Obviously a lot of what’s been the bit issue the big topic of discussion here inside the Beltway Swamp over the past week has been going on with the various things the kids from DOGE have been finding as they investigate the behemoth that is the US Government.
there’s a ton of things that’d make an average person do a triple0take.
some of it has been hyperbolized, but the underlying issues remain. The corporate media focus on the bits that came out early in the week/late last week about Politico missing payroll.
The easy way to deflect this is to focus on the “good” things USAID did/does.
Maybe there’s things that they were doing that are completely justifiable. But it’s up to Congress to actually do the work, and lay those out. In specifics.
As is usually the case, I’m completely on the outside of “the two” camps. I’m a lot closer to Javier Milei‘s abuela approach.
I didn’t bookmark it, but there was someone who was taking about how USAID really just was a p inter-administration parking space for affluent young people who lost jobs when party control changed in the White House.
I’ll spare my more vulgar immediate responses from earlier in the week while readily admitting they were profane, but cry me a river, y’all.
So many of you have never had to worry about anything, ever.
OrangeManBad and the Nazi South African have screwed everything up. The only media outlet that matters said it, so it must be true.
(Forget all the stuff from the first Trump Administration; all of that was true, too…Random Aside: I see that WordPress has taken to counting a double-space after a semicolon as an error. GFY, y’all. Muscle memory guilt up in typing class….)
Returning to the first job I took after I left radio, I went back to the stations probably about six months after I’d left. I was speaking to the receptionist in the lobby, and the General Manager saw me through her office window. She excitedly ushered me in where she was talking to the station do-owner (her ex-husband).
She asked how I was liking my new job. I demurred and said something about liking a lot of the work I was doing, and things like travel. Even if it was to some less-than-wonderful places.
Her husband hadn’t said much, but was listening to my description. After a couple of minutes, he piped in, “they’re missin’ payroll.”
Shit. How do I respond to that? I didn’t want to confirm that it’d happened a couple of times, already, but been fixed within a few days. A bit of discomfort wasn’t really that big a deal with how much more they were paying me, right?
I’d moved back home after my dad had gone to Iraq again to help my mom care for the dogs and house. I’d met this Virginia Beach college student who, for whatever reason, had taken a liking to me, and I was set to rent an apartment near the Oceanfront.
Until they missed payroll again, and I didn’t have the money for the deposit.
On what, then, can I spend this extra money i have? Oh, I’ll pay off the small student loans I had to attend my state school.
Things moved along, and I tried my hardest to make this tiny company succeed. I was doing work both in product development, but also in capturing business. A significant amount of travel, and they’d just take sometimes months to reimburse me for my expenses.
During that time, too, I was having pain in my left eye. I attributed it to something that happened as my new girlfriend and I were trying to squeeze into her childhood twin bed together, but was probably an MS symptom. I went to an ophthalmologist after the incident (accidentally caught her elbow in my eye; as I said, we were trying to share a bed that was probably too small for me, alone…)
I started getting bills from the various providers I’d seen. Why? The company hadn’t paid our health insurance.
Part of the reason I took the job was to get health insurance, and move off the private plan I was paying a not-insignificant amount for.
Things continued to decline with the business. I continued to spend my own money to try to keep things going. They kept missing payroll, and being late with expense checks.
They didn’t pay the lease on the office where I was working in Chesapeake. I had to participate in an emergency move-out one weekend to make sure everything was gone before it was repossessed.
I was driving to and from Ashland (up near Kings Dominion) four days a week.
We started getting paid in paper checks furiously scribed by the company Treasurer on payday.
When I’d get a paycheck, I’d go to the company’s bank, cash it, and rive back to Bad Newz with a pocket full of cash to deposit into my credit union.
The same sort of thing was happening to the writers at Politico late last week/early this week. If you STFW for “Politico USAID,” you’ll see bits about how it was a rumor.
Debunked.
That they missed payroll, for whatever reason, is a story.
How can an organization that’s supposed to be a gold-standard of journalism be given any credit when they’re failing to meet the bare minimums as an employer? That the story got out so quickly says something, too. When I wasn’t getting paid, maybe, my girlfriend, a couple of close friends, and my parents knew about it. I certainly would have been very upset if any of them had shared that information.
I suppose that in the world of social media, there is no shame about loudly proclaiming that to the world.
But that’s true of so many things, I guess.
There’s things that only a few people need to know. And you do your part as an employer to make sure there’s zero chance of the story ever starting in the first place.
Brother, can you spare a dime? has morphed into “zOMG NAXI MUSK is going to mean I miss….”
Cry me a river.
Or maybe understand that the gravy train is over?
I’m not holding my breath on either.
Part of the reason I didn’t vote for Trump is I think things are too far gone to fix gently. I listen to the Republican sympathizers so optimistic about what’s going on. Are they more deluded than the people upset about the DEI cuts?
Good question.
So back to listening to the folks on Just Asking Questions. Not sure if they’ll be as shocked as the Politico people have been when things don’t work out.