Wudja get done last week?
Crude boy asks crude question, makes crude threat.
Elon Musk said Saturday that federal employees must detail their accomplishments at work or risk losing their jobs, the latest move by the Trump administration to overhaul the government that prompted confusion among the workforce.
“Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted on X.
The email created confusion across the federal government. One senior government official said some federal employees started checking with their own legal advisers about how best to respond. One Justice Department official sent out an email asking their staff members to hold off on responding until management could provide further guidance. And one OPM employee questioned whether the agency is allowed to give work orders to employees in other agencies.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union representing thousands of federal employees, said in a statement that it would “challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”
…
The move by Musk, whom Trump has tasked with overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency, comes after the president earlier Saturday posted on social media that he wants the Tesla CEO to “get more aggressive” with his role. Trump also has previously said he is authorizing everything Musk is doing as one of his advisers.
Yes if only Musk were more aggressive.
I read somewhere that an email like that would be treated as phishing i.e. you’d forward to IT and then delete.
And “accomplishments” for what may be routine administrative jobs, such as I have (corporate, not public service).
-processed invoices
-collated documents
-managed diaries
-set up training courses
-updated website.
I would guess that a lot of federal jobs are of that ilk. Others might be doing eg maintenance so:-
-checked waste pipes
-fixed outside duct
-located leak
-sterilised
And so on – many jobs are not “accomplishments”, they are jobs.
Peasants (depending on time of the year):-
– sowed barley
– sowed oats
– spread manure
– milked goats
– trapped rats
All necessary tasks in certain societies and taking some skill. And you’ll do this week after week.
Is he emailing Trump?
-insulted and estranged long-term allies
-pardoned criminals
– attempted extortion of war-torn state
-listened to Putin
-repeated Putin’s talking points
In so far as this bears any resemblance to a normal business practice I have heard of, the model may be that of a specialist insolvency troubleshooter acting to perform fact finding on an enterprise which has entered into protection from its creditors. In those circumstances the operation proceeds at division level – one troubleshooter per 400 – 1000 employees, and employees get to account for themselves to the troubleshooter, in person, when they seek authorisation for spending. The mismatch between that and the (not so) implicit rhetoric and likely efficacy here seems too obvious to labour the point.
Some of the reports of this action said the email asked workers to “describe their jobs”. Nope, it asked them to list several accomplishments from last week. Not only is this far from describing a job, it presumes that “last week” was a typical week, representative of each person’s job.
Accomplishments are all very well, but without maintenance they may turn into fairy gold.
How is Musk’s demand different from that of some random dude coming in off the street? Because in effect, that’s all he is. He might be buddies with the “President”, but he holds no government position, elected or otherwise. Quite apart from that, I would imagine that there are protections and procedures in place that would shield civil servants at all but Presidential-appointee status from arbitrary dismissal. If the department was established by Congress, and administered through Congressionally appropriated funds, then the department as a whole should be completely immune to summary closure or staff cuts. I would be amazed if there was not some sort of official chain of command through which such staff reductions are carried out, and that Executive involvement is (normally) at a much greater remove in terms of broad policy aims and reorganization, subject to Congressional oversight and approval. The President of the United States should have no power to go into any random government office and fire the janitors or mail sorters. He might get a little hard-on saying “You’re fired!” to millions of government employeees, but I’m guessing he has no actual power or authority to directly sack anyone but the people he has the privilege to appoint.
Well I should bloody well hope so, but why the fuck aren’t you calling for organized labour to march in the goddamn streets? Trump doesn’t care about the courts, and it will take years for cases to wend their way through the justice system, assuming there’s an independent justice system left in the United States by the end of Trump’s second month back in the White House.
Whatever happened to the freedom-loving America I remember? Was that a dream? Is everyone so cowed and anesthetized that they’re unwilling or unable to stir in their own defence? Sure, you might be in shock, but if you wait for things to “settle down” you’re not going to have a country any more, just the Kingdom of Trump. Things are not going to “normalize”. They are only going to get worse. The more Trump gets away with, the more he will try, the more he will win. The reason he’s moving so quickly is to reshape and destroy as much as he can before anyone or anything stops him. There is no pressing need for the heedless, radical reorganization of the government and civil service that he is enacting, well beyond the powers of the Executive branch. Musk has even less authority to act than Trump. The power he’s wielding was not Trump’s to offer in the first place. Why anyone feels the need to pay any attention at all to him, let alone obey his commands is beyond me.
And what of all those “patriots”? If Obama had done a tenth of what Trump is doing now, if he’d placed George Soros into even a solely advisory role in his government, they would have responded with a violent outburst that would have made the January 6 Insurrection look like a jolly picnic. But Trump is “their” man. They can’t imagine him ever turning on them. They can’t imagine the powers they are letting him use being used against them, either by Trump, or, heaven forbid, by some future “Radical Left Democrat.” In their minds, they are working towards a future in which there will be no “Radical Left Democrats.” They don’t think they’ll lose, so they can’t imagine the powers they are willingly cedeing to Trump ever being aimed at them. They can’t see that Trump is only in it for himself. He pardoned a bunch of them, so now they owe him. There’s no way he feels any reciprocal obligation. That’s not how his mind works. By the time they realize this it will be too late.
There is no emergency or urgency in what either Trump or Musk is doing apart from their personal need desire to get away with it. Congress won’t stop either of them unless Republicans suddenly grow spines and recognize that Trump is exactly the kind of threat to Liberty against which the Founders tried to protect the United States. They rejected monarchy on principal. That principal is in danger of being overturned.
Could be that the voters who put Trump into office, thus allowing him to install Musk, will at some stage down the track realise the enormity of the confidence trick that has been pulled on them: MAGA and all that. Some of them might get ashamed, and others get angry, and capable of God knows what.
Could be that the bull in the proverbial china shop becomes like unto the most exquisite ballet dancer in comparison with these two galahs. (Sorry, galahs, for that insult.)
Is Musk going to read every one? How many employees are there and how much time does Musk have to read them? Or how many minions does he have to read them?
RIP Elon’s inbox
Not Bruce, you say, accurately, that they don’t complain because Trump’s their man. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is that the left does the same. When Obama wrote executive orders, they were all for bypassing Congress because he was doing things they wanted. Same with Biden. We’ve been giving away power to the president that isn’t his, only complaining about it when it was the “that other guy”.
But then the fact that it’s “that other guy” does make a difference when “that other guy” is Trump. It’s not just Dems v Republicans, it’s people with some scruples v a psychopath with zero scruples.
I’m not disagreeing with that, but the problem is, he is able to do this because so many people have willingly looked the other way when they’re happy about the outcome. Now it’s become normal for things to be done mostly by executive orders, and Trump’s rampage looks like just a ramping up of business as usual.
We needed to call this out when it was done by Biden…Obama…Clinton…etc…not just when it’s a Bush or a Trump. Now it’s going to be much more difficult to deal with.
This is certainly true. I do think some of the responsibility needs to be placed on Congress, though. As I recall, quite a few of Obama’s executive orders followed repeated pleas from the president to “just get me a bill that does X, and I’ll sign it”, with the EO only coming when Congress couldn’t manage to do anything like that. I am pretty sure that at least some of the Biden executive orders were preceded by similar attempts to urge Congress to do something. Congress has ceded a lot of power to the president by being less than functional, and then not doing anything when the president worked around them.
So, yes, we needed to call out the governing-by-executive-order of Democratic presidents, but I’d probably phrase it more (or also) as calling out the non-functional Congress that made those orders seem necessary.
Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t give a crap about Congress, and doesn’t ask Congress to do anything, he just issues orders.
Yes, Congress has been a mess for a long time. Congress is as polarized as the electorate, and the idea of working together for the greater good is missing in action. Congress started giving power away (or rather not insisting on the president not taking it) a long time ago. It really went bad when they gave the president a discretionary budget, so now he has money to do things he wants done.
By sharing the power of the purse, Congress removed the one tool they had to rein in a rogue president. Maybe they never anticipated a Trump; fair enough, most of us didn’t. But that is no excuse to allow presidents to make law. The job of the president is enforcing the laws Congress makes.