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NASA Employee Suspended For Blogging At Work
BobJacobsen writes "FCW has an article about a NASA employee that was suspended for blogging on government time. Seems the unnamed employee's 'politically partisan' blog entries were a violation of the Hatch Act. The article ends with a chilling quote from the government's Special Counsel in the case: 'Today, modern office technology multiplies the opportunities for employees to abuse their positions and — as in this serious case — to be penalized, even removed from their job, with just a few clicks of a mouse.'" Thing is, he was soliciting campaign donations and writing partisan stuff.
Sounds fair to me. Anyone who wastes time at work posting on internet sites should really expe... shit the boss is coming.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
..makes sense to me.. at least he wasn't fired
Just like posting on slashdot :)
Honestly, the employee knew he was breaking the rules and if he was writing partisan stuff, I don't want to say he deserved it, but he knew what he was doing.
Then he should have had a little discipline and waited till he was home.
how do you blog with "just a few clicks of a mouse?"
Perhaps the Special Counsel should be fired for "being a total idiot."
I have to be mindful of when I am at work shouldn't this apply to everyone else?
many (maybe most) people would be disciplined for doing ANY blogging on company time. why should government workers be held to a lower standard?
...as long as he was campaigning for the other guy.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Because if the guy won, then his higher ups would be the canidate in a way, and that guy wouldn't care. If I saw some one that helped get me in office do something like that the most I think he would get would be like a week off, not 3 months, but if it was for my opponent then I'd push the max sentence. This kind of reminds me of the stuff that ex-governor Rayn's lackies did back in the day.
Since I didn't know about this Act, I searched and found:
This nice writeup. Bottom line is, this guy's a federal employee soliciting funds and pushing a political agenda on work time.
This of course has nothing to do with blogging, as you could replace "blogging" with "making phone calls" or "mailing letters" or "stalking people at the coffee maker".
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Well, how I feel depends on what political bias the employee had.
If the employee's views agree with mine, then they are jackbooted fascist thugs for suspending him.
If I disagree with those views, then the employee has every right to deal with this inappropriate use of paid time.
Yeah, if you get caught using company computers to do personal business like that, of course you're going to get nailed. That is true in most private sector companies, and especially true in government agencies where the rules are even stricter. There's no story worth reporting here. Guy did something wrong, and he paid the price. Period. Move along, citizens...
Zooperman
Are very hard to lose, unless you break a few simple rules, like using govt. property for personal reasons, or blogging about politics.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
There are programs that write sports articles. There's only so many ways to write a short article relating the results of an athletic contest, so newspapers have programs that do it.
Can't imagine it would be too difficult for a NASA engineer to write a program that automates political blogging to the point that you can get a new post out with a few clicks. Especially considering the 'quality' of some of the blogs out there....
paintball
Ideally, the State should be above Politics. However, its somewhat impossible to expect that the people who work within the State will not have political leanings and agenda.
That said, whatever political activism people want to take part in should use their own time and their own equipment -- unless their job IS political activism. TFA doesn't say what this guy's job is, but I seriously doubt it"s "chief nasa suck-up to potential future presidents."
If he's using NASA equipment, NASA time, and identifying himself as a NASA employee, then he's basically creating a situation in which causual observers might be forgiven for assuming that NASA is endorsing "candidate x"
Quite frankly, it doesn't make sense for a department, which is often the subject of political punches, to want to be seen as interested - because if "their guy" lost, then the other guy will take it out on them.
Sucks for this guy, but if you work at NASA you should be smart enough to know better.
People have been fired for not doing what they were supposed to do. People can get fired by solving crosswords all day and do nothing else.
There often however is an unfair difference between surfing Playboy and reading the Playboy magazine during the office hours. One is easier to detect and prove then the other. It will be used often as an excuse to fire people, because prove is so much easier to get.
At least In Belgium you need a valid reason before you fire somebody without having to pay weeks or months salary, so they will need this proof. People drinking coffee and having cigarette breaks all the time are much less likely to get fired on the spot.
It has to be said that many companies in Belgium will do the firing of people in several steps. Vocal warning, 2 or thre written warnings, firing the person.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There's probably a need to be stringent here. Being lax with someone that's using their work time at a governmental job to perform political activism really isn't an option. This is one of those areas where these types of actions (censure or terminating an employee) are sensible or even necessary to keep from either actual or apparent impropriety.
The last thing that you'd want is a governmental official padding out governmental positions with a wink and a nod to employees who divert government resources (including their time) to promoting their party. Most politicians probably don't even want to be anywhere near that sort of thing because of the fallout.
My wife was a federal employee for 20 years. From what she has explained to me, you essentially give up some of your rights to take the job.
one restriction that I remember is that she wasn't allowed to take part in protests. Workign in San Francisco, that must have been an every day opportunity she was missing out on!
So I don't find it at all suprising that someone who is doing campaign activities got zapped.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I know the folks who maintain our work's various policies and get brought in when discussing the computer-related ones. Typically policies are in place so that when a person's behavior (in person or online) get out of hand, they can point to a policy and say "you need to change or you'll be let go".
One specific to blogging appeared, with the usual wording about appropriate use of our company's name and so on (I think they wanted public affairs involved any time the name was mentioned in a blog). I came up with a list of obvious problems it raised, there was an outbreak of common sense, and all blogging language was removed.
Personally I feel that policies shouldn't be specific to online behavior if at all possible. Instead it's best to remain neutral to the form of communication and shape policies around it. For example, if we have a policy against hate speech, I wouldn't want to see employees writing hate speech on their blogs while they're at work (we let employees get online during breaks as long as it doesn't interfere with their work). What they do with their own time at home, of course, should generally be their own business.
A more important issue is what this says about the bloat and inefficiency at NASA. If an employee can spend years working on their blog at work, it is because they are not being given enough real work to do.
The issues of "only a few clicks" ignores the point of those clicks. Someone can perform a few clicks to find child pornography and end up going to jail for years.
Clicks don't kill people, people kill people!
I worked at the Census Bureau and posted on blogs like Daily Kos fairly regularly. I don't think it's at all an uncommon thing.
In college, I worked for the USDA as a student assistant. They take the Hatch Act very seriously, and I don't blame them. Why should my tax dollars pay a guy to politically work against things I'm against?
It's a Government Employee doing political campaigning on government time and with government equipment. Which any idiot can see is a bad thing, and amazingly there actually are rules against it.
As seen on bash.org:
<Ben174> : If they only realized 90% of the overtime they pay me is only cause i like staying here playing with Kazaa when the bandwidth picks up after hours.
<ChrisLMB> : If any of my employees did that they'd be fired instantly.
<Ben174> : Where u work?
<ChrisLMB> : I'm the CTO at LowerMyBills.com
*** Ben174 (BenWright@TeraPro33-41.LowerMyBills.com) Quit (Leaving)
I generally dislike Hatch, but this is one of the few things he did right (assuming there are no other gotchyas in this act). Government employees are there to serve the people not to serve the interests of some politician. When they are at home they can do as they wish, but bureaucracy is messy enough without bringing the politics in.
:P.
On the other hand, this person should be quite proud of his/her-self it takes some doing to get fired from a government job
----------
Just your ordinary BOFH
http://killertux.org
I blame the internet for this one too. Mars Climate Orbiter
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
No surprise here. First, taking time out off your job to do personal business -- blogging or anything else -- is a fine way to get in trouble with your employer. Just common sense. You'd get in trouble for taking an hour every day at 3 o'clock to go running.
Second, the Hatch Act has, for decades, prohibited partisan political activity by federal employees. There's good reason, if only because those employees make decisions every day about how and where to spend taxpayer money.
Third, the provisions of the Hatch Act are made clear to every federal employee when they accept the job.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
They give you enough notification when you start your job that you can not use work time to basically influence partisan political activities, particularly raising funds. There are a ton of restrictions for what you do while not on duty as well. But above all, as others have said, he used work time to perform non-work related activities, so the fact that it was Internet or even politically related is irrelevant.
Okay, I get that he was misbehaving and has been punished.
But how many times in recent past have we found that modifications on Wikipedia have been coming from the government and been overly partisan? And what happened to those employees? Nothing, as far as I can remember. What about all those e-mails sent through partisan servers from the White House because it was, well, partisan? How were these employees punished?
The government (and other employers) should set a policy and stick to it. Many employees find themselves with huge amounts of downtime these days, and forcing them to sit there and stare blankly at their screens is not a solution anybody can reasonably expect to work. Many people play solitaire, and nobody cares. I read news and occasionally post to Slashdot. And since being partisan is apparently not a problem (unless it's a new policy, in which case I'd like it enforced en masse) I would think the employee has a case. Especially if s/he was supporting the "wrong" party.
m
conspiracy theorists are being vindicated. some might choose a tin umbrella to go with their hats. the fairytail is WINDing DOWn now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=weather+manipulation&btnG=Search
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc.... as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis. conc
Well, folks, it's happening again! The
( ) New York Times
( ) LA Times
( ) Washington Post
is reporting that the government
( ) is censoring scientists with unpleasant news.
( ) is going to cut back program _________.
( ) has been engaging in warrantless wiretapping.
( ) wants to raise taxes.
( ) plans to institute new product regulations
This is just another case of
( ) Big Government ramming itself down our throats!
( ) the War on Science!
( ) how conservatives are killing the safety net!
( ) government punishing anyone productive!
( ) how the country's becoming a totalitarian dictatorship!
HT:
( ) Digg
( ) Slashdot
( ) Technorati
( ) The other blogger who's a carbon copy of me
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Realistically the Hatch Act is often used by bosses who want to cut dead weight *or weight they don't like*. If your in good with the boss and your views mix with his, then happy blogging.
;)
I would have no issue with this, if the rules were applied evenly across everyone. The reality is that it isn't. Just like many other Acts and Rules it is simply applied as a tool by higher ups to get what they want.
Should the guy have gotten busted, YES! He broke the rules. I don't disagree with that. Is the rules being applied evenly across the line... Left and Right... Upper Management and Lower Peons? Nope.
I would love to know what side this guy was on. If he was working Elephant or Donkey. Maybe someone knows? *Not that matters either way. Both Republicans and Democrats can be dickheads when they want to*
But, on balance, I don't want my money funding political blogging and fund raising.
I think that was a fair outcome.
Wow, maybe we have some rational laws after all.
Oooo to have mod points.....
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
Anyone at NASA stupid enough to think that one guy is any different from the other in the current political climate doesn't deserve my tax dollar.
A freelancer who worked for a client for us. He was thrown in a horrible project, and blogged about it. Not only did he mention the product and the client, but vented about how horrible the code was, how the team sucked and how the software was a unmaintanable mess
It all went unnoticed, until the potential customer, a contract the client was trying to get by hard work hence the rental of additional consultants, Microsoft, did a quick online research. Hit his blog, and decided to NOT buy the product.
That guy was sent home, and can try to start his carreer over.
Thank you, you win.
.gov. I know about the Hatch Act. They train us on it every year or two. I know to keep my partisan stuff to myself while at work. I can be flamingly red or blue at home, but at work, a non-offensive shade of gray. You get a slap on the wrist for screwing around (reading /.) at work. You get in much deeper trouble for porn, warez, hate speech, working for somebody other than the People (side jobs) or partisan politics.
:)
I, too, work for
He's only suspended, not fired, which makes me think it's not a "looking for an excuse to fire him" thing. Had the headline read "NASA Employee Suspended for Violating the Hatch Act", it'd be a Barbrady story. (Move along, looky-loos. Nothing to see here.)
This guy was suspended for violating policy, just like you could be at your job. Only thing is, for us "policy" is, as often as not, federal law. You, the taxpayer, (assuming you're a USA-er) are paying me for this post (which is why it's public domain if posted during normal business hours Eastern time) and paying him to shill for one candidate or another (didn't read, doesn't matter). If you think either is a waste of your money... well, you're probably right. I'll get back to work on Crystal Reports now if you want, but you probably benefit more from this than that.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
If you don't like the policy where you work, get a new friggin' job. In case you've forgotten, NASA is a government organization, so this does not seem like a far fetched "unfair" policy that it is characterized as being.
Everyone's workplace has rules...
begin rambling:
People these days seem to have forgotten one of my main tenets of a successful capitalist economy: the workers' right to chose. It seems that people these days have completely forgotten about that because they're scared of getting bumped from their comfort zone, or they're living far beyond their means and any lapse in the paycheck stream will cripple them financially. Marx came up with his theories in the fear that people would get married to their jobs and unable to better themselves in a capitalist system. I say it's all about choice, and having the BALLS to make the best choice for yourself and your family.
end ramble.
Have a nice friggin' day,
J
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Definitely a redundant sentiment, but I have to say it:
In other news, employee is shocked by the revelation that disrobing and defecating on his boss' desk during business hours was "probably not a good career move."
u-bend
headline... evar. How about this instead: NASA Employee Suspended for Violating Hatch Act
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There was one fellow, well known back then, who deliberately tried to get people he didn't agree with shut up by emailing the sites near the end of their posting path and asking "innocent" questions about whether the company had filed the cost of their Usenet connections as campaign contributions. Given that Usenet at this time was still pretty underground, often run by network admins on spare machines, this had the potential for causing a lot of fuss and of course completely blew the unwritten "Usenet stays on Usenet" rule out of the water. He was completely dumbfounded by the response he got and went on a years-long campaign against the evil Usenet cabal who were allegedly trying to shut HIM up. I don't know if he ever understood what the problem was.
Oops. my bad.
No problem with wasting company time on his blog. It was only the political slant that was evil.
Gotta RTFA.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
NASA is really going down the crapper... wait, that's not working either.
Even if he wasn't doing the above, firing would be quite justified for doing personal things while on the clock and accepting a paycheck. I sure don't want to spend my tax dollars to finance someone else's Internet hobby. And I sure don't want to do it for someone soliciting campaign donations and writing partisan stuff. Heck, maybe this isn't fair enough, can't he be charged with some kind of crime over this?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It is critical that the Civil Service function between changes in administration. If a new President came in and fired everyone to give overpaid jobs to the "friends and family plan" for the party and his supporters, you'd have a completely inept government, instead of our mostly inept one.
These days, we take for granted that the Civil Servants are employees doing a job, not appointees serving as the pleasure of the President, but understand how difficult it was to arrive there. Until Social Security and the SSA, and the IRS and it's paperwork, people didn't have "careers" the way we do now, you showed up, worked, got paid at the end of the day/week depending on the type of employee.
Right now, we don't have masses of Civil Servants doing political work or losing their job. The Hatch Act was part of creating that environment. The "excesses of it," obviously someone blogging on their lunch hour doesn't seem to be what was envisioned when they wanted to stop party bosses from filling a government secretarial pool with their cronies and cranking out letters from there, seem draconian. However, the alternative was real... and not useful to have good government.
The President is a political person, elected through politics, answerable only to political process, so of course he can engage in partisan process. The purpose of the Hatch Act (and similar legislation) was to depoliticize the Civil Servants.
While we joke about government employees being "lazy, incompetent, over/under paid, whatever," without a professional Civil Servants class it becomes a cesspool of corruption. As the public employees are normally unionized with a union that can both fight management (as a union) and change management (as a political organization), they are generally well paid and compensated, particularly with pension benefits and other back end benefits that politicians can approve and leave someone else with the bill. As a result, those jobs are potentially very desirable.
If you don't keep the political bosses away, watch how quickly jobs go to politically connected people that don't show up to work... It seems unlikely that someone powerful would care about a 30k - 90k/year job, but what if they could get it for their daughter-in-law that doesn't work, and just funnel money and benefits to their kids. That's how these positions work in countries without extensive controls, and why we have so many to keep the "friends and family plan" out.
Look at any community non profit and look at how many incompetent people hold well paying jobs because someone that gives money is friends with their parents/grandparents... corruption happens everywhere, and this attempts to reduce it. It doesn't attempt to remove partisanship from politics.
that NASA is not the department in charge of Gundam, either.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
I'm sure if I dug through my in box I could still find it. We're aloud to campaign as we will elsewhere, but we're not to campaign at the Space Center, nor are we to represent ourselves as representatives of the space center (or NASA) while campaigning elsewhere.
I've got no idea who it was.
What I will say is there's been more than one person pushing the Democratic ticket.
Let me get this straight.
Nasa ~ Military
Democrats ! Military
Republican + Military
so voting Democrats = ask for layoff
Yes, I am posting AC, but only because this particular article is going to gain attention, and I brought up the Democrat vs. Republican thing. I'm not even going to tell you my political leanings. I'm not going to debate the issues, the fact is a NASA employee or contractor pushing for a Democrat is a bit like a fur trader backing Peta.
Once they caught him at this, this was as automatic as watching someone step up a building and then fall to the ground. You do not mess with the Hatch Act as a govt. employee period. Doing it at work? He was soooo history.
Steven
The issue was federal employees campaigning, not blogging. Nevertheless, since it was a rank & file employee who no-one would ever know about, it was obviously a grudge.
1) Suspended, not fired
2) No mention of a political party
3) Only a small blurb, in a low circulation specialty mag.
The simple conclusion is that the offender leaned to the left. If (s)he were a right winger, (s)he would have been made an example of. Fired right away, and the national news would hev picked up on it in no time flat.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Didn't see anybody mention this yet, however, Scott Bloch, the Special Prosecutor, is a big-time political hack,:
Watchdog: Doc Shows Bloch Ginned Up White House Investigation to Protect Himself
Since 2005, Special Counsel Scott Bloch, whose office is charged in part with protecting federal whistleblowers, has been under investigation for retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office and generally politicizing the OSC.
Also of interest here is the fact that Bloch used Geeks On Call to delete information off his govt-issued laptop:
Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.
Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, [Bloch] confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer....
Bloch must be trying to take the heat off himself, after the recent FBI raid on his house and office.
Besides covering up for the White House, Karl Rove, and himself, he also indulged in some old-fashioned perks, picking up some $400 hand towels on the OSP tab.
If you're hired to do a job and instead you're posting to a blog, then its no surprise that you'd be fired. Especially considering that a government employee making political posts could be considered a form of propaganda.
This guy is a GOVERNMENT employee. He is being paid by me, by YOU, a guy who works and has his money taken by force if I don't "voluntarily" give it up. (yes, the IRS will levy your bank unless you pay them willingly)
This guy is on MY dime and dammit - he should be working. I don't care what agency or what side he falls on politically. We are paying him to do a job.
He works for me. Not for the Government. Me, YOU and every other tax payer.
People forget that the Government isn't a company. It's a group of people we have chosen to govern us (called the "consent of the governed) and as long as they are doing our will, we *ALLOW* them to remain in power.
Higher standard? Yes. Government employees should be 'civil servants'.
captcha: nursed
Clean your mouse before you make important clicks or updates... one wrong click and you're out of a job these days.
Oh wait... or you can just use a shell
Wow, this was news in like... April? It's almost June. Get with it Slashdot. All I see are stupid Digg stories and "featured" Yahoo stories here, and a day late to boot. Oh well, I suppose it's better than the global warming drivel... Anyway, according to that link:
Since many of you are young you may not remember the days before internet at work or cell phones. Back then we were required to WORK when at work. It doesn't matter if its your computer or your phone, when you are are on the time clock or company hardware or services, it is for business only. Blogging is not necessary for managing a personal life. Save it for off hours and off site.
You linked to a blog that linked to a story that was nothing more than supposition, and then claimed, as they did, that it "could" happen.
What am I supposed to take from this? That you're easily swayed by meaningless speculation?
Chances are, this guy just chose the wrong party to blog for. The Bush administration has been "for us or against" us for a long time. There's good reason the phrases "war on science" and "war on integrity" are common. It's easy to make fun when it's not you that has to go 180 days without pay. Think about it for a while and you might come to more reasonable options, like a warning.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
I feel it necessary to tell you you're full of shit, as misusing my tax money to advance your political agenda is sure as fuck unethical.
Who's joking?
To the submitter and the editors, I wanted to give a rare thanks for not mentioning which political party the employee was supporting. Because ultimately, it doesn't matter (I'm sure it's in the story, and probably commenters bitching about it lower in the threads). The employee needs to be fired regardless of who he was advocating or why. But it would have been easy to put the side he was on in the summary to rile everyone up over how bad "those guys" are on that other team.
I think most people who aren't slave-drivers agree that companies need to be flexible in giving people time for breaks and doing some personal stuff from time to time, or even using their company computer for doing exclusively personal stuff during lunch and outside of work hours. After all, we think about work projects while we're at home in the shower or buying groceries. But there can't be any flexibility when it comes to government employees using taxpayer funded equipment, even in off hours, for partisan activities that aren't specifically a part of their jobs. There's simply too much conflict of interest, no matter how low in the totem pole the employee is or how unrelated the politics are to the agency.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Yes, that is exactly the way it works in countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay and many others in Africa and Asia. Every single time a presidential term ends (assuming it's not a coup), the entire upper to middle echelons of the civil service are essentially laid off and the New Man's "people" brought in. We're not talking about just the presidential cabinet, this is widespread and down to the equivalent of middle management through out every branch of government.
You can imagine the disruption in the "quality" of whatever work any given government agency was doing at the time.
Of course in these countries the government is a fiefdom and the federal and state/municipal budgets the personal checking accounts of politicians. It's a system that has devastating consequences on the quality of life of their citizens.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Golly gee, a lowly government employee, while the department heads are actively violating the hatch act setting up fundraisers and manipulating their entire departments to support bush. Even when caught by congress they weren't dealt with. Most eventually resigned but at bushes request and long after congress told them to go.
Nothing more than supposition? It's the Washington post.
Don't agree with what they say? Take it up with them.
What am I supposed to take from this? That you're easily swayed by meaningless speculation?I don't know... If I use the work file server to serve up my blog or work email account to spam for campaign funding, my employer might still have a thing or two to say about how I use those resources, even if I'm doing it from home. You sound pretty confident though, so you feel free to give it a shot, 'k sport?
And here I was hoping for some juicy nerd rage, but no, cheated again.
No twitter, there is no "wrong party", this is the Hatch Act. Go. Read. A. Book.
That's true, but it's hilarious coming from the top "use GNU/Everything or die" evangelist on the internets.
blah blah, please mod me up, I'm with groupthink
It's also easy to follow the laws that apply to civil servants, which I assume they were informed about when they were first hired. Wanna work for the government? Sure, just don't try to get the one you favour elected (or the other ones kicked out of office). Simple, no?
Somehow I just knew you were going to jump in here to cry censorship and trot out the Republikkan conspiracy to keep you and yours down. Don't you at least read the 150+ comments that were posted before yours to get a feel for what's happening?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Employee A: He simply dressed one level too 'hip hop' (baggy pants AND flashy jewelery). But he did the job (cameraman). He was FIRED one day because the boss got sick of him.
Employee B: He was a director. One day he decided he didn't want the BS responsibility of the job for what he was being paid. He asked to be demoted to cameraman (with a corresponding drop in pay), and was granted this. Two weeks go by and he's being asked to direct for others not coming. He complains that this is not fair, having to direct and be responsible at a cameraman's salary. The boss immediately asks him to turn in his resignation.
Employee C: He's a director teaching one of the cameraman to direct. He lets the cameraman direct a segment during ratings/sweeps, and something goes wrong. The director is given two weeks notice.
Once again, what was that BS you just spouted about not being fired for except the most egregious actions?
Silly analogy: "Person gets arrested for buying knife", but the real facts are that the person got arrested for stabbing someone with that knife.
Likely there is really a story behind the story: He has probably pissed off the boss numerous times and they've been waiting for him to commit some act that they can stick him with.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
aah yes .. no boss today :D
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
America got lucky, damned lucky, that our leadership wanted competent government, and created a professional Civil Service. In Europe, they created a privileged Civil Service, where it doesn't seem at ALL accountable to elected officials, and people strive for wonderful government jobs... America is lucky that we somewhat sneer at them, it's part of competent but not suffocating government.
Our government may be mediocre, but it's a consistently moderate mediocre... Which drastically separates us from the kleptocracy of government that the rest of the Americas suffer from... Israel has a completely dysfunctional public sector because they look the privileged elite approach of Europe, and things like post office jobs are highly coveted and fought for because the post office can give you loans to buy your home, while private sector employees got nothing... Canada's professional Civil Service seems much more like Americas than Europes, which is important for their general success.
James Hansen, who has been using his post for nearly non-stop politicking and junk science for well over a decade?
If they held all government employees to this standard (as they probably should), you'd have to fire 90% of the EPA, most of the state department and probably all of the department of education.
Frankly, I don't think the ELECTED OFFICIALS should do any campaign work on 'our' time. If we had a part-time federal government (working, say, every other year), then they could campaign on their own time.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
Ahh, a global warming flunky. Have any evidence to back your claims? It appears that, as usual, you are lobbing insults to make up for the fact that you are empty handed.
Here's a link for you. It's not an opinion column. It's the law in question. I'm no lawyer, but reading that seems to indicate that federal employees soliciting campaign contributions for a specific partisan candidate is illegal. Period. Location and/or mode of solicitation aren't even mentioned. Section 7323 (a)(2)(C).
So it really doesn't matter where this government employee did it, he broke the law. He did it at work, on a government server/network. Other than indicating that's how they nailed him, it's beside the point. It's mandatory to fire him or give him a minimum 30 day probation. He got 90 days. Apparently, he should have known better.
"Have any evidence to back your claims? It appears that, as usual, you are lobbing insults to make up for the fact that you are empty handed. "
Actually it's you who is empty handed on the GW thing. I have done my homework, a lot of it by argunig the case on slashdot for 7-8yrs, so before I go to great lengths debunking Lindzden and linking to statements by everyone from the WMO to major oil companies, I would ask you to simply look at your own hand.
Provide me with a link to a SINGLE scientific body that disagrees with the much maligned "consensus". To be a "scientific body" the institution must have at least produced one paper on the topic for a reputable jounal such as Nature or Science. I will accept anything published since 2000.
As for the on topic thing I acknowledge you have done the work and sadly I had not. From what I read, US prosecutions often seem to be randomly applied and/or politically motivated, so I guess anything is possible. IIRC similar laws in the 60's & 70's were used to supress peace-nicks, pro-abortionists, homosexuuals, environmentalists, commies, etc. (I know they were used here in Oz).
BTW: I was attacking the WP opinion pages (Lindzen in paricular), sorry if I came over as narky.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Nope, I read it. You said
If the meeting covered the Hatch act, it was about ethics. You were wrong.
Please point that out in the first quote, which is what I was referencing. Hmm, it seems to be totally fucking absent. OOPS!
And? You were wrong, what do you want? That you explicitly referenced the "ethics" training in general does nothing to moot the fact that the Hatch act WAS covered, which makes it about ethics, which makes you wrong again. Seems it's YOUR reading comprehension that sucks.
Why would I do that when I was right about everything I said? Your post was bullshit, and your reply does nothing to change that. All you did in your reply, in fact, was to reference thing I care fuck all about and didn't discuss, and lie about that which I did.
Perhaps you could avoid saying shit that is wrong so you don't have to follow up with a pathetic reply defending your previous stupidity? It won't make you less stupid but at least you wouldn't be advertising it openly like you did with those two posts.