Face, meet leopard. Leopard, meet face.

[Donal]

Earlier watched some videos touted as instances of Schadenfreude by Trumpies and posted in various centrist/liberal channels were found to be guys taking the mickey. Case in point, there was one guy who began to talk about his job with a USAID "Schoolbus Project" was canceled and was devastated that he could no longer find out why "the wheels of the bus went round and round". This was just one video...there were many more with such silly testimonials. I was stupefied at how so many liberals in the west were so desperate to clutch at straws and share those videos.

Liberals love to hear how much smarter they are than everybody. Honestly, I just assume the majority of stuff I see on social media is just engagement farming. And even if every one of these stories was real

1) They are barely a blip among the over all number of Trump supporters

2) They don't seem to be actually learning anything. They still want all of the cuts and hurting to keep going, they just want to be exempt.

 

[Emily's Cat]

But that's not what happened. And what about the approximately 1200 clinics that the VA operates? Who will buy supplies for them?

This is silly. I mean, genuinely silly. Do you think that every Albertsons in the US has three people with credit cards so that each store can have someone buy whatever they need at a moment's notice? Come on, put on your thinking cap for just a moment. I get the knee-jerk impetus to oppose anything that is at all associated with Trump or Republicans as being definitionally bad and evil... but you're strong enough to keep that lower-leg in check, don't you think?

The overwhelming majority of supplies for those 1200 clinics *should be* ordered through a centralized system, using purchase orders. It's bonkers to think that each one of those clinics would be ordering their supplies on a credit card independently - that would be negligently inefficient and would add unnecessary costs.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's what I'm trying to work out. Who needs cards for what, and how did Muskrat and the Minions figure out what was needed and by who in like... thirty minutes? I kind of assume government is a little stingy with giving out free credit cards, and they get gone over line by line?

I doubt they did any actual review to figure things out. I would guess that they looked at the number of cards per employee and said "That's way too many" and set a threshold based on the portion of discretionary spending accounts that exist in private business. The general approach is then "Drop it to private levels, then make a good case for why you need more". It's a sledgehammer approach, and I don't agree with the level they used, but it's unquestionably going to address the problem a lot faster than if they tried to review every single cardholder independently. I give it good odds that they really don't need nearly as many purchasers as they have.

I ask because I'm in construction, and occasionally have to move large things on public streets, like houses and stuff. So we have to contract escort vehicles with amber lights and Wide Load signage and all that. One year we got questioned rather pointedly because of a business expense that was billed by... Goldie's Escorts. It was briefly uncomfortable.

 

[Emily's Cat]

IOW, the intent was, indeed, to curtail purchasing, as was said, and as you tried to deny. Again, the instruction was to shut down purchasing on *all cards*, not just an identified subset of them. The plan was then to (possibly, no promises) reinstate purchasing power for an arbitrarily-set maximum of cards, if the agency could justify their use to some unspecified degree of satisfaction.

This is not the behavior of management trying to improve systems; it is the behavior of management trying to drastically curtail expenditure.

Are you intentionally skipping words and mischaracterizing it?

reduce the spending limit of all its purchase and travel cards through its SmartPay program to $1, with a few narrow exceptions

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Are you intentionally skipping words and mischaracterizing it?

reduce the spending limit of all its purchase and travel cards through its SmartPay program to $1, with a few narrow exceptions .

I say again: "The plan was then to (possibly, no promises) reinstate purchasing power for an arbitrarily-set maximum of cards, if the agency could justify their use to some unspecified degree of satisfaction."

Those are your
"few narrow exceptions." If you have others in mind, please specify.

Who is skipping/mischaracterizing here? You are, not me.

ETA: And let us not forget that your original claim was that the intent was *not* to stop spending. How is limiting all spending on these cards to $1
"with a few narrow exceptions" anything other than a move to stop spending?

 

[TomB]

This is silly. I mean, genuinely silly. Do you think that every Albertsons in the US has three people with credit cards so that each store can have someone buy whatever they need at a moment's notice? Come on, put on your thinking cap for just a moment. I get the knee-jerk impetus to oppose anything that is at all associated with Trump or Republicans as being definitionally bad and evil... but you're strong enough to keep that lower-leg in check, don't you think?

The overwhelming majority of supplies for those 1200 clinics *should be* ordered through a centralized system, using purchase orders. It's bonkers to think that each one of those clinics would be ordering their supplies on a credit card independently - that would be negligently inefficient and would add unnecessary costs.

First, Albertson’s is neither a hospital nor a scientific agency. The business models don’t translate.

Second, the vast majority of things are purchased with purchase orders. It’s just less efficient to do so in some cases. Takes a lot of the load off of purchasing. You know: less bureaucracy needed.

Third, Albertsons likely has something that government agencies generally are not afforded: petty cash. If a lightbulb ( or something not carried in the store) goes out, an assistant manager can go out to Home Depot and buy one and easily be reimbursed. In government, its a bit more involved.

Of course, I’m not sure how many people have access to a purchasing card at a grocery store. If I think about it I’ll ask a personnel manager for a chain I know. I would bet there’s some mechanism by which any manager/assistant manager can run to the hardware store to get something.

T-Cards were also mentioned. These are specifically for travel. They pay for gas, sometimes lodging, car rental, cab fare etc.and incidental work related needs. (Meals come out of your per-diem. You generally pay out of your own pocket.) You know, where centralized purchasing is not an option.

After travel, you have to submit your receipts and explain each purchase. But it’s better than using your own card and paying interest while waiting for reimbursement.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

First, Albertson’s is neither a hospital nor a scientific agency. The business models don’t translate.

Second, the vast majority of things are purchased with purchase orders. It’s just less efficient to do so in some cases. Takes a lot of the load off of purchasing. You know: less bureaucracy needed.

Third, Albertsons likely has something that government agencies generally are not afforded: petty cash. If a lightbulb ( or something not carried in the store) goes out, an assistant manager can go out to Home Depot and buy one and easily be reimbursed. In government, its a bit more involved.

Of course, I’m not sure how many people have access to a purchasing card at a grocery store. If I think about it I’ll ask a personnel manager for a chain I know. I would bet there’s some mechanism by which any manager/assistant manager can run to the hardware store to get something.

T-Cards were also mentioned. These are specifically for travel. They pay for gas, sometimes lodging, car rental, cab fare etc.and incidental work related needs. (Meals come out of your per-diem. You generally pay out of your own pocket.) You know, where centralized purchasing is not an option.

After travel, you have to submit your receipts and explain each purchase. But it’s better than using your own card and paying interest while waiting for reimbursement.

If one is going to have a p-card program for store managers at all, I suspect you would want at least one or two at each store. It's strange to use "three" as an example of an excessive number that's supposed to be some invitation for rampant fraud, waste and abuse.

 

[plague311]

I work for a city government. In the IT department alone there are a total of 12 people on our team. We have 6 credit cards, one just set as "IT" and the other 5 in the name of people here. I manage the credit cards here and I'm able to easily manage all of the cards. It's not a problem at all. The system is audited as well by our finance team. It's all managed through a bank's website.

 

[dirtywick]

Second, the vast majority of things are purchased with purchase orders. It’s just less efficient to do so in some cases. Takes a lot of the load off of purchasing. You know: less bureaucracy needed.

this is important in a lot of industries. for example in mine, if a machine is down and we need a part locally, it’s too time consuming and cumbersome to get it through purchasing. take the p card, go get the part, get the machine up and running. anything under like $2000 they’ll do this if we don’t have we need in stock.

 

[newyorkguy]

Of course if Trampy shafted somebody else, maybe urban black families, Shaw wouldn't care one jot.

I like the way Farmer Shaw says, “If Trump doesn't want to have a solar energy program in the future, that's his business." Eliminating solar energy programs is trump's business? Like that won't affect anyone else. Just trump. In other words, the rest of us should all shut up about it.

 

[plague311]

I like the way Farmer Shaw says, “If Trump doesn't want to have a solar energy program in the future, that's his business." Eliminating solar energy programs is trump's business? Like that won't affect anyone else. Just trump. In other words, the rest of us should all shut up about it.

I agree in general, but I think the point the man was making was that if Trump wants to eliminate the program there's nothing the farmer can do about it, but for this program he's already done the work. He wants to get paid.

 

[TomB]

I like the way Farmer Shaw says, “If Trump doesn't want to have a solar energy program in the future, that's his business." Eliminating solar energy programs is trump's business? Like that won't affect anyone else. Just trump. In other words, the rest of us should all shut up about it.

In fairness, I don't think it was intended the way you are interpreting it. He's talking about the immediate harm of not being paid for work completed, not the long-term effect of policy.

I think what he is saying is that it's one thing to not fund further projects in the future and another thing renege on agreements, contracts and commitments already made and for which work has already been done. Policy is the government/president's business. Deciding not to pay previously agreed to contracts/grants after the work is done is breach of contract.

I don't think he was making a statement as to it being good policy overall.

Edit: Just read Plague311's post. Much better wording.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I say again: "The plan was then to (possibly, no promises) reinstate purchasing power for an arbitrarily-set maximum of cards, if the agency could justify their use to some unspecified degree of satisfaction."

Those are your
"few narrow exceptions." If you have others in mind, please specify.

Who is skipping/mischaracterizing here? You are, not me.

They reduced the limit to $1 for all except a narrow range of purchasers off the top - they didn't reduce it to $1 for everyone, but for the vast majority. Then additional purchasers can have their range increased above $1 upon justification. That's how I read it... because I don;t have this deep-seated need to make anything and everything ever done by anyone associated by Trump be viewed as the activities of a cartoon villain who is intentionally trying to kill people.

I think this isn't a very good approach, I think it's fixing a watch with a hammer... but I also don't think it's done out of malice but out of expediency. You and several others appear to assume that every action is motivated solely by malice, and you seem incapable of even considering a non-malicious reason as possible.

ETA: And let us not forget that your original claim was that the intent was *not* to stop spending. How is limiting all spending on these cards to $1
"with a few narrow exceptions" anything other than a move to stop spending?

If you have 500 people each charging $10, then you've spent $5,000. If you have 5 people each charging $1,000, then you've spent $5,000. Reducing the number of people with purchasing authority is not synonymous with reducing the amount of purchasing that can be done.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If one is going to have a p-card program for store managers at all, I suspect you would want at least one or two at each store. It's strange to use "three" as an example of an excessive number that's supposed to be some invitation for rampant fraud, waste and abuse.

Who is using three as an excessive number?

Having 2.5% of the entire workforce having p-cards seems like it's probably excessive. With 1,200 clinics and 12,000 cards, that's 10 per clinic... and yeah, that seems excessive to me.

The article mentioned needing things for emergencies as a primary reason to not reduce the number of purchasers from 12,000 to ~500. But most clinics aren't hospitals, and most of them aren't dealing with emergency situations. Those happen at hospitals, of which there are 170.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Who is using three as an excessive number?

Having 2.5% of the entire workforce having p-cards seems like it's probably excessive. With 1,200 clinics and 12,000 cards, that's 10 per clinic... and yeah, that seems excessive to me.

The article mentioned needing things for emergencies as a primary reason to not reduce the number of purchasers from 12,000 to ~500. But most clinics aren't hospitals, and most of them aren't dealing with emergency situations. Those happen at hospitals, of which there are 170.

1200 clinics AND 170 hospitals.

 

[plague311]

"Seems excessive to me" is a bull ◊◊◊◊ metric that means nothing to nobody. How does it compare to other similar locations? Companies? Anything?

 

[Norman Alexander]

I agree in general, but I think the point the man was making was that if Trump wants to eliminate the program there's nothing the farmer can do about it, but for this program he's already done the work. He wants to get paid.

Trump's SOP, and a general guide to how he does "business", is to NEVER pay your debts. If the farmer wants to get paid, he needs to sue the government for it. And we all know how well that goes getting your money...

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Trump's SOP, and a general guide to how he does "business", is to NEVER pay your debts. If the farmer wants to get paid, he needs to sue the government for it. And we all know how well that goes getting your money...

Very efficiently of course. Haven't you been watching the news? Elon fired so many workers the government will now run super efficiently and the biggest fastest ever.

 

[3point14]

Expanding the question: Did anyone have any reason to think that he would keep his promises?

Of course they did.

Fox news, and other propaganda outlets have been touting his billiance for years.

I really don't think you can blame people who have been poorly educated by failing, underfunded, classist education system and then been "informed" by a literal propaganda machine, designed to misinform and infuriate, for making poor choices.

Billions of dollars have been spent with the purpose of misinforming this lady and others like her. How on earth one is supposed to see through that when right in the middle of it is anyone's guess.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Who is using three as an excessive number?

Having 2.5% of the entire workforce having p-cards seems like it's probably excessive. With 1,200 clinics and 12,000 cards, that's 10 per clinic... and yeah, that seems excessive to me.

The article mentioned needing things for emergencies as a primary reason to not reduce the number of purchasers from 12,000 to ~500. But most clinics aren't hospitals, and most of them aren't dealing with emergency situations. Those happen at hospitals, of which there are 170.

Why are you assuming there is a problem that needs to be fixed? I.e. surely you need to identify a problem first, rather than just assert one exists.

Is it just your bias for "small government"? If so, how small would you like your government to be?

Currently the projection for the size of the US government is two men and a load of lackeys. Is that small enough for you?