[brian]

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years.Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.
After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the letter on that computer, and accused her of “sedition.”
Here’s what her letter said.
“I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” it began. “The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes!” She mentioned that she was “a VA nurse” working with returning vets. “The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder,” she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq War.
“Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence,” she wrote. “This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.
Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.”
After her computer was seized, Berg wrote a memo to her bosses seeking information and an explanation.

Full Story: http://progressive.org/mag_mc020806

[CoolhandHutch]

We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.
Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.

Sedition: Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state.

[Judee Smudee]

I agree with most of but not all of her sentiments. However, it was a very, very bad idea to write the letter from a VA computer IF in fact that is what she did. As much as she has a right to free speech, the supreme court has up held the employers right to control information that comes off it's computers and that includes employers who are the goverment. On the other hand the people that are over reacting to this are real jerks. I wonder how high up the decision to grab the womans computer and start to persecute her goes? Any pro Bush persons must remember that this poor nurse is looking day in and day out at the limbless, legless, faceless soldiers that they never see. I think that she got a little carried away but maybe I would feel pretty strongly if I did her job.

[pickledpepperRN]

...Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources management service at the Albuquerque VA, wrote Berg back on November 9 and acknowledged that “your personal computer files did not contain the editorial letter written to the editor of the weekly Alibi.”
But rather than apologize, he leveled the sedition charge...

http://progressive.org/mag_mc020806

[sanctuary]

How terribly chilling. Even if I did not agree with her, (but I ,too, have worked in a VA) I believe this country affords to all of its citizens, the right to free speech. I hope she knows that this site is here, as many of us would support her, whether in patriotic support for the Constitution or because we too feel that this administration is behaving illegally, both here and abroad.

[ZASHAGALKA]

Originally Posted by brian

She mentioned that she was “a VA nurse” working with returning vets.

Gov't employees have the right to their opinion. They even have a right to make it very public.

What they don't have is the right to attach their position as a gov't official to add weight to that opinion. This goes back over a hundred years. There was a long and drawn out process to end the 'spoils' system of gov't employment (all jobs are political in nature) by replacing it with a 'competent and permanent government civil service'.

The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 provided that most government jobs are NOT political and are assigned by merit rather than patronage. The flip side is that non-political jobs cannot be used for political purposes. By attaching the weight of her job to her political opinion, she violated the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, thereby placing her job in jeopardy.

From the text of the law: " Sixth, that no person in said service has any right to use his official authority or influence to coerce the political action of any person or body."

Her actions were also, according to the law, criminal in nature. "SEC. 15. That any person who shall be guilty of violating any provision of the four foregoing sections shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or by such fine and imprisonment both, in the discretion of the court."

You can't have it both ways: either your job is subject to the spoils system of political entitlement, or your job status is removed from the political arena.

I knew that when I was a VA employee. And I'm sure that she did, also.

It wasn't what she said that mattered: it was saying that her opinion mattered MORE because she is a gov't employee! It is the implied coercion to vets under her care that they are subject to political approval in order to receive said care. It is the implication that her status as a government employee grants her an 'insider's knowledge' - and that her POLITICAL opinions should be heeded, specifically for that reason.

It is the difference between her job being a political position, or a merit-based NON-POLITICAL position.

You can have political opinions and express them as government employees. You CANNOT express them as a function of your position - unless your job is one of the very few, Pendleton Exempt, political appointee positions.

She should be scared. She broke the law. If she gets fired and/or criminally charged for using her position to further her political goals, it is a conundrum of her own making.

The next time she wants to use her government job as the means of her political mouthpiece, she needs to find a job exempt from the Pendleton act and be APPOINTED to that job.

I personally think its a wonderful thing that most of our Civil Service jobs are removed from the political arena. Imagine if every gov't job was filled by a political appointee. This woman violated an inviolate rule, enshrined in law, specifically designed to make the Civil Service a merit-based and not political system.

Simply put, in order to avail themselves of government services, the public has to fundamentally know that the availability of said services are NOT subject to political opinion. The Pendleton act was a firewall built specifically to protect the public from the implications of political will on the provision of those services. She breached that wall.

~faith,
Timothy.

[mark hamel]

Support your local ACLU chapter and Let Freedom Ring.........

[casper1]

I wonder If a letter commending their behavior would have resulted in punishment. The women has a right to her opinion. The Bush administration failed miserablely. This is a corrupt administration.

[casper1]

Originally Posted by ZASHAGALKA

Gov't employees have the right to their opinion. They even have a right to make it very public.

What they don't have is the right to attach their position as a gov't official to add weight to that opinion. This goes back over a hundred years. There was a long and drawn out process to end the 'spoils' system of gov't employment (all jobs are political in nature) by replacing it with a 'competent and permanent government civil service'.

The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 provided that most government jobs are NOT political and are assigned by merit rather than patronage. The flip side is that non-political jobs cannot be used for political purposes. By attaching the weight of her job to her political opinion, she violated the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, thereby placing her job in jeopardy.

From the text of the law: " Sixth, that no person in said service has any right to use his official authority or influence to coerce the political action of any person or body."

Her actions were also, according to the law, criminal in nature. "SEC. 15. That any person who shall be guilty of violating any provision of the four foregoing sections shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or by such fine and imprisonment both, in the discretion of the court."

You can't have it both ways: either your job is subject to the spoils system of political entitlement, or your job status is removed from the political arena.

I knew that when I was a VA employee. And I'm sure that she did, also.

It wasn't what she said that mattered: it was saying that her opinion mattered MORE because she is a gov't employee! It is the implied coercion to vets under her care that they are subject to political approval in order to receive said care. It is the implication that her status as a government employee grants her an 'insider's knowledge' - and that her POLITICAL opinions should be heeded, specifically for that reason.

It is the difference between her job being a political position, or a merit-based NON-POLITICAL position.

You can have political opinions and express them as government employees. You CANNOT express them as a function of your position - unless your job is one of the very few, Pendleton Exempt, political appointee positions.

She should be scared. She broke the law. If she gets fired and/or criminally charged for using her position to further her political goals, it is a conundrum of her own making.

The next time she wants to use her government job as the means of her political mouthpiece, she needs to find a job exempt from the Pendleton act and be APPOINTED to that job.

I personally think its a wonderful thing that most of our Civil Service jobs are removed from the political arena. Imagine if every gov't job was filled by a political appointee. This woman violated an inviolate rule, enshrined in law, specifically designed to make the Civil Service a merit-based and not political system.

Simply put, in order to avail themselves of government services, the public has to fundamentally know that the availability of said services are NOT subject to political opinion. The Pendleton act was a firewall built specifically to protect the public from the implications of political will on the provision of those services. She breached that wall.

~faith,
Timothy.

I Listen to Members of the Bush administration shove their opinions down our thoats daily. Why are they not they held accountable. Are they above the law.

[ZASHAGALKA]

Originally Posted by casper1

I Listen to Members of the Bush administration shove their opinions down our thoats daily. Why are they not they held accountable. Are they above the law.

They are political appointees, specifically exempt from the Pendleton Act. That act is designed to provide for a largely non-political Civil Service. They are not 'above the law'. The law clearly makes exceptions for political appointees, but emphasizes that such jobs are EXCEPTIONS to the standing Civil Service.

To the victors go the spoils. But how much spoils? Every gov't job? Or just a few carefully chosen ones? That was what was at issue with Pendleton.

The Pendleton act created a commission to determine which few jobs are 'political appointee' jobs, and which are the majority merit-based non-political jobs, not subject to the whims and winds of changing Administrations.

How much more would you have to listen to their opinions if EVERY gov't employee were appointed by the current Administration? The Pendleton Act severely limits the number of gov't jobs that are 'Political Appointee' jobs. You hear from them more because only they are exempt for Pendleton, and so, can bear the hallmark of the politics of the current Administration.

Don't you think that EVERY Administration would gut 'State' for their own appointees? Or HHS? Don't you think, if he could, that Bush would ensure that EVERY employee of the EPA were hand-picked by his Administration? The Pendleton act forbids that. But the price to the piper is that those jobs that the President can't, by Law, appoint, must also be merit-based, and so, non-political.

It is a valid and working compromise. But it depends on the non-political majority of Gov't jobs to be just that: non-political. In fact, the purpose of the Law was to create a firewall between the two types of jobs, thus ensuring a standing Civil Service more stable than any given Administration.

More to the point: the very purpose of the Law Ms. Berg violated was to give HER the protection to hold her job without being required to hold the political views of her leaders. The purpose of the law was to allow her to have her opposing opinions AND retain a civil service job. In fact, the very change created by the Law was to prevent people like her (holding differing views from the current Administration) from being summarily dismissed for those that DO hold that view. But it only works if she abides by the legal restraint that the two (her job and her opinions) are SEPARATE entities.

~faith,
Timothy.