Category Archives: jobs

Two More Panic-Mongering Lawsuits

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Newly installed OMB Director and Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought has moved to curb the abuses of the CFPB by ordering staff to issue no more new rules, to stop new investigations, and to suspend existing investigations and litigations pending a general review of the CFPB’s activities. Vought also has authorized DOGE personnel to audit CFPB’s financial activities, including its payroll.

The National Treasury Employees Union is mightily upset, and it has filed two suits to stop these cease and desists and the audit. The NTEU alleged in the first case

It is substantially likely that these initial directives are a precursor to a purge of CFPB’s workforce, which is now prohibited from fulfilling the agency’s statutory mission[.]

In the second case, the union alleged that the CFPB

granted access, and by extension, disclosed employee records to individuals associated with DOGE without employee consent to such disclosure.

I will be brief, and the NTEU will not find it pleasant.

The union’s first case is entirely speculative as no harm has yet occurred, nor has the union alleged any harm actually has occurred. The suit should be tossed on that ground alone. Regarding the union’s allegation of prohibition, this is pure fantasy: the activities are HIAed, not prohibited, and whether the CFPB is functioning as statutorily required in this context is a political assessment, not one that is justiciable.

In the second case, the union’s allegations are, once again, purely speculative, and no harm has yet occurred, nor has the union alleged any actual harm has occurred. All it has done is raise a series of scary boogieman possibilities for some time in a nebulous future. This case ought to be tossed on that ground as well. Regarding the consent allegation, the CFPB’s employees—all Federal government employees—agreed to have their pay records audited on demand when they signed on to their government employment. That allegation also should be tossed even if the larger case is continued.

The evident frivolousness of these two suits is one more reason why government unions are destructively counterproductive and why the sinecure nature of civil service jobs needs to be severely curtailed.

Incomplete Progress against DEI

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As a result of President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order regarding Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in the Federal government and government contractors, nearly 400 bureaucrats have been “sidelined:” put on paid leave. Additionally, some $420 million in related contracts have been canceled.

There remains, though, a question that shouldn’t be a question.

It is not yet clear when or if they [those bureaucrats] will be terminated.

Charles Ezell, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, though, seems clear on the matter.

[A]gency heads were required to submit to OPM a written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding DEI employees and a list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since November 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEI programs.

That plan was due by COB last Friday. It seems simple enough, and mostly clear: all of those employees should be RIFed. More to the point, since their positions have been eliminated, there’s not even any need to RIF them; they already have no jobs. Send them to the private sector where their vasty experience will stand them in good stead in their job search. The only reason for a formal RIF would be in the event that’s the mechanism to prevent them from being reassigned elsewhere on the Federal—which is to say our tax funded—payroll.

Are They or Aren’t They?

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The McDonald’s burger chain now is claiming to be doing away with its DEI foolishness in its corporate hierarchy.

The company said it would phase out some diversity commitments among suppliers and said its diversity team would now be called the Global Inclusion Team. The name change, it said, was “more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.”

Then the company said it would instead

focus on “continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.”

The name change and backhanded admission that it would continue doing precisely what it intimated it would stop doing insult the intelligence of us average Americans.

This sort of weasel wording is why we cannot trust business managers who claim to be doing away with the intrinsically racist and sexist DEI…foolishness. They aren’t. They’re just hiding it in their back rooms.

Indeed There Is

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River Page, writing for The Free Press last Sunday, objected to any proliferation of “Tiger Moms.” However, she’s wholly misinterpreted the concept of and the goals of tiger moms.

There are more important things in life than making a six-figure salary and going to Yale goes her subheadline. She concluded her piece with this:

There’s no point in living in a prosperous country if you can’t enjoy it[.]

The one is not the aim of tiger moms, and the other isn’t possible without achieving their goal. Vivek Ramaswamy, of DOGE, has laid out the situation, using the H-1B visa debate as the backdrop.

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

He added, as paraphrased by Page, that tech companies prefer to hire foreigners—and their offspring—because the children of native-born Americans don’t work hard enough.

That’s what tiger moms are working against, and we need more of them, not the coddled snowflakes of too many of our current offspring and their children.

That more important thing, toward which tiger moms try to raise their children, is a work ethic that prides work and that produces the overriding satisfaction of a job well done. The self respect that comes from that is what powers full enjoyment of leisure time and the full enjoyment of the plethora of leisures available in a prosperous country.

Indeed, there isn’t a prosperous country without the work required to produce, maintain, and defend it. Six-figure salaries fall out of all of that; they aren’t the goal of any of that. Neither is going to Yale instead of any other school. Students get out of their higher education institution—whichever it is, and it need not be a so-called elite school—what they put into it, and what they put into it is what they learn to put into it during their pre-school and K-12 years. That’s where tiger moms earn their stripes and the respect of us otherwise average Americans, their peers.

Blame Someone Else

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Safeway is closing one of its San Francisco stores due to concerns about high crime rates and employee and customer safety in that store’s neighborhood. Oh, the hue and cry.

The Reverand Erris Edgerly, for instance, is crying foul.

It’s obvious the community has been struggling, but to just up and leave without calling a meeting, with no alternative for groceries, is upsetting. There was no community outreach at all.

It’s obvious that the crime rate in Edgerly’s community has been out of control for quite some time and the safety of his community members has been in the wind for all that time. From that, it’s just as obvious that community “leaders,” like the good Reverand, have contributed nothing useful to mitigating the situation (in truth, the city has done nothing, also, but that doesn’t excuse the community’s “leaders”).

Outreach would have been just more chit-chat and worse than pointless: advance notice of the store’s closing would have been too likely to trigger an accelerated spate of break-ins and lootings, exposing the store’s employees and customers to even more danger in that end game.

Maybe the Edgerlys of the neighborhood should look in a mirror to find some of the folks with whom to…outreach.