brabus

Clinton did a good job with reducing the federal bureaucracy and getting finances under control. I hope Trump can accomplish the same feats regarding these topics.

Here’s a good, quick explanation for why Trump is doing what he is WRT taking out the bureaucrat garbage, and why it’s legitimate.

Therein lies the prime issue. We’ve fucked up for too long, time to rip the bandaid off and start fresh, which means there will be short term pain in a lot of ways, but as a society we’ve been way too focused on the now and barely even aware of what does 5, 10, 20 years down the road look like? As Tree said in another thread, we’ve already fucked unborn generations - it has to stop now. If we do, maybe 3-4 generations from now will be free of the financial impacts of their predecessors idiotic decisions.

Fair response, I’m not opposed to that (the second part). Is there a signal that Putin would only agree to terms that included no western mil sales to UKR? Curious because you mentioned that topic. Supplying them - maybe some (and only mil/medical…I’m not paying for your teachers’ salary, etc.), but I don’t support the continued rate we’ve been executing for years. We’ve accomplished a lot, let’s scale it way back and support minimally until the ink dries.

Agreed. But let them do it without us sending more billions (which Z man says he didn’t even receive a large portion of…hmm). What does that look like? And what is that “just end” worth in time, money and lives?

Ha, that’s valid. But it is another of many examples where industry does whatever it wants (3 years behind schedule, GTFO!) and the gov is supposed to just smile and take it up the shorts. This kind of bullshit has to end immediately.

Dumb move, I agree with you. File this in the category of “WTF were you thinking?!”

You’re trying to compare the GS-X who sits on his ass all day producing nothing (except roadblocks to mission) to mil members who deploy, fight, directly support warfighters, etc? Completely invalid. I know you’ve worked with civs, not saying you haven’t, but your breath of experience is extremely shallow on this subject, or you just DGAF about all the waste, one of the two. I agree with you on Sua’s situation. That’s primarily bullshit because Maj dipshit is at fault, but it’s not bullshit he was asked for justification. @Sua Sponte Highlighting the Maj’s fuck up to leadership won’t buy at least a review of what you provided? Which has been shouted about and tried for our entire careers. Brick wall after brick wall. You act like nobody has thought of that. Shit is so wildly out of control, big action must be done now, not “let’s just keep trying/talking about it and maybe doing the same thing will yield different results in 10 or 15 years!” The problem has become so massive and widespread that we are way past scalpel territory. That is very unfortunate and I wish it wasn’t, but “we” created this monster and let it get out of control - the shit show wasn’t going to last forever (thank God) and now there will be some good people caught up in it. This applies to the entire fed gov, not just DoD.

@Sua Sponte Yep, all makes sense. The hard thing, as you’ve probably seen, is firing those shitty workers. It is a mountain to climb to build the requisite documentation for poor performance history, make the improvement plan, document them not meeting the plan, etc. A shitload of work to fire horrible workers - very frustrating.

Yes, unfortunately that will happen. But the fed civ corps is so insanely out of control that scalpel surgery isn’t feasible - I’ve seen that tried and failed for 19 years. Unfortunately full blown chemo is necessary and that’ll have some undesired side effects, but it will ultimately save the body in the end. And to all those crying about the poor gubmint workers and how will they feed their children! Welcome to everyone else’s life who doesn’t have a gov job. Time to stop sucking on the gov tit and do something useful in the civ sector. The good ones that we unfortunately lose will do just fine on the civ side. It’s the useless sacks of shit that’ll wine incessantly because they know the gov is the only place they can suck so bad and stay employed (up until now at least).

Cut 50% of DoD civilians and you’ll save $40B/yr (have to simul destroy the bureaucratic processes that “require” them). Burn the acquisition process to ashes and start over - will save a metric shit ton of billions over time. Those are two good places to start.

How is firing/laying off probationary people illegal? Serious question.

A couple snippets re: the EO that I just looked at (I have not read the actual EO): Therefore, because all executive power is vested in the President, all agencies must: (1) submit draft regulations for White House review—with no carve-out for so-called independent agencies, except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve; and (2) consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans, and the White House will set their performance standards. The Office of Management and Budget will adjust so-called independent agencies’ apportionments to ensure tax dollars are spent wisely. The President and the Attorney General (subject to the President’s supervision and control) will interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. I read this to mean intent is to rein in unelected bureaucrats, who have enjoyed zero accountability, from making regulations that are based on their personal interpretation. These bureaucrats are not elected and do not represent the people. The president is elected by the people to represent their interests via his running of the executive branch. Therefore, he should have final say on how the executive branch defines/implements regulations, which ultimately are what directly impact all of our daily lives. There could be more to this as I haven’t read the actual text, but what I posted above is absolutely a great thing. I’m sick of people who weren’t elected doing whatever the fuck they want to impact my family’s life. I demand accountability through elections.

He has to realize he has lost big time from a long term perspective (population make up, extremely diminished capacity for future power projection, etc.) He may be an evil POS, but he can’t be that stupid. He may have won some short term land gains and stopped NATO expansion on the border, but overall I don’t think it’ll have been worth the blood and treasure spent. If he recognizes this, he will negotiate, but we will have to give him something he can save face on (such as stating UKR will never be admitted to NATO, we’re not going back to pre-2014 borders, etc.) If we don’t the “forever war” continues, which only means more waste of resources and humanitarian crisis.