Monday, March 10, 2025

Monday Musings - March 10, 2025

1. Hold on--it is already the second Monday of March! There are only 42 Mondays remaining in the year!

Zebra Grazing
Pilanesberg National Park, ZA
February 25, 2025

2. I have been going back through my images from South Africa. While I took a lot during the wine tour, it seems the ones that I like the most are from Pilanesberg National Park. Like today, I was working on this Zebra image. Something about it just makes me happy. The image brings back many exciting and wonderful memories.

3. Roughly 6,000 veterans have been laid off in recent weeks by the U.S. DOGE Service, according to federal data compiled by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokesperson for the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee said that number is probably understated amid ongoing job cuts at the Social Security Administration, the General Services Administration and other agencies. Veterans Affairs, where military veterans make up about 26 percent of the workforce, announced plans Wednesday to cut 80,000 jobs.

Veterans make up about 30 percent of the federal workforce, serving in every department. (The Washington Post)

4. While enjoying high-70s and low-80s degree days it is sometimes hard to remember how cold it is not so far away.

5. It became clear the other day why the Executive Branch is firing so many employees--the plan is to privatize services. What does that mean? Contractors owned by the President's friends will begin to rape the government for billions, possibly trillions of dollars. The American people suffer a politicized workforce providing less services while the rich get richer on our taxpayer dollars. This is just wrong.

6. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to slash the federal government and to privatize its current services. As the stock market has dropped and economists have warned of a dramatic slowdown in the economy, he told CNBC “There’s going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked, we’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period.” (CNBC) (Letters from an American)

7. Today in History. On March 10, 1959, Tibetans band together in revolt, surrounding the summer palace of the Dalai Lama in defiance of Chinese occupation forces.

China’s occupation of Tibet began nearly a decade before, in October 1950, when troops from its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country, barely one year after the Communists gained full control of mainland China. The Tibetan government gave into Chinese pressure the following year, signing a treaty that ensured the power of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the country’s spiritual leader, over Tibet’s domestic affairs. Resistance to the Chinese occupation built steadily over the next several years, including a revolt in several areas of eastern Tibet in 1956. By December 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, the capital, and the PLA command threatened to bomb the city if order was not maintained.