@jik I am so sorry to hear about what they've done to you--my protest sign for Monday includes standing for federal workers.

And the wider implications of this on the data security is horrifying.

@jik Trump and Musk don't give a f about veterans.  

I hope you can find a new job quickly.

@jik @salixsericea

I have said for quite a while that the ultra-capitalists think business investments in safety, security, health, environment, etc are "economic inefficiencies", barriers to nearterm quarterly profit.

The most charitable way to make sense of what you're seeing is that they are trying to run government like a business. I don't even think a business should be run that way, nor do I think that's what they're doing. But it would be the most benign interpretation.

In fact I think they are either actively trying to destroy government, or faith in government, or they are useful idiots for somebody who is.

For a long time, they've pushed the narrative the government can't do anything useful. That's their justification for keeping it small. The problem is the government does a bunch of things that people actually like. They like the postal system, so it's been necessary to create the narrative fiction that it's a profit and loss center, when the Constitution makes no such requirement. The public likes Medicare, so they create scary stories about medical services and other countries. The public like Social Security, so they do what they can to make it seem bankrupt. The public likes the CDC, and FEMA, and NOAA, and CFPB, so they're just gutting them and planning to staff them with i̶n̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ loyalists to erode confidence.

It does not serve a totalitarian government to have other sources of competence, so of course they want the state governments to appear weak or just fail. For a long time the GOP has clung to the theory that states rights were important. They haven't noticed they've been taken over by people who don't believe any of the things that they used to believe. They think it's just good for the team to win at any cost, even though the team has been captured by somebody from the outside who is exploiting their trust and wanting to install a strong but makevolent central government.

The GOP rank and file have been duped, or they'd be backing state governments to protect themselves from people trying to be Central dictators. There will be no states rights when this gets done.

All the oligarchs want now is for everybody to be pliable. And that involves breaking anything that's functioning.

Safety is unimportant to them because they only care about themselves at the top, and they figure they have enough cash to protect themselves. They have shown no characteristics of anyone who has any concern about the public at large, which is why spending minimally on anything protective seems unimportant to them.

As far as I can tell, they are looking at the us the way American pickers look at a storage room full of cool stuff they can sell for whatever someone will pay, it's just that the cool stuff they're auctioning off for personal benefit is natural resources, policy, data, and probably soon human beings.

In some ways this is the fulfillment of Tytler's prediction the Democracy would survive only as long as voters didn't figure out they could vote themselves largesse. Except Tytler wrongly imagined that it would be the poor or middle class who were the voters. He didn't realize that they were actually decent, honest people. It turned out that with Citizens United, the only voters who mattered were the ultra rich. And now those greedy few have figured out that they can vote themselves largesse. And so democracy is in peril.

EDIT: I just want to note that I was thinking VA.gov was Virginia. Ha. I guess it's the Veteran's Administration. But that's why I detoured on States Rights, which might have seemed an irrelevance. I do also think they're bringing down the federal infrastructure, as I indicated here as well, so no need to actually amend the above remarks but I wanted to clarify the focus.

@jik

I understand DOGE may be hiring for such a role.

In any case, best wishes.

https://infosec.exchange/@kimzetter/114006065487319811

@jik

so 😔 to hear for you and what this means to people the agency serves