Midweek Tabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, February 5, 2025
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12 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-gsa-terminate-office-leases-f8faac5e2038722f705587c8dd21ab26
“One of the next moves in President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping effort to fire government employees and curtail operations is using the agency that manages thousands of federal employee worksites around the country to cut down on office space.
Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email shared with The Associated Press by a GSA employee.”
This might actually rile up the Red States; for many mid-size town developers, government leases are gold. Some of those offices have probably been open for decades.
@Not the IT Dept.: And for what? To cut 0.1% of the federal budget? This will not lower the cost of eggs or the cost of living, nor reduce crime.
20,000 employees here and 7,500 offices there is not going to save any significant amount of money tantamount to the time and money lost to future headaches.
Not to mention the cost to re-hire and re-open when frustrated Americans finally tire of yet another Republican failure.
And now it’s the CIA’s turn. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/cia-workforce-buyouts/index.html
“The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first major national security agency to offer so-called buyouts to its entire workforce, a CIA spokesperson and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to shrink the federal government and shape it to his agenda.
The offer — which tells federal employees that they can quit their jobs and receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits — had up until Tuesday not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation….
CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally decided he also wanted the CIA to be involved, one of the sources said….the move is part of Ratcliffe’s efforts to “ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities,” adding that is “part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy.””
Unbelievable.
Having one percent of federal employees—or even two or three times that many—agree to resign or retire later this year accomplishes nothing. This could represent just a portion of those who were already eligible for and planning to retire, or already planning to resign for personal, financial, geographic, or career development reasons. Firing those in their probationary period and freezing hiring during this administration, however, would actually hamstring a lot of organizations.
@Eusebio: I’ve seen estimates that about half the takers are already retiring near-term. So essentially this program is going to cost…I dunno, an average portion of a salary that would not have been collected of maybe $50k/person * 10000 = $500M in excess payments.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a “bad deal”.
20,000 is 1% of 2 million and that is after VERA got added as a sweetener. Far far far short of the anticipated 5% – 10% they were crowing about last week.
They can’t even bribe people well.
Yet another day of talking my co-workers off the ledge…
For anyone who thinks that they have any legal rights when this whole thing blows up inOPM’s face, I suggest a look at the SCOTUS case OPM v.Richmond.
Now this is interesting. Saudi Arabia is not onside with the Gaza plan.
“But on Wednesday, the kingdom’s foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia rejected any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land and said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had affirmed this position in “a clear and explicit manner”.”
And it looks like my earlier question about Egypt and Jordan being consulted about Trump’s claim that they’ll accept a couple million displaced Palestinians has been answered as well:
“Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Wednesday he rejected any attempts to annex land and displace Palestinians. Egypt said it would support Gaza recovery plans without Palestinians leaving the territory.”
Hard to believe Netanyahu signed on to this mess as a done deal.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-official-says-trumps-remarks-about-taking-over-gaza-are-could-ignite-2025-02-05/
The Palestinians should be demanding their West Bank land back and the expulsion of the settlers.
Also, has any Mid East leaders suggest that the US could take in the Palestinians in exchange for Gaza?
@Gromitt Gunn:
I didn’t know that VERA had been added. Now I’m thinking back to my last organization that offered, under more normal times, VERA and VSIP for a certain category of employees. By my estimate, about 3 to 5 percent took the offer; however, a) that employee category was probably older on average than the workforce overall, and b) VSIP was more popular–I’m not sure there was a single VERA.
@Not the IT Dept.:
I’ve been assuming it’s Netanyahu’s plan. And I see no reason to believe the Saudis are being honest.
@gVOR10:
@Not the IT Dept.:
The Saudi’s are not going to slit their own throats for the benefit of Trump, still less of Netanyahu, or Isreali’s various.
Netanyahu continues to maneuver for his primary goal of keeping the sweet Bibi behind out of jail.
The plan is not necessarily Netanyahu’s though.
There’ve been ideas like this floating around MAGA circles for some time, appealing to Trump’s “real estate developer” inclinations, perhaps.
Some Americans have considerable difficulty really grasping the fundamentally ethno-territorial basis of most nationalisms.
See the frequent disparagement of such as “blood-and-soil”.