Posted on Feb 14, 2025
Judge Rules in Favor of Trump Administration on Federal Employee Compensation - The Joe Messina...
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Karma's a bitch, isn't it? Remember that cases of election fraud in 2020 were universally dismissed because those bringing them didn't have "standing"? Well, what's good for the goose...
Judge Rules in Favor of Trump Administration on Federal Employee Compensation - The Joe Messina...
Posted from joemessina.comPosted in these groups: 
Political Opinions
Political Opinions
Posted 10 mo ago
Responses: 3
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While 4 of the 10 cases did not have "standing", the merits of those cases were addressed by the courts anyway, (due diligence) and found things like the plaintiffs’ claims were largely based on, “anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.” or "the plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claim to be too speculative, finding no evidence that physical ballots were altered. " And the other 6 were also dismissed on merits.
https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections
That said, we are all for reducing fraud, waste and abuse in federal spending. We didn't need DOGE to discover it for us, GAO has been finding it every year. What concerns me is, if we do go through with reducing the federal workforce by 75%, how much less effective will be be at reducing fraud waste and abuse when we clearly don't have the manpower to do it now?
And pardon my skepticism, but DOGE promised transparency on this that we still have yet to see: they state all of these cases of waste, big scary numbers, with no actual data, leaving the press to dig into to it, and in too many cases already, demonstrating exaggerations and falsehoods:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/10/elon-musk-pushes-false-claim-ex-usaid-chief-earned-23-million-the-biggest-doge-hoaxes-spread-on-x/
I have also noticed that the White House "Fact Sheets" posted recently are lacking in facts and supporting data, for example:
white house fact sheet
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-works-to-remake-americas-federal-workforce/
This one states The FY22 federal workforce contributes significantly to federal spending and debt. In reality the fed payroll amounts to 4% of federal spending. Is 4% significant?
54% of federal spending goes directly to US citizens in the form of direct assistance, Social Security and Medicare, (not including VA benefits) I'd call that significant. And significantly difficult to maintain with a workforce reduced by 75%.
It states FY22 payroll was $300B. Actually $271B (not a big deal, rounding up, but still not accurate)
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235
It states only 6% of workers in the office full time.
What it doesn't say, is that they got this "data" from an unofficial, and unscientific poll of a very small number of fed employees. And obviously stated for the shock value.
More accurate polling and studies show;
• Of these 2.28M personnel, the majority – 1.2M or 54% – worked fully on-site, as their jobs require them to be physically present during all working hours.
• The remaining 1.1 million or 46.4% of civilian personnel were telework-eligible.
• Of the total 2.28M personnel, 228 thousand or 10% of civilian personnel were in remote positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person on any regular or recurring basis.
• Among all federal employees, excluding remote workers that do not have a work-site to report to, 79.4% of regular, working hours were spent in-person.
• Among the subset of federal workers that are telework-eligible, excluding remote workers, 61.2% of regular, working hours were spent in-person.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OMB-Report-to-Congress-on-Telework-and-Real-Property.pdf
Call me old fashioned, but I never trusted politicians, and I don't trust an unelected billionaire wedged into the White House with dangerous access and a huge conflict of interest, current contracts with the govt.
I'd like to see the actual data, the way GAO has always provided to the agency and congress for action and made freely available online. It's a simple process, and I'm skeptical because that simple process has not been provided even once.
https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections
That said, we are all for reducing fraud, waste and abuse in federal spending. We didn't need DOGE to discover it for us, GAO has been finding it every year. What concerns me is, if we do go through with reducing the federal workforce by 75%, how much less effective will be be at reducing fraud waste and abuse when we clearly don't have the manpower to do it now?
And pardon my skepticism, but DOGE promised transparency on this that we still have yet to see: they state all of these cases of waste, big scary numbers, with no actual data, leaving the press to dig into to it, and in too many cases already, demonstrating exaggerations and falsehoods:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/10/elon-musk-pushes-false-claim-ex-usaid-chief-earned-23-million-the-biggest-doge-hoaxes-spread-on-x/
I have also noticed that the White House "Fact Sheets" posted recently are lacking in facts and supporting data, for example:
white house fact sheet
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-works-to-remake-americas-federal-workforce/
This one states The FY22 federal workforce contributes significantly to federal spending and debt. In reality the fed payroll amounts to 4% of federal spending. Is 4% significant?
54% of federal spending goes directly to US citizens in the form of direct assistance, Social Security and Medicare, (not including VA benefits) I'd call that significant. And significantly difficult to maintain with a workforce reduced by 75%.
It states FY22 payroll was $300B. Actually $271B (not a big deal, rounding up, but still not accurate)
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235
It states only 6% of workers in the office full time.
What it doesn't say, is that they got this "data" from an unofficial, and unscientific poll of a very small number of fed employees. And obviously stated for the shock value.
More accurate polling and studies show;
• Of these 2.28M personnel, the majority – 1.2M or 54% – worked fully on-site, as their jobs require them to be physically present during all working hours.
• The remaining 1.1 million or 46.4% of civilian personnel were telework-eligible.
• Of the total 2.28M personnel, 228 thousand or 10% of civilian personnel were in remote positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person on any regular or recurring basis.
• Among all federal employees, excluding remote workers that do not have a work-site to report to, 79.4% of regular, working hours were spent in-person.
• Among the subset of federal workers that are telework-eligible, excluding remote workers, 61.2% of regular, working hours were spent in-person.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OMB-Report-to-Congress-on-Telework-and-Real-Property.pdf
Call me old fashioned, but I never trusted politicians, and I don't trust an unelected billionaire wedged into the White House with dangerous access and a huge conflict of interest, current contracts with the govt.
I'd like to see the actual data, the way GAO has always provided to the agency and congress for action and made freely available online. It's a simple process, and I'm skeptical because that simple process has not been provided even once.
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CPT Jack Durish
A nicely crafted response. Although I disagree with your conclusions, I respect the time and effort as well as the respect with which it is offered. I only wish that others who disagreed would do likewise. Furthermore, it will take time to respond in kind. Please be patient.
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SGM Jeff Mccloud
CPT Jack Durish - Thank you, however, I provided none of my own conclusions other than my distrust of politicians (dating back to the 1980 election).
While I wait, I figured I would articulate my concerns with DOGE personnel and how DOGE is conducting business:
Starting with Musk: he is a billionaire who spent just hundreds of thousands on campaign donations to receive over $20B in in taxpayer funds in the form of low interest loans, contracts, tax breaks, and other subsidies prior to 2024.
https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/elon-musk-rich-taxpayer-expense/
In this last campaign, Musk provided $250M to help elect Trump. Are we supposed to believe no return is expected on that investment?
And he won't be required to disclose his finances for the duration.
DOGE staffers:
this includes a group of 19 to 24 year olds, fresh out of college or dropping out, with one internship or one year on a software job, now placed in positions to;
-interview senior and executive level staffers in govt depts and agencies, asking them to define and defend their job positions to a teenager with no govt experience, and definitely no experience with any of these depts, and no frame of reference or context with which to determine how a particular dept should go about completing the tasks in their charter from Congress.
-recommend funding cuts without a base knowledge of those funds or purposes.
-recommend reductions in force, without a base of knowledge of what any of those employees do, and what that dept does.
Experience aside, with their online handles like "Big Balls", their very recent racist twitter posts, and yelling at senior govt officials, frankly I think the lack the minimum level of maturity to fix a lemonade stand, much less 2 million federal employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency#cite_note-nyt-swan-musk-feb-25-76
I know "disruption" is the popular phrase here, but disruption only works when you already know the details of how "everything works" and can develop that disrupting change to make it better, and I don't see that here at all.
Transparency:
DOGE promised us transparency and claims to provide it here:
https://www.doge.gov/
All I see is screenshots of the same tweets that originally gave us no context or data at all. We don't see what is being cancelled, just dollar amounts.
If you owned a large business, that you built from the ground up, and an outsider (who has no experience in your business field) came in and only told you how much he cut and not what, you could not accept that.
And you should not accept this, because you are a taxpaying stakeholder.
The worst part:
Musk promised to cut $2 TRILLION in spending, while Trump promised a more manageable "hundreds of billions". Either way, going after this low hanging fruit of thousands and low millions will both take a long time to get there, and because of the indiscriminate nature of these seeming random cuts, we won't know the real damage for a while.
Rather than this low hanging fruit, the could get to billions fast, and make worthwhile progress, by just starting with Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security and Welfare/related programs. This is 54% of our total spending every year.
There is both actual fraud to stop (the applicable agencies already stop most but not all) and needed updates in "means testing" to determine who really needs it.
But they're not doing the real work we need for several obvious reasons
1. Medicare, Social Security, welfare/benefits in general, and IRS personal income tax fraud and avoidance, are all the political third rail. Doesn't matter how much a voter loves you, if you touch what's theirs, they are done with you.
FWIW, the estimate for income tax noncompliance is almost $500B. That's about half of the budget deficit.
2. They know they did not select the right staff for a real job like fixing these real problems.
3. They know they can just build big wins with their base by simply tweeting out the small, random cuts they're making now, with minimal effort, minimal concern for the second order effects, and maximum love from their base.
And that wraps back around to the first concern listed, Musk's conflict of interest. While they are packing the news with these "hundreds of thousands of dollars and low millions" wins, they can distract their base from Musk getting that return on that $250M investment he made in Trump's election.
And when the other side points it out, they can say it's just sour grapes about all they money they can't steal from the gov't anymore, plus with all these savings, we can afford these billions to SpaceX and Tesla to make America even greater again.
Don't be surprised when they continue to spend a trillion over revenue every year and blame it on the left, while they continue to congratulate themselves on cutting millions in waste.
While I wait, I figured I would articulate my concerns with DOGE personnel and how DOGE is conducting business:
Starting with Musk: he is a billionaire who spent just hundreds of thousands on campaign donations to receive over $20B in in taxpayer funds in the form of low interest loans, contracts, tax breaks, and other subsidies prior to 2024.
https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/elon-musk-rich-taxpayer-expense/
In this last campaign, Musk provided $250M to help elect Trump. Are we supposed to believe no return is expected on that investment?
And he won't be required to disclose his finances for the duration.
DOGE staffers:
this includes a group of 19 to 24 year olds, fresh out of college or dropping out, with one internship or one year on a software job, now placed in positions to;
-interview senior and executive level staffers in govt depts and agencies, asking them to define and defend their job positions to a teenager with no govt experience, and definitely no experience with any of these depts, and no frame of reference or context with which to determine how a particular dept should go about completing the tasks in their charter from Congress.
-recommend funding cuts without a base knowledge of those funds or purposes.
-recommend reductions in force, without a base of knowledge of what any of those employees do, and what that dept does.
Experience aside, with their online handles like "Big Balls", their very recent racist twitter posts, and yelling at senior govt officials, frankly I think the lack the minimum level of maturity to fix a lemonade stand, much less 2 million federal employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency#cite_note-nyt-swan-musk-feb-25-76
I know "disruption" is the popular phrase here, but disruption only works when you already know the details of how "everything works" and can develop that disrupting change to make it better, and I don't see that here at all.
Transparency:
DOGE promised us transparency and claims to provide it here:
https://www.doge.gov/
All I see is screenshots of the same tweets that originally gave us no context or data at all. We don't see what is being cancelled, just dollar amounts.
If you owned a large business, that you built from the ground up, and an outsider (who has no experience in your business field) came in and only told you how much he cut and not what, you could not accept that.
And you should not accept this, because you are a taxpaying stakeholder.
The worst part:
Musk promised to cut $2 TRILLION in spending, while Trump promised a more manageable "hundreds of billions". Either way, going after this low hanging fruit of thousands and low millions will both take a long time to get there, and because of the indiscriminate nature of these seeming random cuts, we won't know the real damage for a while.
Rather than this low hanging fruit, the could get to billions fast, and make worthwhile progress, by just starting with Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security and Welfare/related programs. This is 54% of our total spending every year.
There is both actual fraud to stop (the applicable agencies already stop most but not all) and needed updates in "means testing" to determine who really needs it.
But they're not doing the real work we need for several obvious reasons
1. Medicare, Social Security, welfare/benefits in general, and IRS personal income tax fraud and avoidance, are all the political third rail. Doesn't matter how much a voter loves you, if you touch what's theirs, they are done with you.
FWIW, the estimate for income tax noncompliance is almost $500B. That's about half of the budget deficit.
2. They know they did not select the right staff for a real job like fixing these real problems.
3. They know they can just build big wins with their base by simply tweeting out the small, random cuts they're making now, with minimal effort, minimal concern for the second order effects, and maximum love from their base.
And that wraps back around to the first concern listed, Musk's conflict of interest. While they are packing the news with these "hundreds of thousands of dollars and low millions" wins, they can distract their base from Musk getting that return on that $250M investment he made in Trump's election.
And when the other side points it out, they can say it's just sour grapes about all they money they can't steal from the gov't anymore, plus with all these savings, we can afford these billions to SpaceX and Tesla to make America even greater again.
Don't be surprised when they continue to spend a trillion over revenue every year and blame it on the left, while they continue to congratulate themselves on cutting millions in waste.
Some federal workers are ‘getting wealthy at taxpayer expense,’ says Elon Musk, whose companies...
Musk’s DOGE wants to cut tens of thousands of federal workers, and now it’s aiming at people he thinks are too rich.
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SGM Jeff Mccloud
AN Ron Wright - Cool memes.
And it only takes about as much time to fact check them as it does to find them on social media.
No, Warren didn't say citizens don’t have the right to know what the government spends money on
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/feb/11/instagram-posts/no-warren-didnt-say-citizens-dont-have-the-right-t/
The 87,000 figure includes hires across the agency, over a ten year period, including IT and taxpayer services, not just enforcement staff as the claim suggests. And many of those hires would go toward holding staff numbers steady in the face of a history of budget cuts and a wave of projected retirements.
"The IRS will lose about 50,000 people over the next five or six years," said Natasha Sarin, Treasury’s counselor for tax policy and implementation. "A lot of this hiring is about replacing those people."
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/11/kevin-mccarthy/kevin-mccarthys-mostly-false-claim-about-army-8700/
And it only takes about as much time to fact check them as it does to find them on social media.
No, Warren didn't say citizens don’t have the right to know what the government spends money on
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/feb/11/instagram-posts/no-warren-didnt-say-citizens-dont-have-the-right-t/
The 87,000 figure includes hires across the agency, over a ten year period, including IT and taxpayer services, not just enforcement staff as the claim suggests. And many of those hires would go toward holding staff numbers steady in the face of a history of budget cuts and a wave of projected retirements.
"The IRS will lose about 50,000 people over the next five or six years," said Natasha Sarin, Treasury’s counselor for tax policy and implementation. "A lot of this hiring is about replacing those people."
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/11/kevin-mccarthy/kevin-mccarthys-mostly-false-claim-about-army-8700/
Warren didn’t say this about Constitution, tax dollars
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has criticized President Donad Trump adviser Elon Musk’s access to the federal paym
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