Hard Power and Soft Power

[Brett327]

Apparently 4-day weekends could be on the chopping block.

FWIW, I cannot give any civilian government employee even one extra day off. I can give them a whole 59 minutes. When we have a 96 over a holiday weekend, the civilians have to work unless it's a federal holiday. Not really sure what this article is getting at, but I don't think 96s are at risk.

 

[BigRed389]

If this were only about him doing his job, then I might not take as much issue with the "what" and "how" of what he is doing. However, I believe he- and the Executive Branch as an institution- has gone far beyond Constitutional limits.

As for the concept of favorability mandate, it's my contention that the Democratic opposition lost because they are out of touch, and had no cohesive, clear plan. Republicans won because while they are equally out of touch, they adopted a plan which capitalized on people's anger over policies that are needlessly intrusive, and a government that appears increasingly sclerotic and ineffectual.

I do not believe most critically-thinking folks would vote for unelected oligarchs to be brought into government, drug dealers and violent criminals to go free, and "wasteful" government agencies to be "rapidly disassembled" before a suitable alternative framework was in place. None of that seems to be helping the average American family, but it's not hard to see how it helps Mr. Musk and his cronies. I think a lot of Trump voters simply felt that the alternative was worse, and wanted the newspeak and constant barrage of identity politics out of their faces. Although I didn't vote for Trump, I felt that way myself. Democrats have long since lost the thread there.

On point of wasteful and outdated methods: Perhaps the reason there are still people in a limestone cave doing paperwork by hand in 2025 is that the mechanics of a workable alternative are difficult and no funding line has existed to modernize. Perhaps the reason there are 20M deceased Americans on SS is due to the fact that the SSA needs to track deceased individuals, and may even help them prevent SS fraud. I highly doubt they have been receiving benefits beyond the grave, except possibly in isolated cases of administrative mistakes. Perhaps actual solutions take time.

I do NOT believe Elon Musk is so much smarter than everyone else that he came in and "discovered" all these flaws in two weeks. Were someone external and hostile to Twitter (okay, "X"... lame...) to go in and data-mine their system, I am 100% certain they could "discover" all kinds of waste and organizational issues. Big human organizations tend to be that way.

Apologies if I'm re-hashing arguments already made.

My favorite irony among my hard core libertarian friends who love this is how libertarian purists can support centralizing power in the Executive. Like…those guys used to be against having efficient government because they didn’t actually want the government to do much (anything).

 

[Brett327]

My favorite irony among my hard core libertarian friends who love this is how libertarian purists can support centralizing power in the Executive. Like…those guys used to be against having efficient government because they didn’t actually want the government to do much (anything).

Values are increasingly just a façade in support of more base desires, like power and freedom from consequence for one's actions. Libertarians (and lots of conservatives) are just fine with the government telling people what to do, as long as it isn't them.

 

[JTS11]

Values are increasingly just a façade in support of more base desires, like power and freedom from consequence for one's actions. Libertarians (and lots of conservatives) are just fine with the government telling people what to do, as long as it isn't them.

I think I would lump "Evangelical" into that mix as well. That term is an identity facade that increasingly doesn't mean anything.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Say it's not so!!!!!!

Our family days are auth at the 1-2 star level. In my case 1st Air Force. This is for military only. As a GS, our O-6 commander generally approves "59 minute early release" and the GS employees get blanket "max telework authorization" as well.

 

[Griz882]

You've done nothing in this thread but hand waive some of the worst behavior imaginable. WTF is wrong with you?

Come on Brett, first you should know I was joking about your comment. Beyond that my only defense of Trump has been that most posters here are only displeased because their “party” lost like it is some kind of football game and I don’t care for that kind of simple minded political thinking, especially when we’ve spent the last four years in a fog of lies and propaganda, preceded by four years of Trump caused churn, preceded by eight years of nothing but party-vs-party fighting - which, in fact, gave us Trump ‘45.

Something is seriously wrong with our governing systems right now. They are not working. Call it bloated or say it isn’t big enough, it doesn’t matter…it isn’t working for millions upon millions of the very people you casually dismiss and they are demanding (and will get ) changes. Any adult in this room knows the answer is that Congress isn’t doing their job - not even close. I’d prefer a Constitutional amendment for term limits on elected offices (for example no more than 12 years total in any and all elected offices with a single term of six years for POTUS). Others might prefer restructuring the entire government or forcing all of us to conform to an established language set or acceptance of government approved facts - but blaming ordinary people for taking care of their families isn’t the right choice.

 

[Griz882]

The road of history is paved with many a recently elected president who mistook their win for a mandate. Rewind to 2021 for one such example.

This is true…and Biden did his own version of what Trump is doing. If you want to get logical people in the highest offices of the land you need only get rid of the two-party system and our primary and caucus system.

 

[Griz882]

FWIW, I cannot give any civilian government employee even one extra day off. I can give them a whole 59 minutes. When we have a 96 over a holiday weekend, the civilians have to work unless it's a federal holiday. Not really sure what this article is getting at, but I don't think 96s are at risk.

It was the same where I worked in the Department of the Army, in fact it was the same at Interior as well.

 

[taxi1]

most posters here are only displeased because their “party” lost

???

That is the dumbest of all possible takes.

 

[Griz882]

???

That is the dumbest of all possible takes.

OK.

 

[number9]

I’m sorry, I know many of you don’t like it, but anecdotes are the life blood of politics. No one, not democrats, not republicans, give a rats ass about facts. They like the “truth” because it ca be manipulated (Trump’s BS style is all about taking personal control of the “truth”) and they like “tiny fact” anecdotes that serve the “truth” they want to sell. Caught in the middle are normal people. The status quo types tell them things like “It’s only $3 billion dollars, a fraction of the budget so there is no reason to fix it” while they are making $45,000 a year. To them a $3000 balancing error can be catastrophic so when they hear crap like that they roll their eyes and move on. The broke types tell them “USAID gave away a $3 million dollar grant to study transgender swimsuit design in Central America” and the ordinary unwashed roll their eyes wondering why you are bring that up when eggs are so expensive? They have to decide how to vote and if it is working or broke - based on two ridiculous metrics - no wonder our politics are in a whip saw stage right now.

$39B (my understanding of USAID's total budget) out of the $6.75T spending budget is ~0.58%.

$3000 out of a household's $45,000 is ~6.67%.

I know what point you were trying to make, but it just reemphasizes mine -- people are worried about the wrong stuff. Especially when you point out that much of USAID's budget goes to Americans anyway, because we spend it on American goods and services. (Ironically, this is known as "tied aid", and is not unanimously popular in the aid world as it can often be very inefficient.)

 

[JTS11]

???

That is the dumbest of all possible takes.

I'll add that to suggest this site and members are some coven of party ideology IMO is not close to true. Same arguments are bandied about the FBI, and are ridiculous.

 

[sevenhelmet]

???

That is the dumbest of all possible takes.

I especially love the “I was just joking” in the opener.

@Griz882 , Is voting for Trump, enabling and defending his overreach (after bitching about Biden for four years) how the everyman “takes care of their family”? Ok, we’ll see how that one ages.

I said several pages ago that I didn’t expect to convince anyone. This is why- it’s gone beyond pride at this point, it’s something much more entrenched. This intractability- the refusal of even educated and intelligent people to acknowledge objective evidence- is what I despise about politics.

 

[Spekkio]

$39B (my understanding of USAID's total budget) out of the $6.75T spending budget is ~0.58%.

$3000 out of a household's $45,000 is ~6.67%.

I know what point you were trying to make, but it just reemphasizes mine -- people are worried about the wrong stuff. Especially when you point out that much of USAID's budget goes to Americans anyway, because we spend it on American goods and services. (Ironically, this is known as "tied aid", and is not unanimously popular in the aid world as it can often be very inefficient.)

Waste is waste, regardless of budget percentage.

People upset about budget spending on USAID are basically saying, "I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck... give that money to me instead." There are 200 million working Americans. That's basically a $195 check per worker per year, if you were to distribute it evenly. If you were to means test it like the child tax credit, working and middle class Americans could get a $500 tax credit for the cost of USAID. The bottom 50% of wage earners paid an average of $667 last year, so this could alleviate 5 / 6 of their tax obligation.

Another way to look at it is that slashing USAID eliminates 4% of the deficit with absolutely no impact to anyone living within the borders of the U.S and its territories outside of USAID workers. That's not going to fix anything by itself, but it's not 0... and since we don't have to eliminate all of the deficit, just 50-75% of it, that cut gets us almost 10% there.

 

[number9]

Waste is waste, regardless of budget percentage.

People upset about budget spending on USAID are basically saying, "I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck... give that money to me instead." There are 200 million working Americans. That's basically a $195 check per worker per year, if you were to distribute it evenly. If you were to means test it, working and middle class Americans could get a $500 tax credit for the cost of USAID. The bottom 50% of wage earners paid an average of $667 last year, so this alleviates 5 / 6 of their tax obligation.

But this isn't how government budgets work. They don't get to the end of the budget and say, "Hey guys, we have $39B left. Do we give it to USAID or do we send it to American families?"

We deficit spend each and every year. The choice of whether or fund something or not is just that - a choice. It's not "Money for USAID or money for Spekkio" because it's not zero-sum.

Another way to look at it is that slashing USAID eliminates 4% of the deficit with absolutely no impact to anyone living within the borders of the U.S and its territories outside of USAID workers. That's not going to fix anything by itself, but it's not 0.

"Absolutely no impact to anyone living within the borders of the U.S." is demonstrably false. It's not 4% of the deficit either, it's more like 2% for FY2026.