We continue to live in interesting times. This week, Chancellor Musk ordered all 2.3 million federal workers to provide him with an email listing five things they accomplished in the last week.
That was supposed to be filed last Monday, so they had the weekend to think about it. Part of the weekend — the order went out at 4 a.m. Saturday, when all federal employees are expected to be checking their work emails.
It all went smoothly for, oh, about 15 minutes, before people running sensitive agencies slammed on the brakes.
“We are not going to list the five organized crime bosses we wire-tapped,” said somebody at the Justice Department. “We are not going to list the foreign spies we have been communicating with in countries we cannot name,” said the CIA. And “what the hell?” said pretty much everybody else.
The idea was that federal workers would justify their existence, and if they failed to submit their list, or maybe only came up with one accomplishment — “I designed a major freeway interchange” — for example, well, those useless layabouts are considered to have resigned.
If they fail to turn in their homework assignment, they get fired on the spot. So take that. That’s how to maintain an effective workforce with motivated people providing essential services.
The first thing I thought, after the general bafflement faded, was that somebody is going to read all of these if the exercise has any meaning at all. Millions of “what I did last week” essays will take a while for even someone as efficient Elon Musk to review.
They might have to hire and train hundreds of new people just to get through them and analyze whether a file clerk in Oklahoma had done sufficient filing to maintain her job.
Two million is a lot of anything. We struggle to count ballots that are identically formatted and specifically designed to be read by machines. What are they going to do with 2.3 million separate essays submitted with no consistent format or even grouped by agency?
You have to assume no one will ever look at any of them. Nobody cares what’s in them. It’s the disruption that counts.
I was able to get a hold of a few of the submissions. They are clearly valuable documents in terms of reducing federal waste. Here are a few examples:
Dear Elon: This week I spent all five days setting up a system to collect all of the email responses to your request. The system will automatically sort the replies by department and pay grade, and properly archive them in a manner consistent with the federal laws concerning official communications. It took a lot of work, and was kind of expensive. When I ran a test involving a small sample, it crashed the server. Scott, the IT guy, got fired last week. So there’s nobody left who knows the password to reset the servers.
Dear Elon: This week I filed a bunch of papers that people came into the office and submitted for some reason. I filed them good. The people who are supposed to review them and issue permits or licenses are all gone, but if anybody comes back, they will be able to find them.
Dear Elon: This week I kept an eye on a bunch of nuclear reactors that are still in service despite being 20 years past their original design lifespan. Things are mostly good, but I’m not sure you would want to invest in Cincinnati, at least not on the downwind side of town.
Dear Elon: I spent last week four-wheeling in a government truck while “inspecting grazing conditions.” And also played blackjack at the reservation casino. Lost a bunch, so I guess I have to work on my expense report. I’m pretty much exactly what you are looking for, but since you can’t possibly read 2.3 million of these stupid things, I’m going to keep doing it until I retire.
Dear Elon: I spent the week rooting around in people’s dirty underwear at the airport security gate. You wouldn’t believe what people fly around the country with. Filthy pervs. Not that there are a lot of flights taking off since the air traffic controllers got fired.
Dear Elon: I spent the week inspecting beef carcasses. They are all pretty much alike except every now and then somebody will try to slip a rotten piece of road kill into the hamburger. I caught most of it, except what got through the line when I was out on the loading dock for a smoke.
Yep, 2.3 million of those personnel records. And Elon Musk, from the Department of Government Efficiency is going to read them and analyze them to see who is performing up to expectations. A well-oiled machine.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Lee has veered off into deep space and is proposing legislation to take the U.S. out of the United Nations. He claims the $18 billion we spend there is wasted. In an article from KSL, Lee was quoted saying that the money was “enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry.” Well, we can’t have that, Lee said without irony, following a White House announcement that Trump just pulled out from under Ukraine.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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