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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!
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."
...as long as he was campaigning for the other guy.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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.
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.
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.
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)
They aren't. Many companies also allow personal use of the internet (with varying rules regulating that use). Many companies don't. Many government entities do. Many don't.
Is it OK to spend 5 minutes in the hallway talking to co-workers about the big game last night? Some places/bosses wouldn't care. Others would. Some places give you breaks and lunches. Many professionals don't a whistle that blows telling them it's break time. They manage their own time.
There is no "one size fits all here". And certainly no "lower standard" you could guess at based on the article.
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.
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.