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2025-02-10 Government Corruption
Trump hits the golf course in Florida as official hints at sneaky way Elon Musk could be hoping to persuade federal workers to quit
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] President Donald Trump left it to Elon Musk to fight online battles over the DOGE's moves to slash payrolls government agencies, going for an extended round of golf while the fate of agencies and their data lies with the courts.

And even amid Musk's shrouded efforts to gain access to trillions worth of government payment information or even deploy A.I. to ferret out government waste, a new plan emerged to make life uncomfortable or simply inconvenient for federal workers being told to report to the office full time.

The idea is to make DC's government office buildings – many of which date to the postwar boom and 1960s – a lousy place to punch the clock, one official said.
No name or identifying information — he could be anybody, she could be nobody.
It's the inverse of the tech-boom trend of stocking offices with foosball and free soda to get employees to love putting in extra hours.

'We’ve heard from them that they want to make the buildings so crappy that people will leave,' a senior official at the General Services Administration, known as the government's landlord, told the Washington Post.
Ah. The Washington Post claims the unnamed but authoritative unknown — prove that this time your source is real, guys, and actually knows whereof he speaks. You know, instead of just making stuff up out of spite.
'I think that’s the larger goal here, which is bring everybody back, the buildings are going to suck, their commutes are going to suck.'
"Critics say™..."
The D.C. region was already ranked to have some of the worst traffic in the country.

It's problems have been exacerbated by regional squabbling, a lack of dedicated funding for the Metro, and a drop in ridership during the pandemic, local leaders say.

Traffic wasn't something Trump had to worry about at the start of his weekend out of Washington.

The president spent about four hours on his Trump International Golf Course Saturday, as temperatures hit 79 degrees around his home at Mar-a-Lago.

He was whisked by protesters in the presidential limo back to Mar-a-Lago, as he prepares to head to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

The potential office scheme came on a day when Musk's lightning-speed efforts to take on the bureaucracy hit hazards.

A federal judge put a stop to Elon Musk’s access to Treasury Department payment records. That prompted the Department of Governmental Efficiency chief to strike back against New York AG Letitia James, a Donald Trump nemesis.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer was just the latest instance of a court slowing down Musk’s lightning efforts to strip away swaths of the bureaucracy. Trump says Musk is working at his direction, and on Friday night inside his Florida club called Musk's team 'super geniuses.'

Judge Engelmayer said he agreed with the state AGs who said there was a risk to Americans' sensitive data.

He blocked any political employees or so-called Special Government employees – a group that includes Musk – from accessing the data.

It came hours after another federal judge in Washington issued a temporary stop to efforts to put send home thousands of USAID workers amid a plan to strip down the federal agency to a skeleton crew of just a few hundred. But yet another judge lifted an order blocking Musk's group access to Labor Department data.

It is James who oversaw the prosecution of Trump in a civil case that led to a $450 million fraud judgement against him. A new Justice Department task force on 'weaponization' is now probing her effort and looking for any federal participation.

James and a group of state attorneys general sued to block Musk's group from gaining access to the Treasury information.

'This unelected group led by the world's richest man is not authorized to have this information,' said James, who said the DOGE team 'accessed the personal private information of tens of millions of Americans' and were trying 'to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on.'

'She just wants the fraud & waste to continue,' Musk hit back.

'This administration has one chance for major reform that may never come again. It’s now or never,' Musk wrote in yet another post.

He also posted on how the Treasury codes government payments, saying it was 'insane and must be addressed immediately.'
Posted by Skidmark 2025-02-10 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11151 views ]  Top

#1 Turn off the heat and water then
require them to be in the office.
Posted by Skidmark 2025-02-08 18:41||   2025-02-08 18:41|| Front Page Top

#2 Some of it is the building; some of it is the commute.
Posted by Super Hose 2025-02-09 09:08||   2025-02-09 09:08|| Front Page Top

#3 No, all that is required for the building to be habitable.
Compromise, tell them all must return to work by April.
And then shut off the A/C.
Posted by ed in texas 2025-02-09 09:09||   2025-02-09 09:09|| Front Page Top

#4 Judge Engelmayer's action was a 7 day Temporary Restraining Order.

The matter is to be revisited.

In the meantime, govt workers are doing some of the work that DOGE wanted done.
Posted by lord garth 2025-02-09 11:48||   2025-02-09 11:48|| Front Page Top

#5 In the meantime, govt workers are doing some of the work that DOGE wanted done.

Or erasing records.
Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-02-09 11:54||   2025-02-09 11:54|| Front Page Top

#6 I don’t think they are erasing. For some government workers this change is what they have been waiting for for years.
Posted by Super Hose 2025-02-09 13:11||   2025-02-09 13:11|| Front Page Top

#7 Re #4: Ed, tell them the AC was turned off to fight climate change. Everybody has to make some sacrifices to help the planet, right?
Posted by Rambler  2025-02-09 13:24||   2025-02-09 13:24|| Front Page Top

#8 ^ Washington, summer, no AC...heheheheh
Posted by Mercutio 2025-02-10 09:43||   2025-02-10 09:43|| Front Page Top

#9 As a native Washingtonian, I grew up in Wheaton and Silver Springs in the 50s-early 60s. August was always the worst, when family cars didn't have A/C, and weekends at Ocean City or Rehoboth were a Godsend. I brought my California native wife back to DC in the middle of July (her first visit) and her reaction the first morning was "Holy Crap, we are never living here"!
Posted by NoMoreBS 2025-02-10 14:04||   2025-02-10 14:04|| Front Page Top

#10 Actually, as we have seen for years with Walter Reed Hospital, only the intent that the building be habitable is necessary — they can fail safety inspections for a decade or several before it becomes a real problem…
Posted by trailing wife 2025-02-10 15:56||   2025-02-10 15:56|| Front Page Top

#11 The Army has been trying to decommission Walter Reed since before 9/11 as Congress has repeatedly refused the funding to fix it.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-02-10 16:43||   2025-02-10 16:43|| Front Page Top

#12 There is nothing sneaky about it. When the Bobs ask you what exactly you do here, if you don't have a good answer, it is time to leave.
Posted by SteveS 2025-02-10 20:17||   2025-02-10 20:17|| Front Page Top

14:31 Regular joe
14:28 trailing wife
14:25 magpie
14:18 Elmerert Hupens2660
14:14 Regular joe
14:10 Super Hose
14:08 Super Hose
14:08 Regular joe
14:02 Super Hose
14:01 trailing wife
14:01 trailing wife
13:58 trailing wife
13:56 Super Hose
13:54 trailing wife
13:51 Super Hose
13:44 Elmerert Hupens2660
13:22 Difar Dave
13:20 alanc
13:19 swksvolFF
13:17 Difar Dave
13:00 NN2N1
12:59 alanc
12:51 swksvolFF
12:46 Skidmark









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