Disposable Federal Employees?
One month ago, the most destructive and corrupt regime we have ever seen took over this country. Donald Trump at the helm with his first mate Elon Musk, immediately started destroying our democracy. Accepted and long time norms became “evil” and “wrong” because of them. The worst of the worst is the hatchet job they are doing under the guise of DOGE…. Recent photos display Elon with a huge chainsaw, symbolic of his “cuts” to Federal jobs.
Mike, my husband worked for 33 years in the Federal Civil service as a Customs and Border patrol officer. We were in our mid 20s when he started applying for jobs. His first attempt was to be in the Border Patrol, but that meant we would have to move our family to So California and that is not something I wanted to do. Our families are both here in Maine and I had 2 prexchoolers. So, he started working part time for US Customs here in Bangor, ME as a call in officer. At the same time he worked for his parents in their variety store in Eddington, ME and I worked part time as an RN. Neither of us were slouches…we both worked very hard to support our little family. Eventually full time Customs positions came open in VT. Mike applied. The Feds delved into his past with a fine toothed comb, and that is daunting no matter how upstanding you are. They looked into our families, our finances, and all of our private business. They checked references too. It was a long drawn out and stressful process. Not much has changed since then. All of the recent fired employees went through the same thing to work for the Feds. The only ones who don’t get scrutinized an vetted like this are the President and whomever he decides will run federal agencies…like the fabricated DOGE goons and all of the Cabinet members.
Imagine going through all that, passing the muster, getting a job and moving to a new State for a job. Imagine buying or renting a new home, placing your children in local schools or day care and going to work, set on making a career of this new federal job. Imagine learning all of the basics, and beyond of the job. Imagine getting great reviews and evaluations and being able to move up in ranks for better pay and benefits. Imagine all that. That was what Mike did and he did move up.
Now, imagine how it must feel to have a know nothing entitled rich guy, who was not vetted himself, has NO EXPERIENCE IN FEDERAL JOBS OR GOVERNMENT, and who wasn’t even born in this country bringing in his teenage stooges and hacking into government business computers. The computers that you learned to protect and carefully use for your sensitive job. Then they camped out in our Federal agencies until they had it all downlaoded onto hard drives. And after all that, they started send out letters about firings or voluntary resignations….called FORK letters. The offer of 8 months pay comes if you are willing to resign, from your very skilled and hard won job. If you don’t accept, you will be fired. If you do accept, you might be fired anyway and never see a penny of that 8 months pay, and you’d have no recourse on these actions by DOGE.
Tens of thousands of Americans were fired from their Federal jobs since January 20. Since then we had our first mid air crash plane/helicoptuer crash and all aboard were killed. There have been several less spectacular crashes too…the FAA fired workers..like ATC people. Cancer patients have been left stranded in the middle of trials….because federal funding stopped and NIH employees were fired. The CDC people were let go in the middle of the worst TB outbreak the US has seen in 100 years….and bird flu is on the rise. AND all of the established SCIENCE information has been shut down. Regular flu and COVID and RSV are all running rampant right now too. The consumer protection bureau has been shuttered, and they are the ones who protect all of us from crooks like Elon and his boss Trump. OPM has also been hacked and all of our personal and financial information taken by unvetted, untraied DOGE kids. Dedicated long term military elite have been fired and replaced by loyal Trump boot lickers. Traditionally, the military has never been political.
The list of egregious Trumpian things that have happened in just one month is too long to list here. Suffice to say, when Mike and I went to VT for him to work for the Feds, we had no savings to speak of, and our only money was what we got from the sale of our home in Eddington ME. That money had to go toward a new home, and that is where it went. The first move was not funded by the Federal Government, so all of our moving expenses fell on us. Mike borrowed $5000 from his parents that we paid back after we got the money from the house we sold. With the rest of the borrowed money, we put earnest money down on a new house, rented a UHAUL, and drove our family to Newport, VT. He also had the expenses of temporary lodging in a motel before we all moved into our new home…that was also on us, not the Feds. We invested a lot of our own money in that Federal job, because it was was our start to becoming a productive, comfortable middle income family. We both worked very hard for every single thing we have, including our lifestyle. We were never going to get rich in our jobs, but we took care of each other, our kids and even our families at times.
If there had been a DOGE chainsaw hacking of Federal jobs back in 1978, when Mike was a new full time hire, we would have been financially ruined. We would have lost everything that we invested in that move. It would have disrupted our lives and our children’s lives in unimaginable ways. All of what Mike went through to finally become a full time Federal employee would have been a complete waste of his time, the Fed’s money and ours. The Feds invest in federal employees, and the new employees invest their own money in moves and homes to go to and do the jobs. Firing them randomly , with a chainsaw should be illegal.
My hope is that the workers UNIONS and the COURTS will slam both Musk and Trump with lawsuits that they never could imagine. I am pretty sure I know at this point just WHO needs to be fired, and it is not the worker bees in the Federal Government. It is the crooks at the top.
