7 ms·

Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor s

by cbanek 6y ago

Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen." Wow. I don't even know what to say. This is horrible, and misinformation at its worst. I feel like this is the magic marker on the hurricane map that nobody can easily laugh at, because they can't see it.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
If that is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), I hope that: 1) She will not be subject to long term repercussions for being honest and doing her job 2) Whoever asked her to cook the numbers, will be sued and arrested and go to jail. Cooking the numbers in this case equates to me as killing people, because decisions related to reopening, etc, will be heavily influenced by these numbers. 3) I hope that someone Rebekah Jones will know that unknown people in the internet, even in this obscure hacker site called Hacker News, are proud of what she stood for. She has nothing to gain and everything to lose, and yet she chose the right path. (again, assuming this is true)
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  A move straight from Erdogan's and Vladimir's books. At least she is not rotting in a cell (as per their literal book). Other countries do the exact same thing but I never place i.e. Iran to the same standards as Turkey and Russia (self proclaim) to be. These are truly dark-grey pages in US history. I sincerely hope next time around the people of USA select better leaders. Edit: people of Florida were lucky to have such a civil servant.
  - unishark 6y ago
    > Edit: people of Florida were lucky to have such a civil servant. It doesn't appear to say she was fired. Just taken off this particular task.
    - t-writescode 6y ago
      When a principal is made a middle-school science teacher, that’s also not a firing.
      - gknoy 6y ago
        It still counts as workplace retaliation.
        t-writescode 6y ago
        Agreed.
  - abrookewood 6y ago
    I'm not sure this deserves the downvotes. This behaviour (firing disagreeable public servants, censoring information, blatantly lying) is the exact opposite of what you would expect to see from a strongly democratic nation. It amazes me that the US hasn't fallen further on this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
    - vinay427 6y ago
      It's probably because the countries that are ranked lower have even larger and more systemic issues with democracy. Keep in mind that most people in the west and the English-speaking world experience a large reporting bias towards the US (and Europe, etc.), and this compounded with the size of the US means it's very easy to find a new negative story about the US every day. I don't say this to excuse the problems. I just want to point out (based on my experience with family in some of these places and local news sources there) that the countries that are not ranked as highly tend to have a lot of problems that people who focus on US news genuinely don't often hear about and know about.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      It's a nice sentiment to have, but it's mostly just halo effect. Democracy is nice, but not that nice. In fact, it's completely orthogonal to "firing disagreeable public servants, censoring information, blatantly lying" - these issues happen in democracies as much as everywhere else.
      - marvin 6y ago
        Do you have a source on the claim that democracies have, on average, roughly the same level of these shenanigans as non-democratic nations? Certainly the United States does some morally dubious things that are comparable to some of the atrocities that e.g. China and Russia do, but I've still had the impression that oversight, transparency and freedom of speech _improve_ things.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
- pjc50 6y ago
  Are you new to American politics? The demand to cook the books undoubtedly came from the top, whoever investigates can also be fired, and the public are out demanding that reopening happen even if it kills people.
  - vyhd 6y ago
    Fortunately, most of the public are not making that demand. It's well worth keeping in mind that those people are vastly outnumbered: https://xkcd.com/2305/ https://xkcd.com/2305/
    - generalpass 6y ago
      If you dig into the science of polling, what you discover is that the way people answer questions is rather confounding, so management of the largest polls typically do not like to use the modern science of polling. See David Moore's book The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls.
    - specialist 6y ago
      Big fan of majoritarian rule, will of the people, consent of the governed. How do we realize that ideal?
      - dr-detroit 6y ago
        Some sort of orbital EMP weapon used to prevent facebook from weaponizing retardation
      - looper_dude 6y ago
        Legalizing psychedelics.
  - bzb3 6y ago
    Regardless of what happened to this woman, if the public wants the reopening, then by all means it should happen. The opposite, house arrest against the public wishes, is terrifying.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  Worth remembering that all the astroturfing facebook campaigns about reopening came from a single florida ip as well.
  - tripzilch 6y ago
    Got a source for that?
- zshift 6y ago
  As a Floridian, I feel defeated. Most people here don’t follow politics, nor would they care enough to make a stand and protest or call for action. Even if they had the drive, a large majority of residents don’t have the luxury of taking days off of work to do this, especially in the current events. Unless mainstream media, especially Fox around here, makes a statement about this, it’s unlikely anything will happen as a result of this.
sizzle 6y ago
People need to be fired over this, starting her bosses. This is not how you fight a pandemic.
poorjujmnt8 6y ago
Americans need to reconsider what a “managed economy” means. Ok sure a government supervisor isn’t literally dictating what the assembly line produces and how many. But this story is just one of dozens a day that are all about managing information, acting as a forcing function, to get back to business as usual. Pay no mind the body political and it’s monopoly on violence! “Simply generate wealth! Nevermind as we hand out trillions for free! You have to BUY IN! Not these guys, they can get hand outs and tax breaks! Buy in!” Which is it? Socialism or capitalism? Believing there’s ever been anything but a managed effort is nonsense. There is no magic or gods. It’s people validating their identity and having it go unchallenged. Inflation is deflation for the masses. The rich get more handouts when their assets droop. Peter Thiel recently wrote about how in the history of man there’s always been elites managing the plebs. It’s how it works! They’re managing what we believe is correct. It’s a biologically simple trick that’s been used intuitively with great success since the first tribal kings. Here’s the modern version: we control what raw data you see so we can equivocate. It limits real choices and experiences. And it happens constantly while the masses look away at their repetitive jobs.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  A 0 karma account created ~60 min ago seems to think Peter Thiel is great and monarchy can be a "great success". I'm not sure if this is a shill account for genuinely pushing Thiel's points, or a poor attempt to make his platform look dumb, but someone is paying someone to influence HN.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

by cbanek 6y ago

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

If that is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), I hope that: 1) She will not be subject to long term repercussions for being honest and doing her job 2) Whoever asked her to cook the numbers, will be sued and arrested and go to jail. Cooking the numbers in this case equates to me as killing people, because decisions related to reopening, etc, will be heavily influenced by these numbers. 3) I hope that someone Rebekah Jones will know that unknown people in the internet, even in this obscure hacker site called Hacker News, are proud of what she stood for. She has nothing to gain and everything to lose, and yet she chose the right path. (again, assuming this is true)

HenryBemis 6y ago
A move straight from Erdogan's and Vladimir's books. At least she is not rotting in a cell (as per their literal book). Other countries do the exact same thing but I never place i.e. Iran to the same standards as Turkey and Russia (self proclaim) to be. These are truly dark-grey pages in US history. I sincerely hope next time around the people of USA select better leaders. Edit: people of Florida were lucky to have such a civil servant.
- unishark 6y ago
  > Edit: people of Florida were lucky to have such a civil servant. It doesn't appear to say she was fired. Just taken off this particular task.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    When a principal is made a middle-school science teacher, that’s also not a firing.
    - gknoy 6y ago
      It still counts as workplace retaliation.
      - t-writescode 6y ago
        Agreed.
- abrookewood 6y ago
  I'm not sure this deserves the downvotes. This behaviour (firing disagreeable public servants, censoring information, blatantly lying) is the exact opposite of what you would expect to see from a strongly democratic nation. It amazes me that the US hasn't fallen further on this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
  - vinay427 6y ago
    It's probably because the countries that are ranked lower have even larger and more systemic issues with democracy. Keep in mind that most people in the west and the English-speaking world experience a large reporting bias towards the US (and Europe, etc.), and this compounded with the size of the US means it's very easy to find a new negative story about the US every day. I don't say this to excuse the problems. I just want to point out (based on my experience with family in some of these places and local news sources there) that the countries that are not ranked as highly tend to have a lot of problems that people who focus on US news genuinely don't often hear about and know about.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It's a nice sentiment to have, but it's mostly just halo effect. Democracy is nice, but not that nice. In fact, it's completely orthogonal to "firing disagreeable public servants, censoring information, blatantly lying" - these issues happen in democracies as much as everywhere else.
    - marvin 6y ago
      Do you have a source on the claim that democracies have, on average, roughly the same level of these shenanigans as non-democratic nations? Certainly the United States does some morally dubious things that are comparable to some of the atrocities that e.g. China and Russia do, but I've still had the impression that oversight, transparency and freedom of speech _improve_ things.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
pjc50 6y ago
Are you new to American politics? The demand to cook the books undoubtedly came from the top, whoever investigates can also be fired, and the public are out demanding that reopening happen even if it kills people.
- vyhd 6y ago
  Fortunately, most of the public are not making that demand. It's well worth keeping in mind that those people are vastly outnumbered: https://xkcd.com/2305/ https://xkcd.com/2305/
  - generalpass 6y ago
    If you dig into the science of polling, what you discover is that the way people answer questions is rather confounding, so management of the largest polls typically do not like to use the modern science of polling. See David Moore's book The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Big fan of majoritarian rule, will of the people, consent of the governed. How do we realize that ideal?
    - dr-detroit 6y ago
      Some sort of orbital EMP weapon used to prevent facebook from weaponizing retardation
    - looper_dude 6y ago
      Legalizing psychedelics.
- bzb3 6y ago
  Regardless of what happened to this woman, if the public wants the reopening, then by all means it should happen. The opposite, house arrest against the public wishes, is terrifying.
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
Worth remembering that all the astroturfing facebook campaigns about reopening came from a single florida ip as well.
- tripzilch 6y ago
  Got a source for that?
zshift 6y ago
As a Floridian, I feel defeated. Most people here don’t follow politics, nor would they care enough to make a stand and protest or call for action. Even if they had the drive, a large majority of residents don’t have the luxury of taking days off of work to do this, especially in the current events. Unless mainstream media, especially Fox around here, makes a statement about this, it’s unlikely anything will happen as a result of this.

sizzle 6y ago

People need to be fired over this, starting her bosses. This is not how you fight a pandemic.

poorjujmnt8 6y ago

Americans need to reconsider what a “managed economy” means. Ok sure a government supervisor isn’t literally dictating what the assembly line produces and how many. But this story is just one of dozens a day that are all about managing information, acting as a forcing function, to get back to business as usual. Pay no mind the body political and it’s monopoly on violence! “Simply generate wealth! Nevermind as we hand out trillions for free! You have to BUY IN! Not these guys, they can get hand outs and tax breaks! Buy in!” Which is it? Socialism or capitalism? Believing there’s ever been anything but a managed effort is nonsense. There is no magic or gods. It’s people validating their identity and having it go unchallenged. Inflation is deflation for the masses. The rich get more handouts when their assets droop. Peter Thiel recently wrote about how in the history of man there’s always been elites managing the plebs. It’s how it works! They’re managing what we believe is correct. It’s a biologically simple trick that’s been used intuitively with great success since the first tribal kings. Here’s the modern version: we control what raw data you see so we can equivocate. It limits real choices and experiences. And it happens constantly while the masses look away at their repetitive jobs.

blaser-waffle 6y ago
A 0 karma account created ~60 min ago seems to think Peter Thiel is great and monarchy can be a "great success". I'm not sure if this is a shill account for genuinely pushing Thiel's points, or a poor attempt to make his platform look dumb, but someone is paying someone to influence HN.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.