Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The two most active threads yesterday were the Bishop Mariann Budde thread discussing her remarks at the inaugural prayer service and the Blake Lively thread, which actually inspired a second thread in the Website Feedback forum asking for it to be closed. Since I have discussed those threads already, I will start with one titled, "DEI RIFs" and posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. Among the slew of executive orders issued by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump immediately after his inauguration was one prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management then followed up by ordering all DEI staff members to be placed on paid leave by 5 p.m. yesterday. Agencies are expected to develop a "reduction in force" policy for the DEI staffers within a week. The original poster of this thread wants to know if these staffers will have the right to "bump" less senior employees in other parts of the agency. Trump's EOs have generally followed a pattern of being poorly thought out, confusing, and fairly amateurish. OPM memos have not been much better and, in some cases, arguably worse. In this case, posters can't even agree about whether or not a RIF is mandated. Posters have a host of questions, including who exactly is considered DEI staff. In some cases, DEI duties are shared with other responsibilities, and posters wonder whether someone who only handles DEI as a small part of their duties will be included. Many of those responding seem to hate the DEI programs in their agencies and hold DEI staff in low regard. For the most part, they are glad to see them go and don't really care what happens to them. Others are concerned with the legalities of the move and are mainly interested in discussing the technicalities of it as a labor issue rather than specifically tied to DEI. Several other posters, however, are concerned about the fate of the DEI staff. A number of such posters explain that the DEI staff in their offices are simply human resources personnel that rotate through the role. Some took the position simply because it was a promotion or seemed like an interesting opportunity. They are not "DEI careerists," and many posters seem to dislike them being caught up in this matter. Eventually, this thread turned into nothing more than a debate about DEI, which is really irrelevant to the thread's topic. Personal views about DEI don't really matter to this discussion. More important is the fate of those who are being swept up by the OPM memo.

Next was another thread that was posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. Titled, "New OPM memo on RTO", like the previous thread, this one deals with a memo from the Office of Personnel Management. In this case, the memo deals with the return to the office by federal employees. I discussed a thread about a federal RTO in yesterday's blog post. That thread was about the executive order issued by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Whereas that EO was so poorly written as to have no real impact, the OPM memo discussed in this thread is blunt and to the point. Posters are shocked by its aggressive tone. The biggest issue that those responding have with this memo is that it is a blanket policy across the entire federal government. Federal agencies are not all alike. Some have remote work embedded in their culture. Circumstances are different from department to department. Normally, agencies would have been asked to develop their own policies. This meat cleaver approach will cause a number of unnecessary problems. Several posters say they expect it to result in huge numbers of people quitting the government, and some posters say that they plan to do that themselves. Of course, this is part of the goal. Shadow President Elon Musk has made clear that he wants RTO to be as painful as possible in order to encourage employees to leave and help downsize the government. Many posters point out that the memo is not consistent with the laws it cites for authority and, therefore, will likely be subject to legal challenge. For the most part, those responding insist that this will make the government less efficient. Many agencies don't have sufficient office space for their entire staff. Many offer commuter subsidies. So both real estate and transportation costs will go up. Moreover, many posters insist that while they are willing to start work early or end late and work extra hours while at home, if forced back to the office, they will no longer do that. Many say they won't even bring their laptops home with them. What a lot of non-federal employees may not understand is that some agencies have had extensive telework and remote programs from well before the pandemic. In such cases, this is not a return to the status quo, but rather a turn to something completely new. Even in cases where remote or telework only started with the pandemic, that has been long enough that it is the only situation that many employees have ever known. Therefore, this policy is very disruptive in many cases. Complex scenarios always appear simple to those who are ignorant. The current Trump administration policy-making is a perfect example of that rule in action.

Yesterday's next most active thread was titled, "Why aren't people protesting?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster points out that with all the disappointing actions by cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump, there should be plenty of upset people — on both sides of the aisle in the case of some policies — but nobody seems to be protesting. She understands that people are tired of fighting, but says that simply rolling our eyes is not helping. On Monday, one of the threads that I discussed had a very similar theme. Rather than take time that I don't really have today to read this entire thread, I've just looked at a few posts and, based on those and the previous thread, I'll give my impressions. First, it should be noted that there have been protests. They have not received much media coverage, however. There are always claims that "the media" is biased. Never mind that the media is not monolithic, the biases demonstrated by the mainstream media are not as simple as left or right. Rather than devoting space to analyzing media bias, let me just say that the media is currently of the mind that demonstrations are bad. There was a time, especially after Trump's first inauguration, in which protests were seen as fun and trendy. But, sometime after the murder of George Floyd, the public's and the media's attitudes changed. Whether the media reflected public sentiment or vice versa, I can't say. But it is sufficient to note that protests are no longer trendy. The cool kids are not going to them, and "the media" is not covering them. Many have come to the conclusion that protests are ineffective. Of course, not doing anything is also ineffective. Others say that they are just waiting for Trump's policies to really start hurting and inspire more opposition. A common attitude, especially among DCUM fairly-affluent posters, is that while Trump is going to be bad, he won't necessarily be bad for them. They feel like others brought this on themselves and they should suffer the consequences. It is not for those who tried to stop it to protest now. Others try to point out that such people may not be as protected as they believe. While they won't be getting rounded up in a mass deportation raid, they can't hide from a sagging economy or a deteriorating environment. A failed government — which many believe Trump is creating — will impact all of us. As I said in Monday's post, a big problem is a lack of leadership. Elected Democrats are, at best, cowering in fear. At worst, they are actively collaborating with Republicans — we see you, John Fetterman. At the moment, the most prominent opposition leader on the left might be an Episcopal Bishop who, in the space of a few minutes, showed more courage than most elected Democrats have done since the election.

For the past two days, the Montgomery County Public Schools system's inclement weather practices have been the subject of the most active threads that led to my daily blog posts. While the topic was not the most active today, a thread on the topic is the last one that I will discuss today. Posted, of course, in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum, the thread was titled, "MCPS Code Green Thursday On-Time Opening. Also open for activities Wednesday." Unlike the previous threads which were about delayed openings, this one was about schools opening on time today. This was a reversal of the two-hour delay that had earlier been announced for today. As I have said in all posts on this topic, school systems cannot win when it comes to weather. Instead of simply being happy that schools are getting back to normal, several posters fixated on the grammar in the announcement. Whoever wrote the announcement described the return to normalcy as a "Moment of Joy". Posters reacted to that by comparing it to the style of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and demanding the author be summarily fired. MCPS parents are clearly as level-headed as ever. Other than the debate about capitalization, the other dominant dispute in the thread is about teachers. I have never encountered a group that seems so bitter about the people they want to educate their children. Teachers are blamed for every school ailment. Posts in the thread are attributed to teachers without evidence that a teacher had anything to do with them. One poster, in an attempt to demonstrate that teachers are angry about opening on time, listed a number of Facebook posts allegedly from MCPS teachers. Other posters said that the posts were wrongly attributed and many of them seemed to be sarcastic rather than serious. Most of the statements were not that bad in the first place. The general feeling I get from these threads is that few posters believe that decisions about school openings are being made with the interests of students in mind. Rather, delays and closings are seen as accommodations for teachers and viewed as hostile to working parents. The fact that delayed openings are also problematic for teachers never seems to enter these posters' minds. Mind you, all of this vitriol towards teachers is taking place in a thread about schools opening on time.