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This is just vandalism. They don’t want the government to function at all.
by dj_gitmo 2y ago
This is just vandalism. They don’t want the government to function at all.
- Apreche 2y agoFinally. Someone else who gets it. They want to hurt people on purpose.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoIt’s been clear since last year that this administration is a government specifically designed to hurt people.
- dagelf 2y ago[flagged]
- jaybrendansmith 2y agoHow long will we tap on our keyboards before we take action? Yes, we are comfortable, but for how long??
- Apreche 2y agoSit down and ask yourself this question. At what point will I stop going to your job, if you have one, and take to the streets instead? What has to happen for you to do that? Come up with a serious answer. Write down the answer. Put it on an index card or other prominent place so you will be constantly reminded of it. Now read the news every day. If the thing on your index card happens, take to the streets. Even if you are the only one, do it anyway.
- jaybrendansmith 2y agoAny suggestions? Seems that some of my triggers may be happening already. Perhaps we can go with: 1. Global economic collapse 2. WW III 3. Major Pandemic 4. Martial Law declared (might be too late) 5. Elections cancelled 6. All of the above.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI already don't have a full time job. I've used a bit of that job search time to participate in protests and call my reps. >Even if you are the only one, do it anyway. It'd be useless. What we lack in power we have in numbers. Protests only work as a collective action.a collective action that can kick out bad reps and replace them with ones who will do their jobs.
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoDon't put down to stupidity anything that could be proscribed as malice (or something to that effect...)
- doitLP 2y agoThe actual quote is the other way around. What evidence does the parent have for intentions to harm instead of just making stupid cuts, completely inline with their well documented history of simplistic, sledgehammer solutioneering ?
- aqueueaqueue 2y ago> The actual quote is the other way around. I am well aware. > What evidence does the parent have for intentions to harm Just watch/read the news since 2016. Too much to list. In addition Elon is seen as a captain of industry. PayPal. Tesla. Space X. So it can be that Elon is inept.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoIt's hard to take a war on public health measures, public-interest science institutions like NOAA, and public education as evidence of good faith. It's not as if they're starting where the obvious bloat is (defence, fossil fuel subsidies...) and working back to the rounding errors. It's entirely predictable supremacism - the doctrine that wealth and skin colour define virtue, and government in the public interest, which interferes with the "freedom" to abuse and exploit inferiors for profit, is an unnatural abomination.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoSimplistic, sledgehammer solutioneering is an intention to harm. Randomly firing entire teams whose director feels they are "the 'gold standard' of civic technologists" produces immediate and knowable damage. Nobody who wanted government technology to function well would do such a thing. Is it possible that they have some other, important objective which can only be achieved by degrading the quality of government technology? In principle. But I haven't seen any explanation of what that objective could possibly be, and I have seen people with arguments for why they think it should not be easy to get access to NOAA weather data and it should not be easy to file your taxes with the IRS.
- ajross 2y agoIt's not vandalism either. And the goal isn't that the government not function, per se. It's that all government function must be for the benefit of the rulers. 18F was popular, effective, and not remotely beholden to the Trump administration (in fact they were most closely associated with the Obama administration). They had to go, not because we want them to do a bad job but because them doing a good job undermined the administration. To wit, we already had a word for this: this is a purge.
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoCall it draining the swamp. So we can associate that phrase with stupid decisions.
- pixelready 2y agoIn my experience, wetlands are drained to destroy natural ecosystems so that real estate developers can pave over the land for their own personal gain. Makes a perfect metaphor for the current situation. But alas, the propagandists have been too effective at capturing that term to mean destroying the “deep state” (whatever that means at any given moment).
- defrost 2y agoDraining the wetlands, straightening rivers is apt enough. Provided people understand just why these are bad ideas that increase flood damage, savagely reduce biodiversity, remove buffers against storm surges, destroy filters that capture wastes and toxins. In general these are stupid decisions.
- TrackerFF 2y agoIt's the age old privatization trick: 1. Defund and cripple gov. services 2. Point to those, and say "See? it doesn't work. We should get private sector to provide those services, as the private sector is much cheaper and more efficient." 3. Hand out contracts to your buddies. 4. Years later, down the road, another sitting government will revert back to the original state - due to the private contracts turning out to be much more expensive than anticipated, and delivering sub-par service. 5. Next pro-privatization government is elected, goto step (1).
- adsteel_ 2y agoI love your optimism about steps 4 and 5.
- dagelf 2y agoExcept that the debt levels are unsustainable, mostly because of lack of competition, probably...
- Vilian 2y ago>due to the private contracts turning out to be much more expensive than anticipated, and delivering sub-par service.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoMostly because the richest people keep stealing money through lobbying for tax cuts. And its' happening right now. House passed a 900b dollar cut to Medicaid to fund the latest cuts. If you want to pay off deficits you need your biggest contributors to pay their share. But no one who harps about the deficit seems to want to talk about that.
- betaby 2y ago> It's the age old privatization "starve the beast" trick > 1. Defund and cripple gov. services Probably? Government jobs pay below market and was like that way before the current president and the company. > 3. Hand out contracts to your buddies. I mean, Microsoft is getting about 15B from US government alone. Is Microsoft 'buddies'? I agree in general that those tricks are old. The only difference I see today that they are done is less elegant way.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- GeneralMayhem 2y agoNo shit. Vandalizing the government has been the only goal of the Republican party since at least 2016. They're just taking the masks off now.
- 1over137 2y agoSince at least 1980, no?
- badgersnake 2y agoCorrect, that is exactly what they’re trying to do.