↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → worker

All those DC jobs and families…

All those people and jobs and families and dreams and homes being lost right now in the Washington DC area….

I write this as a former Washington, DC, Beltway person, a former US EPA employee, a former 1964 tract housing suburban homeowner in a sterile suburban neighborhood, and as a former refugee of that big mess.

So, as the new administration takes shape, embeds itself into the federal bureaucracy and into the DC area buildings, apartments, homes, and businesses, and as DOGE begins to really dig into the catastrophic amount of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money in almost every single federal agency, we also hear about the cost in people there. That is, the cost in DC Beltway people whose jobs are suddenly ended, whose sinecure isn’t, whose gold-plated taxpayer funded lifestyle and pensions are now over or up in the air.

And while I do feel badly for all these people, this developing bloodied crust of human detritus being tossed about on the waves of the Potomac River, I have to ask all of them, all of you: What about all of the Flyover Country victims of these now sad bureaucrats over the years?

Remember the rural landowners whose private properties – working farms and forests – suddenly lost about fifty percent of their value after the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule was issued? Remember how those rural properties, which are the rural person’s own 401(k) retirement fund and pension, were suddenly, dramatically, radically devalued overnight by some politically radical bureaucrats in DC? Because those properties had a mud puddle on them?

And do you remember how just a few years ago the federal bureaucrats dismissively, derisively, arrogantly told everyone newly, artificially, and unnecessarily out of a job in the coal and natural gas industries to “learn to code“?

Well, folks, as it is commonly said, karma is a real big bitch. Ain’t it.

All those untouchable federal bureaucrats at EPA, USDA, ATF, FBI, DOJ, etc who enjoyed beating up on poor white working people in flyover country, impoverishing them with outrageously destructive and useless regulations, talking down to them…now suddenly some of these same bureaucrats are being held accountable. And this is not even a taste of their own medicine. This DOGE stuff is really just fixing a few broken tractor parts in the barnyard. Chief Executive President Trump has not even figured out which rotting barn he is going to try to fix and which rotting barn he is going to demolish, push into a big pile, and set on fire.

So, yes, some of my old friends in the DC area are either hurting or scared right now, afraid that they are about to be hurting. And I feel badly for them, I do. I do not want to see anyone lose their job, or lose their home as a consequence of losing their job, or not be able to pay for their kids’ college indoctrination experience as a consequence of losing their job. It brings me no pleasure. None. I actually feel badly for all of these DC federal employee people and their ending jobs, their ending careers and ending life plans.

I just also wonder if any of them see or understand the symmetry in all of this. The relationship between messing with the bull out in its rural field, and then earning the bull’s horns up your ass. Somehow, I think of DC Beltway people as not very smart, or not too wise, actually quite tribal and primitive, and having now lived within their own cozy bubble for so long that they are now living so far out in outer space that they really don’t understand what or why this is happening to them.

I am not saying that the DC Beltway bureaucrat people should be treated like cattle and just herded on out of the venue and sent out to pasture. But I am also unconvinced that they will appreciate being treated any better than that, either. They still have a deeply inbred sense of selfish entitlement that only a couple generations of working class reality can erase. C’mon out and join us in the hinterlands, and develop a work ethic we can admire, OK?

So, yeah. About all the sad DC Beltway people right now….

Maybe too much of a good thing?

President Trump and his lawfully appointed government assistants at DOGE have hit the ground running fast, and they have hit the bloated, rogue federal government hard, without question. While Trump may have had an axe to grind with the brazenly insubordinate federal workforce in his first administration, and with all of the brazenly lawless government bureaucrats at DOJ, FBI, DHS etc et al who targeted him with made up nonsense criminal charges and official lawfare for eight years, I still don’t know how many people expected his felt impact to be quite this stunning, this soon.

Trump has been a ton of bricks coming down hard, and to his supporters this is just the beginning of the justice we have wanted for years. Because Trump was not alone in feeling the tyrannical wrath of out of control government. Many of us, his supporters, suffered with him, to one degree or another. Many of us were also maliciously targeted by the Biden Administration for the simple “crime” of having different political views than Biden et al., and so we are all cheering on Trump’s massively overdue housecleaning of the rogue bureaucracy.

Our joy has only been rocketfueled by the daily red meat descriptions of incredible Obama- and Biden-era fraud, waste, and abuse of federal taxpayer funds being discovered by DOGE. And certainly, Trump’s patriotic instincts for justice and hard-about correcting course are only more sharply honed by these really phenomenally outrageous reports. Official corruption now visibly real, and also apparently even bigger and worse than one could imagine. That reasonable Americans will want swift and harsh justice imposed upon the criminals who enabled and engaged in these destructive, nay, treasonous acts is also normal and expected.

All this said, there is sometimes too much of a good thing.

Amidst the required bloodletting we should also want to avoid the appearance of bloodlust. This distinction does not require so much of a let-up in quantity, but rather a more targeted reposte with the rapier. Because in the slash-and-burn comes collateral damage too much for even our beloved Saint Trump to bear. Recall none other than the much and long beloved United States Patent and Trademark Office. Founded by Thomas Jefferson, it is of long and great distinction, for many great reasons. And the USPTO is also of great importance to American business, and it is thus housed in the US Dept. of Commerce.

The highly respected USPTO may have just been caught with a DEI cheat in the executive office, but the office body itself bears no such resemblance. In fact, this work-from-home workplace was among the very first such experiments, begun nearly thirty years ago, with all out-of-DC USPTO attorneys working from expensive, carefully built home offices designed for use only with Dept. of Commerce software. No double incomes here, these attorneys are on the clock day in and day out. Step out of line, fall behind in your caseload, and yes, you, a government attorney, will find yourself standing in the unemployment line, lickety split. The production standards for USPTO attorneys are very high, and they enjoy real hard-earned respect in their field.

The USPTO is one of the very few federal government offices where such potentially harsh discipline still exists, and it exists for good reason: The likely cost of a single USPTO attorney lazing about is very high, borne directly by the AMERICAN businesses who rely upon the USPTO to help them fend off all of the nonstop Chinese fakery and thievery of intellectural property in the active international marketplace. So it also stands to reason that the cost of haphazardly uprooting these finely tuned instruments of American business will be quite damaging to the very companies and business sectors we say we want to protect. Among the ransacking, there are objects of great value worth protecting. The USPTO is one.

Yes, overall, the federal work-from-home thing looks as bad as it probably smells down there in DC. Yes, there are likely countless examples of how work-from-home has been abused across the federal workforce, especially since it became standard in 2020. I know from first hand experience, as I was one of the few at US EPA HQ who got to experiment with it back in the mid 1990s, simply to allow a little bit more room on local roads for DC-bound commuters. What I saw back then with a number of colleagues was what we see in the headlines now: Lots of posh gardening, home-based second businesses, etc., everything but getting The People’s business done. Getting workers back into the work environment is generally a good thing, especially holding federal workers accountable, who exist solely to serve We, The People.

In the critically needed march to bring sanity to our overall disastrously run federal government, let us not also toss the baby out with the bathwater, nor kill the lone golden goose. Let’s not have too much of the medicine America needs.

A Tale of Two Different Approaches to Life, Government

We are witnessing a growing storm right now. Of historic, unprecedented proportion. Something out of a fantastical Hollywood CGI movie is taking shape in front of our eyes. Except this is no fake fantasy, it is the harshest of realities about to descend on all of us. God willing, and for good reason.

What started out as small dark clouds in 2016 has morphed into an enormous, growing boiling cloud mass with lightning shooting out of it, ominous rumblings became peals of sharp thunder. Pick your Armageddon or end-of-the-world SciFi movie, America and the entire planet are entering a new state of being, and this huge ever-growing storm of apocalyptic size and appearance is coming with it.

A Biblical parallel would be the Exodus story, where God’s holy Angel of Death went house to house, inflicting destruction, except on those pure souls who were favored. Or, America is about to witness a Noah-like flood that is going to wipe away all of the sinful grotesquery and leave a cleansed albeit forlorn and changed landscape behind, where green things can grow again in a purified world.

We are seeing the difference between two different ways of looking at life and government play out. And this Biblical clash of good vs. evil is about to get ugly, and disruptive. And beautiful. Change is constant, necessary, painful, and beautiful.

On the one hand is the Uniparty-Media establishment complex, with its ever expanding bloated, unaccountable, lawless, change-resistant, all-powerful federal bureaucracies. This huge, unholy carnivorous plant has been watered with the hard-earned tax money of the American people (taken at gunpoint) for about a hundred years, ever since progressive (Communist) president Woodrow Wilson began inflicting his vision for Big Government and Little Citizen on America.

Relying on the once-inspiring frontier mentality that America was always going to grow, expand, reach ever greater heights of achievement, progressives (statist communists, now Democrats) and their Uniparty GOP allies siphoned off ever larger amounts of American private sector achievement to fund their socialist horror experiment. And with everything on the line, they illegally manipulated voting machines and voting laws and looked the other way to steal the 2020 election, so they could cement their Uniparty rule over all of us once and for all.

And so here we are, about a hundred years after this slow growing cancerous fungus first took hold, and the American people are beholding this evil thing that was just about to take over our lives, eat us all up, and continue growing. Americans were slated to become permanent slaves to the Uniparty bureaucracy and its unelected functionaries who have been holding ever increasing power over our individual fates. And the American people said NO.

In response to the evil Uniparty bureaucracy, the American people just re-re-elected someone who believes in and is willing to fight fight fight at any cost for the original founding vision of America: A place of freedom and limitless opportunity for all of its citizens.

A place where the government exists to serve the citizens, not the other way around.

The coming shock as these two worlds collide is going to be cataclysmic. Yes, proponents of freedom and liberty are going to get the great cleansing they are hoping for, that America desperately needs. But do not kid yourself that the resulting fallout is going to be beautiful, or easy. No, it will be shocking to America’s core. We need this, but it will not be easy.

As the three readers of this blog already know, your dutiful author here is devoted to freedom and liberty at all costs, inlcuding the freewill donation of his own blood and life, need be. Minuteman at the ready, absolutely. Freedom from tyranny may be achieved, but it always comes at a cost, a true and measurable cost. And we are about to witness it, as the evil towers of Mordor come crumbling to the ground in a great shock. Hopefully without bloodshed.

What comes afterwards will be a weird quiet. The sound of one hand clapping, maybe. A thin, still blast of the shofar, heard at Sinai when the Law was given.

For those who are confused by this essay, take note of just one of dozens of such current policy situations: outgoing dementia-ridden White House resident Joe Biden has just signed a new contract with about 42,000 unionized federal workers, obligating the federal government to granting certain lush work conditions with these employees. Done as a business-as-usual end-run around the incoming storm, it ignores the catastrophic blast about to hit Washington, DC.

To wit: Every federal worker serves at the choice of the Chief Executive, who is The President. So all of these 42,000 federal workers can be immediately furloughed, their new gravy train contract rendered moot, and the incoming storm’s ongoing clean sweep will continue unabated. End of business-as-usual.

One man’s wreckage is another man’s treasure, I suppose. I am looking forward to picking over the smoking battlefield when this is over. But I bet I will find some distant kinfolk lying there, too. Painful price to pay, but necessary.