Human Garbage

That’s how the Musk and Trump administration is treating (and maybe viewing) the federal workforce at the moment

If their approach to potential downsizing, stiffing people, and layoffs is confusing, it shouldn’t be; it’s actually remarkably consistent. Part of the confusion is the result it being so mind-blowingly perverse. But there’s also confusion that comes from the fact that the administration is pursuing 3 different lines of attack at once, that sometimes are in conflict.

Also something else that’s remarkably consistent: they lie a lot about what they’re doing, so that also makes it hard to keep track.

1. Federal employees are human waste who do nothing for this country. This is mostly Elon Musk’s gig, and so far has involved offering almost all federal employees (millions!) a “deferred resignation” program. Often invoked here is the fact that Musk laid off 75% of the workforce when he bought Twitter, now X. And it continued to run OK. But it’s a stupid comparison. Twitter is essentially an automated feed. If no one went into the office one day — zero people — it would still run OK, and not many people would notice. Probably not even for a few days. Federal government doesn’t work like that. If 2-million employees all called in sick on the same day, we’d all be in deep doo-doo and see the…