This is much too serious an issue for anyone to make into a trolling attempt. Let me change the subject for a moment, to the career of Al Dunlap. Wikipedia wrote, "He was known at the peak of his career as a professional turnaround management specialist and downsizer. The mass layoffs at his companies earned him the nicknames "Chainsaw Al...Dunlap is on the lists of "Worst CEOs of All Time" published by several business publications. Fast Company noted that Dunlap "might score impressively on the Corporate Psychopathy checklist, and in an interview, Dunlap freely admitted to possessing many of the traits of a psychopath, but considered them positive traits such as leadership and decisiveness." Does this sound at all similar to what we are seeing? I suggest asking Charles Elson.
I doubt that Pres. Trump wants to dismantle or seriously disrupt the USPS. Republican oligarchs have long wanted to privatize it. It has been fully fleshed out at taxpayer expense and is ripe for kleptocracy. Republican policy heretofore has been to low-key destabilize it to provide an excuse for privatization. Postmaster General DeJoy's job was to make that happen by hamstringing it. Why didn't Pres. Biden remove him? Because it is a special agency not fully funded by appropriations. Only the agency board can appoint the Postmaster General, and the board are appointed to seven-year terms and require Congressional approval to appoint and dismiss. Pres. Biden's hands were tied.
Obviously. I assume Musk wants to turn NASA into the funding arm of SpaceX. The immediate problem is that NASA provides vital services besides just hurling things into space. The first A in NASA provides gobs of funding for things such as air safety research, which Musk doesn't care about.
This will definitely run afoul of Congress. Even if you accept the argument that the executive is not bound to spend all of Congress' appropriations, simply deciding to spend money earmarked for a Moon mission on a Mars mission instead, that's illegal. Not that this administration cares one whit about the rule of law, but there you have it.
GOP splitting from Trump over Ukraine would be ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ awesome.
It's not like Europe is blind to this.
My previous career was NWS...since I am now a starving artist I even toyed with the idea of applying for my old job last year but I'm glad I did not--my old office just laid off the two most recent hires and more cuts are on the way next month...and they were already understaffed to begin with. Reminiscent of Rick Santorum's plan 20 years ago to privatize the weather service. Back then it died in committee since there was much public objection. This time, with a more lobotomized public, they might make a more serious attempt.
And a lobotomised Republican Party.
I think that it's worth pointing out that it's not solely due to his minion's actions. Bush Era Republicans put in place a really nasty bit of USPS sabotage - the outright insane pension funding rules. That thoroughly screwed over the USPS and seriously impacted how functional it could be as a business in a bunch of ways. That was in preparation to privatize it, of course, and generally give advantages to other delivery companies by screwing over American citizens. That seems to have been at least partially fixed in 2022, finally, but, well, DeJoy was already in place at that point and sabotaging the USPS in various other ways.
Maybe these people can help...
Can you grasp the difference between a satirical cartoon meant to be criticism of perceived Presidential overreach and an official Whitehouse communication revelling in the fact that the President considers himself to have regal powers ?
It's not a perfect comparison, but it's not too bad.
