At least 14,000 IRS workers did not show up to work this week, disobeying Trump's order

Good.

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Roger That!

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Rather apropos today.

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This seems like a “well duh” statement from the reporting.

Assuming you’re not locked into a contract needing a months notice to get out of it. Eliminating the huge child care expense since you’re not allowed to go to work and can take care yourself seems super obvious.

And then the ripple begins, as care centers can’t afford pay their workers. Who will not get back pay.

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The stupidity and complacency of today’s “free” market extremists is that of the aristocrats of 18th century France: they never think that people will get fed up, and never understand that all it takes is one spark. It may start with Michael Moore, or with the TSA workers, or with the IRS workers, but push people around long enough and it will happen.

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How weird that people would fail to jump at an offer like “we won’t pay you, but we order you to come to work anyway”.

I mean let’s be clear, this is working without pay. Even if the government promises to pay them some day, so what? They already broke their promise to pay them on the agreed date; why should this new, weaker “promise” be worth anything?

The way folx roll over for this horseshit makes me want to punch a thousand walls. When someone decides to take six months to pay my invoices, that IS. NOT. OK. – I would go to jail if I tried it at the grocery store – and the reason businesses get away with it is that we are all pathetic, forelock-tugging craven myrmidons whose only ambition is to bend over another inch or two for our corporate masters, and we should be vomiting ourselves unconscious at the sight of one another.

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I mean, this is great, in some ways. On the other claw, a dysfunctional IRS is among the few things Trump craves as much as a dysfunctional DOJ…personally I’d rather aee the secret service stay home, not so Trump gets killed, but just so people can come up and slap him or shoot him with bb guns for a couple days.

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Yeah, I mean, food stamps, the DOJ and the IRS. Trump doesn’t want any of that stuff to happen anyway. And airports? He’s got airforce one.

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Now that’s REAL trickle-down in action. ;-(
/s?

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“I am a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too, I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.” --Steve Bannon.

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Shannon Ellis, President of the National Treasury Employees Union in Kansas City sums it up when she tells The Washington Post : “People are panicking. It’s scary. It’s getting worse every day.”

“Good,” said the President with a sneer.

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Trump’s poll numbers were already worst in D.C. before the shut down (about 20/80 approve/disapprove) and are falling even below that now.
This seems like a good time to mention that Washington D.C. (which has more people than most of the states in the U.S.) has no senators and their congressional rep doesn’t get to vote. Can we please change that?

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Hard to imagine many tasks more demoralizing then being forced to work without pay just to ensure that a bunch of rich assholes don’t face any delay getting their tax rebate checks.

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I’d imagine that’s when “mistakes” that can’t be tied to anyone at the IRS happen. “Believe me, Congressman, we’re doing our best to find your money. No, we don’t know what happened. Are you sure you filed your taxes correctly, sir? Alright, we’ll be in touch if we find anything. Thank you, sir. Goodbye.”

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“Golly Mr. President, I can’t begin to tell you how embarrassed we are that your last 40 years of tax returns were accidentally mailed to the Washington Post. We will certainly be launching a full investigation into the matter as soon as we can, but I’m afraid we’re a bit short-handed at the moment.”

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The IRS is also losing 25 IT staffers every week since the shutdown began, with many finding other jobs, one House aide said, citing the IRS officials’ briefing.

Retaining skilled workers while offering below-market wages (at least for non-unionized positions) is something the public service always struggles with. Often there are other perks that make up for it: government-backed pensions, more vacation, or maybe just the warm fuzzy feeling that you are contributing to your community and not just making a rich CEO richer. (That last one may be a bit of a delusion but hey, you take what joy you can in this life).

But no amount of perks is going to make up for not receiving any wage at all.

Edited to add: This begs the question: when the shutdown finally ends, I wonder what percentage of workers are just not going to come back because they found other jobs in the meantime. How will the various agencies handle what could be a huge amount of turnover all at once?

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While I upvoted that, careful. A classmate of mine in 10th grade, son of my history teacher, was killed with a bb gun. Freak accident, but he died nonetheless.

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In other words, Bannon doesn’t understand shit about Lenin?

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You’re forgetting all the working class stiffs who are also fully entitled to getting a refund of all that money they loaned the government interest free. Do they also deserve a delay?

Not saying I feel like those 14k IRS employees that arn’t showing up are doing the wrong thing, but don’t try and make it seem like this is only going to hurt the rich folk.

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In a similar vein it never fails to amaze me that companies offering vast bribes donations to the very political parties focussed on impoverishing their customers seem so surprised when their business model collapses…

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