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.

Comments

Somebody doesn't seem to know the law of the posit

[raymorris]

This is bizarre. I wonder if anyone involved in this has READ the Hatch Act.

The Hatch Act doesn't apply to all federal employees. One group the Hatch Act says it does NOT apply to is:
--
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 the nationwide administration of Federal laws.
--

The FCC commissioners are appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Their job is to determine policies to pursued in the nationwide administration of Federal laws related to communications.

His job description is PRECISELY that which the Hatch Act, by its own terms, does not apply to.

It would make no sense to say that those senior officials who make political decisions, such the the Secretary of State and the FCC commissioners, aren't allowed to talk about politics. Net neutrality etc are essentially political issues, and it's the commissioner's job. Of course he's going to take a political stand! That's his job, deciding policy.

Improvement

[technosaurus]

Everyone talks about "change". Nobody wants change for change sake. What we want is improvement. Even on volatile topics like pro-choice/life there is middleground that gets left off the table because it doesn't invoke an emotional response in their demographic ... making adoption easier comes to mind.
Stop talking about "change", its meaningless since it can be good or bad ... or it could mean whats left in our pockets after taxes.

Apply that evenly and watch the heads roll...

[Karmashock]

Quite a few federal officials are taking political sides against the ethics of their office. Side X doing it doesn't excuse side Y doing it. However, it does make the calls to enforce such laws somewhere between hypocrisy and tyranny if they are only applied when an official goes one way but not the other.

The series of incidents are well known and all controversial indifferent to who said what when. I won't bother going through them because whatever I say will be gainsaid by a member of which ever tribe.

For real unity here... for real ethical clarity and purity... these laws have been applied evenly. You can't throw the book at one person for doing it and then say "it was an honest mistake" when someone from the other tribe did it.

Even handed or the entire principle becomes a crass and tyrannical pretext to power and nothing more.

I think too often people look at this sort of thing and think it can't get worse. That stability cannot tip over some point where instead of trending towards stability we will trend towards instability.

Those that welcome such events should consider that what real instability looks like... look around the world at countries that come unraveled. The horror and death.

Such as the wages of corruption. Such is the price of not having integrity. By all means... Burn the FCC official you don't like because he rolled back Net Neutrality and of course was appointed by Trump who is the second coming of Hitler/Satan. Whatever you hyperbolic scree.

Do it.

But when you do it, set a principle and a precedent. Make your bed because you will lie in it.