and a missed opportunity for Trump to show he actually cares about a real display of racism. He blew it.

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I can’t help myself. I try to ignore Donald Trump as much as I can but since he is now president it is impossible, so here goes.

Donald Trump wants to prioritize White South Africans as immigrants. Does this have anything to do with native South African Elon Musk? No, it couldn’t. Musk would never use his influence in the Trump Administration to ask for something so egregiously racist.

Immigration give priority to people who are in immediate danger. Trump’s focus is on South Africans of European descent. So this applies to mix raced South Africans as long as one of the two parents were of European descent. What if only one of the grand parents is of European descent? What percentage European descent is he talking about?

Then, why do White South Africans get priority? Are they in any more danger than women who want out of Iran? Or Sudanese rebels? Or just plain poor folk from Central America who want to escape drug lords?

The troubling aspect about Trump’s order is that it is so transparently racist. This order comes while he is trying to shut down the border from non-white immigrants. So Trump isn’t really opposed to immigrants, just non-white immigrants.

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Elon Musk’s request for personal Social Security information is baffling. The Social Security system is a macro problem in which Musk is taking a distinctly micro approach. How is getting personal information from individual social security recipients in any way helpful? If social security is a problem to look into, then the problem isn’t Jane Doe getting a $2,000 social security check each month. What needs looking at is financing the whole system.

Trump, supposedly an advocate for transparency in government, needs to inform the public on why this distribution of personal information is necessary for the task Musk is undertaking. Trump is allowing a businessman with no responsibility to anyone except Trump access to the personal details of an entire country. How is Musk protecting this data? What is preventing Musk from making a copy of this information for future use?

Department Secretaries can be called before Congress to answer questions regarding their department. The problem here is that Musk is without actual government responsibility. He is acting for Trump and Trump alone. It may be all on the up and up but there is no way to know for sure unless the painful process of institutional review is practiced. It isn’t happening and that is concerning.

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The right wing media is spreading pernicious lies about DEI being a factor in the Los Angeles fires now burning. Forbes magazine, hardly a left wing source, found that there is absolutely no evidence that this is true. Some of this is based on speculation offered by Adam Carolla who when trying to apply to be a fire fighter many years agos was told that he wouldn’t be considered for 7 years because he was white man. Carolla also admits to having a 1.7 GPA which, and I am just speculating on this now, might have something to do with his long wait and the discouraging words he received at the fire house when asking for a job.

Anyway, a quick glance at the graduating class of 2024 proves Carolla wrong. There are a good number of white men in the group. In fact, if you look at the racial breakdown of Los Angeles Fire Department in 2018, Whites are a much larger portion of the fire department than their percentage in Los Angeles population — 49% Whites in Fire Department, 29% whites in Los Angeles and women make up barely 3% of the department with minority women making up less than 1%. So a department made up of 97% men which is important because one of the chief problems conservative critics have is the physical strength needed to fight fire. Men have more than women. There seems to be more than enough men out there working on the fire.

The unspoken subtext here is that somehow non-whites and women aren’t up to the job. Based on what evidence? Is there data that minorities and women are not performing their job? And if so, what are the problems and how do white men doing the same job compare? If someone graduates from the Fire Academy, doesn’t it mean they past the tests required by the LAFD to adequately perform their job? The critics keep returning to the lesbian women who lead the department. Where exactly have these women failed? Somehow the implication is that since DEI has been considered as a part of the hiring process that standards have somehow diminished. It isn’t like the good old days when only white men were running the LAFD.

But, of course, the good old days were not getting the best people available. They were limiting their search to white men and discriminated against people of color and women. How is this better? It is only when discrimination became an issue that women and people of color got a chance to become a fireman. The good old days. You know when Blacks need not apply for jobs they wanted. You didn’t have to consider women at all because they were the weaker sex. You know those good old days when discrimination was OK.

No one wants to hear about past discrimination when DEI is making it impossible for white men to advance now. Right. The thing is if Blacks and Latinos were given a chance 50 or so years ago to join the force DEI wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. The problem is they were discriminated against and, because of that past discrimination, women and people of color are rightfully suspicious of their ability to be treated fairly. So ultimately DEI is the direct result of bad faith hiring from white men in the first place.

By all means, blame the Los Angeles Fires on DEI putting incompetents on the front line. I am sure it will encourage those brave people fighting the fires to give their all to put them out. Really, it is shitty way, particularly in the absence of evidence, to treat people who are putting their lives on the line.

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I recently wrote about the murder of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO. People who I respect were arguing that the people really don’t have much power over healthcare executives and that, given the political climate, weren’t likely to see any changes. This forced Luigi Mangione into action. His frustration with the system gave him no other choice. I wanted to respond to these arguments but I couldn’t quite get my ideas straight about what I wanted to say. The massacre in New Orleans have clarified things for me.

The killer in New Orleans’s probably felt similar to Luigi Mangione, that nobody was listening to what he had to say and, in order to change that, he took extreme action to bring attention to his cause. Since US government is part of the problem, then all Americans are legitimate targets until the US government changes their policy.

Now I don’t believe that to be true and I am betting the most other Americans agree with me. The problem then becomes why is it all right to kill Thompson and not the party goers on Bourbon Street. It becomes a matter of splitting hairs. Thompson definitely held more power over his company than the average American has over government decisions. A terrorist, however, might argue Americans have the power to vote for their leaders. If they are going to vote for the leaders who oppose their cause, then they deserve to die until Americans change to a more ISIS friendly government.

If frustration with the system is a legitimate reason to massacre people then who is to say your frustration is better than my frustration. It is wrong to stay silent when the people dying are disagreeable people. Disagreeable people deserve due process and fair trials because we, as a people, have to know that we there is justice in the process and we are not just going after people we don’t like. Letting lone assassins make that decision is insanity because you are then are opening up political violence option to everyone, including people you disagree with, and who then will kill people you like.

The election of Trump was an incredibly disappointing result but then there is another election coming and, depending on how things go, the political climate could change. At least, this is the way forward I would like to pursue. Call me bourgeois but I much prefer the chaotic and slow machinery of democratic institutions than political violence. I can’t give up on it just yet. It worries me that so many people seem willing to let murder slide as long as the victim is perceived as a legitimate target because someone might decide that you are a legitimate target. Just ask the families who lost a loved one on Bourbon Street.

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I personally think Musk is not that bright. He has twice, within a short time, fired whole departments and then, after realizing he still needs these people, hiring them back. I question the expertise he might bring to a government office devoted to efficiency. Once is a forgivable mistake but twice would suggest an inability to learn from his mistakes and a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

It isn’t as if he couldn’t get help from Human Resources experts. I mean if there is one thing that the corporate world does well is laying people off. That he went ahead with an emotional decision based on his anger at this employees without having a plan for replacing people to do their work is concerning. He is disrupting his employee’s lives and the operation of his company.

Besides being unqualified for the job, he also has the wrong personality for dealing with someone like Trump. Trump needs ass kissers and a really adept ass kisser at that. Trump has a big ego which clashes with Musk who also has a big ego. There isn’t enough room for these two men to be together without one or the other stepping on some toes.

Musk has many many faults but I never got a sycophantic vibe from him. I would hate to be in the room when this breaks down. Wait, I take that back, I would like to be in the room as a spectator only because it is going to be epic. I just will have to remember to duck when objects go flying.

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Missouri executed Marcellus Williams despite there being evidence that he was innocent. The family of the murdered woman asked that his sentence be commuted to life in prison so there was no pressure from them for execution. The county prosecutor found issues with his case and wanted further investigation. Missouri still went ahead because Williams was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

As if a jury sentence can’t be wrong when we know that human institutions are wrong all of the time. When the sentence is death, then the state should be confident that the verdict was correct. Any information that creates doubt regarding the verdict ineeds to be investigated to ensure that execution is merited.

This is why I am not a fan of capital punishment. A wrong verdict that takes away 20 years or so of a person’s life is bad enough but if the state discovers they were wrong, then the person, at least, has his life. Death can not be undone. Missouri seemed more concerned about carrying out the sentence than ensuring that the verdict was correct.

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Mr Bates vs the Post Office documents the ongoing scandal between the British Post Office and their subpostmasters. First the title is far from sexy. I am not sure how the makers of this television series could have spiced up the title because this part 4 part series is far more absorbing than the title suggest. Perhaps this is deliberate given that this is about real people involved in real work using the tools common to the modern business workplace. The horror is real because the problem is so familiar — who hasn’t become frustrated with malfunctioning computer software and helplines that give no help.

Bates (Toby Jones) is a subpostmaster in Wales who runs into trouble when he is unable to balance his books with the Post Office’s computer’s software. Instead of signing off on the incorrect data, Bates refuses to sign off and refuses to make up the difference as his Post Office contract requires. The Post Office ends his contract letting him think that the is the only one to be having this trouble. It is only later that he finds out that he is one of many subpostmaster’s having a similar problem.

Once he learns that other subpostmasters are having the same problem, he tries to right this wrong. Initially believing that all the Post Office needed was data to prove his case but after hearing numerous stories of the Post Office management bringing to trial his fellow subpostmasters does he realized that something more nefarious is going on — the deliberate destruction of Post Office workers in order to protect the reputation and the profits of the Post office. Thus begins his twenty year (and it is still ongoing) struggle for justice.

It is hard to believe that a story about malfunctioning software, indifferent and arrogant business managers could be so engrossing but it is. I binged watched 3 of 4 episodes in one night and I would have watched the 4th on that same night if it had been possible instead I had to wait a week for the last episode. It is a highly relatable series. The horrors are horrors of the every day man and woman. Loosing everything to fight a huge corporation who have the resources to grind a person down until they will admit to anything to make the whole thing go away.

The Post Office management are the perfect bureaucratic villains. Sighting rules and contracts as reasons for their ruthless handling of the subpostmasters and spouting technobabble when people question their computer systems. Whenever any one of them says “our system is robust,” you know that they haven’t a clue about the problems with their system. They are reading from a script from their legal department. They surrendered their humanity for bonuses and prestige and cling mechanically to a confidence in Fujitsu’s Horizon software long after the problems with the system are evident. It would be almost tragic if they had not been so arrogant.

Which brings us to the Fujitsu’s Horizon computer system. Like HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, every time the camera hones in on the Horizon hardware I got a sense of doom. It seems innocent enough but the blinking lights, the menacing cold machine is trouble but I can’t quite explain why. But it can’t be wrong, right? It is a machine. A machine that mindlessly pours out incorrect data that makes no sense to the human beings looking at it and offering no explanation on how it got it but requiring that the users have complete obedience to the information it created. Because Horizon is a robust system. How can anyone argue with that?

This is an odd television story where the story trumps everything else. Everything is done well (Acting, Production) but if there was an actor reading the script in front of an empty canvass, I would have found the story compelling because it is highlighting a problem we see on a much smaller scale in our own lives. How human beings get caught in a tangle of false confidence in infallible technology and unthinking bureaucracy. The show is horrible because you can imagine yourself getting caught up in such a tangle and believable because we see these problems every day. This is must see television.