I thought that was just the job we give people who are trying their best but can’t really anything.

Thank you for this link; it has made my day immeasurably more entertaining.

They don’t plan to fill them. They plan to eliminate the position of anyone who takes this option.

Awaiting sentencing — here’s the relevant bit:

Jessup on Monday told the Guardian that he must fill out certain paperwork before he could step down. The county council chair had mailed him those papers, but they had not immediately arrived, said Jessup, who is awaiting a sentencing hearing tentatively scheduled for April.

According to what Jessup told the Daily Reporter, he was prepared for prosecutors to argue that he deserves between eight and 20 years in prison. Jessup reportedly said that his attorneys were going to seek a sentence of probation.

Even if voters may not expect any better from Trump, Gaitan said, “they feel they can trust him on the economy.”

So…they’re stupid?

Thanks, couldn’t remember that one.

Paywall-Free Version

I think it wouldn’t annoy me so much if I knew who any of them were. Seeing something about Globglopr having beef with Cronchstan just makes me think I’ve had a stroke.

Not being able to scroll recycled content all day has been hugely detrimental to me. I’ve actually started reading books again. BOOKS.

Their tears sustain me. God forbid someone actually help people instead of corporations pretending to be people.

Jesus. I don’t even vape and I can tell what that is just from seeing people use them around town.

The CR provides funding through January 19, 2024, for agencies and programs that were funded in the following four FY2023 appropriations acts:

• the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023;
• the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023;
• the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023; and
• the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023.

For most other federal agencies and programs, the CR provides funding through February 2, 2024.

You can read the whole thing here.

I didn’t, but I get why. It’s a specious argument — it doesn’t matter if 99% of them are useless. It matters if the 1% that become ubiquitous for whatever reason provide utility that makes the useless ones worth it.

Yeah you can run a company that never provides any time or resources to tinker, but only if you’re okay with innovation never happening again.

Editable titles on posts. What a time to be alive!

I really like your last point, and I hope that’s the effect of this. I just also hope that it’s not to the detriment of the competitive service.

We’re already seeing a decrease in quality hires due to direct-hire authority — without checks on the hiring authority, they have a tendency to just hire fast without actually determining if someone is qualified for a role.

As you’re not American, I’ll assume you’re unaware of all the attractive benefits this employer already gets. Here’s a few:

• its employees gain access to massive subsidies for higher education that most Americans have to pay for, since we are a shithole country
• those education benefits are already extended to their spouses and children in instances of total disability*
• any veteran has access to a welfare stipend if they have low income
• any injury they have on duty that results in any chronic symptom means they get tax free money every month and free healthcare for life — this isn’t just while working on base either, if you’re on leave and you twist your knee skiing and it hurts to bend it sometimes, the government will pay you for life for that, and pay you more if you’re married or have kids. Depending on how many “disabilities” you rack up, this can be upwards of $4k, tax free, every month, for life.

*if you rack up 100% of disability, this does not necessarily mean you can’t do anything, it just means you’ve hit a combination of government disability math that thinks you can’t

And those benefits? I’m all for them. I wish everyone got them, since there are far more useful things a person can do instead of joining the military-industrial complex, but whatever, at least someone gets them.

What bothers me about this one is that it’s at the expense of the competitive service, and thus at the expense of the public — Americans will get poorer service from their public servants because they didn’t have to compete against the best-qualified to get their jobs. They just got plonked in there because of who they decided to shack up with.

I guess this is where I sound like an asshole, but…so what?

No one is drafted into the military. You volunteer for a term and they pay you (like shit, but I digress). Most of them never leave the US and most don’t see combat over corporate interests, so it’s basically like any other shitty job apart from being able to be put in jail if you try to quit before your term is up.

Why do we have this fascination with treating this one shitty employer’s employees better than we treat everyone else?

It’s totally possible that it’ll be an amazing thing, but past practices don’t give me a lot of faith in that. The competitive process exists to weed out one or two people being able to hire who they want to without checks and balances. Removal of that for certain classes of people just makes it easier to skirt those checks as long as someone is in a special class.

The problem we run into is what the government considers jobs that require expertise — for example, the people who write rating decisions for disabled veterans have an immensely important job that requires substantial training and skills, but much of the aptitude for learning these is tested for in the panel and interviewing process. They aren’t specific degrees or certifications. Under this rule, those tests would never happen for these people. They’d just be hired, plonked into a training class they might have no ability to pass, and start creating financial obligations for the government in as little as six weeks.

It’s not a point preference. It says that they can be appointed non-competitively if the head of the Executive agency thinks they’re qualified.

We saw the same thing with direct-hire authority — people abandon the competitive hiring practices because direct-hire is faster.

It’s hard for me to see how this difficulty they have, which plenty of non-military and non-law enforcement families also have, makes them a special class uniquely qualified for remote positions based on who they decided to shack up with.