Trump

[version]

Will he obey this order though?

Does it all rest on that? He's not personally carrying out the actions of a given policy. Can federal employees be charged with anything if they do something the courts have slapped down?

 

[IdleRich]

I dunno... I just see lots of talk about him ignoring it but I don't know what it would mean.

It seens this two billion is payment for work already done so withholding it - or trying to - is pretty fucking tight whatever you think about whether the work should have been commissioned.

 

[version]

It seens this two billion is payment for work already done so withholding it - or trying to - is pretty fucking tight whatever you think about whether the work should have been commissioned.

Yeah, he's always been like that; made a career out of stiffing contractors.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah, he's always been like that; made a career out of stiffing contractors.

Yeah, famous for it. What's incredible is that four supreme court judges think it's perfectly fine and maga think the others must have been compromised to disagree.

 

[shakahislop]

I dunno... I just see lots of talk about him ignoring it but I don't know what it would mean.

It seens this two billion is payment for work already done so withholding it - or trying to - is pretty fucking tight whatever you think about whether the work should have been commissioned.

some of the big USAID contractors are literally $100 million down on work that they've already done that they haven't been paid for. USAID contracts a lot of private sector companies to implement thier work, coz they see it as more efficient and means they don't to have run it directly from within the us civil service. all those companies are properly in turmoil. hard to see how they'll survive. i guess overall i don't see those as a huge loss, in general.

 

[Mr. Tea]

some of the big USAID contractors are literally $100 million down on work that they've already done that they haven't been paid for. USAID contracts a lot of private sector companies to implement thier work, coz they see it as more efficient and means they don't to have run it directly from within the us civil service. all those companies are properly in turmoil. hard to see how they'll survive. i guess overall i don't see those as a huge loss, in general.

Easy to say that if you don't work for one of those companies, I guess.

 

[luka]

IMagine how the nazis felt when they closed the concentration camps!

 

[IdleRich]

some of the big USAID contractors are literally $100 million down on work that they've already done that they haven't been paid for. USAID contracts a lot of private sector companies to implement thier work, coz they see it as more efficient and means they don't to have run it directly from within the us civil service. all those companies are properly in turmoil. hard to see how they'll survive. i guess overall i don't see those as a huge loss, in general.

I get that. But as a basic principle it seems to me that if you hire someone to do a job and then they do that job you should probably pay them what you agreed.

 

[shakahislop]

Easy to say that if you don't work for one of those companies, I guess.

yeah it is. it's a catastrophe on an individual level if you've built your life around working for those kinds of organizations. i know a couple of people who are going through that right now and it looks like a nightmare. it's a total collapse of an entire industry. the best estimate at the moment is that it's about 50,000 jobs in the US that have gone in that kind of thing + USAID and so on.

on a more systemic level - i've never been a big fan of the US way of contracting development aid projects to US private sector companies. it happened in the UK as well especially after austerity. it makes sense for some things like you know road building. but for other kinds of projects, like if you're trying to build health systems, giving those contracts to NGOs I'd say is more efficient, or just doing it in-house. but obviously there is an ideological component to that kind of boring management contractual modality judgement call as well.

 

[shakahislop]

I get that. But as a basic principle it seems to me that if you hire someone to do a job and then they do that job you should probably pay them what you agreed.

yeah 100%

 

[IdleRich]

If 50,000 jobs are lost as a result and lots of other jobs too won't the cost of supporting them as unemployed fall on the taxpayer, is this really a net saving?

Are we just seeing the US "cut waste" by changing from paying people to work to paying them not to work?

 

[IdleRich]

Cos what I'm seeing is loads more people being moved to benefits in the name of spurious savings that have not been independently verified.

At the same time as high inflation which is being exacerbated by starting a trade war with pretty much everyone, and a tanking stock market.

Taken together that doesn't look good.

 

[version]

Are we just seeing the US "cut waste" by changing from paying people to work to paying them not to work?

Reminds me of something my gran's husband told me about his time in the civil service under Thatcher. They'd cut the government jobs claiming they were saving money then just replace them with private contractors who cost even more. Total scam.

 

[shakahislop]

i don't think the USAID thing is remotely about saving money. it's about destroying something they don't like i think, and potentially also something that's intended to work on a symbolic level.

 

[IdleRich]

French Senator Claude Malhuret just called Trump an “emperor” and Musk a “jester high on ketamine”: “Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine. We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor".

Funny how Trump wants to be Caesar but everyone else sees him more as Caligula or Nero.

(I still can't believe I got no likes for pointing out that Caligula means Little Boots and Trump means Little Gloves)

 

[pattycakes_]

Man all this conspiracy theory adjacent talk is bringing a tear to my eye. Even @Mr. Tea is at it. Stone the crows

 

[IdleRich]

i don't think the USAID thing is remotely about saving money. it's about destroying something they don't like i think, and potentially also something that's intended to work on a symbolic level.

Undoubtedly

 

[IdleRich]

Caligula - little feet
Trump - tiny hands
Caligula - made horse a senator
Trump - made Kash Patel head of FBI
Caligula - made floating orgy palace
Trump - flew on Epstein Express many times
Caligula - sensitive about his bald spot
Trump - so sensitive he wears a ludicrous wig
Caligula - fucked his sisters
Trump - wants to fuck his daughter
Caligula - made it illegal to mention goats
Trump - scared of sharks
Caligula - abolished sales tax
Trump - abolished tax on billionaires
Caligula - insisted on being treated as a god
Trump - insists on being treated as a god
Caligula - wanted to put his head on a statue of Zeus
Trump - wants to put his head on Mt Rushmore

 

[Mr. Tea]

Man all this conspiracy theory adjacent talk is bringing a tear to my eye. Even @Mr. Tea is at it. Stone the crows

Hard not to be, when the guys doing it have been publishing books and papers explaining in great detail how they intend to do it for decades.

 

[hmg]

i don't think the USAID thing is remotely about saving money. it's about destroying something they don't like i think, and potentially also something that's intended to work on a symbolic level.

Perhaps revenge for all the industrial towns hollowed out by globalization, their inhabitants decimated by fentanyl.