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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.
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
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)
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.
headline... evar. How about this instead: NASA Employee Suspended for Violating Hatch Act
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's not as much about wasting time as it's very much against federal rules to do anything political while on the job.
It's sad but warranted. He could've been more careful.
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.
It is not just about conflicts of interest or goofing off.
It also prevents one from using one's office to "encourage" (read extort) political contributions from those that must do business with one's office.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
He's not suspended for taking a /. break, he's suspended for violating the "Hatch Act", which explicitly forbids people from engaging in political partisan activities in the workplace.
I think it's a good thing. The last thing we need is political rallies on the intranet posting boards.
-Billco, Fnarg.com