!chuds !nooticers Wow

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.'s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be "in the shower" when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an "independent agency," its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all --- and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.

This reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago, and I found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would actually want to use its voluntary services.

FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll, and not much else. One employee told me: "Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don't do a heck of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I've stayed is that I just don't feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn't seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?"

"Recreation and reception fund."

Top FMCS official George Cohen used a "recreation and reception fund" to order champagne and $200 coasters for his office, and to purchase artwork painted by his wife. The tiny agency commissioned paintings of its top employees --- as one employee told me, "like they were reigning kings or something...I've never seen anything like it before." It spent $2,402 retouching the portrait of someone who briefly held the top job in an acting capacity.

FMCS employees "unblocked" their government credit cards to turn off typical abuse protections, then used them to apparently fund personal expenses and simply bill anything they'd like to the government. One employee leased a BMW; another (IT director James Donnen) billed the government for his wife's cell phone, cable TV at both his home and his vacation home, and even his subscription to USA Today.

Employee Dan W. Funkhouser used his FMCS card to rent a storage unit near his home in rural Virginia, two hours from the office he supposedly worked at, which was used to store personal possessions such as a photo album of his dog, Buster. Funkhouser also spent $18,000 at a jewelry store near his house, and "destroyed all purchase card records upon leaving the agency," an audit said.

When Charles Burton retired from FMCS, he incorporated an LLC to which another FMCS employee paid $85,000 using his purchase card, listing it as a "Call Center Service," even though the company had neither a website nor a working phone.

When an accountant, Carol Booth, blew the whistle on financial abuses to the General Services Administration, which manages purchase cards and contracting, Cohen forced her to send an email (which he wrote under her name) rescinding her statement.

Like something out of "The Office," the employees spent an inordinate amount of time and money congratulating one another for being employed there and engaging in "work" that really amounted to pampering themselves.

One purchase was for $30,000 on trinkets making employees' anniversaries. The agency's office was absurdly oversized, but it refused to move. It hired a consultant for a "Hallway Improvement Project" to decorate. It had an in-house gym for employees, and purchased a $1,000 TV for the gym, a $3,867 ice-maker, and a $560 stereo.

The expenses that were actually business-related were hardly better. It paid, for example, $895 "for Suzanne Nichter's enrollment in the English Essentials: A Grammar Refresher course" and $735 "for Lakisha Steward to attend Listening and Memory Skills Development Course."

All expenses paid lifestyle

FMCS used federal jobs as a spigot of cash for friends and relatives. Allison Beck, a former union lawyer who became a top FMCS official, employed her sister-in-law as a "special assistant," and an inspector general found evidence that she tried to create a high-level job for a friend.

FMCS employees allegedly steered contracts to friends, allowing them to write the "statement of work" that would be used to choose the contract winner --- resulting in, of course, their own selection. Such "trainers" were paid $1,500 per day per person to train FMCS's staff, plus $163 an hour for travel. When a low-level employee eventually said the extra travel pay ran afoul of federal rules, a contractor made clear he viewed it as an entitlement, huffing: "Work we have successfully performed for the agency for more than a decade --- at great personal sacrifice, I should add --- will be taken away unless we comply in an unquestioning manner with your edict."

Scot Beckenbaugh, a top agency official, was paid $174,000 a year, but that wasn't enough: He had his "duty station" listed as Iowa so that he could have all of his living expenses and food paid for in D.C., where he lived and worked, as if he was on a six-year-long business trip. When an employee raised the issue to an agency lawyer, the lawyer told him he "should not raise these issues ... it would open a can of worms."

FMCS hired a former mail carrier who lived in Pennsylvania, Lu-Ann Glaser, for a high-level, D.C.-based job, and agreed to pay for her to stay in a hotel for half of every month --- even though it would have been easy to find someone better qualified who didn't need to be put up in a hotel to simply do her job.

Paul Voight, a human resources official, was listed as living in D.C. even though he actually lived in Wisconsin, in order to fraudulently obtain higher cost-of-living pay. Voight's boss was Artur Pearlstein, who left the agency to become a law professor, and was then re-hired after his academic career imploded in a plagiarism scandal. His first move in his new job was terminating an independent investigation into FMCS staff abusing taxpayer funds for personal gain.

Cohen, for his part, steered work to his previous employer, despite signing ethics forms saying he would not.

Constant junkets

Many of the agency's top employees lived outside of the typical Washington, D.C., commuting area, and only stopped in the area occasionally, in an era before telework was routine. Its CFO, Fran Leonard, would come to the office twice a week but leave by 2:00 p.m.

The agency had, inexplicably, an office in Honolulu.

It funded constant travel of its employees to exotic locales, on the pretext that it was drumming up business for the federal agency --- an admission that there was little demand for the agency's existence.

In one month, Beck traveled to Italy and Switzerland, where she conducted a business meeting --- over video chat. Then she went to Tunisia and an island off the coast of Georgia. She flew first class and forced the agency to reimburse her for mileage when she drove to her vacation home in Maine.

The agency had three full-time media relations staffers, none of whom would speak to me, almost certainly one of the only reporters to ever call.

Cash grants for insiders

The agency's existence is predicated on the idea that it is an impartial mediator, biased neither towards labor nor management. But its staff largely comes from a union background, and it gave out grants to promote union membership. But it was too incompetent to do much ideological damage; its employees' comfort always came before helping unions.

Anyone could request cash grants from the agency, with the only requirement that they mention some nexus with unions, however tortured. It doled out a seemingly random assortment of giveaways to private businesses, perhaps because they were the only ones who knew the grants existed.

It gave $63,000 to a hospital that went bankrupt; $51,000 to a childcare company to help it pay government licensing fees; and $57,000 to a company to "strengthen of culture of continuous improvement to drive us to world class excellence!"

What surprised me most about my FMCS investigation was what happened afterward: nothing. An inspector general made a referral to the FBI, but there were no prosecutions. Instead, President Barack Obama nominated a chief subject of the investigation to the top job.

A decade later, Trump has done what even the agency's own employees said should happen: shut it down.

That's nearly 1% of the country's population IN ONE MONTH. Sure it's the start of the school year, but that's still far too many.

Comments have people blaming Dutton, rather than the party in power, despite the latter having the ability to deny visas without legislation.

shitrentals thread

It's been a stalwart of the socialist movement for 200 years to shout down this right wing bs scapegoating migrants and not call attention to the real problem. Capitalism and treating houses as a commodity

we're not overthrowing capitalism buddy. best we can do is vote for a party that isn't supporting capitals battle to reduce working conditions through over supply of labour in our country.

This is a socialist subreddit by the Victorian socialists that aren't cynical and dejected losers and is instead trying to forge a socialist party

!anticommunists redditors and uni students will LITERALLY pick a communist revolution over the reduction of immigration numbers in ANY capacity.

It is quite, figuratively, literally, qualitatively, over for !strayans !chuds

Help me resurrect /h/traditionalgames

Good thing everyone voted for this guy instead of Genocide Joe. I wonder how all those Palestinian supporters in Michigan are feeling about their protest vote now.

It's crazy how quiet they are about this, now that a Republican president is in charge. Almost like it was an organized online and in person effort to help Trump.

It's almost like the news aint reporting shit that doesn't support trump

They are part of the problem but, even on social media the volume level has really been turned down.

Do you mean the social media that's owned by also Trump supporters?

I don't use X. I don't know what's going on there.

Reddit is also censoring content

To some extent. I got the "warning" about upmarseying posts they dislike. I don't think that explains all of the silence.

There are like 4 propaganda 24/7 networks devoted to him. The democrats don't have that.

THEY control everything, the only reason we lost is because there's some grand conspiracy going on in the background to keep the masses asleep. The jews are to blame!

I've had a few try to defend it on Reddit

The argument essentially boils down to "both were bad we aren't responsible for making it worse shut.up"

They didn't want Harris to win to feel superior now they don't want blame either

Typical leftists then?

I mean like 2 of them got detained and threatened to be deported so I am very sure they are loving life.

Should have voted for Harris I guess

You mean the Russian influence campaign, Operation Doppelgänger. https://www.wired.com/story/russian-influence-campaign-exploiting-college-campus-protests/

It's embarrassing how gullible we are. Although, at least on the left we didn't fall for the one about Hilary Clinton being so bored running for president that she decided to torture kids in a r*pe dungeon beneath a pizza joint in Brooklyn. Or the COVID vaccine turns people into zombies.

Sure, we did fall for russian propaganda. In fact, we're still defending that russian propaganda. But chuds fall for even more ridiculous propaganda so it's not our fault

This needs to be screamed loud and clear. T is going to instigate more wars to claim lands. He's going to go full Hitler.

Being a billionaire is never enough, there's always more they want because they are empty inside.

These sick people need to be removed from the population in order to save humanity.

Spez should be notified that /r/politics jannies aren't doing their jobs properly

Personally I think we should take Israel back. Restore Democracy there.

I'd be completely fine with putting boots on the ground and hunting Netanyahu like we did Saddam.

No seriously, someone tell him that the sub completely lost it

It would be funny if USA got significant territory there. And then the next administration just gave it all back to Palestinians with a fresh new deed that can't be disputed.

What will this solve? They'll just start fighting again

The best thing is, I absolutely believe Netanyahu told Drumpf that he could build there as soon as Gaza was "cleansed" just to get the dumb monkey to help him.

As soon as Drumpf realizes he isn't going to be allowed to build his vacation home there, he's going to declare war on Israel himself.

Or maybe Trump will be allowed to build a vacation house there? What would Bibi lose by letting him have a villa in former Gaza?

Dearborn is full of Iraqis and Lebanese who give zero fricks about Gaza, when you ask them why they voted for Trump their answer always the trans and gay in school.

I've been saying this a lot. Democrats thought they were building a foolproof coalition over the past 30 years. Bigger and bigger and bigger tent! But every time they added a new group to their tent.... well, SOMEBODY hates that group, right? And so the other tent made room for one more hater. And one more hater. And one more hater. Until their tent was more full.

It's not more full. We lost because of our turnout. Their coalition is far more unified and loyal than ours, but it isn't bigger.

Our coalition changes by the minute. So does theirs. On election day, our tent is "who showed up". They had more haters than we had diversity that day.

That's fair. We have far more potential voters I should say.

I agree with you as well, but it sometimes feel like stuffing some of them in our tent causes others to fall out.

Unfortunately that is the pain of being the good guys.

Oh well, can't be changed I guess. Those pesky hecking good human bean morals!

The biggest problem the Dems had was hopping in the corner of a minority group representing less than 1% of the electorate while pissing off or scaring off a much higher percentage of people. The Republicans master played the trans issue by recognizing that most Americans are dumb as frick and would buy whatever bullshit was spread about trans people without questioning it. I knew far more people who were sitting out 2024 or voting Republican for the first time over the trans issue than anything that came up because of Israel-Palestine.

Politicking is about more than being morally right, it means having a solid, simple message that can grab votes. Democrats making excuses for "men playing in women's sports" and not being able to do "common sense" things like defining what a "woman" is totally fricked us amongst the low-info voters who make up the majority of the electorate when the Republicans were able to give "common sense" answers like "keep men out women's bathrooms" and "don't tell kindergarteners that men can become women." I fully support trans-rights and find transphobia appalling, but America was not ready for it to be thrusted into the limelight as the latest battle in the culture wars.

I agree. And the worst part is that even when Republicans outright LIED about what Democrats believe about trans people, the Democrats still only had two choices. Defend it, which is talking about it more. Or ignore it, which is leaving the lie to stand.

Maybe just kick the whole group out of your party?

You know we helped level Gaza under Joe right? They put these voters in an impossible position. Support genocide or support genocide. The fact that liberal voters are super defensive at voters instead of ever pushing back on our shitty politicians is why we're in this position in the first place.

How did voting blue no matter who turned out when Chuck caved to Trump last week on the spending bill?

: Sorry guys, nothing we could have done, the guy that tried to pressure Israel into not bombing you just wasn't perfect enough

I think its really appallingly racist that you can hear that more than 350 Palestinians were killed... Many of them children... and your first thought is how to get one over on anti-genocide protestors during the Biden administration...

Palestinian life has meaning... using to get an "own" over on people who cherished that life is so reprehensible...

An it's in every single fricking thread about the horrors in Gaza. These people did not give a single frick about the genocide while the Biden admin was conducting it, and they also don't care now but they can use it as a weapon against others.

No, you can't hold me accountable for my own decisions

Whatever you tell yourself to sleep better at night since I'm guessing you didn't help turn out votes that could've at least reduced the destruction

Cries the one who tried pinning the blame on Palastine protestors when Trump directly earned more votes across all demographics including women and Latinx.

Maybe Palestine protestors are part of the reason everyone voted for Trump?

It's not about votes for third parties but suppressing turnout generally. And Democratic turnout was way down compared to 2020.

It's almost like the party is deeply unpopular

In large part because of the Gaza protests. And we are all worse off because of it. This is still a low information voter problem.

This is your brain on cope. To believe the Gaza protests were pivotal in the Dems losing lmao. I wish protests had that kind of power.

R-slurred commies screaming at everyone, destroying shit and attacking people while living off everyone's tax dollars is the main reason dems lost. Surely, you r-slurs could have protested in a more palatable way, but that wasn't edgy enough apparently

!chuds

NOW - Trump says JFK files will be released tomorrow.pic.twitter.com/AeSMoxwetu

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 17, 2025

https://old.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/comments/1jc1xrq/minnesota_gop_senators_propose_bill_to_classify/

https://old.reddit.com/r/stateofMN/comments/1jc3nwn/minnesota_gop_senators_propose_bill_to_classify/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TimWalz/comments/1jc8qo7/minnesota_gop_senators_propose_bill_to_classify/

After Tommy Tuberville says we need to jail all student protesters, he adds that “free speech is great” but “hateful hate free speech” (??) must be punished.

The number of lawmakers who don’t know what the First Amendment says is deeply concerning.
pic.twitter.com/0tcDtx4A5n

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) March 13, 2025

!freespeech

WATCH: Reporter accidentally pushes microphone into Trump's face pic.twitter.com/NhswllZ0QW

— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) March 14, 2025