This morning Trump's twitter has made it crystal clear he intends to fire Jeff Sessions and replace him with a toady who will investigate the people that investigated him and discovered his crimes as well as investigate his political opponents.
He can't do it right now because they think it is critical that they install their ringer on the Supreme Court before the midterms in order to shield Trump when the time comes that a case involving him winds up there which is bound to happen soon.
Read between the lies - he wants to investigate the people who found his crimes and his political opponents. We can't let Republicans win the midterms or Democracy is dead. Literally.
Get out and vote if Republicans haven't already closed your polling station.
Lindsey Graham has said that he'd be more than happy to help replace Sessions after the midterms presumably to install someone who will end or stiffle the Mueller investigations.
Trump continues to basically INSIST his political opponents be targeted for investigation for no other reason than that they are his political opponents. If you don't have a problem with this, I'm not sure you believe in a functioning democracy. This behavior is starting to make Nixon look like a choir boy. We do not investigate or prosecute people based on the whim of the President. Period. Donald Trump absolutely believes that the Attorney General should both be his a.) personal lawyer and shield from legal jeopardy and b.) his cudgel to destroy political opponents.
Beyond that, Jeff Sessions is one of the most conservative government officials in recent memory. The ONLY problem Trump has with him is that he isn't sufficiently loyal to him personally.
I'd like to make 2 unrelated suggestions for new federal laws:
1. Reduce the President's power to pardon so that s/he cannot pardon those of his or her genetic or adoptive family. This will limit the corrupt use of this power without limiting the just use of this power, since a President's family is a tiny fraction of the population (what are the odds that a Presidential pardon for a family member would be for good reasons instead of corrupt ones?).
2. Make it illegal for a non-governmental employer to fire an employee because of statements the employee made when out of the workplace and outside office hours, unless the employee's primary function is to directly promote positive public relations.
Lately, some folks here and there have been fired for comments posted on social media, either because the company disagreed with the comments or in response to public criticism. Think of the person who gets fired for complaining about not liking their job, or who says something offensive online. I don't think this represents a good trend.
A company should not have such an incredibly powerful check on the free speech of its employees. People should not have to choose between exercising their free speech and feeding their families. If this were illegal, there would be no incentive for people on social media to launch campaigns to pressure companies into attempting to silence their own employees. I accept that some uses of free speech are worthy of public criticism, but losing your livelihood for expressing your opinion is against the basic principle of free speech. Speech ain't free if you pay for it with your job.
I added several exceptions to the rule to make sure it's not too broad. It's more reasonable for an employer to have control over an employee's on-the-job, on-site words and actions. It's also fair to have more strict expectations for an employee in PR, and I'm tempted to think that government employees like teachers, police officers, judges, and so forth should maintain a certain level of public respectability even off the job.
1. I don’t even know why the president has this power. It undermines the judicial process.
2. No. A company has values and branding to consider and all employees should adhere to them 24/7. If an employee says or does something that dimishes those values to a point that business is lost (or even potentially lost) they should be held accountable for that.
A good company will give the employee an opportunity to publicly retract the statement that caused the furor, teach how to keep private and public statements separate and how to prevent issues like that from happening again (or to begin with).
But people are not allowed to say whatever the hell they want. That isn’t what free speech means. Action and consequence.
Now if you personally feel a person shouldn’t have been fired by the company, you as a consumer, can take your business elsewhere. It is how a free market works.
@deltago What constitutes "private"? The rise of social media makes that a grey area. Should someone's private facebook or twitter account be subject for corporate review? Do companies have the right to require employees to add their supervisors on facebook or similar platforms for the purpose of policing what they say? I've worked for a couple employers that tried to do this.
@ThacoBell I think the distinction is rather obvious. If your profile features your employer, you're a representative. If it doesn't, you're not. My profile does not feature my employer nor do any of my posts, and therefore I expect to post freely.
In case there's any confusion, my suggested law specifies that it only applies to comments made outside of the workplace and outside of work hours, when the employee in question is acting as a private citizen.
As for "retribution" or "consequences," losing your job is a hideously disproportionate and inappropriate punishment for any form of speech that isn't a flat-out crime (perjury or slander or incitement to violence and so forth). If there must be any consequence to offensive speech, let the damage be limited to that person's individual reputation; not their very livelihood. You're perfectly free to think and say that somebody is a bad person for their statements, but pressuring their employer into firing them constitutes coercive censorship.
I understand why a corporation would want to fire somebody who said something controversial. The corporation doesn't want an offensive statement to damage their profits by hurting their reputation. But a corporation's desire for profit doesn't justify the power of censorship.
Would you tolerate anyone punishing your statements with that justification? "Your tweet is a threat to our profits, so we're firing you to make the crowd like us again."
Here's my basic problem with this issue in a nutshell:
Would you trust the government with the power to take away your job if you said something they didn't like?
Would you trust Donald Trump with the power to take away your job if you said something he didn't like?
Would you trust your employer with the power to take away your job if you said something they didn't like?
I wouldn't give that kind of power to anyone. When we threaten to take away someone's livelihood when they haven't even broken the law, we are placing the desires of private corporations over the rights of American citizens.
A caveat with a specific example from the last few days: An armed-security guard walked into a bar (in uniform but off-duty) and asked a black bartender to make him a "Travon Martini", which he described as "a shot of vodka, watermelon juice, and it only takes one shot to go down." The bartender refused to make the drink, and also posted the story on social media. The guard was fired, I assume because the security company didn't want their employees to be viewed en masse as racist scumbags.
Also, not for nothing, but Donald Trump calls for the jobs of NFL players on a weekly basis, and issues threats to their employers.
Another thing to consider in this question is liability. Say a supervisor posts racist rants on social media. If an employee or customer then sues the company for discrimination, they'd be able to point to the posts to show that the the company knew or should have known that the supervisor had this ideology, but allowed him to continue to work there.
I think as written you're limiting employers too much @semiticgod. If you allow an employee to actively campaign against their employers under the guise of 'free speech' it's easy to imagine lots of undesirable scenarios - for instance deliberately getting employment in order to effectively carry out industrial sabotage.
I'm not generally in favor of employers' rights. It's not that long ago we had a similar debate in relation to the ability of businesses to discriminate against certain groups. On that issue I was broadly in favor of saying that businesses who wished to provide services to the general public should have to provide those services to all the public. In this instance though I think using the law to force businesses to retain employees who are actively doing them harm is going too far.
@FinneousPJ Personally, I think that reasoning is crap. My facebook is not a business profile, I shouldn't have to censor it because I happen to also be friends with a supervisor. Also, what about a company forcing employees to ad their supervisors to all social media they use? Those policies exist, I've been forced to comply to them before. Am I just supposed to accept that my boss can now force their way into my personal life to police me?
@ThacoBell I didn't say anything about being friends with a supervisor. And they cannot force that.
They do. Laws only really matter when they are enforced. I don't know if/how its different elsewhere, but here in Kansas (and I believe a lot of the US) most jobs are "at will employment". Which means there is no actualy contract and we can be fired for any or even no reason (except discrimination, but the burden of proof is oddly on the employee). There are almost 0 workers rights here.
@deltago What constitutes "private"? The rise of social media makes that a grey area. Should someone's private facebook or twitter account be subject for corporate review? Do companies have the right to require employees to add their supervisors on facebook or similar platforms for the purpose of policing what they say? I've worked for a couple employers that tried to do this.
The rise of social media and people not knowing how to use it properly gives rise to this issue.
If a profile can be viewed publicly then it is public. The only grey area I would say exist is if your profile is private and someone shared its content publicly. I wouldn’t mind seeing that tested in court where the person to made the content public, pays for that person’s lost income.
You do not have to add your employers to your accounts. There is a separation.
@FinnousPJ Yes and no. If you work publicly for a company (for example, your name is displayed on anything from a website to a name tag) and that same name is linked to that account (or worse, you actually state you work for said company on the profile), you as a repersentative of that company need to be careful of what you say and make sure it still reflects the core ideals of the company you work for.
If you work privately, (a random person wouldn’t know where you worked by either looking at your name or profile) then say what you want.
This conversation is also very vague. Most of the stories I have heard about people being fired over twitter / Facebook comments break one of two rules:
1. They admitted to breaking a law or a company policy.
@ThacoBell I see. Well, it's not a problem of freedom of expression on social media at that point in my opinion. It's a workers rights problem.
Hasn't this whole been about worker's rights? We have been discussing what should be grounds for firing when it comes to speech, and how to define "private" vs "public".
@deltago I don't think, "being a dick" should be grounds for losing your livelyhood. Not when it comes to speech.
Allen Weisselberg, the longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity in the ongoing Cohen probe. I have to assume he wasn't granted immunity for nothing. In the end, it may be Trump's longtime playground of shady New York business practices that destroy him. How this man ever thought his business dealings could stand up to the spotlight of the Presidency is going to be a question that will go down in history. If nothing else, I could live with watching Trump's business empire crumble to dust around him.
@ThacoBell I see. Well, it's not a problem of freedom of expression on social media at that point in my opinion. It's a workers rights problem.
Hasn't this whole been about worker's rights? We have been discussing what should be grounds for firing when it comes to speech, and how to define "private" vs "public".
@deltago I don't think, "being a dick" should be grounds for losing your livelyhood. Not when it comes to speech.
@ThacoBell You were specifically talking about having no contract and being able to be fired for any reason. That is not an issue of speech or private vs public, which is why I wanted to dismiss it. I don't understand how you're bringing it back to speech now.
@FinneousPJ t matters because companies can force themselves into their employees' private lives for the sole purpose of policing them off duty. Have twitter or facebook? Too bad, you aren't allowed to use them privately anymore. A company firing someone for what they say off duty is serious bull.
I don't think, "being a dick" should be grounds for losing your livelyhood. Not when it comes to speech.
If a person isn’t replacable, they wouldn’t be losing their job. If a person is actually good at their job and exceed expectations in the working environment an employer would be hesitant to fire them on something that would blow over in a week or two especially if the employee apologized and retracted their statement, then learnt how to use social media properly.
It wouldn’t surprise me however, if this dickish behaviour they display online is also prevalent in their work environment and the employer is using the (potential) customer complaint as an excuse more than a reason.
The person can learn from their mistake however, when they get a new job (and they will, as I said this shit blows over quickly) if they don’t dwell on what they feel is the unfairness of it all. We do not live in a communist state, a job is not guaranteed.
And once again, a person’s supervisor shouldn’t be demanding to be part of a person’s private life, that includes non-public online accounts. That should always remain seperate.
@ThacoBell Only if you mix your twitter or facebook profiles with your professional life. If you do, then I do think it's justified.
As I've already established, you aren't always given a choice. Some businesses already require employees to submit their facebook and twitter accounts. How can you claim its a choice or that the issues are separate when that is clearly not the case? Where is the line drawn? Now its your facebook account, next year its your personal emails. How far down the rabbit hole are people expected to go before someone says its unacceptable?
@deltago "And once again, a person’s supervisor shouldn’t be demanding to be part of a person’s private life, that includes non-public online accounts. That should always remain seperate. "
Who's going to insure this is the case? I've personally been forced to submit my account for review/add supervisors for the explicit purpose of monitoring what I say.
@ThacoBell Only if you mix your twitter or facebook profiles with your professional life. If you do, then I do think it's justified.
As I've already established, you aren't always given a choice. Some businesses already require employees to submit their facebook and twitter accounts. How can you claim its a choice or that the issues are separate when that is clearly not the case? Where is the line drawn? Now its your facebook account, next year its your personal emails. How far down the rabbit hole are people expected to go before someone says its unacceptable?
@ThacoBell There is not any legal obligation for an employee to submit any accounts. Also, please give an example where a business requires this. Otherwise you're just saying stuff.
@ThacoBell Only if you mix your twitter or facebook profiles with your professional life. If you do, then I do think it's justified.
As I've already established, you aren't always given a choice. Some businesses already require employees to submit their facebook and twitter accounts. How can you claim its a choice or that the issues are separate when that is clearly not the case? Where is the line drawn? Now its your facebook account, next year its your personal emails. How far down the rabbit hole are people expected to go before someone says its unacceptable?
"And once again, a person’s supervisor shouldn’t be demanding to be part of a person’s private life, that includes non-public online accounts. That should always remain seperate. "
Who's going to insure this is the case? I've personally been forced to submit my account for review/add supervisors for the explicit purpose of monitoring what I say.
Your reply: “I don’t have one.”
Seriously, before applying for a job anywhere, you change your name on all your profiles (middle name, mother’s maiden name) and you do not post a public picture of yourself and you set everything to private. If they personally cannot find you online and you say “I do not have one,” what are they going to do?
If you want to add work buddies or associates, make a second account or other app such as Whatsapp that supervisors can monitor, but I personally would not work for a place that requires that much restriction on my private life. Although I would also say “good luck finding me” as I have a very common name.
The only time where I can see this being important or acceptable is if you are actually PR for a company, or are dealing with very sensitive NDA materials, even then, trust of your employees is very important and increases moral and would be still a greyish area IMO.
@FinneousPJ No, there isn't any LEGAL obligation. Just your livelyhood. Don't bow to your employer's demands? There goes your job. I don't care what people say about the state of our economys' recovery, finding a job is balls hard here in the US, even just a minimum wage one. I've personally worked for Big Lots, Culver's, and Chic-Fil-A who all required access to your social media.
@deltago Background checks are really common when applying for a job here in the US. There are entire companies built around finding your presonal information for your employer. Chaning your name and whatnot to try and hide is also a non solution. You really think a self in witness protection program is better than just, say, protecting your right to express yourself when not working?
Comments
He can't do it right now because they think it is critical that they install their ringer on the Supreme Court before the midterms in order to shield Trump when the time comes that a case involving him winds up there which is bound to happen soon.
Here's the relevant Trump tweets
Read between the lies - he wants to investigate the people who found his crimes and his political opponents. We can't let Republicans win the midterms or Democracy is dead. Literally.
Get out and vote if Republicans haven't already closed your polling station.
Lindsey Graham has said that he'd be more than happy to help replace Sessions after the midterms presumably to install someone who will end or stiffle the Mueller investigations.
Key Republicans Give Trump a Path to Fire Sessions After the Election
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-23/graham-says-he-expects-trump-to-oust-sessions-after-elections
Beyond that, Jeff Sessions is one of the most conservative government officials in recent memory. The ONLY problem Trump has with him is that he isn't sufficiently loyal to him personally.
1. Reduce the President's power to pardon so that s/he cannot pardon those of his or her genetic or adoptive family. This will limit the corrupt use of this power without limiting the just use of this power, since a President's family is a tiny fraction of the population (what are the odds that a Presidential pardon for a family member would be for good reasons instead of corrupt ones?).
2. Make it illegal for a non-governmental employer to fire an employee because of statements the employee made when out of the workplace and outside office hours, unless the employee's primary function is to directly promote positive public relations.
Lately, some folks here and there have been fired for comments posted on social media, either because the company disagreed with the comments or in response to public criticism. Think of the person who gets fired for complaining about not liking their job, or who says something offensive online. I don't think this represents a good trend.
A company should not have such an incredibly powerful check on the free speech of its employees. People should not have to choose between exercising their free speech and feeding their families. If this were illegal, there would be no incentive for people on social media to launch campaigns to pressure companies into attempting to silence their own employees. I accept that some uses of free speech are worthy of public criticism, but losing your livelihood for expressing your opinion is against the basic principle of free speech. Speech ain't free if you pay for it with your job.
I added several exceptions to the rule to make sure it's not too broad. It's more reasonable for an employer to have control over an employee's on-the-job, on-site words and actions. It's also fair to have more strict expectations for an employee in PR, and I'm tempted to think that government employees like teachers, police officers, judges, and so forth should maintain a certain level of public respectability even off the job.
2. No. A company has values and branding to consider and all employees should adhere to them 24/7. If an employee says or does something that dimishes those values to a point that business is lost (or even potentially lost) they should be held accountable for that.
A good company will give the employee an opportunity to publicly retract the statement that caused the furor, teach how to keep private and public statements separate and how to prevent issues like that from happening again (or to begin with).
But people are not allowed to say whatever the hell they want. That isn’t what free speech means. Action and consequence.
Now if you personally feel a person shouldn’t have been fired by the company, you as a consumer, can take your business elsewhere. It is how a free market works.
If a person publicly works for a company, all of their public comments should reflect that business.
Privately, say what you want.
1.) Delete your Facebook
2.) Be anonymous on Twitter
As for "retribution" or "consequences," losing your job is a hideously disproportionate and inappropriate punishment for any form of speech that isn't a flat-out crime (perjury or slander or incitement to violence and so forth). If there must be any consequence to offensive speech, let the damage be limited to that person's individual reputation; not their very livelihood. You're perfectly free to think and say that somebody is a bad person for their statements, but pressuring their employer into firing them constitutes coercive censorship.
I understand why a corporation would want to fire somebody who said something controversial. The corporation doesn't want an offensive statement to damage their profits by hurting their reputation. But a corporation's desire for profit doesn't justify the power of censorship.
Would you tolerate anyone punishing your statements with that justification? "Your tweet is a threat to our profits, so we're firing you to make the crowd like us again."
Here's my basic problem with this issue in a nutshell:
Would you trust the government with the power to take away your job if you said something they didn't like?
Would you trust Donald Trump with the power to take away your job if you said something he didn't like?
Would you trust your employer with the power to take away your job if you said something they didn't like?
I wouldn't give that kind of power to anyone. When we threaten to take away someone's livelihood when they haven't even broken the law, we are placing the desires of private corporations over the rights of American citizens.
Also, not for nothing, but Donald Trump calls for the jobs of NFL players on a weekly basis, and issues threats to their employers.
I'm not generally in favor of employers' rights. It's not that long ago we had a similar debate in relation to the ability of businesses to discriminate against certain groups. On that issue I was broadly in favor of saying that businesses who wished to provide services to the general public should have to provide those services to all the public. In this instance though I think using the law to force businesses to retain employees who are actively doing them harm is going too far.
If a profile can be viewed publicly then it is public. The only grey area I would say exist is if your profile is private and someone shared its content publicly. I wouldn’t mind seeing that tested in court where the person to made the content public, pays for that person’s lost income.
You do not have to add your employers to your accounts. There is a separation.
@FinnousPJ Yes and no. If you work publicly for a company (for example, your name is displayed on anything from a website to a name tag) and that same name is linked to that account (or worse, you actually state you work for said company on the profile), you as a repersentative of that company need to be careful of what you say and make sure it still reflects the core ideals of the company you work for.
If you work privately, (a random person wouldn’t know where you worked by either looking at your name or profile) then say what you want.
This conversation is also very vague. Most of the stories I have heard about people being fired over twitter / Facebook comments break one of two rules:
1. They admitted to breaking a law or a company policy.
2. They were being a dick.
@deltago I don't think, "being a dick" should be grounds for losing your livelyhood. Not when it comes to speech.
It wouldn’t surprise me however, if this dickish behaviour they display online is also prevalent in their work environment and the employer is using the (potential) customer complaint as an excuse more than a reason.
The person can learn from their mistake however, when they get a new job (and they will, as I said this shit blows over quickly) if they don’t dwell on what they feel is the unfairness of it all. We do not live in a communist state, a job is not guaranteed.
And once again, a person’s supervisor shouldn’t be demanding to be part of a person’s private life, that includes non-public online accounts. That should always remain seperate.
@deltago "And once again, a person’s supervisor shouldn’t be demanding to be part of a person’s private life, that includes non-public online accounts. That should always remain seperate. "
Who's going to insure this is the case? I've personally been forced to submit my account for review/add supervisors for the explicit purpose of monitoring what I say.
Seriously, before applying for a job anywhere, you change your name on all your profiles (middle name, mother’s maiden name) and you do not post a public picture of yourself and you set everything to private. If they personally cannot find you online and you say “I do not have one,” what are they going to do?
If you want to add work buddies or associates, make a second account or other app such as Whatsapp that supervisors can monitor, but I personally would not work for a place that requires that much restriction on my private life. Although I would also say “good luck finding me” as I have a very common name.
The only time where I can see this being important or acceptable is if you are actually PR for a company, or are dealing with very sensitive NDA materials, even then, trust of your employees is very important and increases moral and would be still a greyish area IMO.
@deltago Background checks are really common when applying for a job here in the US. There are entire companies built around finding your presonal information for your employer. Chaning your name and whatnot to try and hide is also a non solution. You really think a self in witness protection program is better than just, say, protecting your right to express yourself when not working?