Yes many of them won’t be replaced. Many institutions won’t. Some existing will remain but need to replace the previous regimes loyalists. And create new admins so your current regime maintains after next elections. This is how you establish lasting power.
This isn’t renovating an old house, it’s pouring kerosene around, torching it to collect the insurance money, and saying you might rebuild whatever you miss. They’ve squandered billions of dollars in past investments, incurred massive liabilities, and are making all future work more expensive.
Say you do need the government to actually do something: how much more money are qualified people going to expect when they can’t count on decent working conditions or job security? How much more will every government contract cost when past history of failure to pay has to be priced in? Every federal job supports multiple private sector jobs, and federal spending provided a consistent economic baseline in many parts of the country, too, so that’ll all be happening within a hard recession.
This is the recipe for corruption that was eliminated back in the progressive era of the early 20th century. It's what gave us Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.
Repopulating organizations with loyal stooges is not constructive.
DEI is merit: the entire point is NOT passing over qualified applicants because they don’t fit a given image. If you look at the people axing DEI programs, note how they’re almost all sons of affluence who aren’t exceptionally qualified.
That's a very gracious description of any DEI program I've had personal experience with.
DEI programs and similar work by focusing more effort on underrepresented groups. By design that puts less focus on overrepresented groups, and splits that focus away from merit all together.
Arguing that everyone should have equal opportunity to succeed is admirable and a great goal to have. I've never seen a DEI program that implements that or stops at that goal though, they need more immediate results and focus instead on helping to select under represented groups into positions to better balance the statistics.
The ones I’ve worked with uniformly focused on making sure that hiring didn’t inadvertently rule people out. This often benefited white people, too: if you’re a vet with a thick southern accent and without a degree, getting the chance to interview is important for being able to demonstrate that you’ve acquired the required skills by other means.
So fire the most competent people (people are placed on probation for 2 years when promoted in the Feds,people being promoted are normally ones you want to keep, and Trump/Elon are blanket firing everyone on probation) because DEI exists?
That's not my argument at all. Firing probationary employees is really the only immediate lever they had, my understanding I'd that other employees are better protected.
Is it the right approach? Definitely not, but that doesn't mean it can't be a step in a better direction. That all depends on your goals and what you want to happen, I couldn't answer that question no matter what.
Probationary employees can more easily be fired for cause. Thousands of employees, including some of the best who had recently been promoted, were given the reason 'poor performance'.
So you are OK with firing the best because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You are OK with breaking the law because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You are OK with lying to people why they are fired because 'otherwise it's hard'.
You just want action and don't care if it's smart action, legal, or fair. That is item 3 on the checklist of fascism.
"The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation."
