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[anewaname]

From this, he was mayor of "Colorado City, a West Texas town of about 4,000 people located in between Midland and Abilene".

If people exist in that town of 4000, who do not understand that they should keep a few days of food, water, and light available, those are some ignorant people. If you google "colorado city, texas" and see the images; the center of town has mostly two story buildings. How much could the town taxes be? Enough to cover schools and road repair?

He is saying the people need to take care of their own households.
He is saying people need to be prepared for several day emergencies.
He is saying it poorly...
He should be saying "the power companies will restore power as soon as possible, read your contracts".
He should be saying, "for those in the community who want to help others who were not prepared, we will set up an online location and help organize that effort.
He should be saying, "we are not handing out cash to individuals, any cash support will go through the relief organization.

His response was poorly done, but the wider state/country media response is only political maneuvering.

[Loud Whispers]

Exodus of Republican voters tired of Trump could push party further right

Time to tokyo drift that political window. USA is too moderate

*EDIT

A local Texan mayor got flak for posting

Spoiler: This encouraging message to his constituency on Facebook (click to show/hide)

ONLY THE STRONG WILL SURVIVE AND THE WEAK WILL PERISH IN THE UNENDING HOARFROST

Not gonna lie this new frostpunk expansion is looking great

[dragdeler]

-

[Lord Shonus]

Exodus of Republican voters tired of Trump could push party further right

If the party loses the support of the less right-wing voters, the party will become further right. That's pretty much the way parties work.

The other important bit is that splitting the party like that cripples it in the next election,  possibly  the next two. Eventually one half of the party will attract enough independents and Democrats to drive the other half into extinction, but that isn't fast.

[Random_Dragon]

The real question is, how many of them learned that sometimes you also need to drip the HOT water during a freeze? 

[Maximum Spin]

People paid the utilities for service, and it is not rendered.  Isn't part of the payment, paying for availability?

At least in my part of America, you don't pay for time when service is out. I would be amazed if it's otherwise in Texas.

[nenjin]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/18/politics/capitol-police-officers-suspended/index.html

"With pay."

[Vector]

that ... delicious privilege, I guess ...

[Starver]

Hard to tell if this is their situation but "suspended pending a proper assessment a culpability", or however it might be deemed, should not itself be the punishment the later tribunal might later wish to apply. Or not apply if evidence shows it wasn't a total dereliction[1].

I don't know much about employment law, less about US employment law, a yet smaller amount of Federal employment laws and somewhat nearer to zero about law-enforcement employment laws, so I could be wrong, but I feel sure they already err on the side of cautiousness in such matters, so no surprise that these possibly equivocal cases don't involve the fullest sanctions in one big step. Watch this this space, of course.




[1] Or even an offence at all. It's entirely possible that one or two of them can justify being 'overly friendly' because they had no choice being faced with dozens of protestors with no viable back-up or way out other than to smile and ask for a hat. It may even be that a 'guided tour' took in the view of impressive-looking but tactically unimportant rooms, coincidentally far from all the planned egress routes. I'd expect at least some claims along these lines, though obviously they need to be substantiatable and believed to end up quashing the suspension and I'm still not sure I'd expect any commendations being mooted as a direct rebound.

[Loud Whispers]

Terraria founder pulls Terraria from planned Google Stadia launch after Google closed his Google Apps access, Youtube channel, google drive account and gmail account without providing a reason or responding to his appeals. People like that dude can survive such an event but for smaller peoples, suddenly losing their 15 year old email addresses & contacts or data they stored on cloud services can be killer. For companies to become so integral to modern life for most, and to be able to unilaterally revoke all such access without even needing to provide a reason, is too much power to hold. Yet we are not yet at the point where we can begin to even legislate oversight over revocation, because whilst there exists legal framework to avoid companies arbitrarily denying access to roads or water (and I'm sure you can stew over the unfortunate implications that there indeed exists company who do arbitrarily deny people access to their own roads and water for profit), we do not consider internet access or internet services to be necessary to civil society or rights. So whether your integration into modern society is revoked for a political reason, an accident of AI or for no particular reason at all, you will very likely have little recourse but to stew in your own parallel hovel.

[Vector]

Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like what happened with Trump was pulling the emergency brakes when we were in Descent to Fascism mode. As in: normally you wouldn't pull up and punch a random person, but Richard Spencer ... yes.

But I also think that social media companies are not committed to being competent records of conversation, they're committed to steering people towards more and more "engagement." I agree that Internet is truly fundamental. I think that treating platforms which we know have contributed for a very long time to radicalization on their platforms, and throughout the rest of the web through SEO, though, as the correct medium for that ... we've given them way too much of a slide.

[Starver]

I'm not sure what the Terraria/Google thing has to do with US politics Far less than Facebook has to do with Aussie politics - and, perhaps strangely, I actually err to their essential POV on that though I agree that it was done cack-handedly.


I would be happy to consider Internet Service Provision a fundamental right (as with all utilities, though they aren't quite that level themselves), but insist upon non-monopolising, fair switching, etc (again, lacking in many jurisdictions).

And yet, glorified Bulletin Boards, themselves, are surely not a right, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Geocities... Especially if you're pushing for Free Market philosophies (over and above Free Speech).


How and why people are (or are not) stripped of particular social-media and associated data is another question. If anything, this just shows there is more market-share available so the individual can diversify and divest of any too monolithic entity (and not straight into yet another monolithic entity), but obviously technical issues exist in that.

What now, though. Perhaps a non-partisan cross-platform ombudsman, with a suitable capacity to triage issues? I can see many problems with that. And many things others would consider to be problems, even if I wouldn't. Waaay beyond my paygrade, though.

[MrRoboto75]

I thought Stadia was well on its way to being a failure anyway.

[wierd]

It was, but still-- Refusing to work with google ever again, is a pretty big and bold move.

Google's hentai tentacles are everywhere.

[scriver]

I think the Terraria Google stuff is in relevance to the discussion of private companies having to much power over us we had a few days ago?