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Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer' (vice.com)
pogopop77 quotes a report from Motherboard: In September 2014, Mats Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state's engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don't last long enough, which "puts the public at risk." "I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote. This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat from The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying [stating]: "ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration -- at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' create violations." In January of this year, Jarlstrom was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Since the engineering board in Oregon said Jarlstrom should not be free to publish or present his ideas about the fast-turning yellow traffic lights, due to his "practice of engineering in Oregon without registration," he and the Institute for Justice sued them in federal court for violating his First Amendment rights. "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," he said. Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Motherboard: "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic lights. It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."
Now if this were a conservative state run by big corporations, you would also have them suing this guy for violating the proprietary intellectual property right of the algorithms used to control yellow lights. See there is no difference between conservatives and liberals. They both want to fuck you in the ass and will use any governmental, corporate monopoly, or legal statute to ensure that your ass is good and fucked. Your government wants to fuck you, Verizon wants to fuck you,
All Gore wants to fuck you. Trump wants to fuck you. HILLARY wants to fuck you. Chipoltle wants to fuck you. CNN , Fox, MSNBC and ABC also want to fuck you. You have a very desirable ass. It is best just to allow yourself to be fucked for the good of society. If you don't you will be labeled a homophobic racist child molesting homosexual terrorist.
Is the imbecile who sent the fine won't be fired.
Right. You are NOT a lawyer, but you are free to represent yourself. It is only practicing law if you do things for a client.
You can be an engineer without practicing engineering. You can be a Doctor without practicing medicine. A title doesn't mean anything when it comes to practicing a trade.
You don't need to be an engineer to measure slashdot advertisements now cover a full third of the screen while stories load and now 1/3 of the horizontal space which means the comment density requires much more scrolling.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm all for restricting the use of credentials - like 'Doctor', for instance - to people certified by the state to use them. However, that restriction should only come into play when they're using those credentials professionally or to lend authority to a fraudulent claim, which this man was not.
He was speaking the truth, arguably for the public good, and he IS an engineer, just not one registered to work professionally in the state. His background does make his study and its findings somewhat more credible to those incapable of understanding it themselves... but he's RIGHT, so he's not trying to use that title to defraud anyone.
I hope he wins his lawsuit.
If he wins the suit, there's nothing to stop people from claiming to be medical doctors and doing all sorts of (more) harm to society.
Just present the facts without claiming to be an engineer.
The thing is, he WAS an engineer, the fine was for practicing in the state without a license, even though that necessitates a transaction of some sort. They basically fined him for stating his education level in an e-mail as an excuse to punish him for disagreeing with them.
He IS an engineer, he is not practicing in the state of Oregon. Practicing is the part that requires registration, so this falls somewhere between a quick cash grab and wanting to shut him up.
If I understand the summary, he's challenging the fine for practicing engineering without registration as he doesn't actually practice engineering.
Perhaps it's not illegal to say "I'm a doctor" as long as you don't then go on to offer a medical opinion or perform a medical procedure?
Sigger than your average
Several textbook fallacies there:
*appeal to accomplishment
*holier than thou
*appeal to ridicule
*ad hominem(s)
All to support censorship based on an allusion to ("think of the children") perceived harm of someone not so ordained into this clergy you mention misinforming the masses by whistleblowing on the system while not having a certain piece of paper stating he has officially been indoctrinated into a certain groupthink category.
Along with "pumping your own damn gas".
The question isn't whether you refer to someone as an engineer, the question is whether they put themselves out as an engineer. You can call yourself "doctor" all you want while you're hanging out at a bar with your buddies, and no one could or would fine you. But don't try to send a letter to the state health department claiming to be a medical doctor, if you're not one.
You sound like a college dropout. Shut the fuck up.
Uh. What does Trump have to do with this?
This started in 2014 and finished up on 12 January 2017. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump didn't swear in until the 20th.
So the entirety of this sad debacle in the suppression of freedom of speech happened on Obama's watch.
Not that it was necessarily Obama's fault either. But, by your brain-dead "logic" it is...
This is about a collusion between state government agencies to shut someone up who is attempting to alert the public to one or more agencies' shady practices at the expense of said public.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I don't know, he wrote a letter claiming to be an engineer as an authority on a topic. Sounds a lot like hes practising.
So quick cash grab then.
The thing is once you state yourself as an engineer you are inferring you are an expert on the topic and are in fact giving a professional opinion/practising. He should not have stated his opinions as facts and linked that with stating he is an engineer.
Afaik the question is wether he was practicing as an engineer. Offering a medical opinion is part of practicing as a medical doctor. If he claimed to be a pilot and offered an opinion on what he thought the pros and cons of a certain model of aircraft were I wouldn't expect that to be illegal as it isn't part of the role of practicing the profession of piloting an aircraft to offer opinions of the various qualities of different aircraft.
The question I would ask is "Is writing an unsolicited letter to the state engineering board regarding the safety issues resulting from the length of a yellow traffic light considered part of the profession of engineering?"
Sigger than your average
1) Reserving bare ancient common words such as "engineer" is idiocy of the highest order.
2) In the state of Oregon, James Watt would have been apparently fined for not being "good enough", so this man is in a mighty fine company.
3) Again, what brainless assmonkey came up with the idea that applying math and physics to problems requires registration?
Ezekiel 23:20
Does the state even have statutes for electronics and/or computer and/or software engineer? I am or have been assigned the title per an employer for all of the above, with a degree for the first but the locality here only has registrations up to electrical engineering (they got stuck somewhere in the late 40s I guess).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
2 cash grabs. He writes to complain about short yellow traps and ends up falling into the unregistered engineer trap. Well played, Oregon.
The 'practising' assumes payment. He wasn't paid, he gave his professional opinion without asking for payment or offering his services as an engineer.
This is a letter from a citizen, who is also en engineer, at least by education, and is not carrying out that trade.
WTF are they doing.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
If you are educated as an engineer and passed all exams, you're an engineer, no matter what a state board says.
But they can regulate the conditions under which you are allowed to practice your trade as an engineer.
Regarding this particular case it's all legal skullduggery in order to shut him up instead of taking his complaint serious.
To me this tells it all. Are you going to help them with that?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Most states have some protection around advertising yourself as a "Professional Engineer" (PE) or similar term that implies you are licensed by the state to provide engineering services to the public. Only a few states apply this sort of orthodoxy to the general term "engineer", and the enforcement tends to be pretty lax.
Check on LinkedIn, there are several million people listing themselves as some form of Engineer--while most of them have an engineering degree from an accredited university, the vast majority of them do not have any PE licensure, for the simple reason that in many engineering fields there's just no reason get a state license.
Intel is in Oregon--and they employ thousands of degreed engineers and they definitely aren't PEs. Those job postings are advertised as "engineers" and the employees use the term "engineer" on their business cards and LinkedIn profiles.
Oregon state law is wrong, and in violation of the first amendment.
Next topic.
Politics have nothing to do with this. This is just plain stupid Americans doing plain stupid American shit.