Nice Hyperbole!

"It's outrageous, it shows that we are in the people's republic of Kentucky now – that government will block political speech that it does not approve of,"

So quoth Mark Nickolas, operator of the bluegrassreport website in an interview with AP about the government of Kentucky shutting off employee access to a number of websites, including Nickolas'. Not to put too fine a point on it here, but what the heck are government employees doing surfing the web?

State officials began restricting employees' Web surfing through a subscription service called "Webwasher" nearly two years ago, Midkiff said. Employees would still be allowed to access newspaper sites, daily weather reports and "things they need to have access to," Midkiff said.

Employees who feel they should be viewing some of the blocked sites could also appeal, she said. The restriction took effect Tuesday, Midkiff said.

Nickolas, who was U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler's campaign manager, said his site gets about 25,000 visits per week. About 10 percent of his site's visitors are from state government computers, Nickolas estimated.

I can see a valid point here. If Nickolas is getting 2,500 hits a week from government computers, that means a lot of government employees, taking salaries paid by taxpayers are not doing what they are getting paid to do. Not just blog access was stopped, either.

State officials this week blocked various categories of Web sites, including those dealing with entertainment, online auctions, humor and blogs.

I don't think this rises to the "people's republic" standard. More like the "what the heck are you doing wasting our tax money?" standard. Maybe instead of getting spun up about blocking these sites, people should be asking why are there so many state employees with what appears to be far too much free time on their hands.

• 

  By Roland Hesz, June 23, 2006 @ 8:20 am

  It was rumor – more exactly I read it at Kos, but it’s the same, I wish I could find a dead neutral political blog somewhere – that “right-wing” blogs are accessible, but I don’t know if that’s true.

  “Employees would still be allowed to access newspaper sites, daily weather reports and “things they need to have access to,” Midkiff said.”

  That’s the thing what I don’t really get. I can spend hours surfing news sites, and can’t really get what is the difference between news sites and blogs.

  But, it’s the employers decision what does he allow and what not.

  Still, I feel that they should either block the whole net – except for work related content, like .gov sites -, or only block the common sense content – like no Nude girls and such.

  But then, they do deserve it, I too think that government employees do have too much free time, and it takes me too much time to get anything from them.
  Let them suffer )

• 

  By Gaius, June 23, 2006 @ 8:23 am

  I told you – you’ve got a jaundiced view!

• 

  By Roland Hesz, June 23, 2006 @ 11:21 am

  Of course I have.

Other Links to this Post

1. Outside The Beltway | OTB — June 22, 2006 @ 6:25 pm