USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House | Hacker News Reader

USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House

reuters.com

58 pointsnico28 comments

> After this article was published, a USDA spokesperson said Fong left the office Monday on her own accord.

> "She was accompanied by two friends who she paused to take selfies with on her way out. Security officials did not play any role in her departure,” the spokesperson said.

Is that a Ministry of Truth official or a credible spokesperson?

Given the preceding quote that she did not believe the terminations were lawful, that would be a complete reversal of her decision from days prior.

  Phyllis Fong, a 22-year veteran of the department, had earlier told colleagues that she intended to stay after the White House terminated her Friday, saying that she didn’t believe the administration had followed proper protocols, the sources said.
  In an email to colleagues on Saturday, reviewed by Reuters, she said the independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency “has taken the position that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time.”
  Fong declined to comment and the Office of the Inspector General did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

So the headline is flat out incorrect?

[dupe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902355

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902678

> The White House defended the firing of Fong and the other inspectors general, saying "these rogue, partisan bureaucrats... have been relieved of their duties in order to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy."

Grim tidings when combined with Elon's cronies taking over payment systems and the incoming trade war.

I have wondered why there is so little discussion of these things on HN compared to other social media.

You're kidding me, right? It seems like every other post on the front page is a discussion of this topic and nothing else. It's getting old.

You can look right now. This story + a related one at the bottom of 3rd page. Not sure where you get that sentiment from. Maybe under submissions?

No? I see under 10% of the HN front page stories being related to U.S. national politics at the moment, which feels very low compared to Reddit and Facebook for me (which are well over 50%, but I realize that each person sees something different potentially).

Half of HN thinks this is precisely what's needed. The other half would like to talk about it, but it's flagged as being irrelevant politics.

Truth. I follow the RSS and there are so many flagged or dead posts that never make the front page.

There seems to be a hard right turn in the tech circles.

Yeah. It's been going on since the dotcom boom. I watched Slashdot become increasingly right wing for a decade. When I finally gave up on it, it was practically Stormfront.

Half crazy, half too pure to get their hands dirty. 0% sensible discussion of absurdity that can only be explained by actions undertaken extremist ideology that benefit the ultra-rich and harm everyone else.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and search for "politics".

Additionally, political discussions on HN are hamstrung by the guideline to "assume good faith", which doesn't work well for political topics because there is a lot of bad faith commentary.

That’s a feature not a bug.

We congregate here, from all over the world, to discuss tech adjacent nerdy and learn from each other. Not US politics.

Hacker News might try to ignore politics, but politics isn't ignoring tech.

You have impending tariffs on chips on the way to wreck tech businesses, and incoming xenophobic immigration policies coming to kick out the talent pipeline.

But sure, let's flag any posts that might hint at everything not being totally awesome. Did you hear that some build tool got open sourced?

>Hacker News might try to ignore politics, but politics isn't ignoring tech.

Great! Maybe folks could discuss that in any of the hundreds of other social forums all over the internet? One of the absolute worst things to have happened as traditional forums and such have gone away and been replaced with "feeds" and "feeding trough" front pages is that every single place seems to eventually devolve into a death spiral of US Team Sports Politics. Does anyone really believe that the relative dearth of political discussion on HN is actually preventing anyone interested in that discussion from finding it? Or keeping anyone interested in being informed on the relevant issues from being so informed? Maybe it's possible to have places in your life where you talk to other people and don't have to talk about politics.

> Great! Maybe folks could discuss that in any of the hundreds of other social forums all over the internet?

Real discussion on there is not possible. This place seems to be more civilized.

Civilized? It won't be for long if people drag political topics in here.

I think the interesting is the tech community that used to be liberal and loving turning to something completely the opposite. Blindly following some playbook by "luminaires", and adopting the most awful parts of the discourse.

I know I am now going to be voted down, but it's the truth.

The tech community at large is very well in line with democracy and progressive values. There's a small cult who got very rich and became insanely hubristic, and they and their fans are a very rotten extremity of an otherwise very healthy and positive community.

There's no 'used to be,' the tech scene is not down with authoritarians today and never will be.

That's the rub. It would've been a non-issue in the late 90's when extremists weren't in power and there was just moderate levels of corruption rather than gold bar senators or Department of Fox News Defense. It's imperative to call-out absurdity where it interferes with the continuation of organized multicellular life rather than be silent, because silence gives consent (Qui tacet consentit).

Pretending to ignore politics is the most political act of all.

That is the, shall we say, more light-hearted take on it.

HN standards typically avoid political discussion that doesn't intersect with technology. But it's hard not to talk about seeing the far-right seizing total political control of the executive branch and destroying the entire bureaucracy and the concept of fact.

If you mean that trade war, what is here to discuss? We (Canada) just got fucked royally by our "best" ally and trading partner. There is not much we can do in return tariff wise without causing even greater harm for ourselves. I think our demented government should just learn the lesson, and develop our own independent trade and foreign policies. There is a whole world out there. Just stop bending over.

And it's flagged.

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