That would be a nice fight to watch.

It’s only a matter of time with Trump.

The building sale and non renewal of leases, is such a shit show. Make people come back into an office that they won’t be able to.

@Forever_Free I thought for a second that we should sell the one that Felon 47 lives in but then I remember, it was already bought by Russia. Seriously though. The CIA building. Don’t tell me that Trump isn’t a traitor put in by Russia. Both him and Musk.

Heather Coxe Richardson said that Trump is physically and mentally ill and has always turned to a father figure to actually run things and that may well be what’s going on here. I’m feeling hopeful at the moment that there really is lots of push back at their huge overreach and this madness may come to an end.

Doge should cancel that fraudulent starship contract.
It just exploded again.

I would suggest he is an unpaid contractor. Once his job is done he will leave on his own. Kinda like Trump himself.

@seawulf575 An unpaid contractor would never have that much power and do what he is doing. And you are wrong. He is getting rid of people who oversee his government contracted companies, which taxpayers are paying him to do. So, he’s still a paid contractor. You know if Biden had done this, Republicans would’ve blown their tops, but Biden wouldn’t have been able to because Dems wouldn’t have backed him. Both Republicans and Dems would’ve probably pushed to impeach Biden.

@Pandora Of course contractors can have that much power. I’ve worked for companies that hired in companies to help make the company leaner and meaner. The people that came were outsiders and when they made a recommendation, the company just followed along. It isn’t the first time in history someone had an outsider look at things. That’s been going on for decades.

If Biden had been doing this, I for one would have cheered. This government is ridiculously bloated. We have been spending money on things we didn’t even know we were spending money on; things that don’t help this country at all. But Biden didn’t do this. Trump didn’t do it in his first term. Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan…none of them did it. This look at where we are spending money and evaluating if it is worth while is long overdue.

@seawulf575 yes, contractors make recommendations but they don’t usually communicate directly with staff and give orders to staff, other than compiling research for their reports. They don’t fire people like Musk is doing.

I worked in government for over 30 years and we’d have firms come in to evaluate methods and situations, but wouldn’t ever expect a direct communication from them and they probably didn’t have the email addresses of the majority of the staff.

@jca2 Every time I’ve had a company bring in “consultants” we are all told they will be there and to give them whatever they need. That was done in this case, except the workers all decided to push back against the rules. Typically the consultants don’t have the power of hire or fire, but can make recommendations and someone from the company can hire and fire. That is the case we are dealing with here. Trump has even told his cabinet members to deal with the recommendations that come from DOGE.

The situation we are in is that we have, for decades, fostered an environment where the inmates are running the asylum. Now someone is trying to put an end to it and the inmates don’t like it. The government is wasting tons of money, has jobs that really serve no useful function, has people that don’t want to have to come into work, and don’t feel they should have to listen to the new boss. None of that is acceptable. Can you imagine any company on the face of the Earth that worked like that? It would be out of business in no time at all.

To make things worse, the government hasn’t been doing budgets like they are supposed to. They are doing “continuing resolutions” which are a dodge of their responsibilities and continue to feed the waste. And when they did do budgets, none of our elected leaders ever reviewed them entirely. They would look to see if a couple of their pet projects were in there and then vote for it. It’s ridiculous. It’s irresponsible.

I’m struggling to understand how ANYONE can be upset by looking for waste in our government and then getting rid of it. Identifying it is only the first part, getting rid of it is the purpose of looking for it.

I have been in many a firm that brought in consultants to shift and shape the firm. Yes, they did communicate directly to the organization. We simply needed talent from the outside to get us to places quickly.
Yes, it is a bit unnerving to trust consultants to do this. But when you think about it in a thoughtful fashion, it is sometimes the only way to move forward. Many FTE (full time employees) would feel it as intrusive and not needed. Yet in the end, it can be the best way to inject new life into an area that is needed.

That said, I feel that Musk is alienating people due to the nature of how he is doing it and not allowing communication to come from the organization.

The consultants I’ve seen would work with a point person, and of course would email the point person and several at the top, and would conduct meetings with staff, but not have the entire email list and be emailing everyone and definitely never be in charge of firing (i.e. answer this email by midnight with your five tasks you did this week and a non response would be considered a resignation). Never. A consultant would not fire an employee of a firm they didn’t work for. They would make recommendations, but not directly terminate the employee. If we had an email from a consultant that said “give me your tasks for the week and failure to do so will be taken as your resignation” that would never fly. It just wouldn’t happen, so it’s not a matter of whether it would piss us off or not, because it wouldn’t occur in the first place, because the consultant would not be given that kind of power.

Cutting waste from the budget is not a bad thing, but what people are objecting to are the methods. Fire the people that work with the nukes, then rehire them a few days later when you realize they’re necessary.

Fire this bunch here, without knowing exactly what they do. Fire that bunch there, without knowing what they do. Hire air traffic controllers who are graduates from MIT because we need geniuses! (is someone who graduated from MIT going to want to work for this shit show? Probably not likely).

Let’s be very clear here. What Musk, with Trump’s approval, is doing is taking a hatchet job to the Federal government. All this talk of cutting waste is a good thing is a red herring. It would be a good thing potentially if done with knowledge and input from managers but this is not that.

Personally, I’d rather have park rangers and NOAA and Social Security and Medicaid with arguably some amount of waste, than a non-functioning government that only supports the billionaires.

Do you think the expected result is the have only Executive Branch – - Trump and Co-President Musk controlling the government (Dictatorship) ? ?

@janbb That sounds good, but the managers have allowed the waste and bloat to grow. They have not been doing their jobs.

@Tropical_Willie Nope. Again, it seems odd that if someone was trying to become a dictator that they would shrink the government, try to move control of many things away from the centralized government and ask Congress to do their jobs to help this shrinkage. It makes a good fear mongering talking point to suggest something like that, but it falls apart when you look at what is being done.

Huh ! ! !

What happened to JAG and all the other checks and balances ?

By executive order all the “guardrails” are GONE !

Wait until he gets to Medicaid and SS

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. Veteran Benefits !

@Tropical_Willie JAG? All I know of that is Judge Advocate General…a military attorney. Any of those would fall under the umbrella of the military and therefore under the umbrella of the POTUS. What you are failing to realize is that the entire Executive Branch of our government falls under the POTUS. All the offices, all the budgets, all the expenses, all the workers…all under his authority. If President Trump sees that there are too many people working under him, he has the authority to correct that. If he sees that there are departments that can be consolidated or gotten rid of, that falls under his authority.

The “guardrails” you are so worried about are either still in place (Congress and the SCOTUS) or they are made up in the minds of liberals. There are parts of the changes that he wants to do that will require Congress to act. Something like doing away with the Department of Education which was created by an act of congress will require an act of Congress to completely get rid of it. But he can reduce it’s focus and staffing.

I’m not “FAILING” . . you are hard core TRUMPER . . until you die. +
“People Are Very Scared’: Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears.”. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/24/people-are-very-scared-trump-administration-purge-of-jag-officers-raises-legal-ethical-fears.html

You like have a dictator / authoritarian leader ! Maybe he will atttack Denmark or Panama !

There was no Congress nor SCOTUS on your Sub just the Captain !

You seem to like that.

@Tropical_Willie As with all organizations, they operate better when they are less bloated. I don’t know how many JAGs are in the military and neither do you. But it isn’t that all the JAGs are disappearing, just a few of the top people. As we saw with many of the top brass, they had been very much not in line with the progressive mind-set. Getting rid of people that can cause trouble for an organization is completely acceptable to me.

And really, you can thank the progressives that were there in President Trump’s first term for much of this. He trusted they would support him and they repaid that trust with efforts to undermine him.

And your worry about “just the captain” on the sub tells me you’ve never served in the military