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Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

thehill.com

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Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#131

Post by ra1n85 »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #76
cyberferret wrote: post #6

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm, and hated it. I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938, no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon of his inaugu…

The explanation is basically the Trump administration wants to control all media messaging (as most administrations do), but is so far behind on staffing the posts at EPA and others that the secretary level people who should be in place to handle this haven't been nominated in most cases, let alone confirmed. The fact that their solution to their own failure to get people in place is to make things worse by releasing…

Well thought and explained. The sausage making of a (particularly dramatic) presidential transition is on display.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#132

Post by Amygaz »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #76
cyberferret wrote: post #6

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm, and hated it. I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938, no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon of his inaugu…

The explanation is basically the Trump administration wants to control all media messaging (as most administrations do), but is so far behind on staffing the posts at EPA and others that the secretary level people who should be in place to handle this haven't been nominated in most cases, let alone confirmed. The fact that their solution to their own failure to get people in place is to make things worse by releasing…

Who needs PR people and gag order when every day we get Spicer who barfs everything about what Trump believes is true or not?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#133

Post by jack9 »

badsock wrote: post #98
jquery wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, Obama didn't do the "exact same thing." He literally auctioned off the posts, giving the ambassadorships to campaign contributors and bundlers ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nom... ). It's easy to find replacements if you don't care about qualifications and just reward your donor list, I guess. One of the ambassadors was so bad, staffers working for her requested transfers to…

You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good, but then you immediately move the goalposts and then use that to pretend that you were justified in your original assertation. That's a shady rhetorical technique, and I suspect you're arguing in bad faith. That's worth some downvotes.

> You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good

Ironically, you are incorrect and have strangely doubled down on it in some sort of pyrrhic victory dance of failure.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#134

Post by Vivtek »

cyberferret wrote: post #35
jquery wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing social media managers are openly hostile to the new boss, with irrelevant-to-their-organization tweets going out about the inauguration crowd-size? To your latter point regarding the fired ambassadors, it's the most scandalous thing since 2008, when Obama did the exact same thing - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-poli...

Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case). A changing of the guard in these roles is (as the article I posted pointed out) the norm. However, In the current case, no one knows who the replacement is, or when he/she will be taking on the role, thus leaving us officially without an ambassador for…

It's pro forma for the ambassadors from the outgoing administration to proffer their resignation effective noon on Inauguration Day. The incoming president then says, no, no, please stay on until we have your replacement set up.

A transition team who knows these things would have done that - the Trump team, though, since he was not actually expecting a transition, had no idea how to run one. And accepted all the resignations.

This is the same reason the commander of the D.C. National Guard was dismissed at noon on the same day.

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#135

Post by Vivtek »

jquery wrote: post #61
whyileft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The National Park Service hosted the event. Seems like it would make sense to post public information about the crowd size when there was a lot of public debate and misinformation about it. I understand your frustration thinking they would always look out for the president's best interest, but this was a pretty clear fact they were posting, not some kind of political opinion. 2. December 3, 2008. That's when that…

You're right, Obama didn't do the "exact same thing." He literally auctioned off the posts, giving the ambassadorships to campaign contributors and bundlers ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nom... ). It's easy to find replacements if you don't care about qualifications and just reward your donor list, I guess. One of the ambassadors was so bad, staffers working for her requested transfers to…

Ambassadorships for campaign contributors! Goodness, the base corruption of such a President!

Good thing Mr. Trump would never do that kind of thing, like with the Department of Education or something.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#136

Post by jquery »

kafkaesq wrote: post #101
jquery wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact-check: There is at least one study that support the President's beliefs on millions of people voting illegally. - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414... There is a Harvard rebuttal to that study, but that doesn't change the fact there is a study supporting the President's position. The inauguration was the most-watched in history (person + tv + live-streaming), yet the "reality" I'm seei…

There is at least one study that support the President's beliefs on millions of people voting illegally. ... There is a Harvard rebuttal to that study... This rebuttal, you mean? "This paper documents how low-level measurement error for survey questions generally agreed to be highly reliable can lead to large prediction errors in large sample surveys, such as the CCES. The example for this analysis is Richman, Chatth…

I'm not an expert enough on the math to decide which study is accurate, the original or the rebuttal (nor did I read the original because it's behind a paywall). Nor, I doubt, is Trump. It's not an official government position that millions of illegal immigrants voted, it's Trump's personal opinion. Much like it was Obama's opinion that Trump would never be President (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FkIJEmOyoA). Or that pulling out of Iraq and leaving a power vacuum wouldn't lead to the horrifying rise of ISIS and genocide (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/isis-gen...). I think Trump's opinion is on the more banal side of things and won't have any severe consequences if he's wrong. That's just my opinion.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#137

Post by jessriedel »

tristanj wrote: post #31
Malician wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the headline in the same manner as the AP section.

Judging from other comments, a lot of people did not interpret it as you did. People are asking if this is a 1st amendment violation and if this is censorship.

Agreed, but those same people are also likely to mistake an employer's banning of employees tweeting under the company name as also an infringement of the 1st amendment.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#138

Post by shostack »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10
woofyman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president can't issue unconstitutional executive orders but has great powers over the executive branch which this falls under.

Right. He can't stop you from saying what you want to say. He can stop you from saying what you want to say on an official Federal government platform . For that matter, many employers can do that. I can say whatever I please, but not with my company name on it.

So this taxpayer funded research data shouldn't be available to the citizens that paid for it?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#139

Post by scrollaway »

jack9 wrote: post #133
badsock wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good, but then you immediately move the goalposts and then use that to pretend that you were justified in your original assertation. That's a shady rhetorical technique, and I suspect you're arguing in bad faith. That's worth some downvotes.

> You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good Ironically, you are incorrect and have strangely doubled down on it in some sort of pyrrhic victory dance of failure.

badsock has posted exactly once in this entire thread.

Give your fellow HNers the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#140

Post by kej »

fixxer wrote: post #110
cyberferret wrote: post #6

I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the norm, and hated it. I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938, no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon of his inaugu…

Meh. This is pretty common in the private sector in various forms, either explicit or implicit. I wouldn't call this censorship. They can still, I presume, communicate their concerns with oversight groups.

Maybe the government ought to be held to higher standards than the private sector?
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