I will shut down the government. I will take that mantle

oh the irony of that 1st paragraph.

 

Just jump the fence. There shouldn't be anyone around watching.

As for me, I don't really know any federal workers, and social security and postal service are unaffected. If I didn't read the news, I wouldn't even know there was a shutdown. The next federal agency I'm likely to interact with is the IRS, which I'm not exactly looking forward to. I can go on like this forever.

 

That's a shame... NM is a beautiful state and White Sands National Park is a great place to visit (my dad was born in nearby Tularosa and my grandmother was born in the nearby Mescalero Reservation). White Sands is especially neat to visit at night. Other interesting places to check out in New Mexico are The Malpais, Carlsbad Caverns and Ruidoso Downs (though now I suspect the ski resort is more appropriate). Some great restaurants in Santa Fe if you get there.

 

trump's government shutdown may get increasingly unpopular...

 

Yeah you’ll see a lot of pissed off people if it delays refunds.

 

So... I don’t have to pay them if I owe?

I’m back on board with the shutdown.

 

It's already killing me as a CPA. So many services are down and theyll be so behind especially with the introduction of the new tax plan.

 

The only people that still support his stupid wall are his deplorable supporters, the 35% of the country. Trump is willing to make 100% of the country suffer to appease 35% of the country. If this goes on longer and longer there is NO CHANCE Trump will get re-elected although I suppose he already knows that.

 

Here's the thing though...if he doesn't give them the wall he also likely won't get re-elected because that is the ONE thing that connects him with his base.

Forget everything else, Immigration is the most important thing to his base, they are paranoid about immigration and think they will have to start speaking spanish. A good chunk of his base are just flat out racist xenophobes.

He could definitely shoot someone on live TV and his base would still bow before him...but let him bend on that wall and they turn against him, every time, without fail.

 

NY's former Lieutenant Governor weighs in:

https://nypost.com/2019/01/02/trump-was-right-to-rein-in-federal-workers-gravy-train/

Trump was right to rein in federal workers’ gravy train
By Betsy McCaughey

January 2, 2019 | 7:11pm

On Friday, President Trump froze pay rates for the civilian federal work force, canceling their automatic 2.1 percent raise for 2019. It’s the right decision, notwithstanding the howls of union bosses and Democrats. And it’s far more consequential than the mere delay of workers’ paychecks during the shutdown.

Federal workers already collect bigger salaries, on average, than workers in the private economy doing comparable jobs. Their benefits packages are also on average 47 percent fatter, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They get up to 49 paid days off a year. And firing them is often impossible.

Then, at age 55, if they’ve put in 30 years, they get a gold-plated retirement package almost unheard of in private enterprise, including defined benefits that protect them from inflation.

In short, federal employees are riding the gravy train, and the rest of us working stiffs who pay the taxes to support the federal government are taken for a ride.

No wonder Trump is applying the brakes. In his 2018 State of the Union speech, the president promised to “reward good workers,” who are the vast majority, and “remove federal employees who undermine the public trust.”

In May, Trump issued executive orders making it easier to fire workers for poor performance or misconduct. Under the old rules, a problem employee has to be given up to 120 days to show improvement. Then, after being terminated, the employee could appeal to several different entities, dragging the appeals process out for eight months on average.

Trump’s rules shorten the performance-improvement period to 30 days and streamline the appeals process. In short, he is putting an end to the federal employee protection racket.

It’s about time. Office of Personnel Management data indicate that only 0.5 percent of federal workers get terminated each year, one-fifth the firing rate in the private economy.

That’s nice for the sluggards on Uncle Sam’s payroll but not for their conscientious coworkers. More than half of federal workers approve of Trump’s changes, according to a June poll. After all, they have to pick up the slack from these bad apples and resent seeing them promoted regardless of their inferior performance.

Trump’s executive orders also bar federal employees from spending more than 25 percent of their hours on union business. Right now, some employees spend 100 percent of their time on union tasks like termination appeals. The rule change is estimated to save taxpayers $100 million a year.

Who is against these changes? The public employee unions, natch, who rushed to court to challenge them. In August, federal district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson struck down the changes, ruling they had to be decided by collective bargaining, not the president. Trump’s Justice Department is taking the fight to a higher court.

Likewise, public employee unions are trying to stop reform of the Veterans Administration, where in 2014 it was uncovered that employees doctored patient waiting lists to make themselves look good. Vets on the phony waitlists died waiting for care.

In 2017, Congress enacted the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, to cut some of the red tape involved in firing and disciplining wrongdoers. But even these improvements are being held up by litigation.

A typical case is Jeffrey Sayers, a pharmacist in the Los Angeles-area VA, who was terminated for mishandling prescription medications, among other things. Sayers is fighting his termination in court, claiming the law didn’t afford him enough time to challenge the charges against him.

Trump’s ability to protect ailing vets and get taxpayers their money’s worth in every department depends on winning the battle to restore merit-based management in the federal bureaucracy.

When the civil service was created in 1883, by the Pendleton Act, merit was supposed to replace the partisan spoils system. But now merit is gone. Scramble those five letters and what you’ve got is the “timer” system: Workers put in their time, get hefty salaries, regardless of their work quality, and skate to retirement. Not exactly the ideal of the “civil servant.”

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.​

 

I doubt ol Beastie ever had to do real work a single day in her life. She even married fake billionaire Wilbur Ross for a while.

Nothing like 0.1%er greed in bleeding out a dry turnip that's the middle class while shouting taxes and stealing to the people desperate enough to believe their two faced lies.

As for personal thoughts, civil servants should be rewarded for their time, as they forsake higher wages upfront in their career, but they shouldn't be protected as a whole. Litigation should be reformed so the rest can follow.

But hey, let's strangle out any remnants of Labor, so we can use old articles from the Federalist to wipe our asses in public buildings. Some extra nickel and dime cost savings that would make any old school robber baron mad respect for the ages.

 

Betsy is a moron. She doesn't make a single valid point in the whole article.

 

I'll be sure to fax this great piece to all my friends.

 

Fax is so 1990's... just post your facebook... that's where the really important news and analysis gets disseminated...

 

trump's government shutdown... as long as trump thinks he can benefit from it, it will go on for months...

 

Not now, but earlier I think he could have pivoted away from the wall and gotten away with it. Remember he was saying Clinton should be prosecuted and then one day, "Nah, we don't care about that, do we folks?" People still grouse about how she should have been prosecuted, but no one is on Trump's ass to make it happen even though he absolutely could. He dropped the 'Mexico will pay for it' bit with a ridiculous fig-leaf that no one is stupid enough to sincerely believe. He pivoted from wall to metal slats. I think if in his first year, he pulled some mumbo-jumbo to pivot fully from a wall to generalized enhanced border security, Trumpers would have been on board. And he'd have an easier time getting $5 billion out of congress for it and could have erected miles and miles of fencing.

 

it's not about the wall. It's more like people who claim to care about climate change but then don't advocate nuclear power.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/03/trump-democrats-reach-compromise-actually-cared-securing-border/

 

I agree. It doesn't have anything to do with hypocrisy though if that is what you are implying. It has everything to do with unwarranted fear.

 

CAN'T IMPEACH ME IF YOU CAN'T GO TO WORK

NANANANANAN

 

mojo-izing the thread...