If you can get even 45 mbps out of them on a claimed 100 mbps, I'll eat a hat.

If many employees are not doing the work however, the problem is likely not the employees but a more general systemic issue relating to management or work structure

Oh, I didn't mean, it is only the low-level employees themselves, who must all be fired (though some of the ought to be). What I said applies equally to managers — whom their managers are reluctant to fire because it is both difficult to do and hurts the person's own record.

Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.

If you don't pay, IRS will put a lien on your house. If you still don't pay, the house will be sold — and police (with guns) will arrive to kick you out from it.

Don't be stupid disputing the obvious — all governments world-wide collect revenues at gun-point. It is normal and the only way possible. It just means, the monies thus collected should only be used in situations, where weapons would take place: enforcing laws and fighting foreign enemies.

You mean like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG [....]

Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here.

After all, the benevolence of the private sector is so well known we sing their praises every day because they never, EVER take advantage of people or stick it to us in their quest for profits

Again, corporations are not (normally) in a position to coerce anybody to buy their services — only the government is in such a position and its role in our lives must be minimized, not perpetually expanded.

Your link is to a description of some outrage committed by Comcast — which is funny, because the company is a book-case example of crony capitalism: it (and other cable giants) grew out of government's idiocy of giving them monopoly, and their CEO today plays golf with the President.

Corporations are not any nicer, than they have to be — in order to compete. But monopolies — like Comcast — don't have anyone to compete with. And the government is the biggest and harshest monopoly of all. One can cancel their Comcast bill — even if it can be infuriatingly ridiculous. Now try opting out of Social Security...

Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.

Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.

The real problem is that firing an underling reflects poorly on his manager(s). This is also the truth everywhere, of course, but in normal enterprises there is this dirty and otherwise reprehensible "profit" to think about, so a bad employee can still be fired even if the manager's record gets hurt in the process. But the glorious government enterprises do not defile their mission with concerns for profit — their revenue is collected for them at gun point by the IRS.

Hence, practically nobody ever gets fired from government — "counseling" and "discipline" is the worst, that usually happens to our civil servants. Is it not time, we put our health care into their capable hands? Oh, wait...

He has someone for that now.

The debate as to whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet rumbles

What's with this "dwarf" nonsense — and big planetarism? We demand equal gravity for all planets!

"Why are we encouraging people to buy new Macs? We should be forcing our own users to upgrade, not theirs."
— Satya Nadella, Internal Memo, 7 August 2014

It will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives at all.

And it, probably, should not. Modern technology already does — or soon will — allow sending a "zerg rush" of remotely-operated drones to overwhelm enemy's defenses. Remotely operated by the new generations raised on video-games — and often too fat for personal fighting anyway.

Oh, and it is not just aircraft — the same logic would apply to tanks and ships. Once you no longer need to care about the soft pink body(ies) inside the military vehicle, you can stuff if with much more weaponry, make it do things which would've killed the human personnel before (like 20-g turns), and comfortably send it on "suicide" missions.

do you have any sources to cite?

Though the GP should've included a link or two, finding them for such a famous case is not at all difficult. Here is the Wikipedia's write-up, and the source they are citing.