Type1TypeA

“I was an ER doctor. I well understand the risks of opioids. However, we as healthcare providers have a professional and ethical obligation to reduce the suffering of our patients. The swing away from opioids has, to me, seem to have gone too far.”

As a Fed civ servant, I agree. But the comments show ppl think ALL Fed jobs are like this. The pitchforks are out for us ALL, but many do real, measurable work. My job exists in the private sector & I could x2 my salary elsewhere. My work is necessary & I'm so tired of the hate.

⚡ The woman in that photo is being used as a political prop by the NYT and she probably doesn't even know it. The framing wants you to feel outrage at the cruelty of the cuts. But the actual data point buried in the story is devastating to the narrative it's trying to build. 272k for a senior VP at a USAID-funded nonprofit is not a real salary. It's a subsidy. That job existed inside a closed loop: taxpayer money flows to USAID, USAID funds NGOs, NGOs hire professionals at inflated rates, those professionals build lives around compensation that was never stress-tested against the open market. The entire salary was a function of proximity to the spigot. Not output. Not value creation. Not demand for her specific skills. The $19/hour number isn't the system being cruel. It's the system being honest for the first time. The market is saying: without the government funding stream, your skills at 57 command 39k. That's the real price. The 272k was the fiction. And here's what nobody in that thread will say: there are tens of thousands of people in the DC metro area alone sitting in exactly this position right now. Government-adjacent professionals whose entire compensation structure was built on a funding model that is being unwound. Not by AI, not by automation, but by simple political reallocation. And the market is going to reprice every single one of them. The deeper pattern is that an entire class of professional jobs in America were never real market jobs. They were artifacts of institutional spending that created its own employment ecosystem. Government, corporate middle management, DEI departments, compliance layers, consulting firms that exist to service other consulting firms. The whole structure was a series of jobs that existed because the money existed, not because the work needed doing at that price. That structure is now being compressed from multiple directions simultaneously. AI from one side. Spending cuts from another. Corporate efficiency mandates from a third. And the professional class that built its identity, its mortgages, its kids' tuitions, its retirement plans around those salaries is about to discover what the open market actually thinks they're worth. That's the repricing. This woman is just the first photo to go viral.

A U.S. District Judge on Tuesday delayed the criminal sentencing of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in order to allow victims to attend the court proceeding in person. After seeing some victims of the opioid crisis protesting outside her courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, she said they should be allowed to attend in person too, and moved the hearing to next Tuesday. When it happens, the judge is expected to order the company to forfeit $225 million to the Justice Department, clearing the way for the company to finalize a settlement of nearly all of the thousands of lawsuits it faces over its role in the opioid crisis.

A girl sits in her car scrolling through her email, heart sinking as she reads, “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates.” It was for a cashier position at Target. She exhales in disbelief; she has a bachelor’s degree *and* a master’s, yet she can’t even land a job at the register. Applications, interviews, rejections… over and over again. She whispers, “What was all that hard work for?” This is the reality many people are quietly facing; overqualified, underemployed, and emotionally drained. The job market can feel confusing and unfair, where education doesn’t always translate into opportunity. Have you ever felt stuck between being “too qualified” and still not being given a chance? How did you navigate it?

Living in a nursing home shouldn’t mean giving up everyday freedoms. I just signed a bill allowing seniors living in nursing homes to consume alcohol - so that everyone can enjoy happy hour!