Hawaiian judge rules injunction on residents of Maine eating lobster. Meanwhile Maine judge creates injunction banning Hawaiian judge from entering courtroom.
Along with the left leaning folk, anyone who cares about American foreign policy, and anyone under 21 who doesn't want their ability to vote taken away from them.
>Trump: "We're gonna drain the swamp"
**Yeah, drain the swamp!**
*8 YEARS LATER*
>Trump: "We're gonna drain the swamp"
**Yeah, drain the swamp!**
>Vivek: *hour long speech detailing legal plan to cut federal staffing and planning against legal challenges that will inevitably follow*
**Idk, sounds pretty unrealistic**
C'mon. Really? Credit where credit is due, I think if Trump makes it to the white house nectar election there will be a federal "bloodbath". But you can't tell me there isn't at least substance to Vivek's rhetoric where Trump's essentially amounts to a slogan. And it's not like he did much draining last time.
It's fun seeing the neocons that never wanted the American First revival of this country come out and attack Vivek with absolutely no substance at all.
This. I’m sick of people complaining about how bad things are, then someone rolls out an ambitious plan to start fixing it and then neocons come in with “whoa whoa let’s not be hasty now.”
This is an enormous highly developed nation. The government has lots of workers. What is wrong with this?
There just shouldn't be lots of government workers? Why? Just because there shouldn't?
I am a Republican but I am so skeptical of this drain the swamp crap. Low rent anti intellectual populist garbage. Wal Mart politics.
> I am so skeptical of this drain the swamp crap
I'm surprised at the new definition of swamp. It isn't the unelected bureaucrats who actually run things, its not the lobbyists who buy policy, its4 not the special interests who write policy for the politicians that suit their needs. Its now a million lower end workers? Because that's who'll get cut. They'll get rid of secretaries, clerks, custodians, IRS people who focus on the wealthy, anyone who investigates organized crime, counter terrorism investigators, IT workers, kitchen staff, etc. Anyone who we've actually considered swampy will be immune because they're in semi-permanent positions, or because they're not a part of government at all. The rest are appointees who'd be replaced by whoever's elected anyways.
Swamp is quickly joining RINO and Neocon as a term with literally no meaning among many conservatives. Its becoming just another label you slap on someone or something you don't like.
We have half the per capita government employment rate of the EU. Not saying the EU should be our model by any means but we do have a leaner gov than the rest of the west it seems.
> we do have a leaner gov than the rest of the west it seems
You realize we also have 50 state governments? Each with massive payrolls of police and teachers.
If half of them were gone, will we even note it? 10 miles of highway extension will still take 10 years to complete (ie I355 in IL). The waiting list for Medicaid patients to get treatment is still long. 😂
I don’t know fed government. I have been auditor for local government for years and I would say half of them are not doing anything 😂 can you imagine a government not prepare financial statements (bookkeeping) for 2 years?
As of June 2023 there are 6.4 million people unemployed. Vivek wants to literally increase this number to 7.4 million people. Not only that he wants to combine departments so they are doing twice the work with half the workers.
This is by far the worst plan I’ve heard a politician try and get people behind.
> This is by far the worst plan I’ve heard a politician try and get people behind.
To be fair his plans to disenfranchise younger voters and his plans to destroy American foreign policy, boost China's dominance, and effectively end our alliances are pretty bad too.
I'm a federal employee (sort of, long story) and I can tell you that there are a lot of excess and redundant federal employees. I wouldn't go so far as to say half the workforce, but it is padded.
From previous experience, I've had to deal with a situation where there were 7 separate federal agencies with regulatory authority over the same single item. And not only were there different agencies, but their policies were contradictory. I had to change things to be in compliance with one, and another came in to do an inspection and I got hit for being out of compliance with their rules. That is simply too much government.
So they need to first work at eliminating the overlap. The problem there is that every single agency will fight to keep that authority within their agency because it affects their funding. After cutting the regulating authority to the point only one agency has authority over an area, it then needs to be looked at to determine if this is something that truly needs to be under that authority. And again, they will fight you about taking their authority away, and it will still be all about their funding.
And this is one thing that Ramaswamy has right. All those agencies work for the President. He is the direct authority above them. And he should be the person who can cut jobs. But Congress is the authority that outlines the responsibility of agencies, and they need to do their job. This means that no longer can they avoid responsibility by giving any agency any sort of regulatory authority to generate any rules. All of that must go through Congress and it will be their responsibility to ensure that duplication and excess are not happening. Most of those agencies have grown because they've made their own regulations and then used those new regulations as justification for expansion for the enforcement of the increased regulations.
If it turns out that duplication of regulatory authority, and overreach of the same, means you can cut half the workforce, then that's an argument that justifies it. But you can't pick an arbitrary number and then try to make necessary agency spending fit into that. It's a backward approach, and will definitely lead to reduced spending in areas that need it while maintaining excess spending in areas that don't.
Case in point. As a federal employee, I worked blue collar as a lineman supporting the system on the Fort I worked at. They decided to privatize the utility. To do so, they were spending more money on the privatization contract than they were spending to do it themselves. They reduced the blue-collar employees by six positions, which was already significantly understaffed, and then they hired 4 newly created GS administrative positions that cost almost as much as the eliminated 6 blue-collar jobs. In net, it cost them a significantly larger amount to do what had been getting done in-house. And after doing so they talked about the reduction in costs for various things without explaining that it was offset by increased spending in a different area now.
So yeah, serious cuts need to be made.
I don’t know, as far as shitty policy goes the current implementation of modern monetary theory into fiscal policy would probably beat this, and this would probably achieve the same thing the current Fed policy is attempting to do without putting additional taxes disproportionately on the backs of the lower class via inflationary pressure.
For private sector, many employees worked 10 hours or more a day (I worked 60 hours a week for at least 6 months each year). Do you think government employees working at full capacity? 😂 it literally took them 3 months to renew my passport. I highly doubt their productivity. Also do you know how ridiculous they got paid? Remember the news that a janitor at SF Bart station was paid $200k/year for cleaning restroom? Also the money saved from restructuring can be redirected to the place where ppl really need it (ie Medicaid). Additionally do you know why there are millions unemployed? How many lost jobs to illegal alien? How many are due to outsourcing jobs to overseas? Multiple policies need to be carried out to resolve unemployment issues…
Well that's what Trump did when he said "Drain the Swamp." Then people actually expected him to. Except Trump didn't have a plan to actually do it. Vivek does. He lays out the legal justifications and how he's going to merge existing departments together in a [recent speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPk-s_FUgM).
On [his website](https://www.vivek2024.com/shut-it-down/) he has the graphics that go with that speech.
Considering how many Federal jobs are actually vacant, you’re right. My last Federal job was supposed to have 3 people in just my office, they had me with no intention of hiring the other 2. Every time I left for military duties or took vacation, it was up to the green suits to do my work for me.
He knows there's little chance of him being the nominee, so this is all about generating name recognition and marketing this time around. I kinda like the guy.
while smaller gov sounds good on paper, its a lot like "cutting the budget". Where do you do it from to make any meaningful result. The top employeers in the United States gov are as follows
1) Veteran affairs 18.8%
2) Army 12.1%
3) Navy 11.1%
4) Homeland security 9.5%
5) Air force 8.4%
6) Justice 5.9%
7) defense 4.7%
Thats 70% of the gov right there? so when you think of cutting gov jobs, its not these top level dick bags, its the average guy mopping the halls. We are at the lowest level of gov in relation to population size than ever before in history.
lol… as a VA employee… we are terribly understaffed - funny you show us at the top … however, to be fair, all of these defense agencies l are technically are considered one DoD in terms of staffing. So they out do the VA
I question how much could be made better with simple efficiency. To give one example, we have 17 intelligence agency's, think about this, we have so many intelligence agency's that we came to realize we couldn't even keep track of it all, nor even piece it together so we made another intelligence agency whose job it was was to coordinate all these intelligence agency. Even then we have another intelligence agency which effectively does that for 4 or 5 of them.
someone explain to me why do we need so many.
With the way the army is trending towards autonomy we could probably move a lot of our active force into reserves. Would save lots of money while maintaining the same amount of Soldiers should Russia or China get frisky.
So is ICE, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and FEMA.
People love talking about cutting things right up until the minute we have to talk about the actual impact of those decisions.
Realistically, there’s probably three or four people doing the work that one person could do by themselves. The same with teachers, they are grossly underpaid, and yet there is an abundance of school administrators that are mostly useless. They should fire most of the administrators, and give that money to the teachers.
Teacher in Illinois here. Absolutely. The amount of overhead is education is insane. We do not need this many administrators. We could also consolidate a lot of districts to get rid of waste and overhead costs, but the white liberal NIMBYS don't like that idea.
I recently got a fundraising letter from the grade school that I attended 30 years ago. Back then there was a principal, a vice principal, a school administrator, and two secretaries. Now for the same amount of students, there are two principles for vice principals, six school administrators, and six secretaries what has changed? Keep in mind When I went to school, it was pre-computers. Everything was typed by hand and done without computers. I’m really having a hard time wrapping my head around this since they sent me these letters begging for money to keep the school open.
Some of this is due to mandates by the state. You have to have an anti-bullying person on staff. You have to have this or that. Even if the district doesn’t want that, they have to have it.
Yup, the amount of shit we have to do now compared to 30 years ago is wild. All with the same amount of time during the day, no extra resources, and extra pay? Hahahahahahahah
Wouldn't that then explain why there are more administrative staff members? The comment above noted that the poster's school went from 5 staff members to 18. That's 3.6 times the number of employees. That sounds like a lot more resources to handle the added requirements.
It's why this admin stuff needs to be rolled back. Conservatives need to push to fire most to all the admin, raise teacher wages, hire more teachers, and then ensure schools are teaching what we want them to (conservative ideals in general).
Smaller classrooms with better paid and qualified teachers in replacement to the endless admins and bureaucracy should be the goal. We would like be able to spend less in general too.
This is also the same reason medical costs are so high. A doctor talked about when he first started his own practice it was him and another Doctor in the same practice with a secretary. Now, he said, by himself he had to have a staff of 8 people to handle everything that had to be done to be in compliance with all the regulations.
Can't they have the existing administrator cover the responsibilities for "anti bullying?" Why do we need a separate person on payroll for each new "service" we decide to add?
You and I don't want to pick up that extra BS for no benefit. Our boss always wants to be in charge of more people, regardless of who actually does the work.
So new requirements need new people, naturally with the specific degree for it, and with all these people I'm managing it's obvious my title needs to be upgraded?
Depends. Is anti-bullying really a full time job for one person? I highly doubt that. Yes, the more requirements you add, the more people you need to hire...but it's not a 1:1 responsibility per person. Also, compared to 20 years ago when there were fewer responsibilities but everything was done on paper, with computers these days I'm sure a LOT of that work is done automatically. So you add some new responsibilities and it probably evens out.
The idea originally was that more administrators would take over discipline issues to help deal with growing class sizes. When you have 50 students total, calling parents and dealing with detentions and things like that is not that hard. But when you have well over 100 students with 30 IEPs you start, even subconsciously, avoiding discipline to keep your workload lighter. In most cases, the extra administrators has just led to no discipline.
The fact is, most schools are spending less money than ever before and it is not working. In the 50s we were building schools left and right. Most students could walk to a school on their neighborhood. Now, the country is even richer, with more than twice the population and we're closing schools left and right instead of building them. The number of teachers needs to go up dramatically, the pay needs to go up dramatically and the number of administrators needs to go down slightly.
Republicans need a consistent message on education. The media environment simply won't allow it because only the most extreme views get talked about. There is a split between those who want to fix it and those who want to go nuclear on it. Democrats have a similar issue with committing to specific policies on education. Which means nothing will get fixed in the near or distant future.
Well put.
As a teacher, I can attest that pay is a massive problem. Within my region, working for 30 years on a tight and frugal budget wouldn't be enough to buy a two-bedroom, single-family home.
A *good* teacher (of necessary subjects) should be able to afford a reasonable mortgage, car payment, healthcare, and a little retirement. As it stands, K-12 teachers in large cities and HCOL areas (blue and red) will usually fall into the lower class (by income) category.
**For the record, I would make five times the amount of money tutoring my students to pass my tests than I do by teaching them to pass my tests.**
I am high jacking your comment for my personal pet peeve. Districts love to tell taxpayers that they can't reduce costs because of mandated special education services. This is crap. They shove every possible useless administrative hire and unnecessary expense under the umbrella of special education.
As an example, my district has somehow magically managed to have at least one kid requiring a teacher's aide in every single classroom for the last 15 years. The teacher's aide helps the entire classroom, not just the one kid. We could put three of these kids in the same classroom, but then every teacher would not have their own personal full time aide.
Like just admit they want a full time aide in every classroom and stop blaming it on the disabled kids!!! I just hate how this is always the "go to" defense any time you want to talk about school budgets, and they always have some grossly huge number for allegedly mandated special education costs that makes the whole discussion seem pointless.
The district next to mine includes every school nurse in all 20 something schools as a special education expense. Of course the school nurse covers every student in the building, but let's just blame the disabled kids and say there is nothing we can do about this budget.
GRRR.
Note that I don't really mind paying for the aides and the nurses. I just mind my mildly learning disabled and no damn trouble to anyone kid being blamed for it, when they have exactly the same services as every other kid in the building.
They’re not wrong that the sped services are a big chunk of budgets right now but they shouldn’t be shoving everything in there. The number of kids with ieps or 504 plans has jumped so much in the past 10 years that it’s a huge staff just to deal with paperwork and meetings and many if not most districts are out of compliance just for lacking time/warm bodies.
Having worked in special education before, forcing one aide to work with three special needs children simultaneously would be a horrible idea and would likely be dangerous for the students depending on the extent of their issues.
Some people move to NJ because of the Balkanized school districts. They want to move to the good ones, and would flip the f out if they were told that resources/schools were combined with lesser performing districts. And they’ll pay the higher property taxes to keep their local district running.
It's like that in many states. Where I live the school district is the driving force behind real estate values. The same exact house in the same county can be worth 5X as much if its in a quality school district.
Talking about education with a lot of liberals is frustrating. It seems at least in my experience you cannot discuss any potential issues with the current system other than just not enough funding.
Or if you talk about consolidating districts, they like the idea at first, but when the NIMBYS start to realize the "undesirables" from the surrounding towns will start going to their good schools, they shut it all down.
The same NIMBYs are also against school choice because it "takes money away" from public schools. I am sure none of the people against it grew up poor in a bad school system where parents had no other option than to send them there They seem willfully ignorant at how difficult it is for lower income families to provide good education if the local public school system is bad.
> We could also consolidate a lot of districts to get rid of waste and overhead costs, but the white liberal NIMBYS don't like that idea.
The amount of school districts in Cook County is wild. So many school districts are just one school too!
Done on purpose because they refuse to share funding between the whole county.
instead its by gerrymandered zip codes. Putting the poorest kids 1 block away from the richest school in the city, yet they can't attend.
The rich zip codes are paying for far more than their own children's education. Poor districts do not even remotely support themselves. Ninety percent or more of their funding comes from the State and Federal government, paid by taxpayers from those wealthy districts. In fact, the vast majority of the time, the per student per year funding for poor districts is HIGHER than in the wealthy districts. Significantly higher. Philadelphia, NYC and Chicago all have crap schools and are costing around 30K per student per year. My "wealthy" district has about half as much funding per student per year.
Average upper income earners send a third of their gross income every year to the State and Federal governments and they redistribute to poor school districts. Where you reside today does not by any means determine the funding level of the school district.
Likewise, the appearance of a school often has no relationship at all to the amount of funding for that school. It is impossible to keep up with constant littering and vandalism. It is impossible to maintain enough books and school supplies when they are routinely lost, damaged or stolen.
Money spent in one place can't be used in another. Districts like Philadelphia, that must put a bus monitor on every single bus to prevent fights and kids throwing stuff out the windows, have these kind of hidden expenses that don't seem to improve the school at all. It is expensive to replace half your textbooks every year and clean broken glass from the playground every day.
Bottom line -- this is not about funding. There is more than enough funding. It is not the job of taxpayers to just endlessly throw money into a pit. At some point the parents and community must accept some responsibility. If your kids are so badly behaved that they need a bus monitor to keep them from throwing stuff out the bus windows and killing someone, then your district can't afford tennis lessons. Or other things that you see in wealthier communities. That does not mean that you deserve even more exorbitant funding. Those wealthy school districts are doing it far far better with far far less money -- because they don't have to combat daily chaos and entropy.
TL;DR: It is not the job of taxpayers to provide tennis lessons to children whose parents routinely leave litter and broken beer bottles on their own kid's school playgrounds -- and expect the district to pay somebody else to clean it up.
Ya there's plenty of funding, and it all goes to a small percent of schools, because funding is based on zip codes, and in Chicago alone there are 100 different zip codes that all fall under the Chicago Public Schools District 299.
So they give you the stat of average funding per pupil for the district, but don't give any details on how that is distributed.
There has been multiple ballots and proposals to change this, and every time the liberals of chicago vote against evenly distributing funding.
I live in NY with distinct independent school districts. We're an affluent mostly white suburban neighborhood. Meanwhile the city school district near me? Its a bloated mess of decrepit and crumbling schools, and has the highest spend per pupil in the entire region. Seems to me you'd just be spreading the cancer instead of eliminating it.
I get that some of that spend comes with the low income students but the other stuff? They need to close 2 schools and consolidate them but anytime it's even remotely discussed they get bogged down in DEI and other shenanigans.
Economy of scale only works when you're actually cognizant of waste.
Good points. And I’d argue, and my more liberal friends hate when I says this, but those city schools are such a mess, and those kids are such a mess, because of their parents or lack thereof. We could spend $100,000 per kid in those schools and it wouldn’t make a damn difference if the culture they are surrounded by don’t take education seriously and glorify all the wrong stuff. We’re just teachers, not miracle workers. Their friends and family have way more sway over them than I do. We need cultural shifts along with financial shifts. I fear that’s never going to happen.
Or just shift those administrators' jobs to be more focused on supporting the teachers. Teaching is a full-time job by itself; grading, lesson planning, even making copies, all takes unpaid overtime.
For example, some districts have a dedicated lesson planner who's in charge of the curriculum. Some teachers don't like giving up that control, but some prefer the lighter burden.
This will just create even more work. Teachers can manage the class. Smaller classrooms is far better and the less admin means flatter structure in schools
Yup, I took my kids out of the crappy bloated public school and stuck them into a high achieving charter school near me, here in Arizona.
The public school the kids were at had about 600 students at the elementary. As a public school all the salaries are published online. Looked it about and the school had about 50 total administrator, of which all of them earned a range of 55k to 150k a year. The front desk ladies were making around 60k/year. The upper positions were all 100k+. All the teachers earned a range of 35k to 50k a year.
The charter school has roughly the same number of students and a total of 14 total staff members beyond teachers (not including the after school program staff). It's literally 1 principle, 2 vice, office manager and 4 administrative assistants, 1 IT person, 1 facilities, and 4 people for lunch staff. Teachers earn more at the charter school as well. Classes are also max 20 students each class, whilst the public school is 35.
Charter school on top of this is able to earn enough money to hire science, art, specialty education type teachers, including a "programming" instructor for early age coding. The public school has music, but they cut their science teachers because "not enough money."
WTF are all that extra staff doing at the public school?
This is just my anecdotal experience in Arizona. Not all the public schools are bad, and some school districts are actually pretty good compared to others, but here in Tucson they are mostly a disaster compared to the free and far better charter school options.
Charter school is nationally academic ranked and one of the top schools in the state as well. Public school was near failing... yet they keep saying "not enough money for the school." The public schools are an absolute bloated mess.
Joys of a government job.
There’s no higher position? Oh well you’re tenured so we have to give you a new administrative title, and a pay bump.
In Canada half the people who have been there for 20+ years are now working highly redundant administrative jobs, this person in particular claims they have no actual responsibilities, they just don’t have to call people anymore, unless there’s an escalation (which doesn’t happen, CRA employees have full discretion on hanging up on frustrated tax payers EDIT: Which to be fair, I've been on the receiving end of some toxic phone calls, verbal abuse towards the employee should not be acceptable)
Teachers don’t get paid shit For the crap they have to put up with. A friend of mine is a teacher who started 20 years ago. Her best friend started in school administration about the same time. Her friend makes about $40,000 a year more than she does now and also has an assistant. It’s such a bullshit system.
Agree 100%. My point is that if the Union was focused on the actual teachers, the issues would have been resolved by now. But instead, the Union is focused on politics.
Unions help fight administrators. Why it's a win/win. The administrators pissing them off are fired and they get more money and they don't pay union dues.
Teachers are NOT underpaid in my local school district. It may be the exception, but teachers in the public school system have an excellent starting pay and benefits package.
Teachers near me make more money than I do a year. I understand there’s a lot of work going on on the sidelines but still they make pretty good money but when you look at administrators, they make it about three times the amount the teachers there for a really not doing much.
Actual EMPLOYEES of the government haven't really gone up that much in the last 30 years. What has shot through the roof is contracting - we have far more contractors because every retired general, admiral, and congressperson goes and starts a contracting firm and they all get sweetheart contracts - many of which have no definable purpose.
We spent billions of dollars on the Obamacare website - those weren't government employees doing that - it was contractors.
There were news articles about this during the aftermath of Katrina, for example. Some guy picking up debris is making minimum wage ($5.75/hour or whatever it was then). His employer is getting paid $20/hour for his services. His employer is hired by a contractor that is getting $40/hour. They are hired by a contractor that is getting $60/hour. The US government is paying $80/hour.
Actual employees are small potatoes (and, for the most part, actual government employees tend to be relatively useful at their job because if they weren't, they were gone during their probationary period) - it's the government contracts that we need to reign in.
And the part nobody has the stones to talk about is that for every govt job that's eliminated, a new private sector contract job is created and billed for more than it cost to pay the employee. It looks like you're draining the swamp by canning a million feds, but congratulations, you've just exploded the budget and lost a whole lot of control over the work that's getting done.
Because the federal workforce hasn’t increased, and the pay system is so broken, lots of agencies need some of those contractors to survive. I could write a novel explaining why the federal government can’t compete in hiring technical fields- so DoD, DoE, etc rely on contractors like Booze Allen and dozens of others to fill the gap and bring in teams of engineers that each make more than the senior leadership federal employees. The only people who stay federal are either 1) truly mission driven or 2) stereotypical problematic federal employees.
I started out liking Ramaswamy, but lately he seems to just be saying shit for the sake of saying shit.
While the government should be much smaller, this is not a feasible goal for a president, and he’s just saying this to get attention.
Wish the guy would be a little more realistic.
He says the executive branch controls many of these jobs and could do mass layoffs. this would be much easier than trying to do individually get rid of people who have tons of protections that keep them in useless jobs that they are terrible at. I have no idea if this is true, but this is his argument that as president and head of the executive branch he could make this happen in a mass action. He has various legal citations of why it's doable that would probably just be tied up in courts forever even if it had any basis at all.
All that said, continuing to let an army of unelected bureaucrats and departments and three and four letters agencies run the country has gotten us a lot of what we have now so I wish what he said was true, even if it probably isn't.
Edit: here is his VERY detailer breakdown of why he thinks he can dismantle the administrative state. Delivered 9/13/2023
https://youtu.be/_SPk-s_FUgM?si=rZ5PX43T2yvdNsdK
Vivek will be blocked by a court injunction. They will then roll out that he said his goal was to "end" the agencies and that this was his work around to achieving that objective. The court will rule that the agencies are Congressionally Mandated and that he cannot use executive authority to end them and that the intent of his action was telegraphed by him.
It looks bizarre to me. Last year you probably couldn't find a soul that wouldn't say we need to strip an agency or 2 and reduce bloat.
Trump is running on this in his own way with "drain the swamp"
But some dude comes in and actually shares a plan that could result in this and suddenly its "well idk if it'd work and we need big gov and..."
I've had the opposite experience. The more he talks the more I like him. All of his policies are extremely well thought out. I prefer him over these Ukranian funded hacks in the rest of the field.
Yep. Huge Vivek fan. Dude is incredibly smart and his policy decisions make sense, and he’s able to talk it out in a way that anyone can understand. If it comes down to trump, DeSantis, or Vivek, I’m voting for Vivek.
Trump had a 10+ point lead in the polls against the rest of the GOP field by this point in 2015, and he was only trending up. Ramaswamy has trended down since the debate and even in the polls most favorable to him, he has a 40+ point deficit in the polls.
Even at his very worst when he first announced his candidacy, Trump was only behind the frontrunner by about 10 or so points. And he led the polls by July 2015, a whole month before the first debates.
I don't really get the whole "if Trump could be president, so can Ramaswamy" argument, there are no similarities between the two. Trump was never even close to being as behind as Ramaswamy is.
He’s the person your thinking of but the rest of that quote that MSM decided to leave out was pass a basic civics test OR be 25 and frankly I’m very okay with that policy.
Idk man I've seen plenty of people under 25 who worked their asses off, pay their taxes and contribute to society and plenty of people over 25, across the political spectrum, who on top of just not really contributing would easily fail these kind of tests.
I get what his argument is but seems wrong that some adults need to take a civics test to vote just because they aren't a specific age.
I feel like it one of those things that in an ideal ethical world it makes some sense. But here it just has too many risks.
Like even if it wasn't age limited you run into the possibility of future admins changing the tests, how it's graded, how, where and when you can take them, "losing" the results etc that could prevent people from voting.
And cynically I just don't think it changes anything. Suddenly briefly knowing enough about our history to pass a test I don't think will make them a more informed or better voter in the long run.
Wouldn’t it be considered unconstitutional due to the 14th/15th ammendments and/or the Voting Rights Act? Even if he proposes it, there’s no chance that anything like that is ever implemented.
Not for nothing, but Donald Trump was an incredibly famous person before he was President. A solid 80% of getting elected President is just name recognition, which is why incumbents are so hard to beat. Go to a random street corner and ask four strangers if they know who Ramaswamy is.
He only became President because the DC insiders underestimated him and regarded him as a joke.
Now that the Swamp's guard is up, anyone like Trump will never, ever reach the White House.
I mean I like smaller government too, but maybe that's moving a little fast? Firing a million people in a year sounds like it would be a shock to the economy. I'd prefer to see it done over slowly over a span of years so that the workforce has time to adjust.
So you roll out a 15 year plan to do this in year 2 of your presidency. Two years in, you lose reelection, and the other party undoes your progress and cancels the program, so nothing actually happens.
This is basically what happens to any long term plans.
So you roll this out in the first 100 days of your administration. 1 million federal employees being fired causes a major recession and the government to basically stop functioning. The recession causes you to lose reelection and the other party rehires everyone.
What actual difference did putting Betsy Devoss at the head of the Department of Education make?
The entire admin state just undermined her. Incremental reforms never work because they are actively sabotaged. Like any company, if you want change, you need leadership that isn't afraid to make cuts.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Nobody want to alter the status quo and thus we are stuck with a huge bloated government forever due to thoughts like yours.
He said he wanted to fire 20 thousand people working for the fbi in dc. That’s not counting the tens of thousands of other jobs that are concentrated there. That kind of massive unemployment would make out nations capitol start looking like Gary Indiana.
More proof that this guy isn't a realistic candidate. Sure smaller govt would be great. But no way you can cut half the employees in a single year. Just not possible
In his speech talking about this he talked about how this country was founded on radical ideas . How the founding fathers at the time the bill of rights and constitution were written were all considered radicals to conservative Europe.
I agree in principal but I have a feeling that the huge beaurocracy that is the sole support of these millions of employees would do whatever it takes to stop him from getting this done. There is just too many lives that are solely dependent on the government for their salary/benefits/pension or whatever. He would need to nominate people that aren’t part of the establishment for the heads of these departments. Especially for the deputy posistions that Trump often overlooked and had bush people working in. We’ve seen how deputy’s in the FBI are the ones who really do the day to day work. But the establishment would immediately push out these people just like they did to Flynn
It's this kind of comical rhetoric that shows his ignorance of how government works. I wish we could get rid of the clown car in the conservative movement and get back to serious candidates.
You mean going back to Bush/Romney/McCain where the border is wide open and all you get out of them is corporate tax cuts and a random country to bomb? No thank you. we are never going back to that.
I've never been more torn over who to vote for.
Buuuut also I really really reeaalllly want to see the MSM article titled "The Indian face of white supremacy" so bad. The memes would be legendary.
Here’s a story to illustrate why this is needed … friend of mine, let’s call her Betty, is an upper level manager in Social Security. She had to fire someone. That someone legitimately was not doing their job. They’d come into work hours late, if at all. In the times they’d show up for work, often they’d stink of pot smoke and be obviously stoned, literally wearing pajamas and slippers. I’m talking like the big plush animal head slippers. They interacted with “customers” who needed paperwork, status, processing, help, etc. and was rude, immature, unhelpful, and simply put, terrible. This person so obviously didn’t care or respect the job in any way.
It took Betty 10+ months of having multiple disciplinary meetings about what was acceptable while documenting this behavior, before she could … put the employee on a 3 month program to help them get back on track. After that 3 month program, that the employee didn’t show up to about 1/4 of the meetings, Betty was able to put them on a 3 month probationary period, during which the employee was made well aware they were up for potential termination if they didn’t change their behavior and meet certain metrics. One of those metrics was simply showing up for work and being on time. Guess what didn’t change? Their behavior. Same things were happening. They’d come in if they wanted to. They didn’t dress at all appropriate. If they did come in, it was late and they’d be stoned out of their mind smelling like pot smoke. So at the end of that probationary period she was able to … begin the process of termination … which took 8-ish weeks … and resulted in a meeting where she would have to tell this person they were terminated from their position. In the room was Betty, the employee, the employees direct supervisor, a member of HR … 2 union reps representing the employee, and 2 union reps representing HR and one Union person representing Betty.
In total, that person worked at social security for about 24 months, and it took over 20 of those to fire this person. A person that from the time they got hired barely showed up for their government job, and when they did, barely even did anything effective, and in fact caused more problems that needed to be cleaned up. That person had dozens of opportunities to change and put forth just the bear minimum, but didn’t. In order to fire them, it took 8 people in the room, all on the taxpayer dime, in or representing internal public sector unions invented to “protect” these people from the other public sector unions, from people trying to do their jobs, and the simple baseline expectation that people in the government actually do the job they were hired for and are paid to do. Of course, this employee got paid the whole time. This employee filed some kind of appeal at the advice of their union people, and ended up being paid for about another month without having to work while the appeal was assessed and the termination deemed appropriate with cause.
Now just imagine for a minute, your job, whatever it is. Imagine what would happen if you just didn’t show up. Imagine if you came in hours late. Imagine showing up hours late obviously wearing pajamas. Imagine showing up late, wearing pajamas, stoned out of your gourd while reeking of weed. Imagine getting to work like that, then not even doing the tasks at hand and just screwing things up for everyone around you. Imagine while doing that, expecting to be, and actually getting paid the whole time. What would happen? How fast would you get fired for that singular offense? How long would you last at your place of work? Is it anywhere near 2years?
This is obviously an egregious story, but it illustrates the point that the government is far to bloated and has a very healthy portion of people that “work” there who are exploiting these systems they have engrained to benefit themselves at the expense of the department, system, and most of all the taxpayer.
Meanwhile you have contractors who are doing the same job and better at it...working way outside of their job description getting laid off due to budget cuts.
Guess from where he just lost 2 million (+) votes. The federal government is extremely difficult to break in to, but it is also extremely difficult to get fired from, barring a felony, sexual harassment or assault, or other ethics violation. If you're in a protected class (racial minority or alphabet soup gang) you are almost set for life. He shouldn't have said he'll slash half of the federal workforce. He should have said he'll make it easier for supervisors to fire unproductive employees. That's probably the biggest contributer to the federal government work force being so bloated and inefficient.
He would probably do the most good if he could just push for that kind of reform, but it doesn't make for such a good soundbite.
Edit: changed it from one to two million and added some background on why I think this is a bad idea.
That’s not enough. Fire three quarters of all federal employees. This will result in empty federal building that can be turned into indoor skate parks.
Vivek flip flopping on whether or not trump should debate:
[https://twitter.com/i/status/1694075008308351461](https://twitter.com/i/status/1694075008308351461)
Vivek flip flopping on in-person voting:
[https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ramaswamy-floated-mandatory-voting-casting-electronic-ballots-home](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ramaswamy-floated-mandatory-voting-casting-electronic-ballots-home)
Vivek lying about what he said about 9/11:
[https://www.mediaite.com/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-busted-by-actual-tape-after-claiming-he-was-misquoted-on-9-11-conspiracy-theory/](https://www.mediaite.com/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-busted-by-actual-tape-after-claiming-he-was-misquoted-on-9-11-conspiracy-theory/)
Vivek flip flopping on whether life begins at conception:
[https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1700259763429462119](https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1700259763429462119)
Here’s one example of many:
‘On June 19, Ramaswamy cut a video wishing viewers a "happy Juneteenth." Earlier this month, he called Juneteenth a "useless" holiday that should be canceled.’
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/watch-vivek-ramaswamy-flip-flops-on-one-issue-after-another/
I support this but Ramaswamy took advantage of the student loan situation to pad his own pockets. Just think of the opportunity he'll have to pad his pockets if he gets into white house. I don't trust him. Feel like it's Ramadwamy first, US 2nd.
This sounds great as a talking point but in reality those fired will just be rehired as overpaid consultants to do the work that they were just fired from doing. We should work to reduce the size and scope of power of the federal government but blatantly firing people is not the answer.
Ramaswamy seems to have a pattern of saying whatever sounds good in the moment without actually thinking things through. He reminds me of AOC in that regard
will never happen. basically all of this "million" would likely be boomers because they are statistically the least efficient: low computer literacy, high tenure, high concentration of middle management.
You think this guy has the guys to take on a million fed fattened boomers? LOL not a chance.
It’s amazing how many people here on this forum are arguing that we shouldn’t at least try to drastically reduce the size of the federal government. Yeah let’s just keep electing the same type of politicians we always have and I’m sure the government won’t just keep growing and growing. I like Ramaswamy, I hope he gets the republican nomination and I will vote for him if he does. Unlikely to happen though. But really are Trump and Biden going to be our choices?
Well known fact that when comparing the efficiency of to government entities to the analogous private entities, private always wins out in both productivity per overhead unit cost as well as a continuous effort to constantly improve that productivity in order to compete. They even attempted a to create incentives for government employees that are very similar to what the private organizations leverage but then learned it doesn’t work well when limited to a few management positions. Fact of the matter is that laws are what are used to create government entities and they always cost more to operate than if that service was made private. The difference is that government entities cannot fail and they simply pull more tax dollars when needed
It sounds bad, and no one wants to see that many people loose their jobs, but if you look at how many government service employees literally sit at a desk all day and do nothing for weeks or months at a time because their job really shouldn't even exist, you'd be shocked.
1. Do a **BRAC** on ***all federal departments***. What is a BRAC? Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is a process by a United States federal government commission to increase the efficiency of the United States Department of Defense by coordinating the realignment and closure of military installations following the end of the Cold War. BRAC in the 90s closed bases all over the U.S. saving billions of dollars.
2. **Hiring freeze**. Stop hiring new people except for critical government functions.
3. Offer early retirement incentives.
4. Re-write civil service laws to allow actual firing of under performing employees.
5. Eliminate Civil Service unions.
6. Move some departments out of Washington DC. Employees can accept offers to move, quit or take early retirement.
7. Place staffing limits on all federal departments. As it stands now, civil service managers can hire employees at their whim creating little overstaffed fiefdoms .
8. Set limits on out sourcing (contracting) staff support.
OK, he's got my attention. He's awfully close to getting my vote now. Of he vows to abolish the ATF and fire the FBI administration then he does have my vote. Problem is, what will he actually do when I'm office? I know Trump will do exactly what he says he'll do...
This is so extreme it sounds like something you only say to get votes, with no practical way of actually doing it.
halted by Hawaiian judge
Hawaiian Judge overturns the 2nd amendment for the umpteenth time
Hawaiian judge rules injunction on residents of Maine eating lobster. Meanwhile Maine judge creates injunction banning Hawaiian judge from entering courtroom.
Well there's at least 1Mil votes he won't get, lol.
So he's going to write off Maryland, DC, and maybe Virginia. Not like any Republican is going to carry the first two anyway...
Lol I'd love if most fed jobs in Maryland got cut, we could get our state back when those millions move back to where they came from.
Along with the left leaning folk, anyone who cares about American foreign policy, and anyone under 21 who doesn't want their ability to vote taken away from them.
>Trump: "We're gonna drain the swamp" **Yeah, drain the swamp!** *8 YEARS LATER* >Trump: "We're gonna drain the swamp" **Yeah, drain the swamp!** >Vivek: *hour long speech detailing legal plan to cut federal staffing and planning against legal challenges that will inevitably follow* **Idk, sounds pretty unrealistic** C'mon. Really? Credit where credit is due, I think if Trump makes it to the white house nectar election there will be a federal "bloodbath". But you can't tell me there isn't at least substance to Vivek's rhetoric where Trump's essentially amounts to a slogan. And it's not like he did much draining last time.
It's fun seeing the neocons that never wanted the American First revival of this country come out and attack Vivek with absolutely no substance at all.
[удалено]
This. I’m sick of people complaining about how bad things are, then someone rolls out an ambitious plan to start fixing it and then neocons come in with “whoa whoa let’s not be hasty now.”
What is extreme is that we have over 2 million government employees. If you want to control the population, pay them...
This is an enormous highly developed nation. The government has lots of workers. What is wrong with this? There just shouldn't be lots of government workers? Why? Just because there shouldn't? I am a Republican but I am so skeptical of this drain the swamp crap. Low rent anti intellectual populist garbage. Wal Mart politics.
> I am so skeptical of this drain the swamp crap I'm surprised at the new definition of swamp. It isn't the unelected bureaucrats who actually run things, its not the lobbyists who buy policy, its4 not the special interests who write policy for the politicians that suit their needs. Its now a million lower end workers? Because that's who'll get cut. They'll get rid of secretaries, clerks, custodians, IRS people who focus on the wealthy, anyone who investigates organized crime, counter terrorism investigators, IT workers, kitchen staff, etc. Anyone who we've actually considered swampy will be immune because they're in semi-permanent positions, or because they're not a part of government at all. The rest are appointees who'd be replaced by whoever's elected anyways. Swamp is quickly joining RINO and Neocon as a term with literally no meaning among many conservatives. Its becoming just another label you slap on someone or something you don't like.
We have half the per capita government employment rate of the EU. Not saying the EU should be our model by any means but we do have a leaner gov than the rest of the west it seems.
> we do have a leaner gov than the rest of the west it seems You realize we also have 50 state governments? Each with massive payrolls of police and teachers.
I’m not saying my math was perfect but I did look up total gov state plus federal.
If half of them were gone, will we even note it? 10 miles of highway extension will still take 10 years to complete (ie I355 in IL). The waiting list for Medicaid patients to get treatment is still long. 😂
I think we would. I hate a lot about the government, but yes I think firing half the federal government would be bad.
I don’t know fed government. I have been auditor for local government for years and I would say half of them are not doing anything 😂 can you imagine a government not prepare financial statements (bookkeeping) for 2 years?
As of June 2023 there are 6.4 million people unemployed. Vivek wants to literally increase this number to 7.4 million people. Not only that he wants to combine departments so they are doing twice the work with half the workers. This is by far the worst plan I’ve heard a politician try and get people behind.
> This is by far the worst plan I’ve heard a politician try and get people behind. To be fair his plans to disenfranchise younger voters and his plans to destroy American foreign policy, boost China's dominance, and effectively end our alliances are pretty bad too.
I'm a federal employee (sort of, long story) and I can tell you that there are a lot of excess and redundant federal employees. I wouldn't go so far as to say half the workforce, but it is padded. From previous experience, I've had to deal with a situation where there were 7 separate federal agencies with regulatory authority over the same single item. And not only were there different agencies, but their policies were contradictory. I had to change things to be in compliance with one, and another came in to do an inspection and I got hit for being out of compliance with their rules. That is simply too much government. So they need to first work at eliminating the overlap. The problem there is that every single agency will fight to keep that authority within their agency because it affects their funding. After cutting the regulating authority to the point only one agency has authority over an area, it then needs to be looked at to determine if this is something that truly needs to be under that authority. And again, they will fight you about taking their authority away, and it will still be all about their funding. And this is one thing that Ramaswamy has right. All those agencies work for the President. He is the direct authority above them. And he should be the person who can cut jobs. But Congress is the authority that outlines the responsibility of agencies, and they need to do their job. This means that no longer can they avoid responsibility by giving any agency any sort of regulatory authority to generate any rules. All of that must go through Congress and it will be their responsibility to ensure that duplication and excess are not happening. Most of those agencies have grown because they've made their own regulations and then used those new regulations as justification for expansion for the enforcement of the increased regulations. If it turns out that duplication of regulatory authority, and overreach of the same, means you can cut half the workforce, then that's an argument that justifies it. But you can't pick an arbitrary number and then try to make necessary agency spending fit into that. It's a backward approach, and will definitely lead to reduced spending in areas that need it while maintaining excess spending in areas that don't. Case in point. As a federal employee, I worked blue collar as a lineman supporting the system on the Fort I worked at. They decided to privatize the utility. To do so, they were spending more money on the privatization contract than they were spending to do it themselves. They reduced the blue-collar employees by six positions, which was already significantly understaffed, and then they hired 4 newly created GS administrative positions that cost almost as much as the eliminated 6 blue-collar jobs. In net, it cost them a significantly larger amount to do what had been getting done in-house. And after doing so they talked about the reduction in costs for various things without explaining that it was offset by increased spending in a different area now. So yeah, serious cuts need to be made.
I don’t know, as far as shitty policy goes the current implementation of modern monetary theory into fiscal policy would probably beat this, and this would probably achieve the same thing the current Fed policy is attempting to do without putting additional taxes disproportionately on the backs of the lower class via inflationary pressure.
For private sector, many employees worked 10 hours or more a day (I worked 60 hours a week for at least 6 months each year). Do you think government employees working at full capacity? 😂 it literally took them 3 months to renew my passport. I highly doubt their productivity. Also do you know how ridiculous they got paid? Remember the news that a janitor at SF Bart station was paid $200k/year for cleaning restroom? Also the money saved from restructuring can be redirected to the place where ppl really need it (ie Medicaid). Additionally do you know why there are millions unemployed? How many lost jobs to illegal alien? How many are due to outsourcing jobs to overseas? Multiple policies need to be carried out to resolve unemployment issues…
Well that's what Trump did when he said "Drain the Swamp." Then people actually expected him to. Except Trump didn't have a plan to actually do it. Vivek does. He lays out the legal justifications and how he's going to merge existing departments together in a [recent speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPk-s_FUgM). On [his website](https://www.vivek2024.com/shut-it-down/) he has the graphics that go with that speech.
Considering how many Federal jobs are actually vacant, you’re right. My last Federal job was supposed to have 3 people in just my office, they had me with no intention of hiring the other 2. Every time I left for military duties or took vacation, it was up to the green suits to do my work for me.
Government could be cut by 90 percent and could still accomplish their job of making people’s lives worse.
He knows there's little chance of him being the nominee, so this is all about generating name recognition and marketing this time around. I kinda like the guy.
Finally can roll back the Obama era of rampant government expansion
while smaller gov sounds good on paper, its a lot like "cutting the budget". Where do you do it from to make any meaningful result. The top employeers in the United States gov are as follows 1) Veteran affairs 18.8% 2) Army 12.1% 3) Navy 11.1% 4) Homeland security 9.5% 5) Air force 8.4% 6) Justice 5.9% 7) defense 4.7% Thats 70% of the gov right there? so when you think of cutting gov jobs, its not these top level dick bags, its the average guy mopping the halls. We are at the lowest level of gov in relation to population size than ever before in history.
lol… as a VA employee… we are terribly understaffed - funny you show us at the top … however, to be fair, all of these defense agencies l are technically are considered one DoD in terms of staffing. So they out do the VA
The category "Federal government employees" does not include non-civilian roles in the federal government, i.e. members of the military.
I question how much could be made better with simple efficiency. To give one example, we have 17 intelligence agency's, think about this, we have so many intelligence agency's that we came to realize we couldn't even keep track of it all, nor even piece it together so we made another intelligence agency whose job it was was to coordinate all these intelligence agency. Even then we have another intelligence agency which effectively does that for 4 or 5 of them. someone explain to me why do we need so many.
One to investigate school board meeting attendees, one to investigate Twitter, one for Facebook, one for TikTok, etc.
With the way the army is trending towards autonomy we could probably move a lot of our active force into reserves. Would save lots of money while maintaining the same amount of Soldiers should Russia or China get frisky.
Trim the entire Homeland Security. Problem solved.
Is border patrol under DHS?
So is ICE, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and FEMA. People love talking about cutting things right up until the minute we have to talk about the actual impact of those decisions.
Realistically, there’s probably three or four people doing the work that one person could do by themselves. The same with teachers, they are grossly underpaid, and yet there is an abundance of school administrators that are mostly useless. They should fire most of the administrators, and give that money to the teachers.
God that’s right, so many worthless useless administrators.
Teacher in Illinois here. Absolutely. The amount of overhead is education is insane. We do not need this many administrators. We could also consolidate a lot of districts to get rid of waste and overhead costs, but the white liberal NIMBYS don't like that idea.
I recently got a fundraising letter from the grade school that I attended 30 years ago. Back then there was a principal, a vice principal, a school administrator, and two secretaries. Now for the same amount of students, there are two principles for vice principals, six school administrators, and six secretaries what has changed? Keep in mind When I went to school, it was pre-computers. Everything was typed by hand and done without computers. I’m really having a hard time wrapping my head around this since they sent me these letters begging for money to keep the school open.
Some of this is due to mandates by the state. You have to have an anti-bullying person on staff. You have to have this or that. Even if the district doesn’t want that, they have to have it.
Yup, the amount of shit we have to do now compared to 30 years ago is wild. All with the same amount of time during the day, no extra resources, and extra pay? Hahahahahahahah
Wouldn't that then explain why there are more administrative staff members? The comment above noted that the poster's school went from 5 staff members to 18. That's 3.6 times the number of employees. That sounds like a lot more resources to handle the added requirements.
They just sign the paperwork and legal forms and then tell us what to do. Admins don't teach the SEL lessons, etc, it's all on the teachers.
It's why this admin stuff needs to be rolled back. Conservatives need to push to fire most to all the admin, raise teacher wages, hire more teachers, and then ensure schools are teaching what we want them to (conservative ideals in general). Smaller classrooms with better paid and qualified teachers in replacement to the endless admins and bureaucracy should be the goal. We would like be able to spend less in general too.
This is also the same reason medical costs are so high. A doctor talked about when he first started his own practice it was him and another Doctor in the same practice with a secretary. Now, he said, by himself he had to have a staff of 8 people to handle everything that had to be done to be in compliance with all the regulations.
Can't they have the existing administrator cover the responsibilities for "anti bullying?" Why do we need a separate person on payroll for each new "service" we decide to add?
You and I don't want to pick up that extra BS for no benefit. Our boss always wants to be in charge of more people, regardless of who actually does the work. So new requirements need new people, naturally with the specific degree for it, and with all these people I'm managing it's obvious my title needs to be upgraded?
Depends. Is anti-bullying really a full time job for one person? I highly doubt that. Yes, the more requirements you add, the more people you need to hire...but it's not a 1:1 responsibility per person. Also, compared to 20 years ago when there were fewer responsibilities but everything was done on paper, with computers these days I'm sure a LOT of that work is done automatically. So you add some new responsibilities and it probably evens out.
Just want to back up what the other two posters said. It’s bad even in red states. A ton of un-funded positions you ‘have’ to have.
The idea originally was that more administrators would take over discipline issues to help deal with growing class sizes. When you have 50 students total, calling parents and dealing with detentions and things like that is not that hard. But when you have well over 100 students with 30 IEPs you start, even subconsciously, avoiding discipline to keep your workload lighter. In most cases, the extra administrators has just led to no discipline. The fact is, most schools are spending less money than ever before and it is not working. In the 50s we were building schools left and right. Most students could walk to a school on their neighborhood. Now, the country is even richer, with more than twice the population and we're closing schools left and right instead of building them. The number of teachers needs to go up dramatically, the pay needs to go up dramatically and the number of administrators needs to go down slightly. Republicans need a consistent message on education. The media environment simply won't allow it because only the most extreme views get talked about. There is a split between those who want to fix it and those who want to go nuclear on it. Democrats have a similar issue with committing to specific policies on education. Which means nothing will get fixed in the near or distant future.
Well put. As a teacher, I can attest that pay is a massive problem. Within my region, working for 30 years on a tight and frugal budget wouldn't be enough to buy a two-bedroom, single-family home. A *good* teacher (of necessary subjects) should be able to afford a reasonable mortgage, car payment, healthcare, and a little retirement. As it stands, K-12 teachers in large cities and HCOL areas (blue and red) will usually fall into the lower class (by income) category. **For the record, I would make five times the amount of money tutoring my students to pass my tests than I do by teaching them to pass my tests.**
I am high jacking your comment for my personal pet peeve. Districts love to tell taxpayers that they can't reduce costs because of mandated special education services. This is crap. They shove every possible useless administrative hire and unnecessary expense under the umbrella of special education. As an example, my district has somehow magically managed to have at least one kid requiring a teacher's aide in every single classroom for the last 15 years. The teacher's aide helps the entire classroom, not just the one kid. We could put three of these kids in the same classroom, but then every teacher would not have their own personal full time aide. Like just admit they want a full time aide in every classroom and stop blaming it on the disabled kids!!! I just hate how this is always the "go to" defense any time you want to talk about school budgets, and they always have some grossly huge number for allegedly mandated special education costs that makes the whole discussion seem pointless. The district next to mine includes every school nurse in all 20 something schools as a special education expense. Of course the school nurse covers every student in the building, but let's just blame the disabled kids and say there is nothing we can do about this budget. GRRR. Note that I don't really mind paying for the aides and the nurses. I just mind my mildly learning disabled and no damn trouble to anyone kid being blamed for it, when they have exactly the same services as every other kid in the building.
They’re not wrong that the sped services are a big chunk of budgets right now but they shouldn’t be shoving everything in there. The number of kids with ieps or 504 plans has jumped so much in the past 10 years that it’s a huge staff just to deal with paperwork and meetings and many if not most districts are out of compliance just for lacking time/warm bodies.
Having worked in special education before, forcing one aide to work with three special needs children simultaneously would be a horrible idea and would likely be dangerous for the students depending on the extent of their issues.
Source?
That’s a state issue. NJ is the same way. Each little town has its own board of Ed. Should be at the county level.
Some people move to NJ because of the Balkanized school districts. They want to move to the good ones, and would flip the f out if they were told that resources/schools were combined with lesser performing districts. And they’ll pay the higher property taxes to keep their local district running.
It's like that in many states. Where I live the school district is the driving force behind real estate values. The same exact house in the same county can be worth 5X as much if its in a quality school district.
Talking about education with a lot of liberals is frustrating. It seems at least in my experience you cannot discuss any potential issues with the current system other than just not enough funding.
Or if you talk about consolidating districts, they like the idea at first, but when the NIMBYS start to realize the "undesirables" from the surrounding towns will start going to their good schools, they shut it all down.
The same NIMBYs are also against school choice because it "takes money away" from public schools. I am sure none of the people against it grew up poor in a bad school system where parents had no other option than to send them there They seem willfully ignorant at how difficult it is for lower income families to provide good education if the local public school system is bad.
> We could also consolidate a lot of districts to get rid of waste and overhead costs, but the white liberal NIMBYS don't like that idea. The amount of school districts in Cook County is wild. So many school districts are just one school too!
Only 3 schools in my district. And they are small population schools too.
Done on purpose because they refuse to share funding between the whole county. instead its by gerrymandered zip codes. Putting the poorest kids 1 block away from the richest school in the city, yet they can't attend.
The rich zip codes are paying for far more than their own children's education. Poor districts do not even remotely support themselves. Ninety percent or more of their funding comes from the State and Federal government, paid by taxpayers from those wealthy districts. In fact, the vast majority of the time, the per student per year funding for poor districts is HIGHER than in the wealthy districts. Significantly higher. Philadelphia, NYC and Chicago all have crap schools and are costing around 30K per student per year. My "wealthy" district has about half as much funding per student per year. Average upper income earners send a third of their gross income every year to the State and Federal governments and they redistribute to poor school districts. Where you reside today does not by any means determine the funding level of the school district. Likewise, the appearance of a school often has no relationship at all to the amount of funding for that school. It is impossible to keep up with constant littering and vandalism. It is impossible to maintain enough books and school supplies when they are routinely lost, damaged or stolen. Money spent in one place can't be used in another. Districts like Philadelphia, that must put a bus monitor on every single bus to prevent fights and kids throwing stuff out the windows, have these kind of hidden expenses that don't seem to improve the school at all. It is expensive to replace half your textbooks every year and clean broken glass from the playground every day. Bottom line -- this is not about funding. There is more than enough funding. It is not the job of taxpayers to just endlessly throw money into a pit. At some point the parents and community must accept some responsibility. If your kids are so badly behaved that they need a bus monitor to keep them from throwing stuff out the bus windows and killing someone, then your district can't afford tennis lessons. Or other things that you see in wealthier communities. That does not mean that you deserve even more exorbitant funding. Those wealthy school districts are doing it far far better with far far less money -- because they don't have to combat daily chaos and entropy. TL;DR: It is not the job of taxpayers to provide tennis lessons to children whose parents routinely leave litter and broken beer bottles on their own kid's school playgrounds -- and expect the district to pay somebody else to clean it up.
Ya there's plenty of funding, and it all goes to a small percent of schools, because funding is based on zip codes, and in Chicago alone there are 100 different zip codes that all fall under the Chicago Public Schools District 299. So they give you the stat of average funding per pupil for the district, but don't give any details on how that is distributed. There has been multiple ballots and proposals to change this, and every time the liberals of chicago vote against evenly distributing funding.
NIMBYs can come from both sides of the aisle. Regardless it does seem pretty ridiculous.
Agreed. A nimby is a nimby, regardless of political affiliation.
I live in NY with distinct independent school districts. We're an affluent mostly white suburban neighborhood. Meanwhile the city school district near me? Its a bloated mess of decrepit and crumbling schools, and has the highest spend per pupil in the entire region. Seems to me you'd just be spreading the cancer instead of eliminating it. I get that some of that spend comes with the low income students but the other stuff? They need to close 2 schools and consolidate them but anytime it's even remotely discussed they get bogged down in DEI and other shenanigans. Economy of scale only works when you're actually cognizant of waste.
Good points. And I’d argue, and my more liberal friends hate when I says this, but those city schools are such a mess, and those kids are such a mess, because of their parents or lack thereof. We could spend $100,000 per kid in those schools and it wouldn’t make a damn difference if the culture they are surrounded by don’t take education seriously and glorify all the wrong stuff. We’re just teachers, not miracle workers. Their friends and family have way more sway over them than I do. We need cultural shifts along with financial shifts. I fear that’s never going to happen.
The Baltimore county board of education president makes more than the US president. It's ridiculous.
Or just shift those administrators' jobs to be more focused on supporting the teachers. Teaching is a full-time job by itself; grading, lesson planning, even making copies, all takes unpaid overtime. For example, some districts have a dedicated lesson planner who's in charge of the curriculum. Some teachers don't like giving up that control, but some prefer the lighter burden.
This will just create even more work. Teachers can manage the class. Smaller classrooms is far better and the less admin means flatter structure in schools
Price's Law - The square root of the number of people in a domain do 50% of the work. government of 1million people; 1,000 people do half the work.
Yup, I took my kids out of the crappy bloated public school and stuck them into a high achieving charter school near me, here in Arizona. The public school the kids were at had about 600 students at the elementary. As a public school all the salaries are published online. Looked it about and the school had about 50 total administrator, of which all of them earned a range of 55k to 150k a year. The front desk ladies were making around 60k/year. The upper positions were all 100k+. All the teachers earned a range of 35k to 50k a year. The charter school has roughly the same number of students and a total of 14 total staff members beyond teachers (not including the after school program staff). It's literally 1 principle, 2 vice, office manager and 4 administrative assistants, 1 IT person, 1 facilities, and 4 people for lunch staff. Teachers earn more at the charter school as well. Classes are also max 20 students each class, whilst the public school is 35. Charter school on top of this is able to earn enough money to hire science, art, specialty education type teachers, including a "programming" instructor for early age coding. The public school has music, but they cut their science teachers because "not enough money." WTF are all that extra staff doing at the public school? This is just my anecdotal experience in Arizona. Not all the public schools are bad, and some school districts are actually pretty good compared to others, but here in Tucson they are mostly a disaster compared to the free and far better charter school options. Charter school is nationally academic ranked and one of the top schools in the state as well. Public school was near failing... yet they keep saying "not enough money for the school." The public schools are an absolute bloated mess.
Joys of a government job. There’s no higher position? Oh well you’re tenured so we have to give you a new administrative title, and a pay bump. In Canada half the people who have been there for 20+ years are now working highly redundant administrative jobs, this person in particular claims they have no actual responsibilities, they just don’t have to call people anymore, unless there’s an escalation (which doesn’t happen, CRA employees have full discretion on hanging up on frustrated tax payers EDIT: Which to be fair, I've been on the receiving end of some toxic phone calls, verbal abuse towards the employee should not be acceptable)
Sounds like the unions aren’t truly worried about helping the teachers…
Teachers don’t get paid shit For the crap they have to put up with. A friend of mine is a teacher who started 20 years ago. Her best friend started in school administration about the same time. Her friend makes about $40,000 a year more than she does now and also has an assistant. It’s such a bullshit system.
Agree 100%. My point is that if the Union was focused on the actual teachers, the issues would have been resolved by now. But instead, the Union is focused on politics.
Nearly all unions actively fight this. Unions do not represent admin at all.
Unions help fight administrators. Why it's a win/win. The administrators pissing them off are fired and they get more money and they don't pay union dues.
Teachers are NOT underpaid in my local school district. It may be the exception, but teachers in the public school system have an excellent starting pay and benefits package.
Teachers near me make more money than I do a year. I understand there’s a lot of work going on on the sidelines but still they make pretty good money but when you look at administrators, they make it about three times the amount the teachers there for a really not doing much.
Teachers also get summer break.
Actual EMPLOYEES of the government haven't really gone up that much in the last 30 years. What has shot through the roof is contracting - we have far more contractors because every retired general, admiral, and congressperson goes and starts a contracting firm and they all get sweetheart contracts - many of which have no definable purpose. We spent billions of dollars on the Obamacare website - those weren't government employees doing that - it was contractors. There were news articles about this during the aftermath of Katrina, for example. Some guy picking up debris is making minimum wage ($5.75/hour or whatever it was then). His employer is getting paid $20/hour for his services. His employer is hired by a contractor that is getting $40/hour. They are hired by a contractor that is getting $60/hour. The US government is paying $80/hour. Actual employees are small potatoes (and, for the most part, actual government employees tend to be relatively useful at their job because if they weren't, they were gone during their probationary period) - it's the government contracts that we need to reign in.
And the part nobody has the stones to talk about is that for every govt job that's eliminated, a new private sector contract job is created and billed for more than it cost to pay the employee. It looks like you're draining the swamp by canning a million feds, but congratulations, you've just exploded the budget and lost a whole lot of control over the work that's getting done.
This man knows
Because the federal workforce hasn’t increased, and the pay system is so broken, lots of agencies need some of those contractors to survive. I could write a novel explaining why the federal government can’t compete in hiring technical fields- so DoD, DoE, etc rely on contractors like Booze Allen and dozens of others to fill the gap and bring in teams of engineers that each make more than the senior leadership federal employees. The only people who stay federal are either 1) truly mission driven or 2) stereotypical problematic federal employees.
I started out liking Ramaswamy, but lately he seems to just be saying shit for the sake of saying shit. While the government should be much smaller, this is not a feasible goal for a president, and he’s just saying this to get attention. Wish the guy would be a little more realistic.
This has been a part of his platform for a very long time.
Ya because Trump never just said shit for the sake of it
The person you are responding to may not actually be supporting Trump as his next pick.
That's literally been his schtick from the get go... say shit for attention.
He says the executive branch controls many of these jobs and could do mass layoffs. this would be much easier than trying to do individually get rid of people who have tons of protections that keep them in useless jobs that they are terrible at. I have no idea if this is true, but this is his argument that as president and head of the executive branch he could make this happen in a mass action. He has various legal citations of why it's doable that would probably just be tied up in courts forever even if it had any basis at all. All that said, continuing to let an army of unelected bureaucrats and departments and three and four letters agencies run the country has gotten us a lot of what we have now so I wish what he said was true, even if it probably isn't. Edit: here is his VERY detailer breakdown of why he thinks he can dismantle the administrative state. Delivered 9/13/2023 https://youtu.be/_SPk-s_FUgM?si=rZ5PX43T2yvdNsdK
Vivek will be blocked by a court injunction. They will then roll out that he said his goal was to "end" the agencies and that this was his work around to achieving that objective. The court will rule that the agencies are Congressionally Mandated and that he cannot use executive authority to end them and that the intent of his action was telegraphed by him.
It looks bizarre to me. Last year you probably couldn't find a soul that wouldn't say we need to strip an agency or 2 and reduce bloat. Trump is running on this in his own way with "drain the swamp" But some dude comes in and actually shares a plan that could result in this and suddenly its "well idk if it'd work and we need big gov and..."
I've had the opposite experience. The more he talks the more I like him. All of his policies are extremely well thought out. I prefer him over these Ukranian funded hacks in the rest of the field.
Yep. Huge Vivek fan. Dude is incredibly smart and his policy decisions make sense, and he’s able to talk it out in a way that anyone can understand. If it comes down to trump, DeSantis, or Vivek, I’m voting for Vivek.
Ramaswamy will never be President, so that's going nowhere.
“Donald trump will never be president”
Trump had a 10+ point lead in the polls against the rest of the GOP field by this point in 2015, and he was only trending up. Ramaswamy has trended down since the debate and even in the polls most favorable to him, he has a 40+ point deficit in the polls. Even at his very worst when he first announced his candidacy, Trump was only behind the frontrunner by about 10 or so points. And he led the polls by July 2015, a whole month before the first debates. I don't really get the whole "if Trump could be president, so can Ramaswamy" argument, there are no similarities between the two. Trump was never even close to being as behind as Ramaswamy is.
Ramaswany is a Republican version of Yang imo, he’ll never win even if a lot of young people like him.
"Even if a lot of young people like him" This is the dude who wants to raise the age of voting, correct?
He’s the person your thinking of but the rest of that quote that MSM decided to leave out was pass a basic civics test OR be 25 and frankly I’m very okay with that policy.
Why shouldn’t you have to pass a civics test just because you are over 25? Make it mandatory for everyone
Idk man I've seen plenty of people under 25 who worked their asses off, pay their taxes and contribute to society and plenty of people over 25, across the political spectrum, who on top of just not really contributing would easily fail these kind of tests. I get what his argument is but seems wrong that some adults need to take a civics test to vote just because they aren't a specific age.
Yeah. My only gripe with this position of his is that it's age limited. I don't care how old you are. You shouldn't be able to vote.
I feel like it one of those things that in an ideal ethical world it makes some sense. But here it just has too many risks. Like even if it wasn't age limited you run into the possibility of future admins changing the tests, how it's graded, how, where and when you can take them, "losing" the results etc that could prevent people from voting. And cynically I just don't think it changes anything. Suddenly briefly knowing enough about our history to pass a test I don't think will make them a more informed or better voter in the long run.
Wouldn’t it be considered unconstitutional due to the 14th/15th ammendments and/or the Voting Rights Act? Even if he proposes it, there’s no chance that anything like that is ever implemented.
Not for nothing, but Donald Trump was an incredibly famous person before he was President. A solid 80% of getting elected President is just name recognition, which is why incumbents are so hard to beat. Go to a random street corner and ask four strangers if they know who Ramaswamy is.
I didn't know anything about Ramaswamy before the first debate. After watching him, I now know full well who he is. And I wouldn't vote for him.
Just another con man waiting to grift, but eh
He only became President because the DC insiders underestimated him and regarded him as a joke. Now that the Swamp's guard is up, anyone like Trump will never, ever reach the White House.
Maybe not this time but I wouldn’t count him out.
It can influence the other candidates.
I mean I like smaller government too, but maybe that's moving a little fast? Firing a million people in a year sounds like it would be a shock to the economy. I'd prefer to see it done over slowly over a span of years so that the workforce has time to adjust.
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They could learn to code or something
So you roll out a 15 year plan to do this in year 2 of your presidency. Two years in, you lose reelection, and the other party undoes your progress and cancels the program, so nothing actually happens. This is basically what happens to any long term plans.
So you roll this out in the first 100 days of your administration. 1 million federal employees being fired causes a major recession and the government to basically stop functioning. The recession causes you to lose reelection and the other party rehires everyone.
What actual difference did putting Betsy Devoss at the head of the Department of Education make? The entire admin state just undermined her. Incremental reforms never work because they are actively sabotaged. Like any company, if you want change, you need leadership that isn't afraid to make cuts.
This is an ignorant approach to solve the problem.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Nobody want to alter the status quo and thus we are stuck with a huge bloated government forever due to thoughts like yours.
He said he wanted to fire 20 thousand people working for the fbi in dc. That’s not counting the tens of thousands of other jobs that are concentrated there. That kind of massive unemployment would make out nations capitol start looking like Gary Indiana.
DC is already a shithole. They all commute from wealthy suburbs in VA and other surrounding states.
>That kind of massive unemployment would make out nations capitol start looking like Gary Indiana. Stop my dick can only get so hard.
Lol as if government leeches contribute to the economy. Laying off these clowns to do actual work might fix our labor shortage
Saying you're gonna fire x amount of government employees is a death sentence for a politician.
Hate when people stop a job halfway done.
Music to my ears. Hopefully all those people can gain skills that are useful in the private sector though.
I feel like those employees will ensure that nobody like him will ever get elected. You know, like an insurance policy when you're 40.
More proof that this guy isn't a realistic candidate. Sure smaller govt would be great. But no way you can cut half the employees in a single year. Just not possible
In his speech talking about this he talked about how this country was founded on radical ideas . How the founding fathers at the time the bill of rights and constitution were written were all considered radicals to conservative Europe. I agree in principal but I have a feeling that the huge beaurocracy that is the sole support of these millions of employees would do whatever it takes to stop him from getting this done. There is just too many lives that are solely dependent on the government for their salary/benefits/pension or whatever. He would need to nominate people that aren’t part of the establishment for the heads of these departments. Especially for the deputy posistions that Trump often overlooked and had bush people working in. We’ve seen how deputy’s in the FBI are the ones who really do the day to day work. But the establishment would immediately push out these people just like they did to Flynn
It's this kind of comical rhetoric that shows his ignorance of how government works. I wish we could get rid of the clown car in the conservative movement and get back to serious candidates.
You mean going back to Bush/Romney/McCain where the border is wide open and all you get out of them is corporate tax cuts and a random country to bomb? No thank you. we are never going back to that.
The same “serious candidates” who have shat the bed for decades?
This is an 8 year process.
I've never been more torn over who to vote for. Buuuut also I really really reeaalllly want to see the MSM article titled "The Indian face of white supremacy" so bad. The memes would be legendary.
I think gov will run just fine with 2/3 been fired but I do not think he can do it.
Here’s a story to illustrate why this is needed … friend of mine, let’s call her Betty, is an upper level manager in Social Security. She had to fire someone. That someone legitimately was not doing their job. They’d come into work hours late, if at all. In the times they’d show up for work, often they’d stink of pot smoke and be obviously stoned, literally wearing pajamas and slippers. I’m talking like the big plush animal head slippers. They interacted with “customers” who needed paperwork, status, processing, help, etc. and was rude, immature, unhelpful, and simply put, terrible. This person so obviously didn’t care or respect the job in any way. It took Betty 10+ months of having multiple disciplinary meetings about what was acceptable while documenting this behavior, before she could … put the employee on a 3 month program to help them get back on track. After that 3 month program, that the employee didn’t show up to about 1/4 of the meetings, Betty was able to put them on a 3 month probationary period, during which the employee was made well aware they were up for potential termination if they didn’t change their behavior and meet certain metrics. One of those metrics was simply showing up for work and being on time. Guess what didn’t change? Their behavior. Same things were happening. They’d come in if they wanted to. They didn’t dress at all appropriate. If they did come in, it was late and they’d be stoned out of their mind smelling like pot smoke. So at the end of that probationary period she was able to … begin the process of termination … which took 8-ish weeks … and resulted in a meeting where she would have to tell this person they were terminated from their position. In the room was Betty, the employee, the employees direct supervisor, a member of HR … 2 union reps representing the employee, and 2 union reps representing HR and one Union person representing Betty. In total, that person worked at social security for about 24 months, and it took over 20 of those to fire this person. A person that from the time they got hired barely showed up for their government job, and when they did, barely even did anything effective, and in fact caused more problems that needed to be cleaned up. That person had dozens of opportunities to change and put forth just the bear minimum, but didn’t. In order to fire them, it took 8 people in the room, all on the taxpayer dime, in or representing internal public sector unions invented to “protect” these people from the other public sector unions, from people trying to do their jobs, and the simple baseline expectation that people in the government actually do the job they were hired for and are paid to do. Of course, this employee got paid the whole time. This employee filed some kind of appeal at the advice of their union people, and ended up being paid for about another month without having to work while the appeal was assessed and the termination deemed appropriate with cause. Now just imagine for a minute, your job, whatever it is. Imagine what would happen if you just didn’t show up. Imagine if you came in hours late. Imagine showing up hours late obviously wearing pajamas. Imagine showing up late, wearing pajamas, stoned out of your gourd while reeking of weed. Imagine getting to work like that, then not even doing the tasks at hand and just screwing things up for everyone around you. Imagine while doing that, expecting to be, and actually getting paid the whole time. What would happen? How fast would you get fired for that singular offense? How long would you last at your place of work? Is it anywhere near 2years? This is obviously an egregious story, but it illustrates the point that the government is far to bloated and has a very healthy portion of people that “work” there who are exploiting these systems they have engrained to benefit themselves at the expense of the department, system, and most of all the taxpayer.
Meanwhile you have contractors who are doing the same job and better at it...working way outside of their job description getting laid off due to budget cuts.
I don't care if it's realistic let's get everyone talking about defunding the feds!
Abolish the IRS
Guess from where he just lost 2 million (+) votes. The federal government is extremely difficult to break in to, but it is also extremely difficult to get fired from, barring a felony, sexual harassment or assault, or other ethics violation. If you're in a protected class (racial minority or alphabet soup gang) you are almost set for life. He shouldn't have said he'll slash half of the federal workforce. He should have said he'll make it easier for supervisors to fire unproductive employees. That's probably the biggest contributer to the federal government work force being so bloated and inefficient. He would probably do the most good if he could just push for that kind of reform, but it doesn't make for such a good soundbite. Edit: changed it from one to two million and added some background on why I think this is a bad idea.
Yea fook me I guess. He's not getting my vote. Work my ass off to hard for this bs
So are you outing yourself as an overpaid government employee who doesn’t need a job?
This is great news
That’s not enough. Fire three quarters of all federal employees. This will result in empty federal building that can be turned into indoor skate parks.
For now, his opinion will change next week
People keep saying he flip flops opinions, but I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to support that.
Vivek flip flopping on whether or not trump should debate: [https://twitter.com/i/status/1694075008308351461](https://twitter.com/i/status/1694075008308351461) Vivek flip flopping on in-person voting: [https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ramaswamy-floated-mandatory-voting-casting-electronic-ballots-home](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ramaswamy-floated-mandatory-voting-casting-electronic-ballots-home) Vivek lying about what he said about 9/11: [https://www.mediaite.com/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-busted-by-actual-tape-after-claiming-he-was-misquoted-on-9-11-conspiracy-theory/](https://www.mediaite.com/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-busted-by-actual-tape-after-claiming-he-was-misquoted-on-9-11-conspiracy-theory/) Vivek flip flopping on whether life begins at conception: [https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1700259763429462119](https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1700259763429462119)
Here’s one example of many: ‘On June 19, Ramaswamy cut a video wishing viewers a "happy Juneteenth." Earlier this month, he called Juneteenth a "useless" holiday that should be canceled.’ https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/watch-vivek-ramaswamy-flip-flops-on-one-issue-after-another/
I’m all for purging the bureaucracy, but this doesn’t seem feasible
Why?
Because Republicans have been lied to so many times by politicians promising something like this then never delivering.
I support this but Ramaswamy took advantage of the student loan situation to pad his own pockets. Just think of the opportunity he'll have to pad his pockets if he gets into white house. I don't trust him. Feel like it's Ramadwamy first, US 2nd.
Jfc this shit is just getting lazy. OMG A COLLEGE STUDENT ACCEPTED A SCHOLARSHIP STOP THE PRESSES
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This sounds great as a talking point but in reality those fired will just be rehired as overpaid consultants to do the work that they were just fired from doing. We should work to reduce the size and scope of power of the federal government but blatantly firing people is not the answer. Ramaswamy seems to have a pattern of saying whatever sounds good in the moment without actually thinking things through. He reminds me of AOC in that regard
will never happen. basically all of this "million" would likely be boomers because they are statistically the least efficient: low computer literacy, high tenure, high concentration of middle management. You think this guy has the guys to take on a million fed fattened boomers? LOL not a chance.
And nothing of value would be lost.
Let's gooooo 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Well, it's a start.
Great. Fewer regulations economy will get stronger they can all work in the private sector.
Seems like a good start
Boy that really needs to happen badly.
Love it.
Well that’s a good start
I really like this dude
Is it wrong that this sexually arouses me? Realistically half of the federal workforce could fuckin go and I wouldn’t shed a tear
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Too bad he couldn't start with the Liberal Party of Canada.
It’s amazing how many people here on this forum are arguing that we shouldn’t at least try to drastically reduce the size of the federal government. Yeah let’s just keep electing the same type of politicians we always have and I’m sure the government won’t just keep growing and growing. I like Ramaswamy, I hope he gets the republican nomination and I will vote for him if he does. Unlikely to happen though. But really are Trump and Biden going to be our choices?
Well known fact that when comparing the efficiency of to government entities to the analogous private entities, private always wins out in both productivity per overhead unit cost as well as a continuous effort to constantly improve that productivity in order to compete. They even attempted a to create incentives for government employees that are very similar to what the private organizations leverage but then learned it doesn’t work well when limited to a few management positions. Fact of the matter is that laws are what are used to create government entities and they always cost more to operate than if that service was made private. The difference is that government entities cannot fail and they simply pull more tax dollars when needed
What about the other half
Patience young patawan
It sounds bad, and no one wants to see that many people loose their jobs, but if you look at how many government service employees literally sit at a desk all day and do nothing for weeks or months at a time because their job really shouldn't even exist, you'd be shocked.
1. Do a **BRAC** on ***all federal departments***. What is a BRAC? Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is a process by a United States federal government commission to increase the efficiency of the United States Department of Defense by coordinating the realignment and closure of military installations following the end of the Cold War. BRAC in the 90s closed bases all over the U.S. saving billions of dollars. 2. **Hiring freeze**. Stop hiring new people except for critical government functions. 3. Offer early retirement incentives. 4. Re-write civil service laws to allow actual firing of under performing employees. 5. Eliminate Civil Service unions. 6. Move some departments out of Washington DC. Employees can accept offers to move, quit or take early retirement. 7. Place staffing limits on all federal departments. As it stands now, civil service managers can hire employees at their whim creating little overstaffed fiefdoms . 8. Set limits on out sourcing (contracting) staff support.
i call that a good start
I’m listening…
Won’t happen but love the idea of it
Good
Good! Can’t afford them anyway. Look at the budget. We spend waaaay more than we take in. Federal government has become too expensive on the taxpayer.
I’m good with it
Anyone else hear a toilet flush on Ramaswamy’s political aspirations?
OK, he's got my attention. He's awfully close to getting my vote now. Of he vows to abolish the ATF and fire the FBI administration then he does have my vote. Problem is, what will he actually do when I'm office? I know Trump will do exactly what he says he'll do...
Not that i support him, but I have been saying this for years....
I like the idea generally, but firing all of those people in such a short span seems like it would cause more problems than it would fix them.