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[smjjames]

The administration of "why don't we just not do our jobs?"

Honestly, I'm surprised that things didn't get way worse, which is probably largely due to the bureauacracy continuing under it's own momentum, if less efficiently as it should be doing.

[Telgin]

For example a close friend of mine was supposed to get federal assistance last year in paying for grad school and the money just... didn't arrive.  I think it eventually materialized months later so it was never stolen either.  The administration of "why don't we just not do our jobs?"

Did the graduate school itself have any part in the process?  Because if so, I wouldn't put it past them to have been the problem.  My experience has convinced me that graduate school administrations are black holes of incompetence.

[nenjin]

Is that how it works? That if you don't spend it, you lose it? That seems like it would create extremely crooked incentives, and seems like it'd be the kind of financial control that only totally clueless people would use. Or in other words, exactly what you'd expect out of the government.

That's exactly how budgeting works. It's why the military routinely fires off a shitload of ammunition at the end of the year, so to the bean counters it looks like it was consumed. If it's not consumed, the bean counters go "well then clearly we can reduce your budget next year since you didn't use all that ammo." This is true of most department budgets. If you can't justify what you have, you lose it. I've heard stories from enlisted folk of "grenade parties" where they'd just detonate crates upon crates worth of grenades to "clear out their stock."

In a normally functioning government, departments fight to keep their current funding or get more funding next year. They will accomplish this through the same frivolous means (wasting what remains of their budget so it gets consumed, hiding money, spending it inefficiently.) But in this whackadoo dystopian government, departments are actively trying to self-sabotage because the Great Deal Maker wishes it to be so.

[PTTG??]

Is that how it works? That if you don't spend it, you lose it? That seems like it would create extremely crooked incentives, and seems like it'd be the kind of financial control that only totally clueless people would use. Or in other words, exactly what you'd expect out of the government.

That's how it works in corporations, too. Don't fall into the libertarian propaganda trap of assuming government is always the worst way to do something.

[Frumple]

Anyhow, isn't making asylum seekers have to pay in order to seek asylum against international law? If not the spirit of it.

It's absolutely against the spirit of it. There's zero bloody question on that front.

Letter of the law (and more importantly domestic letter of the law given the US routinely wipes our ass with international law) is a different question, but spirit of it isn't a question at all. It's a blatant attempt to piss on said spirit.

... and yeah, corps aren't exactly much (or any) better at budget allocation. It's a very generic logistics issue.

[Grim Portent]

I mean the idea is just to correct when you over budget for something by not doing so in the following year, the problem of course being that expenditure each year isn't always the same. My dad used to work in middle management for telecomms companies and used to moan about the same stuff, with them pissing away part of their budgets each year just to justify having the same budget in future.

[EnigmaticHat]

For example a close friend of mine was supposed to get federal assistance last year in paying for grad school and the money just... didn't arrive.  I think it eventually materialized months later so it was never stolen either.  The administration of "why don't we just not do our jobs?"

Did the graduate school itself have any part in the process?  Because if so, I wouldn't put it past them to have been the problem.  My experience has convinced me that graduate school administrations are black holes of incompetence.

Its entirely possible, most college administrations seem to make mistakes often.

[Max™]

We aren't trying to teach fear of punishment, we're teaching cause and effect at the very least, and right and wrong in many cases.

The knock-on effects of that can be unpredictable, though; there's a point where a kid learns not only "if my parents become aware of things they don't like, I get hurt" but also "if I don't like what's going on, I should hurt people weaker than me until I feel better." It happens sooner than people think, too. Kids don't always advertise when they've figured stuff out, particularly if you react negatively to them telling you things.

It's also very hard to de-escalate from that back to reasoning with them, because you can't logic them out of something you didn't logic them into -- so, ultimately, everything is either a threat or a suggestion. I can tell you from experience that once a kid raised under that paradigm gets strong enough that the threats stop working, you're essentially done parenting them.

I'm happy I don't have any kids to deal with anymore, but while I was the only times I've ever actually smacked a kid were always a situation where I look over just in time to see a little hand reaching towards something that is going to suuuuuuuuuuck so bad if they actually get their target. Trying to say "hey grabbing that handle is going to dump a pot of hot stew on your head why wasn't it turned facing the back of the stove so please take a couple steps away from it for me?" isn't really guaranteed to work or even feasible if it was. So if if comes down to watching shit unfold or acting, I'm gonna flick out a mommacat pop to deflect/block the hand before apologizing and explaining exactly why it was my bad for not pre-emptively fixing those sorts of problems. I would have rather avoided the whole situation but I missed something that could be really dangerous, and because I can't easily fix the kinds of things that could have happened I did that. So, yay, that didn't go badly and you're just a little startled instead of seriously injured so I can totally fix that with a hug and a piggyback ride for having to thwap your hand suddenly.

When they get older and decide to deliberately start pumping out assholery and being a hardheaded little shit or straight up ignoring me when I'm trying to chill things out and show them a better way to go about that shit? Well, you ever had someone lock their middle finger behind their thumb and thwack you with it?

I don't do that but I will fwoosh one past your ear as a "hey, leave being an asshole to the professionals, little padawan" attention getter when you turn to stomp off or go back to your phone or whatever fit is being thrown. It's like when you got water in your ear and then the pressure floofs out and it drains and you can hear all sorts of shit again afterwards. THWA-POOMPH!

Also works great with cats that think they're clever by getting up on the counter to rummage in the cabinets... slink up silently, THWA-POOMPH past their ear, they instantly go as flat as they can and try to launch themselves anywhere else, assuming they lucked out on the near miss and learning that naughty counter kitties might randomly encounter sneaky fingerthwacks of doom!

[Dunamisdeos]

Uh, hey folks, some shit is going down for reals in Venezuela today.

Disturbing imagery warning, for real. Military jeeps deliberately ran over some protesters. Trump also directly threatening blockades and such of Cuba on account of their military support, though that seems not directly related to this specific event. You'd think alone that would result in some sort of media response, though. There's surprisingly little mainstream news coverage for this in the US, not sure if that lends or removes credibility to the story.

This article has a lot of info on the situation.

[Frumple]

There's video of it, yes. Pretty sure there was mention over in the Latin America thread.

The lack of mainstream coverage is completely fucking expected, though. Nothing surprising about it. Stateside media in particular has a persistent and lengthy history of just not talking about anything happening south of the border. Significant or persistent coverage is pretty close to guaranteed to not happen.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That and, you know, our government is actively trying to knock over Venezuela and loot the country for everything its got. Of course the big companies aren't allowed to talk about it outside the government line.

[smjjames]

There's video of it, yes. Pretty sure there was mention over in the Latin America thread.

The lack of mainstream coverage is completely fucking expected, though. Nothing surprising about it. Stateside media in particular has a persistent and lengthy history of just not talking about anything happening south of the border. Significant or persistent coverage is pretty close to guaranteed to not happen.

Yeah, I did mention it, with a The Guardian link. Though they didn't have a video embedded, just a link. It did get mentioned on CNN briefly, but I guess the media treats it like par for the course which is why it didn't get talked about more.

[McTraveller]

Back to politics, Betsy Devos is the actual fucking satan devil and I'll fight everyone on that.

Only Americans would look at "6 digit student debt not eliminated by bankruptcy" and think "man our civil servants don't deserve that but everyone else does."

Only the current administration would intentionally fail to fix even that narrow problem and let a 700 million dollar budget sit around.  264 applicants accepted is getting into "every last one of them had a personal contact" territory.

Ehh... yeah I'm kind of stupefied we even have a program like "give $700M to forgive debt of civil servants" but non civil servants are then stuck with paying their own debt and the civil servants' via taxes.  Although - $700M doesn't really go that far.  It's maybe the debt of like 20,000 people, at $30k forgiven each.  Incidentally, $30k is about the income tax of 4 filers... average is apparently $8400 in federal income tax per filer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wow I'm in an expensive state.  https://www.fool.com/taxes/2018/04/22/how-much-does-the-average-american-pay-in-taxes.aspx says average federal income tax is about $8400 but average state and local is only like $2000.  I pay just under $9k in federal income tax*.  But my state and local combined is I think higher than federal income tax - I pay over $4k in state income tax and about $3300 in local (property) taxes.  And that doesn't even include my state's 6% sales tax.

*I'm just talking income tax here, not FICA or Medicare.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean the main thing that got me is the utter gall of backing a program like that publicly then just publicly forcing it to fail.

Like do you really think we aren't watching???

[Frumple]

Why would you think fucking devos and her ilk would give a damn even if people are watching? If they were capable of feeling shame or whatever they wouldn't be the sort of scum they are to begin with.