EPA Porn Enthusiast Still Employed at EPA

Some people wonder how many
grains of wheat a pile make. Others, like
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), wonder “how much pornography
would it take for an EPA employee to lose his job?”

The question, it seems, is rhetorical.
The Washington Post has followed up on the randy
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee who admitted to
watching two to six hours of porn a day at work: four months later,
he’s still pulling pay.

EPA’s spokeswoman Liz Purchia confirmed that the porn-watching
employee is still employed but on leave, but could not comment
further because of the ongoing investigation.

The EPA’s inspector general reported that the employee had
downloaded over 7,000 porn files—and was even
caught in the act red-handed when the IG special agent walked
into the office for an interview.

We need to get hard on these masturbatory delinquents, says Rep.
Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who recently introduced a bill “to make it a
uniform federal government law that employees cannot look at porn
at work.”

Meadows acknowledges that this is a systemic bacchanal not
limited to the EPA. The Week
reported in August that employees from other government
agencies were also caught with their pants down—mostly for lack of
anything better to do:

An employee at the Federal Communications Commission told
investigators that the reason he watched up to eight
hours of porn at work every week was “out of boredom.”…A
Treasury employee who had viewed more than 13,000 pornographic
images at work “stated he is aware it is against government rules
and regulations, but he often does not have enough work to do and
has free time.”

And the problem goes beyond mere salacious Web-surfing:

“It’s not just casual porn viewing, but hours and hours of
unproductive time doing things we shouldn’t be condoning. There
seems to be a need to reinforce agency rules that might be in
place, but not enforced,” Meadows said.

But before we get all blue in the face over insouciant feds
spending taxpayer funds to twiddle their thumbs, consider the
alternatives: EPA employees could watch porn all day or they could
spend their time conducting
SWAT raids on Alaskan miners,
regulating emissions from wood-burning stoves, or harassing
citizens
for building stock ponds. A porn-watching government worker is
a distracted government worker—and we might all be better off for
it.