Causey says President Donald Trump is keeping his promises to "drain the swamp" with a crackdown on federal unions, and aims to make the federal retirement plan...
Nobody likes bad news, except maybe much of the media, lobbyists seeking work and people with political agendas. Come to think of it that describes many in the D.C. Beltway. But a couple of miles away in the real world, bad news is really bad news.
But the reality is that bad things — real, imagined and pending — happen all the time. And these times generally get more eyes and ears than the good stuff.
It’s been maybe a decade or more since federal workers and retirees have gotten any “yahoo”-inducing good news out of the White House or Congress. Former President Barack Obama was friendly to civil servants and said he wanted to make government “cool again.” And it was, except for sequestration, furloughs, shutdowns and three years of frozen federal pay. Imagine if he hadn’t had their best interests at heart — that could have been a real rough patch.
President Donald Trump is keeping his promises to ” drain the swamp” with a crackdown on federal unions, and aims to make the federal retirement plan more costly for workers and less valuable for retirees.
He also envisions a pay freeze and more privatization of government functions.
A column last week about an updated set of White House proposed cuts to the Federal Employees Retirement System prompted one reader, Michael G. to urge me to knock it off and lose the cloudy crystal ball.
“You know, if you would stop, or at least limit your predictions of all things that you ‘think’ may happen with the retirement systems, you could provide us with other actual events and occurrences that are factually known and documented to happen … Your uncanny ability to make a living out of speculation is getting rather annoying.”
What we try to do at Federal News Radio is tell you what “could” happen, rather than wait until changes occur. That’s a big difference.
But I asked readers if tracking threats to the federal benefits package — which pop up every year — was TMI (too much information) or GMM (give me more). Here’s how a few more of them responded:
And last but definitely not least, this one:
What are the odds someone with the same name living in the same town as my brother?
By Amelia Brust
In Japan, if someone commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, the train company can sue the victim’s family for clean-up fees and from the negative publicity. The costs have been known to range from 100 million yen to as much as 140 million yen.
Sources: Joi Ito, MIT Media Lab
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Mike Causey is senior correspondent for Federal News Network and writes his daily Federal Report column on federal employees’ pay, benefits and retirement.
Follow @mcauseyWFED