Monday, April 09, 2007

John Wiley Price to Dallas County employees: No blog reading for you

An update on The Great Dallas Blog Ban:

Unfair Park follows up on reports at Grits and the Wretched of the Earth about Dallas County employees being restricted from reading blogs. They've confirmed a new policy - enacted two weeks ago by the Commissioners Court - and identified its source: John Wiley Price, who apparently doesn't have enough to do trying to get the county jail into compliance.

The policy explicitly limits access to sites that are “potentially harmful to Dallas County,” without defining what that means (though it apparently includes Grits). Amazing! Does Dallas County actually WANT its employees to be unaware of potential harms?

This is essentially a policy that says county workers will be less well informed than others in the community about what's going on around them. Foolish. And yet, somehow, typical. Dallas residents should let their commissioners know their opinion of this thoughtless blindering policy.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good Lord Grits you can not have an educated and well informed group of people. Next thing you know people will start to think for them selves and ask the wrong questions! Grits you are just trying to start trouble with all this accurate information and alternate viewpoints. Ignorant and uninformed people are sooo much easier to manage.

Anonymous said...

This is typical of Wiley, an information control freak. I bet John reads Grits for Breakfast, lunch and dinner so that he can stay informed on the issues at hand so that he can discuss matters intelligently.

Anonymous said...

Seems to me Grits' blog is helpful to Dallas County. I guess a lot of lawyers will be busy trying to enforce this ban.

Where is the ACLU when they're needed. I would hope for a public outcry against any ban that limits information available to anyone!!

Anonymous said...

Maybe he was just tired of grits pimping himself while looking for a job?

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Pimping myself for what? To whom? I'm not sure what you think is going on here.

Anonymous said...

I usually use my blogger ID for comments, but on this topic I'm going incognito.

Actually, the policy as it was related to me was "potentially harmful to Dallas County assets," but that may be a distinction without a difference. Guess it depends on how you define "assets". That could range from trying to protect the county computers from viruses to protecting the county's ability to limit the information disseminated to what employees get from the mainstream media.

And I disagree with the other guy's "pimping" statement. Keep up the good work, Scott!

Anonymous said...

I suspect that John Wiley, who just happens to be a member of the Juvenile Board, which oversees the operation of the Dallas Co. Juvenile Department, has a certain aversion to blog sites because bloggers could then publicly expose that fact that Wiley has, on many occasions, dated female juvenile probation officers, helped some of them get promoted, and conversely used his juvenile board position to have other juvenile employees fired depending upon the whim of his intemperate disposition.

Anonymous said...

Did Wiley learn that behavior from Bexar County politics? Sounds all too familiar!!!!

Anonymous said...

The same thing is now happening to TYC employees. It looks like they are afraid that we're becoming informed of what's really going on instead of believing that "they don't know anything". Educators at VFCA found today that either they couldn't get into Grits For Breakfast or that anything to do with TYC was scrambled. Isn't it interesting that across the hallway where the administrators, secretaries and diagnosticians are, accessibility was still allowed. Just some more of that TYC "One Team" attitude. Keep the people in power informed and swear that you know nothing to the lowly employees. I wonder who they think really keeps TYC going. While they sit in their offices and try to think up new policies and strategies to keep us under their feet, we are actually trying to help the kids get an education and give them some life skills that just might help them in life outside the facility. Thanks for looking out for us....NOT!!!! I guess these people think those in Austin care about them and will keep them around when they close our facility. Better think again, I'm afraid. I'm guessing they are going to treat you just as you are treating us. It probably feels good while it lasts though doesn't it. I just don't know how you can actually sleep at night and look yourself in the face in that mirror. You should all be ashamed. Don't any of you actually have any principles and can you not stand for what is actually right or do you just become a chameleon when you get that supervisory position?

Anonymous said...

I heard the same rumors about JWP and at least one juvenile probation officer.