Apparently those protections haven’t been adequately enforced, in the opinion of many Congressmen, as previously cited.

> If I were a congressman I’d vote against whistle blowing “regardless of context” which is how the bill phrases it, more or less,

Did you read the context of that statement? The intent is to address concerns that people who first tried to raise the issue through normal work channels (i.e. inform supervisor, suggest process improvement, etc) or deal with it as part of their normal job were not being granted whistleblower protection for later raising the issue higher up the chain. The “prior context” was justification for the board and courts to rule they were not “whistleblowers”. The Democrats and many Republicans disagreed, and said the whole intent of the law was to protect anyone raising the issues, even if they tried to do it through channels first.

> … but I also know that the guys at NASA would be alot better off if congress appropriated some additional funds to them rather than giving them the option to speak in front of congressional sub-committees about possible violations, let the lawyers do that, let the scientists do science.

I certainly agree Congress assigning additional funds (like maybe signing last year’s budget and giving them the money they expected for this year) would be great. And certainly taking scientists away from doing science so they can talk to Congress about problems is a waste. Except for the fact that the big waste is the problems in the first place, and the means to correct the problems is for the people who are having them to directly testify. It’s like court – you don’t interview the lawyers on the stand.

How can a bill that prevents union members from using a secret ballot (and thus protecting them from being bullied into voting a certain way) be good? Or rather, how could _every_ Democrat support this? This bill seems more anti-union to me, so maybe the yeas and nays should have been reversed.

The way I read this and implied by the title “streamlining the process” (not that titles are particularly honest) is that the Labor Board can make the determination the employees want the union representation without the employer’s challenge. It doesn’t say secret ballot is not an option. Also the old wording says 30% of employees and the newer version says “majority”.

Given the Republican track record of opposing any unions, I’m going to trust the Democrats here argued the vote clause was only being used as intimidation and or stalling tactic and not because employees were joining unions out of peer pressure.

Do you know if any such votes ever resulted in uncovering coerced union membership choices?

SharkByte, your hyperbole misrepresents the actual arguments being made. There are several forces at work within the Republican Party to stifle science. One is the religious conservative element resisting the philosophical implications coming from the results of science, and opposed to the liberal moral opinions from those who base their views on science. Another force is the Big Business corporate interests of maximizing profits without regard to other concerns. A third is the NeoCon agenda to promote an agressive, black/white foreign policy stance. These three forces have found a home in the Republican Party leadership, and have made their presence known through issues on abortion and stem cell research, issues on oil and timber industries and questions regarding climate change, and through the “War on Terror” and Iraq, etc.

No one asserts that the Republicans are actively trying to usher in a new Dark Age (hey, let’s set back science and crush our technological advancement!). Rather, the various political agendas all have reasons to be concerned about particular science information becoming public, because it does not support the positions they advocate. So there is a pattern of suppressing the presentation of science results, and the stifling of research into areas that are politically uncomfortable.

And political parties do have back room, front room, side corridor, phone call, etc conversations where they explicitly discuss Party positions on bills. They also play pressure games (within the party and with outsiders they can influence). To suggest that doesn’t happen is completely uninformed on the ways of politics.

Yes its true that 94 Republicans voted against this bill but I seriously doubt it was because they are trying to supress scientists right to speak out. I would be much more likely to believe they voted against it because they felt it was un-necessary legislation that was already covered some where else or because the bill was so laden with pork that had been added onto it that the real meaning of the bill was lost in the shuffle.

Ultimately, all we can do is ask the guys who voted against it why they voted the way they did but to portray it in the light you did serves no positive purpose what so ever. Please, I know the people who read this site are entirely to intelligent to be taken in by something like this without searching for all the facts first.

But as I thought about this bill, I was reminded of another one that recently passed the House: the Employee Free Choice Act.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll112.xml

Now, since every Democrat was for the bill and every Republican was against it (also, the White House stated the President would veto it if it makes it to his desk), so I’m not going to assume that this is a black and white, “if you vote for it you’re evil, if you vote against it you’re good” issue.

But one part of the bill seems particularly disturbing to me:

“In its current form, the statute allows an employer to demand a secret ballot election administered by the National Labor Relations Board when a union requests recognition based on signed authorization cards or petitions. The proposed Employee Free Choice Act would force the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union as the exclusive bargaining representative of employees based on signed authorizations obtained by union organizers.”

How can a bill that prevents union members from using a secret ballot (and thus protecting them from being bullied into voting a certain way) be good? Or rather, how could _every_ Democrat support this? This bill seems more anti-union to me, so maybe the yeas and nays should have been reversed.

I will say that the Democrats have their act together, either way. Looking through some of the other bills that have been voted on lately, the Democrats have rarely had more than one or two members vote a different way from the rest of the 232 Democrats.

Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/
Search for words/phrases: Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act
It lists 3 bills under “Listing of 3 bills containing your phrase exactly as entered.”
Click on one of these (it doesn’t matter which)
Then click on “Bill Summary & Status file.” in the table.
There should be a larger table. In the 2nd row from the left, 3rd column from the top there should be “Amendments”. Click there

Amendment 1, H.AMDT.41, by “Rep Stupak, Bart”, is the second amendment I mentioned, the one about adding a specific case of political interference. The fourth, H.AMDT.44, by “Rep Sali, Bill”, is the one that would eliminate the scientific protection entirely.

If you click on the amendment number it will give you additional information (although, strangely, not the text of the amendment directly). The “Roll no. ###” link shows you the voting record for the amendment. The H####-#### links show the debates on the amendments. It does not contain the whole debate, just the first few words of each statement. Click the link directly above that statement to get the full text of the debate. Note that it does not start at the appropriate section, it is somewhere further along the page. The text of the amendments is in there somewhere, probably near the beginning of the debate. I found the best way to get to the debate is to do a quick in-page search for the sponsor of the amendment and find the place where he formally introduces it. The text of the amendment is immediately after that.

TheBlackCat, I’m having difficulty locating the proposed amendments. Clues?

And this was not the only amendment to the scientific component of the bill, either. Another amendment (By Stupak) added a more specific protection to the bill:
“(3) any action that restricts or prevents an employee or any person performing federally funded research or analysis from publishing in peer-reviewed journals or other scientific publications or making oral presentations at professional society meetings or other meetings of their peers.”.”

Here the votes were very similar
all democrats wanted the part added
20 republicans wanted it as well
178 republicans did not want it

You cannot argue that this is them trying to separate two parts of the bill, yet it is pretty much the same pattern of voting. And once again none of the speakers expressed a problem with the existing bill. Their problems were specifically with the scientific aspects.

Chill Out, allow me to quote relevant testimony from the House Record:

As a result of finding that the civil service protections of the time were inadequate, Congress, in the first Bush administration, enacted into law the Whistleblower Protection Act, WPA, of 1989, which expressly stated that ‘‘any protected disclosure of waste, fraud and abuse by a Federal employee is covered by the law.’’
Unfortunately, as interpreted by the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal circuit court, loopholes began to develop in the WPA. Accordingly, Congress strengthened the law in 1994. It is noteworthy that the report accompanying the WPA Amendments of 1994 expressed great frustration with the way the WPA was being interpreted. According to the report, it states, ‘‘Perhaps the most troubling precedents involved the Board’s inability to understand that ’any’ means ’any.’ The WPA protects any disclosure evidencing a reasonable belief of specified misconduct, a cornerstone to which the MSPD remains blind.
1500
‘‘The only restrictions are for classified information or material, the release of which is specifically prohibited by statute. Employees must disclose that type of information through confidential channels to maintain protection. Otherwise, there are no exceptions.’’
Unfortunately, we are once again largely back to where we started. Since the 1994 amendments, 177 whistleblower cases have come before the Federal Circuit Court; however, only two whistleblowers have prevailed. Among the reasons are a number of decisions which have continued to create exceptions to the law, including decisions stating that an employee is not protected by the WPA if the employee directs criticism to other witnesses or a supervisor in an attempt to start the process of challenging misconduct, or the information disclosed was done in the
course of the employee’s ordinary job duties, or the information disclosed has already been raised by someone else.
In addition, the Federal Circuit Court has stated in one case that: For a Federal employee to reasonably believe there is evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse, as required by the law, he or she must overcome with irrefragable proof the presumption that the agency was acting in good faith.
This is an unheard of legal standard, defined in the dictionary as ‘‘impossible
to refute.’’ In other words, the agency pretty much has to admit to the waste, fraud, or abuse. H.R. 985 would clarify congressional intent that any whistleblower disclosure includes disclosures ‘‘without restriction to time, place, form, motive, context, or prior disclosure made to any person by an employee or applicant, including a disclosure made in the ordinary course of the employee’s duties.’’ In addition, H.R. 985 would end any uncertainty about the irrefragable proof standard, making it clear that the ‘‘substantial evidence standard’’ applies to all five categories for legally protected whistleblowing disclosures. Appellate courts could not impose additional burdens for a particular category, as I understand occurred in the case of White v. Department of Air Force with respect to ‘‘gross mismanagement.’’

To summarize, Congress feels the Federal Courts have consistently ruled counter to the intent of the law. Thus, the clarification is required in order to explicitly dictate to the courts the interpretation.

And I find it funny. Conservatives are loudly proclaiming the malfeasance of “activist judges” for overinterpreting the law, but here is a case where Congress is legally closing the loophole to constrain “activist judges”. Yet Conservatives oppose the closing of the loopholes.

Well I did some looking around and I managed to find the amendment here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d110:4:./temp/~bdLmvK::

An amendment numbered 4 printed in House Report 110-48 to remove the provision that would make influencing federally funded scientific research a prohibited personnel practice.

The scary thing isn’t the amendment itself, though, it is the vote tally (you can find that by clicking “Roll No. 150 at the bottom”):

159 Republicans were in favor of stripping the scientific protections from the bill
39 Republicans were in favor of keeping the scientific protections
232 Democrats were in favor of keeping the scientific protections
0 Democrats were in favor or stripping the scientific protections
4 didn’t vote on each side

You read that right. Although More republicans voted against the scientific protections than voted for the bill as a whole. There were only a handful of republicans who wanted to keep the scientific protections in the bill. All Democrats wanted to keep the scientific protections.

Second, people don’t need to to know the exact mechanism by which whistleblowers must act. If someone is fine with everything, then they can just ignore the bill. If someone thinks they need to blow the whistle, then they can talk to a lawyer or search for the relevant portions of the law themselves. All someone has to know initially is that they think something is wrong. If that is enough to prompt them to do something, then they can check about the exact process they have to go through. It is the same as if someone thinks they have been wrongly accused of a crime. You don’t need to know the law before it happens. Once it does you check the law yourself or hire a lawyer to do it for you. There is no need to know the entire law by heart.

Third, your criticism applied just as well to the original form of the bill. How are people supposed to know what the U.S. code says now? That is what lawyers or for or it is something you do when it actually becomes important. Changing it will not change that.

About your comment about how being more specific limits our freedom. I don’t agree with that position at all. Do you think we would have more freedoms if the bill of rights did not specifically spell out things the government cannot do to us? Besides, look at most the amendments. Often the last thing they say is “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” There is similar wording in the original constitution on many issues. The constitution is not meant to stand on its own, it is meant to be backed up by additional legislature. The constitution outlines the general manner in which the 3 main branches of the government operates, while the U.S. code deals with the specifics. If the U.S. code does not specifically say that people can sign away their whistleblower protections then they can be made to do so. If it does not specifically say that you can blow the whistle on classified information to authorized people then you will not be able to do so. The law has to be specific or else the courts will not be able to protect people.

And you cite an issue with adding a little bit of wording to the bill. But that is not the important part of the bill. There are a great many other parts of the bill that are most certainly not frivolous or unnecessary. These are changes that the last few years have shown are essential. So if they are making these necessary changes anyway, I see no reason why they shouldn’t clean up some more minor problems with the existing bill while they are at it. Citing one little part of the bill as being unnecessary while ignoring the many other parts of the bill that are is just nitpicking. Besides, you don’t know that the part you cite is unimportant. It may be related to real cases that I am not aware of.

And finally, you say this is not about science suppression. You are wrong. There is a portion of the bill that deal specifically and explicitly with this problem. It is in the bill. Therefor it is certainly an important issue.

You proved my point when you said “The hardest part for me was… finding Title 5 section 2302 to read the context of the changes.” Which is to say that unless you are a judge on a case as to the legitimacy of a whistle blowing or the lawyer of someone who’s wondering whether or not their claims are legitimate you probably aren’t going to read it. What i mean is, if you are a government employee the odds are you have not and will not read the US Codes that protect you.

Now, taking that into consideration, i see no reason why a judge needs more than the original text to make a decision. Its like saying that the “necessary and proper” clause of the constitution is too vague and then specifying what is necessary and proper, such an action doesn’t give more freedom, it takes away the ability to interpret, which is the job of a judge and doesn’t need to be done, in this specific case anyways by congress.

Now if Congress put out a bill saying that any employee who feels that their job has been put in jeopardy because they are forwarding scientific fact (a la that NASA climate change business with the Bush appointee, or that stuff about the grand canyon book store that were both publicized in this blog.) has the right to sue the government or what have you then go for it, no scientist should feel pressured to lie, science is about truth. But as i said in my original post i just don’t think this bill is about being pro or anti science.

The fact is these scientists are not ordinary civil servants. It is not their job to toe the party line. It is their job to do research and report the finding faithfully and fully. It is their job to tell the government and the people how things really are so the best decision can be made. What the Bush administration meddling in science ultimately amounts to is an attempt to alter reality, or at least our knowledge of it, so it confirms to the party platform. Government policy on scientific issues should reflect the best knowledge at the time, not the other way around. It should be clear by this point that covering up a problem, even by altering the results of scientific studies, will not simply make the problem go away. Reality does not care about the political opinions of those in power, so scientists trying to find out about reality should not have to either.

That is one of the most chilling comments I have ever seen posted anywhere.