Last Friday, POGO, along with over four hundred other groups, urged the President and Congress to move forward on restoring credible whistleblower rights for federal employees.
From the letter:
We offer our support to expeditiously pass legislation that includes the critical reforms listed below. Whistleblower protection is a foundation for any change in which the public can believe. It does not matter whether the issue is economic recovery, prescription drug safety, environmental protection, infrastructure spending, national health insurance, or foreign policy. We need conscientious public servants willing and able to call attention to waste, fraud and abuse on behalf of the taxpayers.
The letter goes on to detail what strong whistleblower protections for federal employees would look like:
A strong Whistleblower Protection Act would:
- Grant employees the right to a jury trial in federal court;
- Extend meaningful protections to FBI and intelligence agency whistleblowers;
- Strengthen protections for federal contractors to make them as strong as those provided to DoD contractors and grantees in last year’s defense authorization legislation;
- Extend meaningful protections to Transportation Security Officers (screeners);
- Neutralize the government’s use of the “state secrets” privilege;
- Bar the MSPB from ruling for an agency before whistleblowers have the opportunity to present evidence of retaliation;
- Provide whistleblowers the right to be made whole, including compensatory damages;
- Grant comparable due process rights to employees who blow the whistle in the course of a government investigation or who refuse to violate the law; and
- Remove the Federal Circuit’s monopoly on precedent-setting cases.
A copy of the letter is available here.
-- Bryan Rahija
- Cross-Post: We Need Whistleblowers
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Gangs use a street code of silence and retaliation to protect their domain. US President Kennedy was instrumental in stopping the gangs by way of anti-discrimination laws by protecting those not in the gang. It is my understanding that it is a federal crime to withhold information regarding the unlawful behavior of a gang. Therefore, those not part of the gang are entrapped if they don't blow the whistle. The hard part is to know which gang your up against. GOD BLESS AMERICA FOR US President Kennedy!
Thank you for this information and please keep up the good work.
Posted by: scott | Sep 21, 2010 at 04:13 PM