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.

Comments

Hatch Act

[Lxy]

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".

Re:Hatch Act

[canUbeleiveIT]

Remind me, while Bush is campaigning and fundraising for McCain, who is paying him to do that?

If you would have read the linked resource in the parent post that you responded to, you would have known why that isn't a violation of the Hatch Act. This is a list of who cannot participate in partisan activities. You will notice that the president does not fall into that heading. Not to mention that every US President that I can remember has politicked for members of his party, so I don't know why you are singling out ole George.

Re:Hatch Act

[richmaine]

I was (before retirement) a NASA employee for 35 years, and I do know the Hatch act well... as I ought to, it being drilled into us every year at mandatory and really boring "ethics" training. I feel it mandatory to quote "ethics" because it was just about laws and nothing about actual ethics, the subjects two having less correlation than one might hope. The article, and most of the posters here, are seriously misrepresenting the Hatch act.

In particular, the Hatch act has nothing to do with whether you are at work or not. The Hatch act prohibits a government employee from doing pretty much anything political even on your own time and with your own equipment. It is pretty draconian. And, of course, it only applies to peons; those high-level muck-a-mucks who are most likely to be abusing their positions are exempt. The excuse for all this is that it "protects" the employees from political pressure. Pretty lame excuse, though.

The bit about doing this stuff on government time is completely unrelated to the Hatch act. That's a distinctly separate offense, and one for which there is much less excuse.

It is unclear from the article whether the suspension was really because of the Hatch act offense or the use of government time.equipment. I suppose it could have been both.

Re:Hatch Act

[AMuse]

Rich: These days the Hatch act interpretation, at least at NASA, is a bit more loose. From what I've been told, us peons can do nearly any political activities we want while on our own personal time, but nothing during work hours, or using government equipment. Bumper stickers are still OK on your car. Supervisors are held to a bit more strict of a standard I think, since they could force employees' hands.

We can also still run for and hold local office as long as we're not violating any conflict of interest rules.

Hatch Act wasn't do depoliticize politics

[alexhmit01]

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.