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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

#261

Post by true_religion »

vhost- wrote: post #229
true_religion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does trump get to use twitter, but the EPA can't?

Because Trump is the boss. It's the same way that most companies don't allow random department heads to speak directly to investors, but force everything to be filtered through the board meeting notes, and SEC filings.

What the EPA reports may be factual, but the presentation of facts, when they are spoken of, and how often, are all political practices.

Is it important for the EPA to tweet daily "hey guys, you know climate change is caused by humans?". No, we know it is and don't deny it is. What's controversial is: how do we reign in the problem, what are we willing to give up to do so, and how do we coordinate with our allies and competitors ?

The EPA's tweets may not be helpful in getting Chinese support, or encouraging a positive practical debate on how 3rd world nations can both improve their economies with limited technology and still be part of the climate change solution----or even if such a thing is necessary in the short term.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#262

Post by talmand »

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.

If you look at the vote totals you'll see that far more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than Democrats and that far more Democrats voted against it than Republicans. The Democrats did not suddenly decide to support civil rights since the majority of the opponents of such policies were Democrats. Much of the violence against blacks you see from that era were committed by Democrats. I seriously doubt there were Democrats out beating blacks for demanding civil rights one day and literally the next day they were voting for civil rights.

That situation was far more nuanced than the idea that millions of people with opposing viewpoints across the entirety of the country suddenly agreed with each other to switch parties.

As for the southern strategy, there is the viewpoint that getting people to vote for you doesn't automatically mean you accept and enforce their ideologies. They just become "useful idiots" for your cause. Although, I disagree with the premise of the strategy because it would have the side effect of fostering racial divide. But I have the advantage of hindsight in that matter.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#263

Post by talmand »

eh78ssxv2f wrote: post #174
DrScump wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Even if he has been there for only five days, I do not think that he should put a gag order on the employees.

Gag orders are placed on employees all the time, in or out of government. This is nothing new, just something for people to nitpick and go negative before they even know what's going on.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#264

Post by LyndsySimon »

will_walker wrote: post #114
13of40 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we've had mobile phone saturation long enough that they could measure attendance just by looking at cellular data.

At the Boston march, networks couldn't handle load - it was the first time I haven't had network access for hours in years. Maybe this wouldn't preclude the network registering my phone's requests (and our phones were reporting signal bars) but it's to be considered that our cellular infrastructure isn't built to handle massive protests at this scale.

> At the Boston march, networks couldn't handle load

Sounds like the Boston police department needs to order more Stingrays!

:(

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#265

Post by LyndsySimon »

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…

Your post is in gray. Even though I believe the last two sentences in your post justify a downvote, I gave you an upvote because the first two sentences are absolutely true and provide important perspective in this discussion.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#266

Post by LyndsySimon »

cyberferret wrote: post #40
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...

> 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? But wasn't it the Parks agency that tweeted about the crowd size, not the EPA? And is the current administration simply going to shut down or fire everyone who shows any form of push back towards the regime? Isn't that what they do in places like, oh say, N…

If you're an employee of the government, working to publicly undermine the policies of the person elected to lead your branch of government doesn't seem like a good way to keep your job.

I can't think of many instances where Executive Branch employees used official outlets to undermine a sitting President's policies in the past. Can you?

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#267

Post by talmand »

I didn't know we had so many HN commenters that are experts at the inner workings of Presidential transitions and for a fact know what's going behind the scenes of the current transition. In some cases they somehow know individual thoughts and motivations of people they likely don't know.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#268

Post by 13years »

guelo wrote: post #51
rokosbasilisk wrote: post #37

Just to add a reality check, the epa isnt some noble organization , they are highly political and often incompentent. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/10/431223703/...

That chemical spill was a disaster caused by an accident when the EPA was trying to manage the wastewater from a gold mine. The wastewater was created by unregulated gold mining in the 20s. Trump wants to return us to those days when industry was unregulated and created the pollution that has taken decades to clean.

Actually, prior to the EPA property rights were the method of pollution control. However, under property rights there was 0 pollution allowed. Courts began to consider that some pollution must be allowed to allow the economy to thrive.

So the EPA came into formation not exactly for the purpose to stop pollution, but to decide just how much is allowable.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#269

Post by ChrisLomont »

dnautics wrote: post #252
FLGMwt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguable, but lack of peer review certainly should inspire a lack of confidence in results.

Do you not believe grigori Perelman's proof of the poincare conjecture? Do you believe in arsenic life? The first is still not peer reviewed, and the second very much was so. These are some more well known cases. Having been there I'd say probably about 40% of peer reviewed material in chemistry and biology is seriously flawed. We really have this problem where peer review is held up as a scientific standard. It shou…

>Do you not believe grigori Perelman's proof of the poincare conjecture?

Yes, because his peers spent serious time checking it and found no flaws. Peer reviewed doesn't need publication in a journal.

>Do you believe in arsenic life?

No, because peers found it flawed.

You're conflating peer review with simply getting past initial peer reviews. The more peers that review a claim, the more likely it is correct. The flawed ones are almost always not reviewed much at all.

And I'd bet there is a significant gap in correctness between things that are barely peer reviewed over things that are not.

Re: Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates

#270

Post by justinlaster »

talmand wrote: post #262
learc83 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you look at the vote totals you'll see that far more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than Democrats and that far more Democrats voted against it than Republicans. The Democrats did not suddenly decide to support civil rights since the majority of the opponents of such policies were Democrats. Much of the violence against blacks you see from that era were committed by Democrats. I seriously doubt…

He literally just explained this. Democrats then are not the same Democrats now.

The people (southern whites) that committed violence against blacks who were democrats back then, are very, very likely to be Republican these days.

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