February 21, 2025 • 38 mins
This episode addresses the far-reaching effects of budget cuts on veterans and military personnel, focusing on legal updates, community activism, and the implications for national security. Navigating misinformation while advocating for veterans’ rights, hosts emphasize the importance of maintaining robust support systems for those who have served.
• Discussion on the impact of government budget cuts on veterans
• Importance of credible information sources in navigating veterans' affairs
• Community protests highlighting veterans' rights
• Insights into recent legal rulings affecting veterans
• Exploration of budget cuts’ effects on agencies like NASA
• Paradox of military readiness amid funding reductions
• Call to action for collective dialogue around veterans' needs
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Left Face.
This is the podcast that coversveterans topics in the Pikes
Peak region, and we are coveringboth local, national and
international political topicsthat are relevant to veterans.
I am your host, dick Wilkinson,and I am joined by my co-host
today, adam Gillard.
How are you doing, adam?
(00:22):
I'm doing good, dick.
How are you?
I'm doing very good.
I am happy to be here.
I've definitely doing, adam.
I'm doing good, dick.
How are you?
I'm doing very good.
I am happy to be here.
I've definitely just, man, I'vehad a lot on my mind as far as
this episode, and so I'm excitedto dig into the conversation
today.
It's Impacted Veterans.
Everything we're going to talkabout today is direct Impacted
Veterans.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, we definitely, like we said, no shortage of
things coming out of this newadministration where we have to
stand on top of these topics tomake sure we're educating people
properly, and I've been talkingwith some folks about
collecting resources and topicsthat we want to run up the chain
and things like that.
And one thing I always harp onis make sure that you have good
sources, make sure you'reactually looking at the sources
(01:00):
that you're reading thisinformation from because you
don't want to be a part of theproblem.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Correct.
There's a publication out thereand it comes up every now and
then it gets sent to me as likea link for a headline for
something, or I saw that itactually comes up pretty far up
in the Google search results oncertain news topics.
Hindustan Times.
There's no such place asHindustan on the map right now.
(01:26):
That is sometimes the name forlike a certain region in
Pakistan and like NorthAfghanistan.
It's just, you know, it's a notreal nation state, yeah, but
it's sort of a tribal regionword, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Right, like Cascadia.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, you know, there's but or what's it called
the Catalonian like enclavewithin Spain, right?
Like they want to be their owncountry but they're not quite
yet.
That's kind of what thesepeople maybe are in, I don't
know, but anyways, it's not aplace where there's a government
or a news agency or any placeof structure, right?
But then they write on topicsthat are, I don't know,
(02:01):
sensational, I guess, but theywrite on topics that are I don't
know sensational, I guess.
But it doesn't seem like it'stotally a propaganda hole.
You know what I'm saying, but Ican't say that it's credible
either.
But it's out there, it's partof the noise and it's pretty far
up in the noise.
So anyways, that's just onethat always.
When I saw it yesterday when Iwas searching for some topic, I
(02:23):
thought dang, there it is againHindustan Times.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, obviously, if Google listens to this
conversation, it pops it up onmy news feed now.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It will, and then also you'll notice the Gulf of
Hindustan may show up on GoogleMaps soon.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I have been enjoying people renaming the Gulf of
Mexico.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
They just keep throwing out more and more
vulgar names for it.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That's always good.
This last week we saw um someprotests going on downtown.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Uh, I don't know if you got a chance to swing by
there, but, but I was there fora few hours.
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I wasn't in the area.
No, yeah, it was.
Uh.
I actually signed up to do theparasol patrol.
So like you walk with uh anumbrella, so if there's any like
protesters yelling like towardskids and families, and like
that you just kind of protectthe kids and families from the
noise and stuff like that, whichis more up my alley.
I'm not like a big rah-rah guyand things like that.
So your job is to stand therequietly and stoically and not
(03:17):
react to people yelling peoplethings at you, and I can do that
.
We had one guy that was drivingaround in a truck about four or
five times while I was there,like just driving through with
his Trump stickers on, yellingand screaming at us.
So, yeah, it definitely drewsome emotional reactions from
folks, but I think we got a lotmore horns honking and
supporting us and there was acouple hundred people out there,
(03:37):
you know it was definitely areally good showing, so it's
something that's probably goingto be happening more and more, I
think.
So we keep seeing the way thatthe administration is going.
I don't know if you heard, butwe have a king now.
Did you see that tweet?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
No, I mean I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I was aware that we have a king, but there's a tweet
about it.
Tell me yeah, so he canceled thecongestion traffic law in New
York he canceled that new taxand then at the end he said long
live King Don.
Or something like that at theend of his tweet Wow, yeah, it's
just.
And folks will write it off andsay oh yeah, he's just joking,
(04:19):
he's just trying to rile you up.
But he's already committedtreason once, he's already
attacked the Capitol once, andnow he's sitting there with
immunity where he's saying thatthe Supreme Court doesn't even
know how to decide what's legalor not Right.
He only he can interpret thelaw.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right.
Well, one way I see that comingto reality right now is the
whole is Elon Musk in charge ofDoge or not?
When the Trump administrationgoes to court over cases where
people are saying that they gotfired or that there's some
illegal cuts going on in theirorganization, then the answer is
Elon Musk is not in charge ofDoge.
(04:53):
But then Donald Trump basicallyevery day says Elon Musk is
doing a great job being incharge of.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Doge.
He's literally talking to theworld from behind the Oval
Office desk, the Resolute desk.
It's crazy how much they didthat CNN.
I can't remember who it was.
They just did an interviewtogether.
Oh, hannity, that's who it was.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
But my thing is he knows that if his lawyers,
basically he can live in, he cansay whatever.
And if his lawyers go to courtand say, well, here's the real
legal filing, and Donald Trumpsays the exact opposite thing
one hour later, every single day, it doesn't matter at all.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's the weird situationthat we're in is that he can
(05:39):
make up whatever he wants to sayand as long as his lawyers go
to court and say, well, this isis what we wrote down, so this
is what's really going on, iswhat's on paper well, and even
that, that one meeting must saidI'm going to say some things
that are wrong yeah like cool,we know you're going to say some
things that are wrong like thisis to like lead off with that,
though it's like don't factcheck me, I'm going to be wrong
(06:01):
yeah, this is, this is stream ofconsciousness.
slash, government planning,slash.
You know everything else righthere live.
Well, that's the topic we'regoing to cover in a minute is
about some of the Doge activity,but let's just get our viewers
caught up on one thing, adam,before we move on to that.
You know, court case is finallydone, done, done.
(06:24):
That you were involved with,yeah, official.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
When we were recording last week, we were
kind of waiting for the SupremeCourt to make a decision.
They made a decision not totake up jurisdiction on it, so
that kind of reverts back to thedistrict court's ruling, which
was that it was unconstitutional, and then we kind of had to
wait for the city to.
I think they were kickingaround some ideas and they were
trying to look for other avenues.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Last week yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Which I mean at that point.
It's just ridiculous Likeyou're trying that hard to
subvert the will of the voters,like that's just everybody's
kind of like when the law saysyou're doing something
unconstitutional and then thenext level says the same thing
like listen, just listen, man.
The next level says the samething Listen.
Just listen, man, so they endedup coming out with a statement
(07:10):
saying they're disappointed butthey'll honor this, and they
removed her from the ballot.
So it's done for this round.
It cannot happen in April.
But if Donaldson gets reelectedin April, I could see it being
on the 26th ballot.
They're never going to stoptrying this.
So you know, now the focusturns to doing good things with
(07:32):
this tax money that comes in and, you know, making sure that
people that keep jobs or get newjobs recognize how they got
those jobs, so that they keepvoting for the people that are
fighting for them.
That's true, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yep, and I think a good thing to focus on is 18
months at least betweenlaunching the wreck sales and
the opportunity to repeal it, sothat time frame is a long time
(08:07):
for there to be positiveinfluence.
Positive, you know, notnecessarily a lot of revenue,
tax being flowed through, butproof that the danger and harms
that they were talking aboutdon't exist.
Right, right, the boogeyman hasto vanish in those 18 months.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And I think I don't know how it wouldn't right.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You know Right Because, like we've said all
along it, like cannabis, hasalways been here, it's just
people are driving less to getit.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So, yeah, the boo us to get it.
The boogeyman has been here thewhole time.
Things are cool.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
That's it exactly.
That illusion should vanish ifwe get through 18 months.
I agree that even if it wasgoing to lose abysmally, they
would still put it on the ballotagain, just as sort of like hey
, we had to invade Iraq twice toseal the deal, They'll come
back around.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It's good to finally put it to bed.
It's kind of a surreal momentwhere it actually was done.
I've been on this since westarted filling out the
petitions, filling in signatures.
It's definitely nice to finallyhave something done and get
something positive for the city,because this is so much tax
money.
It could really define what wedo as a city going forward,
(09:10):
being able to fund some of theprograms around here.
Looking at publictransportation even the police
academy use funds to fund thatthing.
Get that built so we canrebuild our police force.
It can define our city for ageneration or two here.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
It's good to see.
Well, thanks for taking that on, adam and being involved.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You know by name mostly because the lawyers did
most of the work.
You know, pure luck that I gotthat.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But thanks for thanks for doing that.
So all right back to Doge.
So today's topics we're goingto cover are things about, you
know, going out of the federalgovernment to have direct impact
on active duty military it'sabout to happen.
And then us as veterans, bothsides of the coin, are getting
the doge effect.
And Pete Hexeth, SecretaryHexeth, is on board full blast,
(09:56):
as we expected he would be.
So which one do you want tostart with, Adam?
Do you want to start with thedefense budget cuts or do you
want to start with the VA?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
um, you know, for an ungeneral kind of federal job
stuff so first to kind of frameit for for this area, we're
looking at like 15 to 20 percentveteran population.
Yeah, right, and that's theveteran population.
We still have tons of activeduty, yes, tons of contractors.
I mean, you're probably lookingat, 60% of our workforce is
(10:27):
tied into the defense sector.
So when we're talking aboutimpacts here, this is so huge
for our area and on top of theother conversations of moving
space force and things like thatso I don't know.
Let's start with the government,the big feds.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So promises made, promises kept is what they say
over on the other side of theaisle.
And here we are.
The promises have been kept.
The axe has swung, the GrimReaper sickle has passed through
many agencies already in thelast few weeks and what I've
seen, what we've all seen on thenews, is that somewhat
(11:04):
indiscriminate job cuts oroffers for resignation with some
kind of severance, and that'shappened on the orders of tens
of thousands of governmentemployees as far as brought, you
know, over the whole governmentRight, and people are taking
the taking the cut, you knowlike they're taking the
(11:25):
severance, and I think they'redoing that because the writing
would be on the wall that if, ifdon't take it now, it might
only be a month before it's notthere anymore and they just say,
well, that was nice, but youjust don't come back and we're
not going to pay you and that'sit.
So that part you know.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I can't imagine being in that position right now A
lot of those federal workers,because a lot have been let go
illegally because they're in theunions and so there's going to
be more lawsuits against themand things like that.
But what's that going to do forthem?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I'll tell you, the administration is not concerned
about that at all.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
No, no, yeah, there's no pressure from that they are
blatantly removing workers'rights and union busting.
So, yeah, they're not going togive a shit about that.
The thing that bugs me the mostis that when you look at the GS
workers, like our governmentworkers, they are a lot bigger
workforces than the contractorsthat they want to hand stuff
(12:20):
over to.
When you look at a lot ofcontractors, you're so focused
on your scope of work you can'tbleed over that because you get
in trouble for not flexible,right, yeah?
whereas, like your GS workerscan catch a lot of extra BS and
kind of wear the glue that holdsthat stuff together so now
we're gonna get rid of that andwe're gonna pay people twice as
much to be contractors and withlimited scale, with limited
(12:42):
scope.
Yeah, bad things are gonna comefrom that.
Administratively, you know alot of things are gonna fall
apart.
And when you look at, they'vebeen cutting the probationary
period folks, bad things aregoing to come from that.
Administratively, you know alot of things are going to fall
apart.
And when you look at they'vebeen cutting the probationary
period folks, which is heavilyveterans also, you know people
coming out, you know, jumpinginto the federal service.
Oh sure, those new folks are thefolks that are like busting
(13:03):
their ass to like make it, makeit, whereas you have people that
have been up there for 30, 40years, that are GS, 15, sess,
that just are sitting inpositions, kind of clogging
things.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
They keep that.
There's definitely some oxygenbeing sucked out of the room by
some senior folks I mean we allit's.
You know that's just alwayspart of bureaucratic government,
right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, so just if you're looking to save money,
just cutting off those thepeople that are just starting
out, uh, it's the least returnon investment.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, correct, yeah.
So they're gonna, they're gonnabe stuck.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know, these people that haven't worked in
you know 15 years are gonna bestuck trying to run their
offices again without the helpthat they're used to.
Yes, so those offices are goingto start failing for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, the yeah's right.
Some of the senior folks thathave had two or three layers of
administration underneath ofthem and then entire layers of
that just disappeared.
Talk about breaking businessflows and workflows.
I mean some of that is thepoint right Of breaking their
work flows.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Exactly that's what people want.
But, how does it get?
Put back together, right that'sthe well so many of these
services that they're breakingup to are.
They're needed in a lot ofcommunities.
So I mean, I don't think theyeven care about putting it back
together.
I think that's true.
It hurts the point.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's true.
Um, well, near and dear to meis NASA.
I work in the space industryfor our listeners and so I pay
attention to what NASA's gotgoing on, but I don't work with
them directly on a contract oranything like that.
Right now they are about to beoperating at their smallest
workforce since the Apollomissions shut down.
(14:47):
They are taking a massive Iwant to say it was like 40% of
their contracts are going away.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Spacex.
He's just taking the moneythat's supposed to help the
public and provide us jobs and agood economy and just handing
it off to the oligarchs.
It's gross.
It's so blatant.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I wonder how long, as we do in the intelligence
community, you say follow themoney.
Um, will there be any amount oftime or, uh, what you might
even think of as a reasonablecooling off period?
Before you know, cut nasa'sbudget.
Six months later, basically,nasa's like we can't even mop
(15:29):
the floors, we can't, much lesslaunch a rocket.
You know, and then you know,six months after that, all these
new contracts get cut.
Um, is that, you know, with,with, not nasa, with companies
instead of nasa?
Um, if the overt program is toprivatize, there's probably a
legal way to do that.
Even if there's conflict ofinterest involved, there's
(15:51):
probably a legal way to redothose appropriations right well,
I think that's why they'releaving him off of the.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Uh, the doge had had a doge list.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yes, because that conflict.
So, yeah, he just gets to standin the corner and whisper, you
know, and not be on paper butnot be liable on paper, right?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
yeah, so he gets all the authority none in the corner
and whisper, you know and notbe on paper but not be liable on
paper, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So he gets all the authority, none of the
responsibility and that wentback to where the president has
the beautiful, you know wideopen door of.
He can't have a conflict ofinterest really.
You know, like a president can't, you know not anymore.
So he can basically say Elon'sin charge and then file court
papers and say he's not incharge.
So, man, I hope that it doesn'tjust turn into that much of an
(16:34):
ugly direct you know one for onequote unquote kind of tradeoff.
I hope it doesn't.
But I mean, step one happenedalready.
Right, we can't deny that stepone happened, and are we just
going to not do space stuff likeon the civil side?
Is it only going to be defense,or you know what happens there,
I don't know there's been somuch money given to the
(16:58):
commercial side anyways.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yes, Like right now, his whole point of taking away
the government funding is tostop other startups and things
like that.
He's trying to like consolidateoh sure Stream in the base,
yeah, so like any new startups,have to fall underneath him
anyways, so he'll be able tocollect all the sure pyramid
scheme it yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get to decide which level
(17:22):
you're at, so fair well that thetakeaway, and we'll finish this
part on what I've seen as afollow-on impact, which makes
perfect sense.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
But it's a ripple effect and, man, if ripples are
in a tight, controlled space,they can actually get bigger,
right Like the harmonics cancause damage, and so what we're
seeing is some of this bounceback.
I've seen in the last just twodays so this is like hot off the
breaking news as far as podcastgoes that civil servants that
(17:54):
were not fired, were not offeredany kind of severance, did not
assume that their position wasat risk, are going ahead and
jumping ship anyway, even ifthey're not qualified for
retirement.
They're saying, hey, basicallythis work environment is so
volatile I don't feel securehere.
A lot of the people that Irelied on in my own department
(18:18):
or in the next department overare getting fired or resigning.
So I don't want to be one ofthe last people on this ship,
you know, because I have no ideawhat's going to happen and so
they're leaving.
So even the people that wethink we're gaining efficiency
by saying, well, they were notessential, essential people are
leaving because what somebodythinks, you know, these not
(18:39):
essential people are actuallymuch more required than anyone's
willing to admit yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
And these folks that are leaving, they're not, you
know, just folks that you pickup on.
Even janitors need to havesecurity clearances.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Sure, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So there's so much more that goes into hiring these
folks and getting them into thesystem.
They're not easily replaceable.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
And so I guess what we're saying there is if
somebody, if Congress, let's saythis goes to the heads roll for
the next two years, years, andlet's say that congress flips
back blue and they start tryingto appropriate and hire people
back, we're talking two yearsfrom now, before that could
really take place, that at the,you know at the soonest.
And then how long does it takeand how much money does it take
(19:21):
to rehire?
I'm not saying all of them, buteven if we just wanted to bring
back 30 of all the people thatare leaving right now, I think
that would almost erase all thesavings, because that hiring,
vetting and clearances,everything else, training You're
hiring people and then they'rein a six-month, one-year
training program and even if wewanted to bring back 30% of the
(19:42):
people that we got rid of in thelast month, the cost would be
outrageous and that's going tohave to happen in some of these
places.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Well, we kind of saw it quickly happen where they
fired the nuclear watchdogs, thefolks who were kind of watching
the arsenal, and then quicklyrealized like, oh, we need to
resend these and actually, youguys come back to work, please.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yes, Yep, yeah, we got to see that on a compressed
timeline All the other cutscould follow the same timeline,
just on a longer, or the sameprocess just on a longer
timeline.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, because that crystal ball, the nuclear
industry, that's always a toppriority when it comes to those
administrations.
So they quickly realized thatmess up.
Yeah, some of the other onesare going to be a slow burn.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Aviation.
Oh my goodness, cuts at thefreaking Aviation Administration
right With all the planecrashes and all the problems
that are going on.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, another one yesterday.
Yeah, it was two days ago, thatwas in Canada.
No, there was another one.
Oh, there's another one.
Well, there's one in.
Arizona like two days ago, it'stoo small, yeah, where they
crash, and again that's going tobe an air tower thing.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yes, you know, two planes flying south, and yet
they came through with thesickle and said hey, everybody
that wants to retire, everybodythat wants to quit, get out of
here.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
And that's one of the most highly stressful jobs Hard
to train, hard to get qualifiedand you're going to offer
somebody a carrot like that,like early retirement.
Oh yeah, I'm taking that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
And it's a safety whatever you know.
They basically have securityclearances in their type of
world and they've got all thesafety restrictions of, you know
, no drinking and no drugs andall this other stuff and
constant supervision of how muchthey sleep and that kind of
stuff right, yeah, just likethey're a part of the air crew
basically right, yeah, air crew.
Exactly yeah, they have thoseair crew restrictions so that's
not easy.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's not easy to get somebody to do that.
Now we're thousands of people.
That's terrible.
Yeah, yeah, people are fallingon the stars.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Well, that's a no end in sight.
We don't know what.
We don't know yet.
We don't know what the impactsof all this will be.
It doesn't feel like it couldbe good but saving money at what
cost?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
yeah, there we go exactly, and I think a lot of
folks that voted for thisthey're uh, they're kind of
seeing it, but they're too proudto say like, maybe this is too
much yes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
People are still like they're still.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, when he just said that ukraine started the
war, they're like well, yeah,they did.
They were pretty aggressive.
Oh, come on, come on, man.
Another country clearly invadedthem and you guys are just
outrageous.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It's just the whole.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I mean, it's so dystopian man you're never going
to get buyer's remorse from thepeople that voted for Donald
Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It just doesn't matter.
They could deport their owngrandmother or mother, steal
them out of their home andthey'd be like I think he's
probably doing something useful.
It's not possible to getbuyer's remorse out of those
people.
We're not going to wait forthat.
Well, some folks may havebuyer's remorse in the military
(22:47):
coming up soon because thestatement that was put out by
Pete Hegseth this week,secretary of Defense, he picked
up on the Doge steamroll and hesaid I want every department of
the military, as far as likeDepartment of the Army,
department of the Navy, themajor branches, I want them to
bring to me proposals for an 8%budget cut starting in 2026 and
(23:13):
for every five years and fourmore years after that.
So five years in a row, 8%reduction every year.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Wow, yeah, we talked earlier about how people most
government agencies areoperating at like 60% manning
already, right, so we're alreadyundermanned.
Equipment is hard to acquireand get money because budgets
are never handed down in time,so you only have money for a
(23:41):
very short period of time.
You try to spend like hell forthat month or two, but it is so
incredibly hard to operate andmaintain a workforce that's
properly trained and equipped.
You know, as it is right now.
And then he wants to keepcutting and when you first
brought this up, too, I askedyou know well, where is he
talking about cutting?
If you're talking cuttingequipment, people like my
(24:06):
biggest concern, he's just gonnastart chopping people I, I
don't know right.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I mean, and that's the thing is, the people who
have been able to report on thememo that went from the SecDef
out to the, you know, four stars, was that?
You know, by Monday of nextweek we need a plan, and so that
level of detail is not outthere yet.
I don't think Hegseth has putany emphasis on how that would
(24:30):
happen.
I think he's open for what I'msure would be creative ideas
from the four stars and thesecretaries of those services to
say, well, if we're reallygoing to do this, this is what's
going to have to happen.
The way the military thinks.
I feel like we're much morelikely.
This is the way we think isokay, we're going to can a
(24:53):
program of record or onespecific platform, a weapons
platform or something like that,and instead of saying, okay,
we're going to take 2% out ofpersonnel, 2% out of base
operations, 2% out of combatoperations, and go through and
slice the pie up and, like,sprinkle it around.
That's not, we're modular, youknow it's like just take this
whole can and throw it away.
(25:15):
You know, that's how we like todo it.
So I feel like that's what thesecretaries of those services
are going to show up on Mondayand be like well, we're going to
stop flying this helicopter,we're going to stop floating
this type of ship and that'regoing to stop floating this type
of ship and we're going to savemoney like that.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It's going to be interesting because they're
going to have to factor incutting their GS positions and
hiring more contractors, whichthey're going to cost more.
To backfill there's so manymoving pieces right now.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
We've seen firsthand in the military, and I think it
does happen in the military alittle bit different than it
happens in the civilian branchesof government and just
departments of government, inthat when they come down and
kind of say, hey, you guysaren't flying that airplane
anymore, no, that really stopshappening.
There is no replacement, theplane doesn't come back, the
troops get retrained, thecivilians go home, and that
(26:06):
whole thing just shuts all theway down.
And so I do think that if theNavy said, hey, this
middle-sized ship that could bereplaced by this other one that
we've already got, that wholething just goes away.
And so there's contractors,there's ship maintenance people
there's probably a few thousandsailors per boat that they just
say reduce the manning andrelease the contracts.
(26:27):
Like, those people don't workhere anymore, they can go build
ships for some Chinese flagcompany over in San Francisco.
Like we don't, we don't care youknow Like, so I don't see a
replacement at a higher cost,because I don't see a
replacement happening at all,and I think that you know.
Is it realistic that 40% we'retalking about 40% over five
years?
No, that's not possible.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Right, you know that's not going to happen, it's
just not possible.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
But the idea of cut, cut, cut, cut, year after year,
that's happened before.
I don't think it's ever ran for, you know, more than maybe two
years in a row.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like everybody will start out with some big.
There was an old Air Forcechief of staff, general Welsh,
and he got the word that he hadto cut workforce by X amount by
you know, in five years, and hewas like, well, I'll do it in a
year.
It just hacked people and likewe lost so many like of the
support personnel and everybodyhad to become experts on you
know all the support jobs andthings like that he has to do
(27:24):
like another tour, as like chiefof staff and he got turned down
because like it was thebloodbath.
It was nasty for us you know, atthe operational level, Like
it's just crazy that they don'tthink about these cuts.
They, just like you said,they'll hack a whole system off.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Now here's the thing that was contradictory that I
think should be concerning forour active duty brothers and
sisters out there is thatSecretary Hegseth said we're
going to put the military in awar footing.
We're going to be.
We want you to be combat readyand lethal, like right now, at
(28:01):
all times, like heightenedreadiness in the face of a lower
op tempo, right, but we wantyou to be just on as your seat,
super, super ready, yeah, and wewant to reduce all of your
budgets by 40 those two thingsdon't go together.
Readiness costs money and whenwe ramp up for deployment and go
into a high up-tempo mode forthe military where they say, hey
(28:25):
, no, really, like over the nextthree years, here's all the
units that are going to deploy,we know exactly how many troops
are going to be in theselocations and that means we've
got a year out, two years out,to start getting these training
plans put together.
(28:46):
That costs a ton of money.
Right, to get that readiness sothat you know you've got 10,000
people in a brigade that aremultiple combat brigades ready
to go.
That doubles the budget of thatunit versus walking around in
the woods out here at FortCarson.
If you're walking around in thewoods at Fort Carson all year
long, it costs you personnel andnothing else.
But if you have to take thosepeople and go to three different
training sites to get preparedto deploy and you have to do a
medical push for thousands andthousands of people, right, it
(29:08):
doubles the cost of that unit'soperation.
Right, and I don't, you can't.
Yeah, soldiers carry a lot ofstuff on their back and sure you
can put more stuff in theirpack, but you can't replace the
things that are required todeploy that process is very well
tested and true.
right now We've been doing thatyou know rinse and repeat for
the last 25 years.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, and you, as you talk about being in that
heightened state, I just alwaysthink back to.
You know, all the suicides thatwe're having at you know, in
the veteran community.
You know, and it's becauseyou're at a constant heightened
state for so long like it thatleaves a watermark on you, you
know and people trying to learnhow to process that when they
come back into the civilianworld or even while they're
(29:48):
still in.
It's a struggle and now we'retelling people again that you
know, with less money, with lessresources.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
We're going to tie on the rope.
Expect you to perform at thesame level.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's going to be a lot of
repercussions like that.
Yeah, we're going to take a lotof steps backward, I think,
when it comes to mental health.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Mental health and that is one small flavor in the
mixture of unit readiness andmorale.
Right, bottom line People we'vegot, like you say, even when
there's relatively enough money,resources and everything else,
you've still got.
You know the Army base has fiveDUIs a day because they have so
(30:26):
many people there.
Right, those signs at the gatethat say you know how many days
since a DUI or how many dayswhatever, like they're just
jokes, almost right.
And that's when things are kindof fat, dumb and happy right.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
It's funny because the Air Force has those and like
if a unit has like two, yeah,like they're getting their asses
too, like you're there on theweekends and things like that,
like I was on Fort Carson andI'd drive off, and those units
are in the hundreds, hundredsit's insane, right, insane, um.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
and so if that's, you know, if that's the case, when
we, like, I say, when we're nottotally just strapped for people
and resources and everythingelse, and we actually can take
Thursday afternoon off to gotake time with your family,
right, if you're some of thoseunits you're able to do that,
right, they're like, hey, wedon't work on Thursdays, you pay
your bills on Thursday morningand you go see, take your kids
(31:17):
out on Thursday afternoon right,you have an appointment.
You can't do that when 40% ofeverything disappears, right?
Because you're going to bepainting the buildings yourself.
Right, you're going to berepainting the parking lots
yourself.
You know we're going to be backto all base maintenance.
It's going to be on the back ofthose service members in
between training rotations,right, I mean, that's it.
(31:38):
You go training rotation, basemaintenance rotation and you're
literally the just, you know,the handyman type people.
They got like 200 of you.
You go out and just do projectsall over base.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right when I was stationed in north carolina they
had prisoners coming on base todo the cleaning.
Sure, weeds and seeds stuff andthings like that, like with.
We know for-profit prisons arepicking up again yeah, I could
see more, more bases leaningtowards prisoners or privates,
the price is about the sameright, yeah, you get less talk
back from the prisoners.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yes, so but yeah, the labor, the labor is the labor
and I'm, you know, the againunit readiness and morale really
suffers when you have to go cutgrass on base for 30 days in a
row, all day, every day.
You're out there swinging weed,whackers and stuff.
You know like you want to talkabout people getting a dui right
.
Stand out in the sun in georgiafor 40 days cutting grass when
(32:30):
you're.
You know your job is to drivetrucks right, yeah, next thing.
You know, like everybody got introuble that like bad things
happened.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You know that movie jarhead I think shows a good it
does a really good job.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, that training training.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
You're at the peak training and you just hold, you,
hold, you hold.
You go crazy man.
Yeah.
So you're a trained killer outthere.
Weed whacking, weed whacking,yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yep, and the hurry up and wait piece.
Yeah, it drives you crazy, andthat's Hegseth's memo basically.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It was like we're going to get into, yeah, and I'm
saying the way that we're goingright now.
I don't think people they'll bewaiting long, though, like I
think they're, they'll haveplaces to go.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
What do you mean?
The so people that are gettingout of the work?
you're saying, no, I'm saying,like our military, yeah, oh,
wars, conflicts, we're gonnahave more conflicts yeah, well,
I guess you will get to throwthat memo in the trash if we end
up in a two-front war, right,like the reductions won't exist.
So you know that is true, right, I didn't think about that.
Well, we won't touch that topictoo hard.
(33:33):
But Donald Trump is trying tonegotiate the end of the Ukraine
war without Ukrainianinvolvement.
So we'll see how, a week fromnow, how that's going.
I get the feeling that a weekfrom now, it may be whatever
deal is happening, it may be adone deal.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
You know Well because he initially asked for half of
their natural resources.
And Ukraine said you know, sitand spend on that.
And now he's saying Ukrainestarted the war.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yes, Like it's such a blatant, like you know bully
tactic.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
And just the way that he can change words and get
people to change their thoughtson something Something as easy
as Russia invaded Ukraine.
They started this, they are theones doing this and they're
singing Trump's praises.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Rewrite history.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, the rewrite history and we talked about it a
little last week where the wordfascism?
They try to use it on bothsides, like no, it is a
right-wing ideal ideology.
Yes, like when ever you know aleft-wing person is in there.
Everything we do is communist.
You call us communist all thetime, but now that there's a
fascist there, they're trying touse it.
As you know, the left hasfascist too.
(34:40):
Yeah, no no like this is howeducation works.
Words mean something.
We need to know what they meanand stick to that, because that
double speak from 1984 is like areality now, it is now what?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
if we all have to learn russian, then words won't
mean the same thing I know, yeah, I I don't know if I think
we'll be all right.
We, you know, I think we'llsurvive.
Uh, I do like alternativehistory books, though, where, uh
, and I don't read books, but Ilike that, I like to dabble in
it and read a little bit aboutit, just kind of get the idea in
(35:13):
my head of like, if you know,the world war two had not gone
the way it did, and oh, you knowthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Dramatical High Castle.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Dramatical High Castle, yeah which I love that
author, philip K Dick.
He's one of my favorite, youknow he's one of my only authors
that I actually like.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, but you know those kind of things are really
cool.
So you know, we'll see, maybewe get a round two.
Those are always sci-fi, kindof futuristic.
Maybe they just didn't realizethere was a the end of World War
III.
The reality came together.
They just had to include thatnext round of stuff in there.
I mean, nostradamus said therewas three of them?
(35:47):
Sure, yeah, we'll see Well nextweek we'll find out how we're
doing.
As far as if Europe is backinto the hey, we did say they
want to roll the clock back.
We want to go back to theLeague of Nations and to the war
cabinet and everything else,and that's back when the Eastern
front of Europe was shaky andunstable.
You know, everything was up forgrabs, right?
So this is you get to be aworld player and you want to
(36:10):
have the fight way off in theback corner of your backyard,
but they're still on yourproperty, right, you know you
get to be the big dog callingthe shots, right, and and that's
kind of how Donald Trump seesit is, the eastern edge of the
western world is still in mybackyard, and so I'll let them
fight over there and make allthe stink they want, and then
I'll just come over and call thefight whenever I want.
(36:31):
And that's how he's kind of.
Again back to, that is 1930,1940.
And how could we just sit ontop of everything and be in
charge, right?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, so it's going to come to a head pretty quickly
of everything and be in charge,right.
Yeah, it's gonna come to a headpretty quickly.
You know, I think the Europeanleaders they've known for a
while but they're understandingthat we're not there they knew,
but it's a scary thought, yeahand the whole thing with, like
us, providing that security tofolks.
(37:01):
That was so that they wouldn'tgo nuclear.
It was to help stop nuclearproliferation.
And so now that we're pullingback and saying like, nope,
america first, this is ourcontinent over here and that's
it.
Other countries are going tostart looking at nuclear options
.
Greenland needs some nukes,yeah that place is so strategic
(37:24):
for us when it comes to what wedo.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I think they need nukes to defend themselves from
us.
Yeah, we're coming watch outGreenland alright, next week
update on Greenland'ssovereignty and Russia's war in
the Ukraine.
Thanks everybody for listeningto another episode of Left Face.
We'll catch you next week.
Take care, take care.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Left Face.
This is the podcast that coversveterans topics in the Pikes
Peak region, and we are coveringboth local, national and
international political topicsthat are relevant to veterans.
I am your host, dick Wilkinson,and I am joined by my co-host
today, adam Gillard.
How are you doing, adam?
(00:22):
I'm doing good, dick.
How are you?
I'm doing very good.
I am happy to be here.
I've definitely doing, adam.
I'm doing good, dick.
How are you?
I'm doing very good.
I am happy to be here.
I've definitely just, man, I'vehad a lot on my mind as far as
this episode, and so I'm excitedto dig into the conversation
today.
It's Impacted Veterans.
Everything we're going to talkabout today is direct Impacted
Veterans.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, we definitely, like we said, no shortage of
things coming out of this newadministration where we have to
stand on top of these topics tomake sure we're educating people
properly, and I've been talkingwith some folks about
collecting resources and topicsthat we want to run up the chain
and things like that.
And one thing I always harp onis make sure that you have good
sources, make sure you'reactually looking at the sources
(01:00):
that you're reading thisinformation from because you
don't want to be a part of theproblem.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Correct.
There's a publication out thereand it comes up every now and
then it gets sent to me as likea link for a headline for
something, or I saw that itactually comes up pretty far up
in the Google search results oncertain news topics.
Hindustan Times.
There's no such place asHindustan on the map right now.
(01:26):
That is sometimes the name forlike a certain region in
Pakistan and like NorthAfghanistan.
It's just, you know, it's a notreal nation state, yeah, but
it's sort of a tribal regionword, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Right, like Cascadia.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, you know, there's but or what's it called
the Catalonian like enclavewithin Spain, right?
Like they want to be their owncountry but they're not quite
yet.
That's kind of what thesepeople maybe are in, I don't
know, but anyways, it's not aplace where there's a government
or a news agency or any placeof structure, right?
But then they write on topicsthat are, I don't know,
(02:01):
sensational, I guess, but theywrite on topics that are I don't
know sensational, I guess.
But it doesn't seem like it'stotally a propaganda hole.
You know what I'm saying, but Ican't say that it's credible
either.
But it's out there, it's partof the noise and it's pretty far
up in the noise.
So anyways, that's just onethat always.
When I saw it yesterday when Iwas searching for some topic, I
(02:23):
thought dang, there it is againHindustan Times.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, obviously, if Google listens to this
conversation, it pops it up onmy news feed now.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It will, and then also you'll notice the Gulf of
Hindustan may show up on GoogleMaps soon.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I have been enjoying people renaming the Gulf of
Mexico.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
They just keep throwing out more and more
vulgar names for it.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That's always good.
This last week we saw um someprotests going on downtown.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Uh, I don't know if you got a chance to swing by
there, but, but I was there fora few hours.
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I wasn't in the area.
No, yeah, it was.
Uh.
I actually signed up to do theparasol patrol.
So like you walk with uh anumbrella, so if there's any like
protesters yelling like towardskids and families, and like
that you just kind of protectthe kids and families from the
noise and stuff like that, whichis more up my alley.
I'm not like a big rah-rah guyand things like that.
So your job is to stand therequietly and stoically and not
(03:17):
react to people yelling peoplethings at you, and I can do that
.
We had one guy that was drivingaround in a truck about four or
five times while I was there,like just driving through with
his Trump stickers on, yellingand screaming at us.
So, yeah, it definitely drewsome emotional reactions from
folks, but I think we got a lotmore horns honking and
supporting us and there was acouple hundred people out there,
(03:37):
you know it was definitely areally good showing, so it's
something that's probably goingto be happening more and more, I
think.
So we keep seeing the way thatthe administration is going.
I don't know if you heard, butwe have a king now.
Did you see that tweet?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
No, I mean I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I was aware that we have a king, but there's a tweet
about it.
Tell me yeah, so he canceled thecongestion traffic law in New
York he canceled that new taxand then at the end he said long
live King Don.
Or something like that at theend of his tweet Wow, yeah, it's
just.
And folks will write it off andsay oh yeah, he's just joking,
(04:19):
he's just trying to rile you up.
But he's already committedtreason once, he's already
attacked the Capitol once, andnow he's sitting there with
immunity where he's saying thatthe Supreme Court doesn't even
know how to decide what's legalor not Right.
He only he can interpret thelaw.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right.
Well, one way I see that comingto reality right now is the
whole is Elon Musk in charge ofDoge or not?
When the Trump administrationgoes to court over cases where
people are saying that they gotfired or that there's some
illegal cuts going on in theirorganization, then the answer is
Elon Musk is not in charge ofDoge.
(04:53):
But then Donald Trump basicallyevery day says Elon Musk is
doing a great job being incharge of.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Doge.
He's literally talking to theworld from behind the Oval
Office desk, the Resolute desk.
It's crazy how much they didthat CNN.
I can't remember who it was.
They just did an interviewtogether.
Oh, hannity, that's who it was.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
But my thing is he knows that if his lawyers,
basically he can live in, he cansay whatever.
And if his lawyers go to courtand say, well, here's the real
legal filing, and Donald Trumpsays the exact opposite thing
one hour later, every single day, it doesn't matter at all.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's the weird situationthat we're in is that he can
(05:39):
make up whatever he wants to sayand as long as his lawyers go
to court and say, well, this isis what we wrote down, so this
is what's really going on, iswhat's on paper well, and even
that, that one meeting must saidI'm going to say some things
that are wrong yeah like cool,we know you're going to say some
things that are wrong like thisis to like lead off with that,
though it's like don't factcheck me, I'm going to be wrong
(06:01):
yeah, this is, this is stream ofconsciousness.
slash, government planning,slash.
You know everything else righthere live.
Well, that's the topic we'regoing to cover in a minute is
about some of the Doge activity,but let's just get our viewers
caught up on one thing, adam,before we move on to that.
You know, court case is finallydone, done, done.
(06:24):
That you were involved with,yeah, official.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
When we were recording last week, we were
kind of waiting for the SupremeCourt to make a decision.
They made a decision not totake up jurisdiction on it, so
that kind of reverts back to thedistrict court's ruling, which
was that it was unconstitutional, and then we kind of had to
wait for the city to.
I think they were kickingaround some ideas and they were
trying to look for other avenues.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Last week yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Which I mean at that point.
It's just ridiculous Likeyou're trying that hard to
subvert the will of the voters,like that's just everybody's
kind of like when the law saysyou're doing something
unconstitutional and then thenext level says the same thing
like listen, just listen, man.
The next level says the samething Listen.
Just listen, man, so they endedup coming out with a statement
(07:10):
saying they're disappointed butthey'll honor this, and they
removed her from the ballot.
So it's done for this round.
It cannot happen in April.
But if Donaldson gets reelectedin April, I could see it being
on the 26th ballot.
They're never going to stoptrying this.
So you know, now the focusturns to doing good things with
(07:32):
this tax money that comes in and, you know, making sure that
people that keep jobs or get newjobs recognize how they got
those jobs, so that they keepvoting for the people that are
fighting for them.
That's true, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yep, and I think a good thing to focus on is 18
months at least betweenlaunching the wreck sales and
the opportunity to repeal it, sothat time frame is a long time
(08:07):
for there to be positiveinfluence.
Positive, you know, notnecessarily a lot of revenue,
tax being flowed through, butproof that the danger and harms
that they were talking aboutdon't exist.
Right, right, the boogeyman hasto vanish in those 18 months.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And I think I don't know how it wouldn't right.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You know Right Because, like we've said all
along it, like cannabis, hasalways been here, it's just
people are driving less to getit.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So, yeah, the boo us to get it.
The boogeyman has been here thewhole time.
Things are cool.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
That's it exactly.
That illusion should vanish ifwe get through 18 months.
I agree that even if it wasgoing to lose abysmally, they
would still put it on the ballotagain, just as sort of like hey
, we had to invade Iraq twice toseal the deal, They'll come
back around.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
It's good to finally put it to bed.
It's kind of a surreal momentwhere it actually was done.
I've been on this since westarted filling out the
petitions, filling in signatures.
It's definitely nice to finallyhave something done and get
something positive for the city,because this is so much tax
money.
It could really define what wedo as a city going forward,
(09:10):
being able to fund some of theprograms around here.
Looking at publictransportation even the police
academy use funds to fund thatthing.
Get that built so we canrebuild our police force.
It can define our city for ageneration or two here.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
It's good to see.
Well, thanks for taking that on, adam and being involved.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You know by name mostly because the lawyers did
most of the work.
You know, pure luck that I gotthat.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
But thanks for thanks for doing that.
So all right back to Doge.
So today's topics we're goingto cover are things about, you
know, going out of the federalgovernment to have direct impact
on active duty military it'sabout to happen.
And then us as veterans, bothsides of the coin, are getting
the doge effect.
And Pete Hexeth, SecretaryHexeth, is on board full blast,
(09:56):
as we expected he would be.
So which one do you want tostart with, Adam?
Do you want to start with thedefense budget cuts or do you
want to start with the VA?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
um, you know, for an ungeneral kind of federal job
stuff so first to kind of frameit for for this area, we're
looking at like 15 to 20 percentveteran population.
Yeah, right, and that's theveteran population.
We still have tons of activeduty, yes, tons of contractors.
I mean, you're probably lookingat, 60% of our workforce is
(10:27):
tied into the defense sector.
So when we're talking aboutimpacts here, this is so huge
for our area and on top of theother conversations of moving
space force and things like thatso I don't know.
Let's start with the government,the big feds.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So promises made, promises kept is what they say
over on the other side of theaisle.
And here we are.
The promises have been kept.
The axe has swung, the GrimReaper sickle has passed through
many agencies already in thelast few weeks and what I've
seen, what we've all seen on thenews, is that somewhat
(11:04):
indiscriminate job cuts oroffers for resignation with some
kind of severance, and that'shappened on the orders of tens
of thousands of governmentemployees as far as brought, you
know, over the whole governmentRight, and people are taking
the taking the cut, you knowlike they're taking the
(11:25):
severance, and I think they'redoing that because the writing
would be on the wall that if, ifdon't take it now, it might
only be a month before it's notthere anymore and they just say,
well, that was nice, but youjust don't come back and we're
not going to pay you and that'sit.
So that part you know.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I can't imagine being in that position right now A
lot of those federal workers,because a lot have been let go
illegally because they're in theunions and so there's going to
be more lawsuits against themand things like that.
But what's that going to do forthem?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
I'll tell you, the administration is not concerned
about that at all.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
No, no, yeah, there's no pressure from that they are
blatantly removing workers'rights and union busting.
So, yeah, they're not going togive a shit about that.
The thing that bugs me the mostis that when you look at the GS
workers, like our governmentworkers, they are a lot bigger
workforces than the contractorsthat they want to hand stuff
(12:20):
over to.
When you look at a lot ofcontractors, you're so focused
on your scope of work you can'tbleed over that because you get
in trouble for not flexible,right, yeah?
whereas, like your GS workerscan catch a lot of extra BS and
kind of wear the glue that holdsthat stuff together so now
we're gonna get rid of that andwe're gonna pay people twice as
much to be contractors and withlimited scale, with limited
(12:42):
scope.
Yeah, bad things are gonna comefrom that.
Administratively, you know alot of things are gonna fall
apart.
And when you look at, they'vebeen cutting the probationary
period folks, bad things aregoing to come from that.
Administratively, you know alot of things are going to fall
apart.
And when you look at they'vebeen cutting the probationary
period folks, which is heavilyveterans also, you know people
coming out, you know, jumpinginto the federal service.
Oh sure, those new folks are thefolks that are like busting
(13:03):
their ass to like make it, makeit, whereas you have people that
have been up there for 30, 40years, that are GS, 15, sess,
that just are sitting inpositions, kind of clogging
things.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
They keep that.
There's definitely some oxygenbeing sucked out of the room by
some senior folks I mean we allit's.
You know that's just alwayspart of bureaucratic government,
right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, so just if you're looking to save money,
just cutting off those thepeople that are just starting
out, uh, it's the least returnon investment.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, correct, yeah.
So they're gonna, they're gonnabe stuck.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know, these people that haven't worked in
you know 15 years are gonna bestuck trying to run their
offices again without the helpthat they're used to.
Yes, so those offices are goingto start failing for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, the yeah's right.
Some of the senior folks thathave had two or three layers of
administration underneath ofthem and then entire layers of
that just disappeared.
Talk about breaking businessflows and workflows.
I mean some of that is thepoint right Of breaking their
work flows.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Exactly that's what people want.
But, how does it get?
Put back together, right that'sthe well so many of these
services that they're breakingup to are.
They're needed in a lot ofcommunities.
So I mean, I don't think theyeven care about putting it back
together.
I think that's true.
It hurts the point.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's true.
Um, well, near and dear to meis NASA.
I work in the space industryfor our listeners and so I pay
attention to what NASA's gotgoing on, but I don't work with
them directly on a contract oranything like that.
Right now they are about to beoperating at their smallest
workforce since the Apollomissions shut down.
(14:47):
They are taking a massive Iwant to say it was like 40% of
their contracts are going away.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Spacex.
He's just taking the moneythat's supposed to help the
public and provide us jobs and agood economy and just handing
it off to the oligarchs.
It's gross.
It's so blatant.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I wonder how long, as we do in the intelligence
community, you say follow themoney.
Um, will there be any amount oftime or, uh, what you might
even think of as a reasonablecooling off period?
Before you know, cut nasa'sbudget.
Six months later, basically,nasa's like we can't even mop
(15:29):
the floors, we can't, much lesslaunch a rocket.
You know, and then you know,six months after that, all these
new contracts get cut.
Um, is that, you know, with,with, not nasa, with companies
instead of nasa?
Um, if the overt program is toprivatize, there's probably a
legal way to do that.
Even if there's conflict ofinterest involved, there's
(15:51):
probably a legal way to redothose appropriations right well,
I think that's why they'releaving him off of the.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Uh, the doge had had a doge list.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yes, because that conflict.
So, yeah, he just gets to standin the corner and whisper, you
know, and not be on paper butnot be liable on paper, right?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
yeah, so he gets all the authority none in the corner
and whisper, you know and notbe on paper but not be liable on
paper, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So he gets all the authority, none of the
responsibility and that wentback to where the president has
the beautiful, you know wideopen door of.
He can't have a conflict ofinterest really.
You know, like a president can't, you know not anymore.
So he can basically say Elon'sin charge and then file court
papers and say he's not incharge.
So, man, I hope that it doesn'tjust turn into that much of an
(16:34):
ugly direct you know one for onequote unquote kind of tradeoff.
I hope it doesn't.
But I mean, step one happenedalready.
Right, we can't deny that stepone happened, and are we just
going to not do space stuff likeon the civil side?
Is it only going to be defense,or you know what happens there,
I don't know there's been somuch money given to the
(16:58):
commercial side anyways.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yes, Like right now, his whole point of taking away
the government funding is tostop other startups and things
like that.
He's trying to like consolidateoh sure Stream in the base,
yeah, so like any new startups,have to fall underneath him
anyways, so he'll be able tocollect all the sure pyramid
scheme it yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get to decide which level
(17:22):
you're at, so fair well that thetakeaway, and we'll finish this
part on what I've seen as afollow-on impact, which makes
perfect sense.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
But it's a ripple effect and, man, if ripples are
in a tight, controlled space,they can actually get bigger,
right Like the harmonics cancause damage, and so what we're
seeing is some of this bounceback.
I've seen in the last just twodays so this is like hot off the
breaking news as far as podcastgoes that civil servants that
(17:54):
were not fired, were not offeredany kind of severance, did not
assume that their position wasat risk, are going ahead and
jumping ship anyway, even ifthey're not qualified for
retirement.
They're saying, hey, basicallythis work environment is so
volatile I don't feel securehere.
A lot of the people that Irelied on in my own department
(18:18):
or in the next department overare getting fired or resigning.
So I don't want to be one ofthe last people on this ship,
you know, because I have no ideawhat's going to happen and so
they're leaving.
So even the people that wethink we're gaining efficiency
by saying, well, they were notessential, essential people are
leaving because what somebodythinks, you know, these not
(18:39):
essential people are actuallymuch more required than anyone's
willing to admit yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
And these folks that are leaving, they're not, you
know, just folks that you pickup on.
Even janitors need to havesecurity clearances.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Sure, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So there's so much more that goes into hiring these
folks and getting them into thesystem.
They're not easily replaceable.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
And so I guess what we're saying there is if
somebody, if Congress, let's saythis goes to the heads roll for
the next two years, years, andlet's say that congress flips
back blue and they start tryingto appropriate and hire people
back, we're talking two yearsfrom now, before that could
really take place, that at the,you know at the soonest.
And then how long does it takeand how much money does it take
(19:21):
to rehire?
I'm not saying all of them, buteven if we just wanted to bring
back 30 of all the people thatare leaving right now, I think
that would almost erase all thesavings, because that hiring,
vetting and clearances,everything else, training You're
hiring people and then they'rein a six-month, one-year
training program and even if wewanted to bring back 30% of the
(19:42):
people that we got rid of in thelast month, the cost would be
outrageous and that's going tohave to happen in some of these
places.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Well, we kind of saw it quickly happen where they
fired the nuclear watchdogs, thefolks who were kind of watching
the arsenal, and then quicklyrealized like, oh, we need to
resend these and actually, youguys come back to work, please.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yes, Yep, yeah, we got to see that on a compressed
timeline All the other cutscould follow the same timeline,
just on a longer, or the sameprocess just on a longer
timeline.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, because that crystal ball, the nuclear
industry, that's always a toppriority when it comes to those
administrations.
So they quickly realized thatmess up.
Yeah, some of the other onesare going to be a slow burn.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Aviation.
Oh my goodness, cuts at thefreaking Aviation Administration
right With all the planecrashes and all the problems
that are going on.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, another one yesterday.
Yeah, it was two days ago, thatwas in Canada.
No, there was another one.
Oh, there's another one.
Well, there's one in.
Arizona like two days ago, it'stoo small, yeah, where they
crash, and again that's going tobe an air tower thing.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yes, you know, two planes flying south, and yet
they came through with thesickle and said hey, everybody
that wants to retire, everybodythat wants to quit, get out of
here.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
And that's one of the most highly stressful jobs Hard
to train, hard to get qualifiedand you're going to offer
somebody a carrot like that,like early retirement.
Oh yeah, I'm taking that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
And it's a safety whatever you know.
They basically have securityclearances in their type of
world and they've got all thesafety restrictions of, you know
, no drinking and no drugs andall this other stuff and
constant supervision of how muchthey sleep and that kind of
stuff right, yeah, just likethey're a part of the air crew
basically right, yeah, air crew.
Exactly yeah, they have thoseair crew restrictions so that's
not easy.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's not easy to get somebody to do that.
Now we're thousands of people.
That's terrible.
Yeah, yeah, people are fallingon the stars.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Well, that's a no end in sight.
We don't know what.
We don't know yet.
We don't know what the impactsof all this will be.
It doesn't feel like it couldbe good but saving money at what
cost?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
yeah, there we go exactly, and I think a lot of
folks that voted for thisthey're uh, they're kind of
seeing it, but they're too proudto say like, maybe this is too
much yes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
People are still like they're still.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, when he just said that ukraine started the
war, they're like well, yeah,they did.
They were pretty aggressive.
Oh, come on, come on, man.
Another country clearly invadedthem and you guys are just
outrageous.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It's just the whole.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I mean, it's so dystopian man you're never going
to get buyer's remorse from thepeople that voted for Donald
Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It just doesn't matter.
They could deport their owngrandmother or mother, steal
them out of their home andthey'd be like I think he's
probably doing something useful.
It's not possible to getbuyer's remorse out of those
people.
We're not going to wait forthat.
Well, some folks may havebuyer's remorse in the military
(22:47):
coming up soon because thestatement that was put out by
Pete Hegseth this week,secretary of Defense, he picked
up on the Doge steamroll and hesaid I want every department of
the military, as far as likeDepartment of the Army,
department of the Navy, themajor branches, I want them to
bring to me proposals for an 8%budget cut starting in 2026 and
(23:13):
for every five years and fourmore years after that.
So five years in a row, 8%reduction every year.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Wow, yeah, we talked earlier about how people most
government agencies areoperating at like 60% manning
already, right, so we're alreadyundermanned.
Equipment is hard to acquireand get money because budgets
are never handed down in time,so you only have money for a
(23:41):
very short period of time.
You try to spend like hell forthat month or two, but it is so
incredibly hard to operate andmaintain a workforce that's
properly trained and equipped.
You know, as it is right now.
And then he wants to keepcutting and when you first
brought this up, too, I askedyou know well, where is he
talking about cutting?
If you're talking cuttingequipment, people like my
(24:06):
biggest concern, he's just gonnastart chopping people I, I
don't know right.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I mean, and that's the thing is, the people who
have been able to report on thememo that went from the SecDef
out to the, you know, four stars, was that?
You know, by Monday of nextweek we need a plan, and so that
level of detail is not outthere yet.
I don't think Hegseth has putany emphasis on how that would
(24:30):
happen.
I think he's open for what I'msure would be creative ideas
from the four stars and thesecretaries of those services to
say, well, if we're reallygoing to do this, this is what's
going to have to happen.
The way the military thinks.
I feel like we're much morelikely.
This is the way we think isokay, we're going to can a
(24:53):
program of record or onespecific platform, a weapons
platform or something like that,and instead of saying, okay,
we're going to take 2% out ofpersonnel, 2% out of base
operations, 2% out of combatoperations, and go through and
slice the pie up and, like,sprinkle it around.
That's not, we're modular, youknow it's like just take this
whole can and throw it away.
(25:15):
You know, that's how we like todo it.
So I feel like that's what thesecretaries of those services
are going to show up on Mondayand be like well, we're going to
stop flying this helicopter,we're going to stop floating
this type of ship and that'regoing to stop floating this type
of ship and we're going to savemoney like that.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It's going to be interesting because they're
going to have to factor incutting their GS positions and
hiring more contractors, whichthey're going to cost more.
To backfill there's so manymoving pieces right now.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
We've seen firsthand in the military, and I think it
does happen in the military alittle bit different than it
happens in the civilian branchesof government and just
departments of government, inthat when they come down and
kind of say, hey, you guysaren't flying that airplane
anymore, no, that really stopshappening.
There is no replacement, theplane doesn't come back, the
troops get retrained, thecivilians go home, and that
(26:06):
whole thing just shuts all theway down.
And so I do think that if theNavy said, hey, this
middle-sized ship that could bereplaced by this other one that
we've already got, that wholething just goes away.
And so there's contractors,there's ship maintenance people
there's probably a few thousandsailors per boat that they just
say reduce the manning andrelease the contracts.
(26:27):
Like, those people don't workhere anymore, they can go build
ships for some Chinese flagcompany over in San Francisco.
Like we don't, we don't care youknow Like, so I don't see a
replacement at a higher cost,because I don't see a
replacement happening at all,and I think that you know.
Is it realistic that 40% we'retalking about 40% over five
years?
No, that's not possible.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Right, you know that's not going to happen, it's
just not possible.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
But the idea of cut, cut, cut, cut, year after year,
that's happened before.
I don't think it's ever ran for, you know, more than maybe two
years in a row.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like everybody will start out with some big.
There was an old Air Forcechief of staff, general Welsh,
and he got the word that he hadto cut workforce by X amount by
you know, in five years, and hewas like, well, I'll do it in a
year.
It just hacked people and likewe lost so many like of the
support personnel and everybodyhad to become experts on you
know all the support jobs andthings like that he has to do
(27:24):
like another tour, as like chiefof staff and he got turned down
because like it was thebloodbath.
It was nasty for us you know, atthe operational level, Like
it's just crazy that they don'tthink about these cuts.
They, just like you said,they'll hack a whole system off.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Now here's the thing that was contradictory that I
think should be concerning forour active duty brothers and
sisters out there is thatSecretary Hegseth said we're
going to put the military in awar footing.
We're going to be.
We want you to be combat readyand lethal, like right now, at
(28:01):
all times, like heightenedreadiness in the face of a lower
op tempo, right, but we wantyou to be just on as your seat,
super, super ready, yeah, and wewant to reduce all of your
budgets by 40 those two thingsdon't go together.
Readiness costs money and whenwe ramp up for deployment and go
into a high up-tempo mode forthe military where they say, hey
(28:25):
, no, really, like over the nextthree years, here's all the
units that are going to deploy,we know exactly how many troops
are going to be in theselocations and that means we've
got a year out, two years out,to start getting these training
plans put together.
(28:46):
That costs a ton of money.
Right, to get that readiness sothat you know you've got 10,000
people in a brigade that aremultiple combat brigades ready
to go.
That doubles the budget of thatunit versus walking around in
the woods out here at FortCarson.
If you're walking around in thewoods at Fort Carson all year
long, it costs you personnel andnothing else.
But if you have to take thosepeople and go to three different
training sites to get preparedto deploy and you have to do a
medical push for thousands andthousands of people, right, it
(29:08):
doubles the cost of that unit'soperation.
Right, and I don't, you can't.
Yeah, soldiers carry a lot ofstuff on their back and sure you
can put more stuff in theirpack, but you can't replace the
things that are required todeploy that process is very well
tested and true.
right now We've been doing thatyou know rinse and repeat for
the last 25 years.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, and you, as you talk about being in that
heightened state, I just alwaysthink back to.
You know, all the suicides thatwe're having at you know, in
the veteran community.
You know, and it's becauseyou're at a constant heightened
state for so long like it thatleaves a watermark on you, you
know and people trying to learnhow to process that when they
come back into the civilianworld or even while they're
(29:48):
still in.
It's a struggle and now we'retelling people again that you
know, with less money, with lessresources.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
We're going to tie on the rope.
Expect you to perform at thesame level.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's going to be a lot of
repercussions like that.
Yeah, we're going to take a lotof steps backward, I think,
when it comes to mental health.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Mental health and that is one small flavor in the
mixture of unit readiness andmorale.
Right, bottom line People we'vegot, like you say, even when
there's relatively enough money,resources and everything else,
you've still got.
You know the Army base has fiveDUIs a day because they have so
(30:26):
many people there.
Right, those signs at the gatethat say you know how many days
since a DUI or how many dayswhatever, like they're just
jokes, almost right.
And that's when things are kindof fat, dumb and happy right.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
It's funny because the Air Force has those and like
if a unit has like two, yeah,like they're getting their asses
too, like you're there on theweekends and things like that,
like I was on Fort Carson andI'd drive off, and those units
are in the hundreds, hundredsit's insane, right, insane, um.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
and so if that's, you know, if that's the case, when
we, like, I say, when we're nottotally just strapped for people
and resources and everythingelse, and we actually can take
Thursday afternoon off to gotake time with your family,
right, if you're some of thoseunits you're able to do that,
right, they're like, hey, wedon't work on Thursdays, you pay
your bills on Thursday morningand you go see, take your kids
(31:17):
out on Thursday afternoon right,you have an appointment.
You can't do that when 40% ofeverything disappears, right?
Because you're going to bepainting the buildings yourself.
Right, you're going to berepainting the parking lots
yourself.
You know we're going to be backto all base maintenance.
It's going to be on the back ofthose service members in
between training rotations,right, I mean, that's it.
(31:38):
You go training rotation, basemaintenance rotation and you're
literally the just, you know,the handyman type people.
They got like 200 of you.
You go out and just do projectsall over base.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right when I was stationed in north carolina they
had prisoners coming on base todo the cleaning.
Sure, weeds and seeds stuff andthings like that, like with.
We know for-profit prisons arepicking up again yeah, I could
see more, more bases leaningtowards prisoners or privates,
the price is about the sameright, yeah, you get less talk
back from the prisoners.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yes, so but yeah, the labor, the labor is the labor
and I'm, you know, the againunit readiness and morale really
suffers when you have to go cutgrass on base for 30 days in a
row, all day, every day.
You're out there swinging weed,whackers and stuff.
You know like you want to talkabout people getting a dui right
.
Stand out in the sun in georgiafor 40 days cutting grass when
(32:30):
you're.
You know your job is to drivetrucks right, yeah, next thing.
You know, like everybody got introuble that like bad things
happened.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You know that movie jarhead I think shows a good it
does a really good job.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, that training training.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
You're at the peak training and you just hold, you,
hold, you hold.
You go crazy man.
Yeah.
So you're a trained killer outthere.
Weed whacking, weed whacking,yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yep, and the hurry up and wait piece.
Yeah, it drives you crazy, andthat's Hegseth's memo basically.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It was like we're going to get into, yeah, and I'm
saying the way that we're goingright now.
I don't think people they'll bewaiting long, though, like I
think they're, they'll haveplaces to go.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
What do you mean?
The so people that are gettingout of the work?
you're saying, no, I'm saying,like our military, yeah, oh,
wars, conflicts, we're gonnahave more conflicts yeah, well,
I guess you will get to throwthat memo in the trash if we end
up in a two-front war, right,like the reductions won't exist.
So you know that is true, right, I didn't think about that.
Well, we won't touch that topictoo hard.
(33:33):
But Donald Trump is trying tonegotiate the end of the Ukraine
war without Ukrainianinvolvement.
So we'll see how, a week fromnow, how that's going.
I get the feeling that a weekfrom now, it may be whatever
deal is happening, it may be adone deal.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
You know Well because he initially asked for half of
their natural resources.
And Ukraine said you know, sitand spend on that.
And now he's saying Ukrainestarted the war.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yes, Like it's such a blatant, like you know bully
tactic.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
And just the way that he can change words and get
people to change their thoughtson something Something as easy
as Russia invaded Ukraine.
They started this, they are theones doing this and they're
singing Trump's praises.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Rewrite history.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, the rewrite history and we talked about it a
little last week where the wordfascism?
They try to use it on bothsides, like no, it is a
right-wing ideal ideology.
Yes, like when ever you know aleft-wing person is in there.
Everything we do is communist.
You call us communist all thetime, but now that there's a
fascist there, they're trying touse it.
As you know, the left hasfascist too.
(34:40):
Yeah, no no like this is howeducation works.
Words mean something.
We need to know what they meanand stick to that, because that
double speak from 1984 is like areality now, it is now what?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
if we all have to learn russian, then words won't
mean the same thing I know, yeah, I I don't know if I think
we'll be all right.
We, you know, I think we'llsurvive.
Uh, I do like alternativehistory books, though, where, uh
, and I don't read books, but Ilike that, I like to dabble in
it and read a little bit aboutit, just kind of get the idea in
(35:13):
my head of like, if you know,the world war two had not gone
the way it did, and oh, you knowthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Dramatical High Castle.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Dramatical High Castle, yeah which I love that
author, philip K Dick.
He's one of my favorite, youknow he's one of my only authors
that I actually like.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, but you know those kind of things are really
cool.
So you know, we'll see, maybewe get a round two.
Those are always sci-fi, kindof futuristic.
Maybe they just didn't realizethere was a the end of World War
III.
The reality came together.
They just had to include thatnext round of stuff in there.
I mean, nostradamus said therewas three of them?
(35:47):
Sure, yeah, we'll see Well nextweek we'll find out how we're
doing.
As far as if Europe is backinto the hey, we did say they
want to roll the clock back.
We want to go back to theLeague of Nations and to the war
cabinet and everything else,and that's back when the Eastern
front of Europe was shaky andunstable.
You know, everything was up forgrabs, right?
So this is you get to be aworld player and you want to
(36:10):
have the fight way off in theback corner of your backyard,
but they're still on yourproperty, right, you know you
get to be the big dog callingthe shots, right, and and that's
kind of how Donald Trump seesit is, the eastern edge of the
western world is still in mybackyard, and so I'll let them
fight over there and make allthe stink they want, and then
I'll just come over and call thefight whenever I want.
(36:31):
And that's how he's kind of.
Again back to, that is 1930,1940.
And how could we just sit ontop of everything and be in
charge, right?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, so it's going to come to a head pretty quickly
of everything and be in charge,right.
Yeah, it's gonna come to a headpretty quickly.
You know, I think the Europeanleaders they've known for a
while but they're understandingthat we're not there they knew,
but it's a scary thought, yeahand the whole thing with, like
us, providing that security tofolks.
(37:01):
That was so that they wouldn'tgo nuclear.
It was to help stop nuclearproliferation.
And so now that we're pullingback and saying like, nope,
america first, this is ourcontinent over here and that's
it.
Other countries are going tostart looking at nuclear options
.
Greenland needs some nukes,yeah that place is so strategic
(37:24):
for us when it comes to what wedo.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I think they need nukes to defend themselves from
us.
Yeah, we're coming watch outGreenland alright, next week
update on Greenland'ssovereignty and Russia's war in
the Ukraine.
Thanks everybody for listeningto another episode of Left Face.
We'll catch you next week.
Take care, take care.
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