«Like so many self-described “dirt bag” climbers in Yosemite, he spent a couple of years doing odd jobs to make ends meet before he got hired by the park service. It meant scraping toilets, picking up used diapers and “squeegee-ing urine” from bathroom floors, he said. But it was still pretty much the holy grail of jobs for a passionate climber.
“It was, quite literally, a dream come true,” Chmura said.
So, when the Trump administration arrived with its slash-and-burn crusade against the federal workforce, he was stunned and heartbroken to be swept up in it.
“I just really don’t understand why they’re attacking working-class Americans who never took these jobs to get rich,” he said. “It’s just extremely confusing. Why us?”
Conservative friends from Ohio, who have seen him on Instagram and TV, have reached out and said, “This is not what I voted for, this is … insane,” Chmura said.»
So, the public-facing stuff gets the exceptions, when people scream loud enough, but the behind-the-scenes stuff gets axed.
Goodbye, IRS tax enforcement. Goodbye, OSHA. Goodbye, USDA Economic Research Service. Goodbye, SEC. Goodbye, FTC truth-in-advertising enforcement. Goodbye, food inspection. (Goodbye, government tracking of food poisoning. Hello, lawsuits against private websites set up to do the same.)
