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On the way back from the protest today...
we sat next to a guy on the train who asked what the signs were about, so we told him.
He assured me that while a few people would lose their jobs in the short run, everything would settle down soon and in the long run it would be good for everyone.
I disagreed politely, pointing out that the cuts are so deep, and in so many agencies, that pretty much every American will be affected by them, soon and with no expiration date. And that the cuts are being made with an axe, not a scalpel. I'm all in favor of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, but if you were really trying to do that, you would hire people who know about accounting and government procurement, and who would study what the agencies do before issuing prescriptions for how to fix them. But they don't have time to do that kind of serious investigation: they have to break things as fast as possible, without understanding them, because the longer they take, the more likely somebody is to stop them. Instead, they have a bunch of 20-year-old kids who are good at computer programming but don't know anything else making decisions about shutting down entire government agencies, and they've been given access to your entire financial history, your SSN and birthdate and tax returns etc, without even passing a security background check; I assume they've made copies of all that on their home computers so they can sell it later. He agreed that it would be best to have government fixed by people who know what they're doing.
And then I asked what business he was in. He talked about his efforts to get a mistaken DUI stricken from his record so he can get back his CDL and return to his job driving trucks so he can retire with full benefits before he's 70. Apparently a lawyer he hired to help with this lied to him in order to extract more legal fees from him, and never really pressed his case, but he's still out $30K, and several years of seniority, for the attempt. He was on his way to a job fair, and I wished him luck.
As he got off the train, he said "Y'all seem to be really nice people. You're clearly left-wingers, and I'm not, but it's been nice talking to you." I replied "Yes, we need to talk across these divides, or we'll have two countries rather than one."
He assured me that while a few people would lose their jobs in the short run, everything would settle down soon and in the long run it would be good for everyone.
I disagreed politely, pointing out that the cuts are so deep, and in so many agencies, that pretty much every American will be affected by them, soon and with no expiration date. And that the cuts are being made with an axe, not a scalpel. I'm all in favor of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, but if you were really trying to do that, you would hire people who know about accounting and government procurement, and who would study what the agencies do before issuing prescriptions for how to fix them. But they don't have time to do that kind of serious investigation: they have to break things as fast as possible, without understanding them, because the longer they take, the more likely somebody is to stop them. Instead, they have a bunch of 20-year-old kids who are good at computer programming but don't know anything else making decisions about shutting down entire government agencies, and they've been given access to your entire financial history, your SSN and birthdate and tax returns etc, without even passing a security background check; I assume they've made copies of all that on their home computers so they can sell it later. He agreed that it would be best to have government fixed by people who know what they're doing.
And then I asked what business he was in. He talked about his efforts to get a mistaken DUI stricken from his record so he can get back his CDL and return to his job driving trucks so he can retire with full benefits before he's 70. Apparently a lawyer he hired to help with this lied to him in order to extract more legal fees from him, and never really pressed his case, but he's still out $30K, and several years of seniority, for the attempt. He was on his way to a job fair, and I wished him luck.
As he got off the train, he said "Y'all seem to be really nice people. You're clearly left-wingers, and I'm not, but it's been nice talking to you." I replied "Yes, we need to talk across these divides, or we'll have two countries rather than one."