“How can love so right go so wrong.” – The BeeGees.
Or has it? Or are we being gas-lighted just a touch?
The world, at least in the unconscionably massive US federal bureaucracy, stopped breathing for the past few days.
Trump wielding a taser (stun-gun) to government spending, with Musk his phenomenal instrument of research and delivery. One has to be incredibly stupid or clinically an idiot to not know about the immense waste in the US federal bureaucracy. Can you spell many trillions of dollars?
Focusing on just one of the major items making tsunami-like waves: the attempts to make large-scale reductions in the federal workforce. There are some three million people employed by the Fed. Today. There were 1.88 million in 2004. Frankly, I, your humble scribe, is puzzled. As complex as the world is, increasingly so, that has and will continue lagging behind the resources and tools required to manage work and change. The challenge is not in the difficulty nor complexity. Rather, the volume.
Hmmm. I thought that Charles Babbage kinda figured out how to deal with that when he invented the Analytical Engine (computer to you young readers). In the 19th century. And thereafter, Turing, von Neumann, Berners-Lee, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Apple… As an aside, how about we buy some not-1960’s computers for most federal agencies.
And then, do we need the 438 governmental agencies listed in the Federal Register? Simple answer, no. In fact, there is no human, and other than at the Federal Register, no computer in the bureaucracy that can recite fifty of those! The million employees and the millions of square feet of empty office buildings in at least half of those agencies? I suppose we do need a bunch of people to administer a trillion or two hemorrhaging from our most generous checkbook.
So. Let’s go fix that, President Trump. Amazing is it not that the same Elon Musk, spent $44 Billion to buy Twitter and then fired two thirds of the highest paid employees in tech.! What happened to the business? Nothing. In fact, the loudest critics of those firings — other massive corporations — quietly had massive layoffs just weeks after Musk wielded his mighty sledgehammer.
Just an aside, your humble scribe knows a couple high level federal employees who have not been in their offices for four years, other than to pick up bonus checks and have a slice of celebratory cake doing that. They are busy at home, with additional full-time, work-at-home jobs…
The problem, for me, and for too many people, including the thinking ones, the productive ones, and the freeloaders, is the President took to the task with a sledgehammer. Perhaps he might have taken just two days to have meetings with his cabinet secretaries to have a simple plan of action. And then implement! Rather than slogging through that massive mess.
Or … Did we all get gas lighted. Step up or step out.
Given the warp speed of Trumps’ axe, we are likely to get a resolution by dinnertime. And “trim” the workforce by a million superfluous people.
Just for fun… What is the “developer” Trump thinking of doing with a few million square-feet of “A” quality office space all around the country that has been empty for four years, while meticulously maintained?
Hmmmm. Perhaps there will be another 1980’s Japanese real-estate acquisition boom in 2025.
Another aside. Your humble scribe was “in the room” when Twitter was nascent. Did not understand it then. They declared me a barely functioning idiot. But still treated me to dinner. I do understand it now, although I think it is a cancer of the intellect.