WE.CONNECT.DOTS: The “one-percenters” are at the top of the food chain. For the rest of us, elite means having a government job. Pay is better. Benefits are to kill for. Hard to get fired.
Recent news indicates you can now add one more attraction for government employment: unrestricted use of computers with plenty of time for personal surfing of the internet.
“Titillating.”
Scandals over emails and web site utilization by government workers have broken out nationally and in Harrisburg. The word “pornographic” is appearing more and more in family newspapers.
“Hundreds of government workers used office Internet to access the website Ashley Madison,” the Associated Press charged recently. Washington Post puts the count of people paid by your Federal tax dollars to look and exchange pornography on computers you also bought at 14,000.
State Attorney General Kathleen Kane continues to sit on thousands of pornographic emails exchanged by at least 50 state workers. Her threats could be an underlying reason that she could be booted out of her elective office.
“Ashley Madison” uses the slogan “Life is short, have an affair.” The website claims to facilitate extramarital affairs. Many (but not all) federal customers appeared to use nongovernment email addresses, says AP. Something about a bigger discount if you join on a government computer.
Hackers recently released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website. The culprits intend to blackmail those who admit indiscretions in their email exchanges.
According to AP, at least two assistant US Attorneys, a data tech administrator in the White House, a division chief, trial attorney and investigator in the Justice Department and some Homeland Security workers are outed. AP pulled others from the House and Senate computer networks.
General Kane’s trickle release of emails in her possession already brought down a Gov. Tom Corbett cabinet member, a couple of deputies and several high-placed advisors.
AP says it will not name the government subscribers because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime. AP continues to need these people as sources for their stories which may be closer to the real reason for secrecy. Apparently deliberate misuse of government computers on taxpayers’ time is not a reason to overflow our prisons.
General Kane claims she is prohibited from releasing more racy emails by court rulings and labor contracts.
That would also be consistent with past practices. Inspectors in charge of monitoring British Petroleum’s undersea drillings were later outed, but not identified. Supposedly, they spent government time reviewing pornography. Said time might have been better used preventing a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico several years ago.
So far, pornography in our government has only been a minor issue in the multi-candidate “zoo,” also known as the 2016 Presidential race.
GOP aspirant Carly Fiorina, according to Bloomberg News, wonders how a government employee can sit around all day, watching porn, while the worker in the next cubicle actually works for a living. She believes the issue is more about gender since men tend to look at porn and women are better known for working harder.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), another aspirant for the big political prize, believes the scandal deserves less attention. He told the Washington Post “I don’t know if it is against the law in some states still. In some states, there are old laws against adultery, but I think if we start going after people and locking people up for adultery, we’re headed for a bizarre world.”
Elsewhere is no less entertaining.
Two Michigan state lawmakers, first-term, social conservatives from the GOP’s Tea Party wing, “apologized and said they did not misuse resources,” according to AP. Rep. Todd Courser “admitted to orchestrating a fictional email in May. That racy email falsely said “he was caught with a male prostitute to divert attention” from his more conventional affair,” reported AP.
Both Courser and Cindy Gamrat are married to other people. They also shared office and staff.
Bottom Line: I am too old to get a government job. If I wasn’t, I would look at the “titillating” features of such employment. That beats worrying about wife looking over my shoulder at home.
I worked for the State of Maryland and as byzantine as that government was their state computers were administered for inappropriate usage and I don’t think they would have the problem Pennsylvania seems to have. I wasn’t even allowed to put Weatherbug on my desktop and since I had to do a lot of traveling I thought at least real time weather forecasting was perfectly appropriate.