Dr. Phosphorous
Platinum Member
- Sep 3, 2024
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- #1
This is sad to read. This guy used to work for the Bureau Of Land Management and he voted for Trump, believing Trump would make his life better.....and actually Trump's DOGE soulless government cost-cutting and cruelty has made his life far worse.
He lost his wife to cancer at about the same time he was being forced to resign from his Federal job. He thought he could get a grace period from DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), but no such luck.
When it was all said and done, this guy finally was able to get 4 weeks of paid leave before being kicked out the door. He wasn't even allowed to use his government health insurance to pay for his wife's cremation, because he was no longer employed at the time.
This is "Making America Great Again".
From the Washington Post. --
When the government’s resignation offer arrived, Edward Brandon Beckham had no way of knowing.
He was on leave caring for Mikel, his wife of 21 years, who was dying of colon cancer. Under the terms of Brandon’s absence from the federal Bureau of Land Management, he wasn’t expected to check his work email.
So Brandon, who goes by his middle name, had to learn from the news that the Trump administration was offering to let federal workers like him resign and get paid through September. In mid-April, he decided to accept.
Now, staring at his computer, Brandon, 45, read that he was too late. The offer had closed three days before.
Brandon looked at Mikel, across the living room in her hospital bed. She was asleep. Surely, he told himself, the new government run by President Donald Trump — the man Brandon voted for — wouldn’t penalize him for missing a message. He composed an email to his bosses just after 5 p.m.
“As my wife is continuing in Hospice and I am her continuing caretaker, at this time, I am formally requesting that I be placed on Administrative Leave until a deferred resignation date of Sept. 30, 2025,” Brandon wrote. “Considering my circumstances, I respectfully request that I be allowed to participate.”
That spring, Brandon was among hundreds of thousands of federal workers weighing whether to abandon public service. Trump had taken office vowing to slash the federal bureaucracy, then entrusted the task to billionaire Elon Musk and a newly created cost-cutting team called the Department of Government Efficiency. In a matter of months, Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service wiped out hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in spending and the job security that once distinguished government work.
Of America’s 2.4 million federal workers, nearly 4 in 10 registered to vote had, like Brandon, cast ballots for Trump, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Brandon liked Trump’s vision for the country, which he thought reflected his own conservative values, and believed the president had a good shot at ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
But as the days passed, Brandon was becoming convinced that the Trump administration’s treatment of government employees — large-scale firings, emails he saw as harassing, and strict return-to-office mandates — was wrongheaded and cruel. If he was unable to resign, Brandon would be required to report to a federal building in Las Vegas more than 70 miles away. Round-trip, it would cost him three hours a day with his three children, for whom he would soon be the only parent and sole provider.
He lost his wife to cancer at about the same time he was being forced to resign from his Federal job. He thought he could get a grace period from DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), but no such luck.
When it was all said and done, this guy finally was able to get 4 weeks of paid leave before being kicked out the door. He wasn't even allowed to use his government health insurance to pay for his wife's cremation, because he was no longer employed at the time.
This is "Making America Great Again".
From the Washington Post. --
When the government’s resignation offer arrived, Edward Brandon Beckham had no way of knowing.
He was on leave caring for Mikel, his wife of 21 years, who was dying of colon cancer. Under the terms of Brandon’s absence from the federal Bureau of Land Management, he wasn’t expected to check his work email.
So Brandon, who goes by his middle name, had to learn from the news that the Trump administration was offering to let federal workers like him resign and get paid through September. In mid-April, he decided to accept.
Now, staring at his computer, Brandon, 45, read that he was too late. The offer had closed three days before.
Brandon looked at Mikel, across the living room in her hospital bed. She was asleep. Surely, he told himself, the new government run by President Donald Trump — the man Brandon voted for — wouldn’t penalize him for missing a message. He composed an email to his bosses just after 5 p.m.
“As my wife is continuing in Hospice and I am her continuing caretaker, at this time, I am formally requesting that I be placed on Administrative Leave until a deferred resignation date of Sept. 30, 2025,” Brandon wrote. “Considering my circumstances, I respectfully request that I be allowed to participate.”
That spring, Brandon was among hundreds of thousands of federal workers weighing whether to abandon public service. Trump had taken office vowing to slash the federal bureaucracy, then entrusted the task to billionaire Elon Musk and a newly created cost-cutting team called the Department of Government Efficiency. In a matter of months, Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service wiped out hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in spending and the job security that once distinguished government work.
Of America’s 2.4 million federal workers, nearly 4 in 10 registered to vote had, like Brandon, cast ballots for Trump, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Brandon liked Trump’s vision for the country, which he thought reflected his own conservative values, and believed the president had a good shot at ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
But as the days passed, Brandon was becoming convinced that the Trump administration’s treatment of government employees — large-scale firings, emails he saw as harassing, and strict return-to-office mandates — was wrongheaded and cruel. If he was unable to resign, Brandon would be required to report to a federal building in Las Vegas more than 70 miles away. Round-trip, it would cost him three hours a day with his three children, for whom he would soon be the only parent and sole provider.
