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Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

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Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#141

Post by 3131s »

Vivtek wrote: post #135
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…

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.

It is corruption if a president lets campaign contributions influence their choice of appointees to political positions. Whether or not Obama did that is another discussion, but just because Trump will do the same, we should not hold any other president to a lesser standard.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#142

Post by wfunction »

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…

My understanding was that the problem wasn't their termination, which every president does, but the fact that he denied them any sorts of extensions. Am I incorrect? See this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/trump-ambassa...

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#144

Post by acomjean »

vmeson wrote: post #83

We went through this sort of censorship of government scientists and departments in Canada with the conservative Harper government: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-muzz... The US should not put up with any, even a temporary form of such censorship of the parts of the government that are doing scientific research and environmental stewardship. There should be another march in a week or two to s…

Fwiw at the march in Boston there were chants for science...honestly something I thought I'd never hear.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#145

Post by scrollaway »

linkregister wrote: post #119
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…

Unless you have evidence of jquery's having been paid to post this, please don't make the accusation. The number of true believers in various viewpoints, willing to lie in order to sway the audience vastly overwhelms the amount any organization's payroll could handle. jquery, as many conservative and liberal commenters before him, believes that a lie to persuade someone for his noble cause is justified by its outcome…

Parent asked a question; it's not really an accusation.

I used to be on board and would have defended the mindset that asking the question is an accusation in and of itself. But now, over in /r/france, we have this stuff going on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/5pv83r/inside_the_p...

At this point, I think it's sometimes fair to ask that question. There is no doubt that HN does have paid shills; if you turn showdead on, you'll often see some of the more egregious ones. The question is about the subtle ones.

Of course, that's what the current administration wants: For nobody to be certain of anything. Nerdwriter made an excellent video about it a couple of weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geEVwslL-YY

Hm. When was the last time a government wanted its citizens not to be sure of what's true, what's false and each others' affiliations...

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#146

Post by intended »

craigvn wrote: post #49
ams6110 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is not hard right-wing. I'm not sure what he is, time will tell, but he's not that.

He appears to be exceptional at one thing, manipulating people. The right wing have been manipulated by Trump for his own agenda, which I suspect is just a lust for power. People seem to miss that Trump is trying to set up a dynasty, he plans after he ends as President to ensure his daughter/son/son-in-law are all succeeding him, like the Bush's or the Kennedy's but much greater.

I think it's much worse and much dumber.

Trump saw an opportunity and went for it with everything he had. He used modern tools and knew how to apply it to the modern public. He knew his audience and his audience also knew how to navigate the new medium.

I doubt he expected to do so well when he started but apparently the old world institutions and cultural protections of pre 1990 are well and truly dead.

Tomorrow someone else is going to navigate this path, and they are going to do it better.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#147

Post by dnautics »

vmeson wrote: post #83

We went through this sort of censorship of government scientists and departments in Canada with the conservative Harper government: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-muzz... The US should not put up with any, even a temporary form of such censorship of the parts of the government that are doing scientific research and environmental stewardship. There should be another march in a week or two to s…

Peer review most certainly does not determine scientific truth.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#148

Post by DrScump »

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…

  but is so far behind on staffing the posts at EPA
He's been in office five days. How rushed of a hiring process are you seeking?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#149

Post by true_religion »

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…

I don't know how saying governemnt officials should speak through a specific medium is 'censorship'.

Any organisation will want to control its message, and having your officials use a channel that's 140 characters maximum leads to only being able to talk about issues in the most flimsy of ways.

Personally, I think there should be less Twitter and more published in-depth reports.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#150

Post by wooter »

icanhackit wrote: post #121
codeddesign wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Anything remotely neutral about the new administration is met with a mob and pitch forks. Discussion is good. Saying you don't understand because you don't agree with answers is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul is homosexual. Last time I checked, that's called "bigotry"

> Saying you don't understand because you don't agree You can't make an assessment about whether you agree if you don't understand - the latter must must happen before the former can come to pass. It would either be the case that you don't understand because the explanation is complex or it contains logical fallacies...the latter applies to your statement above. > is like saying you don't understand why a homosexaul…

> But if we're going talk about the old classics like racism, homophobia, and sexism -- the conservative side knows the art better than any.

Lincoln, a Republican, abolished slavery. And Roosevelt, a Democrat, interned Japanese Americans.

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