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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

#231

Post by abootstrapper »

ryanx435 wrote: post #201
ajmurmann wrote: post #33

This is so terrifying. Fixing environment that was destroyed takes a very long time. Public land and parks that were given to companies can probably never be taken back. Not to talk about mountains that were mined. All this might be gone forever for some silly, antiquated mining or similar.

Lol. By your logic, we should revert all farmland west of the Appalachians back to native prairie because it used to be public land before people moved there.

No, OP's logic is that we can't revert farmland west of the Appalachians back to native prairie because it's practically impossible to "undevelop" land back to its natural state. Thus we should focus on protecting currently undeveloped land.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#232

Post by vkou »

dghughes wrote: post #100
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…

Yes it's amazing we put up with it for so long and then voted for Harper again!! My guess is it was apathetic young voters and frightened Boomers who lost 1/3 or half of their retirement savings in 2008 just as they were going to retire. Harper even changed Government of Canada to the Harper Government too bizarre at the time even more bizarre looking back. There was supposedly a secret portrait library of all portra…

The Liberal party being in shambles for... 8 years probably had more to do with a Harper victory then his accomplishments did.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#233

Post by cyberferret »

wallacoloo wrote: post #225
vacri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, you cannot downvote a direct reply to your comment, so you can't punish an explanation provided to you.

How does one downvote a comment on HN? I thought maybe there was some reputation or age requirement, but I've been here a while now & I still don't see any option to downvote comments.

How many Karma points do you have? (top right). I don't think I could downvote until I got to about 1000 or 1500 points, I believe.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#234

Post by bildung »

wallacoloo wrote: post #225
vacri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, you cannot downvote a direct reply to your comment, so you can't punish an explanation provided to you.

How does one downvote a comment on HN? I thought maybe there was some reputation or age requirement, but I've been here a while now & I still don't see any option to downvote comments.

The threshold is at 500 karma points.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#235

Post by Semaphor »

wallacoloo wrote: post #225
vacri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN, you cannot downvote a direct reply to your comment, so you can't punish an explanation provided to you.

How does one downvote a comment on HN? I thought maybe there was some reputation or age requirement, but I've been here a while now & I still don't see any option to downvote comments.

I think you need over 500 karma to downvote. I couldn't downvote for my first few years here (and I probably only downvoted posts once or twice since I could)

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#236

Post by sandworm101 »

masonic wrote: post #164
sandworm101 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Where a new admin hasnt lined up a new ambassador, normal practice is to have the old one continue until the replacement is worked out. This admin, for whatever reasons, is months behind the normal schedual. A list of names should have already have been circulated on the hill so that they could be vetted and agreed upon asap. To leave such a post unfilled breaks diplomatic protocols and can be taken as a slight.

This admin, for whatever reasons, is months behind the normal schedual. This admin must really suck to be "months behind" after 5 days. Please describe your process for properly vetting, nominating, debating, and confirming all (or most) ambassadorships in 4+ days, since you see that as "normal practice". Extra credit: name any three administrations that have done so. I would hope that the Secretary of State would ha…

He was elected months ago. Even so, responsible campaigns start working this stuff out even before the election. Teambuilding should not be left until the last minute.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#237

Post by pasquinelli »

lucajona wrote: post #187
cantankerous wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a vacuous statement. Science is an inductive exercise and suffers from the problem of induction. It's difficult to make the case that real truth can come from it at all. In lieu of this, peer review is a very good heuristic for sifting out bunk science.

I don't think it's fair to call a correct statement vacuous. More nuanced than it appears, and easily misinterpreted maybe. I think it's fair to point out that peer review doesn't determine scientific truth, because that would get the causal relation in reverse. Consensus has little to do with objective truth, but it is a useful heuristic as you say.

i think it's perfectly appropriate to call a true statement vacuous. for instance, a counterfactual conditional is always true; that fact makes the particular truth of a particular counterfactual conditional completely uninteresting, or vacuous. it's true, but in a hollow, empty, vacuous way. what use would there be calling a false statement vacuous?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#238

Post by michaelbuddy »

learc83 wrote: post #158
wooter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

He said "conservative". You think Lincoln was a conservative? The Democrat's decision to support civil rights and the Republican southern strategy shift to appeal to voters who opposed civil rights radically altered both parties. The Republican party shares a name with the Party of Lincoln, but that's about it.

giving some alternative facts again are we?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#239

Post by cool_look »

(forced to use a side account to comment on this)

You have to look at it from the Trump teams point of view. They honestly don't see that the 'free speech' argument holds water. They see it as abuse of a public position to spread falsehoods.

Basically EPA employees in the Trump Team's view are perpetuating climate alarmism ( again in the TT view ).

So they are stopping that.

Just flip it around just for a second. I'll choose an equivalent that would cause liberals to shut down the twitter of an official.

Imagine a Department of Health official was tweeting photos of aborted foetuses and keeping a tally "350 aborted this month. #whatawaste".

There would be calls to stop that official speaking out.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#240

Post by inferiorhuman »

Amygaz wrote: post #132
nikdaheratik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is his job. Spicer is very explicitly a PR person.
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