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FCC Commissioner Broke the Law By Advocating for Trump, Officials Find (theverge.com)
A newly released letter from government officials finds that Republican FCC commissioner Michael O'Reilly broke a federal law preventing officials from advocating for political candidates when he told a crowd that one way to avoid policy changes was to "make sure that President Trump gets reelected." The Verge reports: After he made the comments, the watchdog group American Oversight filed a letter with the Office of Special Counsel, which handles Hatch Act complaints. In response to the group's letter, the Office of Special Counsel said today that O'Rielly did, in fact, violate the Hatch Act. The letter said O'Rielly responded that he was only trying to provide an explanatory answer to how those changes in policy could be stopped, but the office rejected that reasoning. The office said it has sent a warning letter to O'Rielly this time, but will consider other infractions "a willful and knowing violation of the law" that could lead to legal action.
I suspect everyone breaks one law or another every day and doesn't know it.
It is likely that the Office of the Special Counsel has a better handle on the Hatch Act and the relevant case history than raymorris does
I still can't believe the Left thinks that racism serves as a rebuttal when it's completely orthogonal to logic and simply shows you to be the miserable wretched racist you are. But then again, the leftists have always been racist, from founding the KKK to oppose the Republican abolitionists to running the National Socialist party and killing other socialists for not being the right sort of socialists and then complaining that if only they'd gone further left, everything would've been just great. Oh well, you changed from hating the Jews to hating the 1%, I'm sure nobody will ever notice the resemblance in terms of forcibly dispossessing a rich segment of the population and distributing their goods. So when they go around murdering people you can always take comfort in the fact that it was done for a "good reason"!
You quoted the first half of 7324, subsection A. Read the rest of it, subsection B.
(ii) an employee appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose position is located within the United States, who determines policies to be pursued by the United States in relations with foreign powers or in the nationwide administration of Federal laws.
[That's an FCC commissioner]
may engage in political activity otherwise prohibited by subsection (a) if the costs associated with that political activity are not paid for by money derived from the Treasury of the United States.
Subsection (a) is what you quoted. But subsection (B) says appointed people CAN do those things, as long as they don't spend government money doing it.
Dude, Kellyanne Conway alone has as many Hatch Act violations as the whole eight years of the Obama administration!
The current administration has taken graft and corruption to heights unheard of in the First World. Please, continue to blame Obama for all your problems, though.
dom
Except people from both sides have been hit and mentioned several times in this comments section..
But those who have been hit were covered under the Act.
That is clearly not the case here from a plain reading of the Act. O'Rielley is a Presidential appointee, and appointees are explicitly excluded from the Act.
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Subsection (b)
(ii) an employee appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose position is located within the United States, who determines policies to be pursued by the United States in relations with foreign powers or in the nationwide administration of Federal laws.
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He is an appointee. He used no taxpayer funds. He simply made a statement. The Act specifically exempts appointees.
This is simply political grandstanding.
It's also rank with the stench of fear and desperation on the part of Democrats.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Violations of the Hatch Act were common during the last 8 years, but none of the current ButtHurts got very exercised about it.
This is tribalism in action. Members of the tribe are not held accountable for doing things that those outside the tribe would be held accountable for. Most people do it. The Democrats were mostly fine with Obama essentially continuing Bush's foreign policy, even though they had railed against the policy when Bush was in charge. Likewise, evangelical Christians, the supposed "values voters", chucked it all out the window to vote for a serial adulterer who bragged about assaulting women. We can imagine the Republican reaction if Obama's personal attorney had paid off a porn star to cover up an extra-marital affair during an election campaign. Yet, we hear little from them now.
Rank hypocrisy is a major feature of how the world currently works. Go looking for it anywhere, and you're likely to find it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"politicians will do or say anything to protect their "tribe""
FTFY
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In my years here on earth, I've realized that most people are hypocritical to at least some degree. Including me.
The only solution is when one is being hypocritical, and being called on it, that both sides meet and renounce hypocrisy. The problem is, we devolve into 3 year old mentality when confronted by our own hypocrisy rather than admitting it, we point to "worse" hypocrisy as an excuse for our own hypocrisy.
And because enough people play that game that way, we all end up losing, getting more and more hypocritical. The only solution is for the grownups left, those that can see their own hypocrisy without excusing it, to start calling everyone on their own bullshit. Obama wasn't the greatest president, GWB wasn't the worst. They were more or less equal for all intents and purposes. It is only the edges where they differed substantially.
The question is, why do we continue to excuse bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior? I didn't let my kids get away with it, so why are we letting adults who should know better do it?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.