I like how he says it’s his freedom to make those stupid videos. Well guess what idiot, it’s the city’s freedom to fire your dumb ass too.
Blackwater? Haliburton?
Pfft. You’re far behind the times, friend. Blackwater hasn’t been Blackwater for some time; they kept changing their name to try and buy some better PR and are now known as Academi.
Oh, and Erik Prince is no longer involved in the running of the company, although he does appear to own part of it still. Back in 2009 he moved to Abu Dhabi and started a new [del]mercenary[/del]security company called Reflex Responses. Cite.
The world will be a better place when Mr. Prince departs it.
My initial reaction was to reply to this with a post which would undoubtedly be seen as supporting ex-Chief Kessler.
I don’t want to seem like I’m supporting him, because I don’t.
At the same time, though, I don’t want to leave this comment unremarked, because it’s not a good analysis of the law surrounding the city’s “freedom.”
So I’m hoping I can avoid controversy by simply saying, up front, that the purpose of this post is to rebut the analysis above, as opposed to defending the chief.
Kimballkid: if the chief had posted videos discussing how valuable Obamacare is, and the city council hated Obama, would they still be free to fire him for posting what they thought were stupid videos?
Of course - with the stipulation it doesn’t violate any existing employment laws or terms of an employment contract. Why wouldn’t they?
Is this, as it appears, some kind of transparently bad sort of gotcha?
Now whether or not the legal right to perform the action makes the action ill-advised is entirely a separate matter.
Officially they are not firing him for the videos. Even though I think they should.
The videos aren’t bad because they are pro-2nd ammendment. They are bad an embarrassing to the town that hired him because of how he did it. If he had a pro-obamacare video made in the same manner they should fire him too. The videos made him look like an out of control crackpot. Not the person you want in charge of law enforcement.
Because when a government is an employer, they are bound by the First Amendment in a way that a private employer is not.
This is ludicrous. The town is very likely not anti-gun. Its a small town in Central PA.
That doesn’t mean they want to be the main stage for a national embarrassment.
He’s horrid example for gun ownership as well as the he’s shot himself in the hand in a rather hazy incident. He treats guns like toys.
If he had frothed at the mouth about Obamacare and hinted at threats to Right Wing think tanks he’d be in the same boat but the incidents in his past would be shocking himself with an auto-defilberlator that belonged to the township the situations might be close to comparable.
You are way off base here, Bricker.
In addition to the above, and barring any contract, they could fire him for no reason at all since Pennsylvania is an ‘at will’ employment state. As far as I know, stupidity is not a protected class.
So basically, yes, a transparently bad attempt at a gotcha.
Translation to plain English: “I’m outraged by the liberal hypocrisy, but I can’t quite put my finger on, much less explain, what is hypocritical about it.”
I wonder what the life expectancy is of the people who made this decision. 
Good grief, talk about missing the boat.
I fully support the town’s decision to fire the idiot chief.
I do not agree that Kimballkid’s reasoning is correct. That’s my only statement.
Anyone who believes “I like how he says it’s his freedom to make those stupid videos. Well guess what idiot, it’s the city’s freedom to fire your dumb ass too,” is the correct way to analyze the law surrounding this issue, please say so.
People who are attacking me because they suspect my sympathies lie with the chief and I wish to expose some flaw in the town’s approach, listen up:
The town is well aware that firing the idiot chief on the grounds of the videos alone invites a risky First Amendment defense. Thus, the town’s asserting: “Nahas said the borough claimed that Kessler made improper use of a state-administered purchasing program to buy discounted tires for his personal vehicle, failed to submit required crime data, and made derogatory comments about borough officials…”
So please, if your knee-jerk reaction is to defend the town, stop. The town is fine. It’s doing just what it should do. I love the town. I want to marry the town and have its children, and do things with it that I’ve never done before. OK?
My only point here in this thread is to point out that it’s not accurate to say that the town has the “freedom” to fire someone in the same way people have the freedom to make stupid videos. Also, it’s not correct to say that the town can fire for any reason it pleases because Pennsylvania is an at-will state. Even though that would be true for a private employer, it’s not true for a town. Because the town is “government,” it has restraints on it that a private employer doesn’t have.
OK? If you wish to debate those specific propositions, speak up.
Bricker, this is quite possibly the most, um, human thing I’ve ever seen you post on the Dope; you should bookmark it or something as an example of the type of informative, witty, contentious and engaging post that we all should strive for whenever possible.
Plus, the bolded part totally made me Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there!
I’m sorry, the quarry went down the rabbit-hole.
If you work for a company that has big policies and procedures on how to fire someone yo could probably make innocuous political videos on youtube all year long. It would take a boss seeing them, disagreeing with them and going through a lot of those procedures by himself to get you canned.
On the other hand, if your videos showed you doing things that were an embarrassment to the company as a whole, and the company’s insurance saw them and said this employee’s antics may result in a rate increase, and the overseeing safety institute that regulates your company says the video are causing them to increase inspections and review your certifications the company as a whole will likely start looking into your competence and viability as an employee.
And then when you are issued a warning you call in a bunch of goons to parade around the company, causing safety issues and bringing unwanted negative attention that results in sales losses.
Don’t act surprised if they can your ass for that.
Somehow I don’t see someone making a video supporting Obamacare (or even being against it) bringing such irresponsibility to the table.
While it may be true they have some first amendment restraints that don’t allow outright firing (and I’d be curious as to what those are) because they are ‘government’, they can make it very miserable to do his job.
Also, in my opinion, he has compromised any ability he had to do his job effectively.
Conservative conservatives hate these types much MUCH more than liberals.
Four words.
You. Are. NOT. HELPING!!!****
I know this is a hijack, and I’m sorry, but I am curious about the details on this. I live in an at-will state and work for the government, and if I recall interviews and hiring packets correctly (mine from a few years back, and all the subordinates I’ve interviewed and sat with while HR goes over the legalities), my particular bit of government seems to be under the impression that we employees can get fired for any or no reason as long as it’s not a federally-protected status thing. Is that not actually true?
Agreed on both counts.
But I wrote to correct your earlier statements because they were incorrect. These statements, in contrast, are quite correct.