All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[Dalak]

Is Jamie Reed a whistleblower in your opinion, Mets?

Despite having not met even the generous standards and interpretation you have granted -- what makes her a whistleblower?

I can find more gifs, you know.

According to his own article which somehow absolves her: "It’s clear the St. Louis clinic benefited many adolescents: Eighteen patients and parents said that their experiences there were overwhelmingly positive, and they refuted Ms. Reed’s depiction of it. For example, her affidavit claimed that the clinic’s doctors did not inform parents or children of the serious side effects of puberty blockers and hormones. But emails show that Ms. Reed herself provided parents with fliers outlining possible risks."

She's outright lying, and so that means that we cannot implicitly trust the self-edited information she's released illegally. I'm still stunned that she hasn't been prosecuted under HIPAA grounds, because simply by accessing each piece of PHI she's committed a crime for that individual time it wasn't Job related when she's not protected by Whistleblower protections. I'm fairly sure lying about what you are blowing the whistle about applies. Whether any of her concerns are valid or not, she's outright lied and so Mets will defend her (And The Week) to the end. As you've seen he will only acknowledge these things wrong if other news organizations call them out, rather than us hobbyists.

Yet another misleading statement.

The open borders issue was originally about your false claim that Democrats want open borders when you were shown factual data and evidence that this was a Republican lie meant to arouse fear and anger in voters — the original discussion was never that no Democrats support open borders but that it is not Democratic policy simply because a prominent politician wore a t-shirt, which was the standard Republican myth that you promoted until proven factually incorrect.



Just as you are now trying to mislead about HR policies instead of addressing rampant Republican white nationalism and their attacks on the LGBT community and other political minorities.

The pattern is to state a false or misleading opinion then argue against all evidence, despite knowing that it is both hypocritical and inherently dishonest to ignore the unethical and illegal activities of those you support while attempting to lecture others about ethics and policy.



An attempt to provide evidence that contains no actual data and is little more than an opinion.

Useful for deflection but provides no real objective support for the argument at hand.

That’s the pattern — demand objective unbiased evidence from others yet provide little in return.



If they sent America another Statue of Liberty modern Republicans would send it back.

It's really worked in distracting people from pointing out all the evidence of fascism in the GoP he's avoiding, like the National Socialists brazenly hobnobbing at CPAC and all the other posts of links and actual historians of the period & their warnings.

They're not that different, you just don't seem to be very experienced or knowledgeable of the field. Even when the reasons are budget cuts, mergers or redundancies employees are explained why, not just dismissed without a word of why...and the reason is because if they were dismissed without it being laid out and properly documented the company would be open to lawsuits about improper termination. Pn top of that, none of this latest excuse you are providing has anything to do with the situation that began the conversation.

I'm sorry but this isn't true in all cases, at least not in the US (here in Europe it's different, you can't fire people just because).

Consider the US tech layoffs last year, for example at Amazon - impacted employees were fired over e-mail, a generic e-mail saying "Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated. You are no longer required to perform any work on Amazon’s behalf effective immediately.” (while access to internal systems was revoked, there was no communication/call from HR or from a manager, and consider that most employees were working from home)

https://nypost.com/2023/01/19/amazon...-off-by-email/

Or Google US employees coming into the office, trying to badge in, the badge being rejected, not realizing they had been fired by generic e-mail that they hadn't read yet:

https://www.businessinsider.com/goog...23-1?r=US&IR=T

There's plenty more examples like this.

Yeah, so if you read the stories and not the headlines though it's a very small number of people where that occurred so more of a terrible oversight and not the norm and with good reason because firing people with zero explanation opens the company up to the potential wrongful termination cases. If you don't provide any cause as a company then the employee can then claim it was because of their race, age, religion, sexual orientation or gender and then the company has to go to trial(or settle) and prove that it wasn't the case. Companies don't want to do spend the time and money doing that so they document it all to the nth degree when terminating employees.

Even the quoted moment shows they explained why they were being fired. When a Layoff happens your Job isn't there anymore, so it's nothing to do with you why you've been fired or not. Whether they used a random name generator or carefully compared productivity numbers or anything else they don't have to explain why because at it's basic level - your Job Position is being removed, so you are no longer employed. It's explicitly not personal, just personnel.

It is also HIGHLY excremental, cowardly to do via email, and something that I'm told eats away at people who work HR if they have a conscience to begin with.

Black Trump Supporters Are Being AI-Generated.

Of course there's no condemnation over this from the right, just "Damn, we got caught" and an attempt to move on without comment.

We had one last week. Bowling and laser tag. I absolutely despise them. Forced interactions like that are just gross to me. I am fully capable of working with people and doing my job and going home. I dont need to be buddy buddy forcefully.

Morning office games are tedious to the extreme more often than not.

Attachment 138124

Drudge sure brings the good word to the right wing internet.

Trump's only good for News Agencies in the fact that he provides ad revenue.

[thwhtGuardian]

But where does it say that the other employees weren't fired like that and that these were an exception? Because they weren't an exception, it was all done via generic e-mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ing-email.html

"Amazon coldly began its layoff of 18,000 workers by informing them by EMAIL and cutting off their access to work computers: 'Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated'. Around 18,000 Amazon workers were let go via email in a new round of cuts. They woke up Wednesday to a note telling them their 'role has been eliminated'. The employees were also cut off from access to their offices and computers"


https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-th...al-11675049800
"A spokesperson for Amazon.com Inc., which recently laid off more than 18,000 people, confirmed that the company conducted layoffs via email"

Because it says it right in the article that only five only found out that way, if it were more than that who were completely surprised wouldn't it have said? And there's nothing wrong with the email being used to convey the information as long as the email contains all the relevent information, especially in a tech company wher who knows how many employees never even went into a physical office.

And again, all of that has nothing to do with the situation around Gina, which started the conversation.

[hyped78]

Because it says it right in the article that only five only found out that way, if it were more than that who were completely surprised wouldn't it have said? And there's nothing wrong with the email being used to convey the information as long as the email contains all the relevent information, especially in a tech company wher who knows how many employees never even went into a physical office.

And again, all of that has nothing to do with the situation around Gina, which started the conversation.

I don't know the situation about Gina, wasn't following the thread before, sorry. Who's Gina, anyways?

"Because it says it right in the article that only five only found out that way" - it doesn't say that. And, again - "A spokesperson for Amazon.com Inc., which recently laid off more than 18,000 people, confirmed that the company conducted layoffs via email" (Wall Street Journal)

All of them, or at least the big majority, were fired via e-mail. Obviously news outlets didn't speak to all of them. There's plenty of material on that on Linkedin, besides "just five".

And here's what their CEO said:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/amaz...the-memos.html

"Notification emails will be sent out to impacted employees shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica to be completed by end of the day today"

[Tami]

GOP’s Ernst wants to stop Biden from delivering the State of the Union

As President Joe Biden prepares to deliver his latest State of the Union address, it stands to reason that there are Republican members of Congress who aren’t eager to hear the Democrat’s remarks. But more notable are the GOP lawmakers who’d like to prevent the speech from even happening.

Last week, for example, Rep. Scott Perry raised the specter of rescinding Biden’s invitation. “He comes at the invitation of Congress, and Republicans are in control of the House,” the Pennsylvania Republican told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. “There’s no reason that we need to invite him to get more propaganda.”

Exactly one week later, Sen. Joni Ernst sat down with the same Fox host and pushed a related message.

“It is unfathomable that we do not have a national security strategy from the president, nor do we have his budget for the upcoming fiscal year,” the Iowa Republican said. “And because of that, we want to stop him from actually delivering the State of the Union.”

When the senator referenced “we,” she was apparently referring to proponents of her legislation on the matter. The Washington Examiner reported last week:

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) introduced a bill on Monday that would block President Joe Biden from giving a State of the Union address if he doesn’t submit his budget and national security proposal on time. Congressional Republicans are backing the Send Us Budget Materials & International Tactics In Time, or SUBMIT IT, Act, which would bar leadership from inviting the president to give the State of the Union address until Congress has received his budget and national security strategy.

Part of what makes all of this odd is the fact that the White House could submit budget blueprints and national security strategies to Capitol Hill, but congressional Republicans would probably ignore them. There’s a congressional maxim that’s been around for a while related to the budget process: The president proposes, Congress disposes. With this in mind, Ernst is effectively saying, “Give us a budget that we’ll quickly discard or you won’t get a SOTU invitation.”

[Zelena]

Famine in Gaza: babies dying of dehydration.

[Powerboy]

Former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein wrote a piece for the Atlantic, mainly about the internal disputes over the decision to publish an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-times/677546/

It shows ideological conformity among the staff.

There was one example that was dismissed by left-wing critics as unrealistic, when he says he was called out during an orientation for saying his favorite sandwich is from Chic-fil-A.



Except the story is backed up by people who were there at the time, and heard him discuss it contemporaneously.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/arti...uite-real.html

Jonathan Chait considers what this means about the people who were wrong about the culture of the New York Times, and how media figures on the left try to delegitimize criticism.



This does not appear to be an organization with a right-wing work culture.

It's one example and one head of HR. Then again, in today's culture, most HR departments are going to protect the company by slanting towards what would be considered left policies. Even if some things are legal, they can be bad PR.

I work at Target, which makes things interesting. No discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Must respect personal pronouns. But they will buy Chick Filet and leave it in the breakroom for people.

[The Cool Thatguy]

So can someone explain to me why different state based standards for president are wrong, but different state based standards for a woman's body is fine?

[CaptainEurope]

Screenshot 2024-03-05 194111.jpg

Biden was behind in the previous polls from both those pollsters. Is this the beginning of the Joenami?

[Jack Dracula]

We had one last week. Bowling and laser tag. I absolutely despise them. Forced interactions like that are just gross to me. I am fully capable of working with people and doing my job and going home. I dont need to be buddy buddy forcefully.

Coworkers discovering I’m bad at bowling seems worse than being sandwich-shamed imo.

[Username taken]

Screenshot 2024-03-05 194111.jpg

Biden was behind in the previous polls from both those pollsters. Is this the beginning of the Joenami?

The polls are a bit all over the place at the moment.

It's an unusual election cycle in that it's an exact rematch of the last election and (interestingly) some people aren't sure if Trump will actually contest in November considering the sheer number of cases against him.

[Mister Mets]

There seem to be two views here about the former New York Times guy's story.

Either this incident is so weird and uncomfortable that he made up the story, or it's understandable and he shouldn't have remarked on it at all.

This seems contradictory.

Yeah, so if you read the stories and not the headlines though it's a very small number of people where that occurred so more of a terrible oversight and not the norm and with good reason because firing people with zero explanation opens the company up to the potential wrongful termination cases. If you don't provide any cause as a company then the employee can then claim it was because of their race, age, religion, sexual orientation or gender and then the company has to go to trial(or settle) and prove that it wasn't the case. Companies don't want to do spend the time and money doing that so they document it all to the nth degree when terminating employees.

At-will employment allows an employer to fire someone at any point.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/us-a...mployment.html

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/empl...-will_doctrine

There are reasons that it would be illegal for an employer to fire someone (discrimination, retaliation, public policy) but it is harder to establish under those circumstances.

You seem to be thinking about jurisdictions (or perhaps union contracts) with just-cause provisions, where sufficient reasons need to be provided.

I think it is obnoxious to have BS things like "ice-breaker" at work in the first place. You go to work to earn a living, not to make friends. If it happens, it's a bonus, but not everyone wants to socialize at work. I guess the ice was broken in this case.

It's also interesting that the person has already self-censored about his actual favorite sandwich because of its price and lied about his favorite sandwich being from that Chick-something brand. So, he wasn't even "shamed" about his actual favorite food, just a replacement that he said thinking it would make him more.... I don't know, real? Unpretentious? Maybe the moral of the story could be "Don't try so hard to fit in that you lie about yourself, it might not work out the way you expected."

Anyway, the last thing I will say about the Sandwichgate: It's interesting what gets people worked up, isn't it? Some are concerned about women losing autonomy over their own bodies or people losing access to healthcare that greatly improves their well-being. Some are concerned about adults not making friends on their first day at new job. Priorities.

The forms of socializing vary from workplace to workplace.

In some places, especially in the media with irregular schedules and people having similar frames of reference and spending a lot of time together in close proximity (or the Slack/ Zoom equivalent), there's an ethos of work being a major part of someone's life.

There's an emphasis in some places of bringing "your whole self to work" which is often cheaper than paying better by the hour. But it has complications if someone's whole self is an entitled jerk who can't tolerate differing viewpoints.

It also gets to some interesting arguments on equity, as parents note that they're missing out on professional opportunities because they're not able to drop their lives for sudden assignments, or social events with coworkers.

Problems in the world don't mean that people can't be bothered by abrasive coworkers, cliques, in-groups pushing conformity or lies. And obviously complaints about workers who are too obnoxiously left-wing are just as valid or invalid as complaints about workers who are too obnoxiously right-wing.

Famine in Gaza: babies dying of dehydration.

That's terrible.

Hamas should surrender immediately.

[thwhtGuardian]

I don't know the situation about Gina, wasn't following the thread before, sorry. Who's Gina, anyways?

"Because it says it right in the article that only five only found out that way" - it doesn't say that. And, again - "A spokesperson for Amazon.com Inc., which recently laid off more than 18,000 people, confirmed that the company conducted layoffs via email" (Wall Street Journal)

All of them, or at least the big majority, were fired via e-mail. Obviously news outlets didn't speak to all of them. There's plenty of material on that on Linkedin, besides "just five".

And here's what their CEO said:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/amaz...the-memos.html

"Notification emails will be sent out to impacted employees shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica to be completed by end of the day today"

Yes, it notified employees by email but only five were surprised meaning it wasn't a big deal or impactful and at the end of the day it's still notification and it fully explains the whys and hows with zero of the opaqueness that Mets was complaining about.

[thwhtGuardian]

There seem to be two views here about the former New York Times guy's story.

Either this incident is so weird and uncomfortable that he made up the story, or it's understandable and he shouldn't have remarked on it at all.

This seems contradictory.



At-will employment allows an employer to fire someone at any point.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/us-a...mployment.html

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/empl...-will_doctrine

There are reasons that it would be illegal for an employer to fire someone (discrimination, retaliation, public policy) but it is harder to establish under those circumstances.

You seem to be thinking about jurisdictions (or perhaps union contracts) with just-cause provisions, where sufficient reasons need to be provided.



The forms of socializing vary from workplace to workplace.

In some places, especially in the media with irregular schedules and people having similar frames of reference and spending a lot of time together in close proximity (or the Slack/ Zoom equivalent), there's an ethos of work being a major part of someone's life.

There's an emphasis in some places of bringing "your whole self to work" which is often cheaper than paying better by the hour. But it has complications if someone's whole self is an entitled jerk who can't tolerate differing viewpoints.

It also gets to some interesting arguments on equity, as parents note that they're missing out on professional opportunities because they're not able to drop their lives for sudden assignments, or social events with coworkers.

Problems in the world don't mean that people can't be bothered by abrasive coworkers, cliques, in-groups pushing conformity or lies. And obviously complaints about workers who are too obnoxiously left-wing are just as valid or invalid as complaints about workers who are too obnoxiously right-wing.

That's terrible.

Hamas should surrender immediately.

Legally they can, but in practice it almost never happens because of all the various protections employees have and how risk avoidant corporations are. It's why a deep blue state like Mass hasn't decided to change from at-will because the protections provided effectively make firing someone for no good reason next to impossible. Again, this is simply illustrating your l ack of knowledge and experience with the issue.

[CaptainEurope]

GREAT NEWS

Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will not run for re-election in Arizona

[hyped78]

Biden was behind in the previous polls from both those pollsters. Is this the beginning of the Joenami?

The polls are a bit all over the place at the moment.

It's an unusual election cycle in that it's an exact rematch of the last election and (interestingly) some people aren't sure if Trump will actually contest in November considering the sheer number of cases against him.

1 year before his reelection, Obama was trailing Romney on most polls

Yes, it notified employees by email but only five were surprised meaning it wasn't a big deal or impactful and at the end of the day it's still notification and it fully explains the whys and hows with zero of the opaqueness that Mets was complaining about.

That's not correct. You might not believe this, but this is why I've pointed out Amazon: I have a friend from India who moved to Seattle to work for Amazon, later his family moved there as well. He was working from home one morning and suddenly he lost access to systems and then received that generic automated e-mail mentioned on the news articles. That was that. He eventually had to move back to India, because he couldn't stay in the US (visa, not sure how that works?). His manager, HR, etc. never spoke to him; he was later contacted regarding the severance package and his flight back to India. He found out via Linkedin that his entire team got eliminated, incl. his manager. He had no clue this was gonna happen. So no, it wasn't just "5 people", it was 18k who found out via automated e-mail on the designated day.

I don't know what Mets was complaining about, also missed that.