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image.thumb.png.5da0b0d5b31eb9fb2d6a73c7b09a98c8.png
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/trump-tesla-vandalism-prison.html

Quote

 

President Trump escalated his threats against people who vandalize Tesla cars, musing in a social media post on Friday that those convicted of damaging or destroying the vehicles — including U.S. citizens — could be sent to notorious prison complexes in El Salvador.

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

In recent weeks, vandals in several cities have defaced or destroyed Tesla vehicles and dealerships in apparent protest of Mr. Musk’s efforts to drastically reshape the federal government and fire much of the federal work force. No serious injuries have been reported.

Last month, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador offered to imprison convicted criminals from the United States in his country’s massive prison facilities.

Then this month, the United States deported Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador. The deportation flights landed in El Salvador despite a federal judge ordering that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States. The judge has vowed to continue investigating the flights and has said the Trump administration has not been cooperative.

Human rights groups say that the crowded Salvadoran prisons are holding pens for tens of thousands of people rounded up in arrests that have ensnared innocent people. The Terrorism Confinement Center is a hulking centerpiece of the system that is big enough to hold up to 40,000 inmates, some as young as 12.

Analysts say it is unlikely that a plan to detain U.S. citizens overseas would hold up in court.

Mr. Trump, who pardoned hundreds of people convicted in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has recently become fixated on delivering outsized punishments to the Tesla vandals after a journalist told the president at an event promoting Tesla on the White House lawn that “some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists.”

“I will do that,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’ll do that. I’m going to stop them."

No immediate action was taken, but a week later, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, made good on the promise and labeled the attacks as acts of “domestic terrorism.”

Then, on Thursday, Ms. Bondi highlighted weeks-old arrests of individuals charged in some of the arson attacks and suggested that they were tied to a larger plot by people “operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.” Earlier this week, Mr. Trump had suggested, without evidence, in a Fox interview that the vandalism was paid for “by people very highly political on the left” — echoing his claims about other protest movements like Black Lives Matter and the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

Ms. Bondi, who developed a close relationship with Mr. Trump during her two terms as Florida’s attorney general, supported Mr. Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, including people who had been convicted of violent crimes and weapons charges. The F.B.I. described those involved in the planning and perpetration of that attack as “domestic violent extremists.”

 

 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, royiv said:

This is third world dictator shit.

ALL of it is.  And this is what our resident Trumpkins like, and cheer.  They have never, ever had a problem with authoritarian banana republic bullshit....their only problem is that they didn't have it working on their behalf.

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Posted (edited)

It reoccurred to me that I currently own a car, and the founder of that car company was, in fact, Hitler.  I'm sure glad I never bought a Tesla.

Edited by dcbc
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Posted
ALL of it is.  And this is what our resident Trumpkins like, and cheer.  They have never, ever had a problem with authoritarian banana republic bullshit....their only problem is that they didn't have it working on their behalf.

e115ab61775352fbc5a6f5c829e7575b.jpg
Posted

Once you buy a Tesla, you don’t want another car. I know some hardcore Harris people from the Midwest who still drive their Teslas while being proud of how liberal they are. They have no shame in driving their Tesla because they love it and can’t accept their souls have been stolen for convenience. This is how completely fucked we are. 

Posted
On 3/19/2025 at 11:03 AM, chainsaw said:

Bill Burr is reaching GOAT tier

 

On 3/19/2025 at 11:17 AM, jimmyjazz said:

He has the combination of wit, intelligence, and don't give a fuck that all the greats have.

Even in a star wars spinoff

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Posted
12 hours ago, Chopper said:

Also, again, on behalf of All Jews, I'd like to voice my disgust for Musk's idiocy and his wink wink to neo-nazis.

 

Trying to deflect from his dad being pinned as JFK's assassin.

Posted
5 hours ago, dcbc said:

It reoccurred to me that I currently own a car, and the founder of that car company was, in fact, Hitler.  I'm sure glad I never bought a Tesla.

80 years after Elmo has kicked the bucket, we'll let it pass.

Jesus H. Christ.

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Posted
9 hours ago, MrBig said:

Once you buy a Tesla, you don’t want another car. I know some hardcore Harris people from the Midwest who still drive their Teslas while being proud of how liberal they are. They have no shame in driving their Tesla because they love it and can’t accept their souls have been stolen for convenience. This is how completely fucked we are. 

Have driven many, have been around many. This is just nonsense, they don't even execute on the electric car thing better than anyone. Mercedes has a fantastic electric car, so does polestar etc. 

Maybe for a model 3 shitbox vs a base model camry or something, but not for a real car. 

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Posted
10 hours ago, MrBig said:

Once you buy a Tesla, you don’t want another car. I know some hardcore Harris people from the Midwest who still drive their Teslas while being proud of how liberal they are. They have no shame in driving their Tesla because they love it and can’t accept their souls have been stolen for convenience. This is how completely fucked we are. 

Carvana just came and hauled my Model S away last week. And they took my neighbor's Model 3 the prior week. This is in CO. So your anecdote is not entirely  accurate.

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Posted
11 hours ago, dcbc said:

It reoccurred to me that I currently own a car, and the founder of that car company was, in fact, Hitler.  I'm sure glad I never bought a Tesla.

You had forgotten that you own a car? 

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Posted (edited)
34 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Carvana just came and hauled my Model S away last week. And they took my neighbor's Model 3 the prior week. This is in CO. So your anecdote is not entirely  accurate.

Yes. In fact, Dealer trade-ins of Teslas are up 300% https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/tesla-trade-ins-are-at-an-all-time-high-edmunds-says/ar-AA1Bp9oQ

Edmunds:  found that March 2025 represents the “highest ever share” on record of Tesla trade-ins toward new or used purchases at dealerships. 

Teslas accounted for 1.4% of the cars traded in through March 15, up nearly 300% from the same month last year, when just 0.4% of trade-ins were Teslas. 

Quote

Edmunds’ report also noted a decline in interest from consumers who are interested in similar cars made by different manufacturers. Previously, a car-shopper interested in Ford’s electric vehicles, for instance, might have considered a similar model produced by Tesla ― but that’s also on the decline.

While many Tesla owners remain fiercely loyal to the brand, a loss of external interest would invariably lead to a smaller customer base, the report warned, though it won’t happen overnight.

“Unlike switching smartphone brands or streaming services, replacing a car is a major financial decision, and even the most disillusioned Tesla owners will likely hold onto their vehicles out of necessity,” Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights, told HuffPost in an email.

 

 

Edited by Chopper
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Posted

A cnbc reporter live-posted Huckster-muSSk's all-hands. It was far more bizarre than the reports.

here's a few but there's about 20 of 'em:

"There's 7,000 satellites orbiting the earth and all they use is solar panels and a battery." Predicts 90% or more of power on earth will be "solar panels with batteries." He says, "My predictions have a pretty good track record."

...If there’s a good or service you want, you can just have it. Everyone in the world will be able to have anything they want." And he's talking about this as "sustainable abundance" enabled by AI and robotics.

"Optimus is learning to walk and catch balls it's pretty cool." In a short time Optimus went from being an idea to being "the most sophisticated humanoid robot on Earth." Tesla has what others don't - "Our robot has a real brain! It's like Wizard of Oz Tin Man..."

"I think there's an opportunity" he said to make a "supersonic" electric VTOL "jet." Maybe we'll do that! (Tantalizing the fanbois.) Brings up "hyperloop" again. Oh boy.

 

 

Posted (edited)
55 minutes ago, 6th Street said:

Carvana just came and hauled my Model S away last week. And they took my neighbor's Model 3 the prior week. This is in CO. So your anecdote is not entirely  accurate.

I just don’t get them. The fit, finish, and ride on those things is like dodge level bad. I don’t give a fuck how advanced they feel, if I’m going to buy a POS, I’m not paying base model Porsche money for it.

Edited by Bateshorn
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Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

I just don’t get them. The fit, finish, and ride on those things is like dodge level bad. I don’t give a fuck how advanced they feel, if I’m going to buy a POS, I’m not paying base model Porsche money for it.

You will love and enjoy it when it is mandated you have one. The new People's Car. Except VW's were efficient and fun. This will be more of a Lada type thing. Or a Zastava 

I give you the new SUV model. (Still probably outperforms a CT on icy roads.

image.jpeg.42ffa2f603ecb156aae7d3d9e62eee5c.jpeg

Edited by InkaUtexas
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Posted
18 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

You will love and enjoy it when it is mandated you have one. The new People's Car. Except VW's were efficient and fun. This will be more of a Lada type thing. Or a Zastava 

I give you the new SUV model. (Still probably outperforms a CT on icy roads.

image.jpeg.42ffa2f603ecb156aae7d3d9e62eee5c.jpeg

I went back and forth between the laugh and rage reaction.

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Posted
13 hours ago, dcbc said:

It reoccurred to me that I currently own a car, and the founder of that car company was, in fact, Hitler.  I'm sure glad I never bought a Tesla.

What did ‘dolph have to say about the latest quarterly sales figures at the board meeting?

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Posted
1 hour ago, Chopper said:

...If there’s a good or service you want, you can just have it. Everyone in the world will be able to have anything they want."

When the robots fail, he’s talking about human slaves as backups.  Redundancy and all.

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Posted

 

In other news, fuck dem vets.

Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System into Turmoil
A chaotic restructuring ordered threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Late in February, as the Trump administration ramped up its quest to transform the federal government, a psychiatrist who treats veterans was directed to her new workstation — and was incredulous.

She was required, under a new return-to-office policy, to conduct virtual psychotherapy with her patients from one of 13 cubicles in a large open office space, the kind of setup used for call centers. Other staff might overhear the sessions, or appear on the patient’s screen as they passed on their way to the bathroom and break room.

The psychiatrist was stunned. Her patients suffered from disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Treating them from her home office, it had taken many months to earn their trust. This new arrangement, she said, violated a core ethical tenet of mental health care: the guarantee of privacy.

When the doctor asked how she was expected to safeguard patient privacy, a supervisor suggested she purchase privacy screens and a white noise machine. “I’m ready to walk away if it comes to it,” she wrote to her manager, in a text message shared with The New York Times. “I get it,” the manager replied. “Many of us are ready to walk away.”

Scenes like this have been unfolding in Veterans Affairs facilities across the country in recent weeks, as therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Among the most consequential orders is the requirement that thousands of mental health providers, including many who were hired for fully remote positions, now work full time from federal office space. This is a jarring policy reversal for the V.A., which pioneered the practice of virtual health care two decades ago as a way to reach isolated veterans, long before the pandemic made telehealth the preferred mode of treatment for many Americans.

As the first wave of providers reports to offices where there is simply not enough room to accommodate them, many found no way to ensure patient privacy, health workers said. Some have filed complaints, warning that the arrangement violates ethics regulations and medical privacy laws. At the same time, layoffs of at least 1,900 probationary employees are thinning out already stressed services that assist veterans who are homeless or suicidal.

In more than three dozen interviews, current and recently terminated mental health workers at the V.A. described a period of rapid, chaotic behind-the-scenes change. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.

Clinicians warn that the changes will degrade mental health treatment at the V.A., which already has severe staffing shortages. Some expect to see a mass exodus of sought-after specialists, like psychiatrists and psychologists. They expect wait times to increase, and veterans to eventually seek treatment outside the agency.cont'd:

Spoiler

“Psychotherapy is a very private endeavor,” said Ira Kedson, a psychologist at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center in Pennsylvania and president of AFGE local 310. “It’s supposed to be a safe place, where people can talk about their deepest, darkest fears and issues.” Veterans, he said, trust that what they tell therapists is confidential.

“If they can’t trust us to do that, I think that a sizable number of them will withdraw from treatment,” he said.

A Veterans Affairs spokesman, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the contention that a crowded working environment would compromise patient privacy as “nonsensical,” saying that the V.A. “will make accommodations as needed so employees have enough space to work and comply with industry standards for privacy.”

“Veterans are now at the center of everything V.A. does,” Mr. Kasperowicz added. “Under President Trump, V.A. is no longer a place where the status quo for employees is to simply phone it in from home.” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the president’s return-to-office order was “ensuring that all Americans benefit from more efficient services, especially our veterans.”

The DOGE cuts have already sparked chaos and confusion within the sprawling agency, which provides care to more than nine million veterans. The Trump administration has said it plans to eliminate 80,000 V.A. jobs, and a first round of terminations has halted some research studies and slashed support staff.

The cuts drive at a sensitive constituency for Mr. Trump, who has campaigned on improving services at the V.A. In Mr. Trump’s first term, the agency expanded remote work as a way to reach veterans who are socially isolated and living in rural areas, who are at an elevated risk for suicide. Now those services are likely to be sharply reduced.

“The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services,” said a clinician at a mental health center hub in Kansas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”

Veterans, too, are expressing anxiety. Sandra Fenelon, 33, said she had a rocky transition back to civilian life after leaving the Navy in 2022. “I just constantly felt like I am at war,” said Ms. Fenelon, who lives in New York and is training to become a pharmacist.

It took a year, working with a V.A. psychologist, until she felt safe enough to begin sharing the troubling things she had seen on deployment, things that, she said, “people on the outside would never understand.”

Now, Ms. Fenelon is worried that the tumult at the V.A. will prompt her therapist to leave before she is better. In her session this past week, she burst into tears. “I feel like I’m now forced to be put in a position where I have to start over with someone else,” she said in an interview. “How can I relate to a therapist who never worked with veterans?”

‘You Deserve Better’
For a suicide prevention coordinator in California, mornings start with referrals from a crisis hotline. On a typical day, she said, she is given a list of 10 callers, but sometimes as many as 20 or 30. The work is so intense that, most days, there is no time for a lunch break or bathroom breaks.

“My job is to build rapport, to figure out what I need to do to keep them alive. I let them know: ‘I’m worried about you, I’m going to send someone out to check on you,’” the coordinator said. “I tell them, ‘You served this country. You deserve better.’”

The team, which is responsible for covering some 800,000 veterans, was supposed to get three more social workers, but the new positions were canceled as a result of the administration’s hiring freeze, the coordinator said.

She said the stress around the staff reductions is intense, and fears it will cause her to miss something critical. “I’m so scared I’ll make a mistake,” she said. “I’m not sleeping well, and it’s hard to stay focused.”

Veterans are at sharply higher risk for suicide than the general population; in 2022, the suicide rate was 34.7 per 100,000, compared to 14.2 per 100,000 for the general population. A major factor in this is the availability of firearms, which were used in 73.5 percent of suicide deaths, according to the V.A.

In Denver, Bilal Torrens was just finishing a shift when he was notified by email that he was being terminated.

His job, he said, was helping homeless veterans settle into life indoors after years of living on the street. During those early months, Mr. Torrens said, the men are often overwhelmed by the task of collecting benefits, managing medications, even shopping for groceries; he would sit with his clients while they filled out forms and paid bills.

The layoffs reduced the support staff at the homeless service center by a third. The burden will now shift onto social workers, who are already staggering under caseloads of dozens of veterans, he said.

“They’re not going to have enough time to serve any of the veterans properly, the way that they should be served and cared for,” Mr. Torrens said.

Alarms Over Privacy
In Coatesville, Penn., mental health providers have been told they will conduct therapy with veterans from several large office spaces, sitting with their laptops at tables, said Dr. Kedson. The spaces are familiar, he said — but they have never before been used for patient care.

“That would sound like you’re seeing them from a call center, because you’d be in a room with a bunch of people who are all talking at the same time,” Dr. Kedson said. “The veterans who are going to be in that position, I suspect they will feel very much like their privacy is being violated.”

So far, only supervisory clinicians have been affected by the return-to-office policy; unionized workers will be expected to report to the office in the coming weeks.

Dr. Kedson said clinicians have warned that the orders compromise patient privacy, but he has seen little response from the agency’s leadership. “They’re doing it because these are the marching orders coming out of the current administration,” he said. “People are trying to make something that is really untenable work.”

Dr. Lynn F. Bufka, head of practice at the American Psychological Association, said the “longstanding presumed practice for the delivery of psychotherapy” requires a private location, like a room with a door and soundproofing outside the room.

She said HIPAA, the health privacy law, allows for “incidental disclosures” of patient information if they cannot be reasonably prevented — a threshold that she said the V.A. risks not meeting. In this case, she said, the privacy risk could be prevented “by simply not requiring psychologists to return to the office until private spaces are available.”

Several V.A. mental health clinicians told The Times they were interviewing for new jobs or had submitted their resignations. Their departures risk exacerbating already severe staffing shortages at the V.A., outlined in a report last year from its inspector general’s office.

“Everybody is afraid, from the top down,” said Matthew Hunnicutt, 62, a social worker who retired in late February after nearly 15 years, much of it in supervisory positions, at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center in Chicago.

When staff were ordered to shut down diversity initiatives, Mr. Hunnicutt decided to speed up his retirement, feeling that “everything I had done was just wiped away.” He said care at the V.A. had been improved during his time there, with better community outreach, shorter wait times and same-day mental health appointments.

“Just to have it be destroyed like this is extreme,” he said.

 

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Posted
 
In other news, fuck dem vets.
Trump and DOGE Propel V.A. Mental Health System into Turmoil
A chaotic restructuring ordered threatens to degrade services for veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Late in February, as the Trump administration ramped up its quest to transform the federal government, a psychiatrist who treats veterans was directed to her new workstation — and was incredulous.
She was required, under a new return-to-office policy, to conduct virtual psychotherapy with her patients from one of 13 cubicles in a large open office space, the kind of setup used for call centers. Other staff might overhear the sessions, or appear on the patient’s screen as they passed on their way to the bathroom and break room.
The psychiatrist was stunned. Her patients suffered from disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Treating them from her home office, it had taken many months to earn their trust. This new arrangement, she said, violated a core ethical tenet of mental health care: the guarantee of privacy.
When the doctor asked how she was expected to safeguard patient privacy, a supervisor suggested she purchase privacy screens and a white noise machine. “I’m ready to walk away if it comes to it,” she wrote to her manager, in a text message shared with The New York Times. “I get it,” the manager replied. “Many of us are ready to walk away.”
Scenes like this have been unfolding in Veterans Affairs facilities across the country in recent weeks, as therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Among the most consequential orders is the requirement that thousands of mental health providers, including many who were hired for fully remote positions, now work full time from federal office space. This is a jarring policy reversal for the V.A., which pioneered the practice of virtual health care two decades ago as a way to reach isolated veterans, long before the pandemic made telehealth the preferred mode of treatment for many Americans.
As the first wave of providers reports to offices where there is simply not enough room to accommodate them, many found no way to ensure patient privacy, health workers said. Some have filed complaints, warning that the arrangement violates ethics regulations and medical privacy laws. At the same time, layoffs of at least 1,900 probationary employees are thinning out already stressed services that assist veterans who are homeless or suicidal.
In more than three dozen interviews, current and recently terminated mental health workers at the V.A. described a period of rapid, chaotic behind-the-scenes change. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.
Clinicians warn that the changes will degrade mental health treatment at the V.A., which already has severe staffing shortages. Some expect to see a mass exodus of sought-after specialists, like psychiatrists and psychologists. They expect wait times to increase, and veterans to eventually seek treatment outside the agency.cont'd:
Spoiler

“Psychotherapy is a very private endeavor,” said Ira Kedson, a psychologist at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center in Pennsylvania and president of AFGE local 310. “It’s supposed to be a safe place, where people can talk about their deepest, darkest fears and issues.” Veterans, he said, trust that what they tell therapists is confidential.
“If they can’t trust us to do that, I think that a sizable number of them will withdraw from treatment,” he said.
A Veterans Affairs spokesman, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the contention that a crowded working environment would compromise patient privacy as “nonsensical,” saying that the V.A. “will make accommodations as needed so employees have enough space to work and comply with industry standards for privacy.”
“Veterans are now at the center of everything V.A. does,” Mr. Kasperowicz added. “Under President Trump, V.A. is no longer a place where the status quo for employees is to simply phone it in from home.” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the president’s return-to-office order was “ensuring that all Americans benefit from more efficient services, especially our veterans.”
The DOGE cuts have already sparked chaos and confusion within the sprawling agency, which provides care to more than nine million veterans. The Trump administration has said it plans to eliminate 80,000 V.A. jobs, and a first round of terminations has halted some research studies and slashed support staff.
The cuts drive at a sensitive constituency for Mr. Trump, who has campaigned on improving services at the V.A. In Mr. Trump’s first term, the agency expanded remote work as a way to reach veterans who are socially isolated and living in rural areas, who are at an elevated risk for suicide. Now those services are likely to be sharply reduced.
“The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services,” said a clinician at a mental health center hub in Kansas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”
Veterans, too, are expressing anxiety. Sandra Fenelon, 33, said she had a rocky transition back to civilian life after leaving the Navy in 2022. “I just constantly felt like I am at war,” said Ms. Fenelon, who lives in New York and is training to become a pharmacist.
It took a year, working with a V.A. psychologist, until she felt safe enough to begin sharing the troubling things she had seen on deployment, things that, she said, “people on the outside would never understand.”
Now, Ms. Fenelon is worried that the tumult at the V.A. will prompt her therapist to leave before she is better. In her session this past week, she burst into tears. “I feel like I’m now forced to be put in a position where I have to start over with someone else,” she said in an interview. “How can I relate to a therapist who never worked with veterans?”
‘You Deserve Better’
For a suicide prevention coordinator in California, mornings start with referrals from a crisis hotline. On a typical day, she said, she is given a list of 10 callers, but sometimes as many as 20 or 30. The work is so intense that, most days, there is no time for a lunch break or bathroom breaks.
“My job is to build rapport, to figure out what I need to do to keep them alive. I let them know: ‘I’m worried about you, I’m going to send someone out to check on you,’” the coordinator said. “I tell them, ‘You served this country. You deserve better.’”
The team, which is responsible for covering some 800,000 veterans, was supposed to get three more social workers, but the new positions were canceled as a result of the administration’s hiring freeze, the coordinator said.
She said the stress around the staff reductions is intense, and fears it will cause her to miss something critical. “I’m so scared I’ll make a mistake,” she said. “I’m not sleeping well, and it’s hard to stay focused.”
Veterans are at sharply higher risk for suicide than the general population; in 2022, the suicide rate was 34.7 per 100,000, compared to 14.2 per 100,000 for the general population. A major factor in this is the availability of firearms, which were used in 73.5 percent of suicide deaths, according to the V.A.
In Denver, Bilal Torrens was just finishing a shift when he was notified by email that he was being terminated.
His job, he said, was helping homeless veterans settle into life indoors after years of living on the street. During those early months, Mr. Torrens said, the men are often overwhelmed by the task of collecting benefits, managing medications, even shopping for groceries; he would sit with his clients while they filled out forms and paid bills.
The layoffs reduced the support staff at the homeless service center by a third. The burden will now shift onto social workers, who are already staggering under caseloads of dozens of veterans, he said.
“They’re not going to have enough time to serve any of the veterans properly, the way that they should be served and cared for,” Mr. Torrens said.
Alarms Over Privacy
In Coatesville, Penn., mental health providers have been told they will conduct therapy with veterans from several large office spaces, sitting with their laptops at tables, said Dr. Kedson. The spaces are familiar, he said — but they have never before been used for patient care.
“That would sound like you’re seeing them from a call center, because you’d be in a room with a bunch of people who are all talking at the same time,” Dr. Kedson said. “The veterans who are going to be in that position, I suspect they will feel very much like their privacy is being violated.”
So far, only supervisory clinicians have been affected by the return-to-office policy; unionized workers will be expected to report to the office in the coming weeks.
Dr. Kedson said clinicians have warned that the orders compromise patient privacy, but he has seen little response from the agency’s leadership. “They’re doing it because these are the marching orders coming out of the current administration,” he said. “People are trying to make something that is really untenable work.”
Dr. Lynn F. Bufka, head of practice at the American Psychological Association, said the “longstanding presumed practice for the delivery of psychotherapy” requires a private location, like a room with a door and soundproofing outside the room.
She said HIPAA, the health privacy law, allows for “incidental disclosures” of patient information if they cannot be reasonably prevented — a threshold that she said the V.A. risks not meeting. In this case, she said, the privacy risk could be prevented “by simply not requiring psychologists to return to the office until private spaces are available.”
Several V.A. mental health clinicians told The Times they were interviewing for new jobs or had submitted their resignations. Their departures risk exacerbating already severe staffing shortages at the V.A., outlined in a report last year from its inspector general’s office.
“Everybody is afraid, from the top down,” said Matthew Hunnicutt, 62, a social worker who retired in late February after nearly 15 years, much of it in supervisory positions, at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center in Chicago.
When staff were ordered to shut down diversity initiatives, Mr. Hunnicutt decided to speed up his retirement, feeling that “everything I had done was just wiped away.” He said care at the V.A. had been improved during his time there, with better community outreach, shorter wait times and same-day mental health appointments.
“Just to have it be destroyed like this is extreme,” he said.

 


Whatever, veterans are suckers and losers. They’re getting what this regime thinks they deserve.
Posted
2 hours ago, Chopper said:

 

 

I literally watched a comic book movie recently where the over-the-top, evil leader rallied his troops with promising that they would get everything they ever wanted.

there are paths where Elon becomes a Bond villain and some would argue he’s already there. He sees himself as the victim so any response is justified.

Posted
13 hours ago, MrBig said:

Once you buy a Tesla, you don’t want another car. I know some hardcore Harris people from the Midwest who still drive their Teslas while being proud of how liberal they are. They have no shame in driving their Tesla because they love it and can’t accept their souls have been stolen for convenience. This is how completely fucked we are. 

Disagree. I agree that some may be in this situation but anyone with decent morals is questioning their ownership of a Tesla today.

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Posted

yeah, i've actually felt bad for all the Tesla drivers here. there are a TON, Denver had some kind of rebate program years ago and i've never been somewhere with so many EVs! it's actually pretty cool. but knowing Denver went for Harris close to 80% i know most of the Tesla drivers here are not in support of Elon's current warpath.

more like

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i am seeing more and more with stickers and magnets with some variation of the 'bought before i knew he was an asshole/crazy' message. the dealership here is one of the ones that has been attacked. gotta be pretty scary for the local owners. i've only seen a handful of the frankenmobiles.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
37 minutes ago, mchookem said:

...i've never been somewhere with so many EVs! it's actually pretty cool. but knowing Denver went for Harris close to 80% i know most of the Tesla drivers here are not in support of Elon's current warpath.

Is that a reverse "leopard eating faces?"

Edited by Parliament
Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:


Whatever, veterans are suckers and losers. They’re getting what this regime thinks they deserve.

They didn't think of bone spurs. Fuck 'em!

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