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Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

wired.com

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Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#91

Post by [deleted] »

Alupis wrote: post #17
mikeyouse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of HR 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations.” Come on. The message is overtly political (blaming democrats for the shutdown when republicans control the presidency + the house + the senate) and 100% of the people pretending it’s not would be outraged if the same thing was posted under a different administration.

Which part of the statement is false or campaigning? Is it not true Democrats have blocked the passage of the bill? Of course it is.. and people should know that, shouldn't they?

[deleted]

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#92

Post by Alupis »

hyperhello wrote: post #77
Alupis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Democrat" is a slur now? Come on people...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Absolutely absurd in a modern setting. Everyone, including the news/media colloquially refers to Democrats as "Democrats" and "Democrat".

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#93

Post by johnnyanmac »

culi wrote: post #75
l2p wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBA message is somehow worse... https://sba.gov

> Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. > Every day that Senate Democrats continue to oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding. > As a result…

Just to add some context to this "clean federal funding": a "clean bill" here means "let things expire". Democrats are fighting for a continuing resolution which extends whatever is about to expire.

In this case, the ACA subsidies would expire if a clean funding bill is passed.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#94

Post by Alupis »

lesuorac wrote: post #69
Alupis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer the government is shut down, the better excuse/cover the executive branch has to permanentely layoff and shutdown departments. Democrats are going to lose this standoff either way...

I disagree. I think the fact that Democrats let Trump have a blank check-book for his first term was a massive mistake. We went from having government shutdowns all the time due to the rampant spending to just covering up the fact that he's blowing through more money than presidents do in 8 years. It leads to a perception that he's actually fiscally responsible.

At this point, either political party pretending to care at all about fiscal responsibility is absolutely hilarious.

The standoff is about a component of the Affordable Care Act that is expiring. Democrats don't have the footing to win this battle - so the longer the standoff holds the worse outcome they can expect. Trump's administration seems to have wanted this shutdown... and Democrats walked right into the landmine.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#95

Post by johnnyanmac »

eastbound wrote: post #74
passive wrote: post #4

This weaponization of public resources for partisan purposes is hardly surprising, but given the government is shut down, I would imagine black or even grey hats might feel like it's open season on .gov, so I would be surprised to see much durability in their attempts.

It’s barely anything to get a stroke upon: The article didn’t quote the text directly and paraphrased it. It means it is not persuasive per se , or it would have been used as proof. Since the raw text couldn’t serve as proof, an entire article had to be mounted to create the feeling of being appalling. It’s an opinion piece. And that’s all it always it: People getting hung up over principles and theories. The proof t…

>I wish we were able to talk to each other.

We quickly went from "should a woman have autonomy over her body" to "can the president invade a US city" in the blink of an eye. Things are getting continually less compromisable as we edge more to "should the US be a democracy" as a question.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#96

Post by rolph »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #90
rolph wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually, governments are severly limited in compelling or interfering with political speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act

Governments are not limited by the Hatch Act, civil service employees are. And the limitations are mainly around elections, so for example under the Hatch Act a civil service employee may not "use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election", may not "knowingly solicit, accept, or receive a political contribution from any person", may not "run for the…

The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law that prohibits "civil service employees in the executive branch"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government)

the only copout is if it is president or vice president doing it, or someone outside the executive branch.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#97

Post by xp84 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #93
culi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. > Every day that Senate Democrats continue to oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding. > As a result…

Just to add some context to this "clean federal funding": a "clean bill" here means "let things expire". Democrats are fighting for a continuing resolution which extends whatever is about to expire. In this case, the ACA subsidies would expire if a clean funding bill is passed.

The Democrats already lost the battle on those things (cuts to Medicaid + no extension of Obamacare subsidies) and they were already going to happen because Democrats didn’t (and don’t) have the votes to renew them because they can’t win elections. Now they’re using this opportunity to try to get those things back at gunpoint. It’s not propaganda that the Republicans have offered a CR which changes nothing additional. Once again, Democrats expect to enact their own policy goals with 47 Senate seats and find it doesn’t go so well. Maybe some decade they will go back to trying to convince voters to vote for them instead of just ridiculing everyone outside their echo chamber.

(I’m not a democrat or a republican, I’m not rooting for either one.)

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#98

Post by xp84 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #9
Alupis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of HR 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations.” Come on. The message is overtly political (blaming democrats for the shutdown when republicans control the presidency + the house + the senate) and 100% of the people pretending it’s not would be outraged if the same thing was posted under a different administration.

They don’t “control” the Senate. You need 60 seats in the Senate if the other party is willing to filibuster everything, and boy howdy are both parties willing to these days. If the GOP did have 60 seats, then they’d be able to pass that clean bill over the filibuster of the Democrats.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#99

Post by xp84 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #31
Alupis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of the statement is false or campaigning? Is it not true Democrats have blocked the passage of the bill? Of course it is.. and people should know that, shouldn't they?

‘People should be lied to by the government out of political convenience’ is a theory I guess. Though not one I’d endorse. It’s equally true that “Senate republicans failed to put forth a spending CR that could attract 60 votes” or “Senate republicans failed to pass filibuster reform to only require 50 votes on spending measures.” Are equally true statements yet somehow they didn’t make the autoresponders. Weird.

Absolutely! All those things could correctly be said, and maybe that’s what would be said now if the Democrats had won the last presidential election! Instead, they ran a candidate who was so unpopular she dropped out before Iowa last time she ran. The DNC still hasn’t processed this reality, though.

Re: Gov workers say their shutdown out-of-office replies were forcibly changed

#100

Post by xp84 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #60
Alupis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always finding a way to blame the Republicans... last time they were in the minority and were blamed for shutting down the government. Now they're in the majority and you still want to blame them for shutting down the government. To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics. Elections have consequences - and the longer Democrats drag…

Whoever’s to blame (the party that controls all three branches), it’s still wildly inappropriate and illegal to put political messaging on Federal websites (www.hud.gov for one glaring example) and in email signatures. > To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics. Seems a bit like projection when your summary is based on your weird…

> have broken our government in ways that are going to be very difficult to undo.

The cowardice of both parties to never balance the budget in the last 50 years (Except Clinton!) has done more damage, arguably, in miring us in permanent debt.

I suspect the people who are fine with the government shutting down and who are fine with questionably legal tactics to do away with departments like USAID, feel that even though these things are probably legally wrong, they’re better than just continuing to piss away more and more of future generations’ money, money that we don’t have.

I think the greatest sin involved in all of this is the government’s ridiculous magical, thinking that they can set tax policy and spending policy independently of each other. In my opinion, one of the two should be a fixed function of the other. Either we agree on our tax rates and government benefits, automatically adjust to fit in the budget, or we agree on what we’re going to spend, and taxes automatically adjust to match — either way it should be something everyone can calculate before the bill is voted on.

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