Your tax dollars at work….wait, not “at work”, but, um…
Guest post by Christopher Horner, CEI
Funny how so many people at NOAA have the same hobby they work on on taxpayer-provided assets on taxpayer time directly related to their taxpayer-funded position.
But it’s OK. The American Meteorological Society is increasingly a sober, science-based organization, run by sober, apolitical science-types.
And, as I reminded NOAA in my appeal just denied today (see below), when seeking emails showing NOAA employees’ use of taxpayer assets to develop AMS’s advocacy documents, NOAA brags on its staff’s participation in and work for AMS. (NOAA waived this away as, well, ok, true, “at times”, apparently just not the times that matter).
Just as AMS touts their officers’ NOAA credential in presenting them to the world. But that’s not related to their work at AMS. Or NOAA. Except when it is.
But, despite these things and that, well, the documents were also created on agency time and held by the agency, always under the agency’s control (after all, how else did they inspect these 116 documents that are not under their control or obtained by them?), they really, well, erm…weren’t. Because NOAA was only “technically” able to pull and inspect them.
So, you see, our saying that possession “automatically” made them government records — which, ok, we didn’t actually say, but instead pointed to numerous factors including the above — is not persuasive.
You see, NOAA’s resident climate activists are like academics at public universities apparently getting a bit tired of having the “string” they agreed to of scrutiny, of how they use taxpayer time and assets, actually invoked. And have laid down the law to their nominal supervisors.
Which some of you may have been under the impression included us, the taxpayers. Well, you were wrong. Some employers have the right to see how their assets are being used. Just not you. When it comes to them.
So, no. No, these aren’t work-related records. Really. And as Attorney General Holder promised, FOIA will not, repeat not be used as ways to withhold records. It just won’t. Except when it is.
Evaluation of costs and benefits of suing to follow. But these contortions by the most transparent administration, ever (still claimed, as of yesterday! Let’s go to the evidence, here) are, on their own, priceless.
CEI_NOAA_AMS_Records_Appeal PDF
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Its easier to get computer data going in the other direction. Recall that Tallbloke, a well known private citizen blogging in the UK had his computers seized by the Norfolk Constabulary in the investigation of the “hacked” (read “leaked”) emails of climategate. They found nothing and had to return everything but they had a good look at whatever he had electronically. Gee, their FOIA requests are as simple as banging on your door unannounced.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/23/uk-police-seize-computers-of-skeptic-in-england/
Use this library to learn how to shutter NOAA, EPA, IRS, DOE, grant bribes to universities yes back to State rights and powers – no $$$ in DC to bribe voters and special interest groups . .
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/index.html
A truly corrupt government (or entity) is one that is corrupt a little bit, all the time.
Thank you Chris and team for your continued diligence on these transparency issues. The hypocrites in government are many and patriots few. In time history will record this sad period when political advocacy corrupted the education of science and scientific institutions throughout the world. Truth and understanding of the physical world we live in is the goal, keep up the good work of fighting for transparency.
We need to track the FOI requests that are denied.
Keep a tracker much like we track the outragous predictions made be Warmists.
The Denying of FOI requests may have another motive. It may increase the costs and time associated with skeptic’s work. The Warmists can live off government money, but the skeptics have to live off private money (hence: accoutability). If you recall during the Briffa/Yamal debacle, it took 4 years of FOI requests until he had to cough up his work. How much money in lawyers fees were paid out? The University of Virginia( wrt Mann’s emails) is also making this an expensive venture.
If we track these FOI denials over time, it is easy to show that the science has been corrupted. This is just politics dressed-up as science.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/freedom-information-act
Hahahahahahahahahahaha….
NOAA’s position is clear – employees who work in AMS leadership positions do so in their personal capacity. Therefore they have reason to hide communications between those employees and the AMS. (Note that the AMS Information Statement on Climate Change does not mention NOAA.)
So it’s okay for a government agency to link arms, share information and develop mutually consistent policies with a large influential private sector group, but because it is done “unofficially” none of that cooperation is subject to scrutiny or FOIA requests. Cute little bureaucratic sidestep there.
Good luck with pursuing the matter if you choose to, Mr. Horner. By the way, what’s particularly important about these communications?
Rudebaeger said:
February 16, 2013 at 9:26 am
We need to track the FOI requests that are denied.
————————————–
Hockeystick
If you think this is corrupt just look at what British MPs get up to.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/2/15/a-fistful-of-share-options.html
The chairmanship of the Energy and Climate Change Committee is effectively in the gift of Messrs Cameron and Clegg (Prime Minister and Deputy PM respectively). That being the case, Yeo’s continued occupation of the post tells us all we need to know about the two men’s approach to clean government.
Just look at what Tim Yeo has hoovered up.
Do you think he is getting this for nothing, or could it be because his Chairmanship of this committee?
ITI Energy Limited; suppliers of gasification equipment.
AFC Energy; company developing alkaline fuel cell technology. Address: Unit 71.4 Dunsfold Park, Stovolds Hill, Cranleigh, Surrey, GU6 8TB. Undertake duties as Chair, run board meetings and keep in touch with senior management.
Received payment of £3,750. Hours: 10 hrs. (Registered 20 March 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 9 May 2011. Hours: 11 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 13 June 2011. Hours: 12 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 11 July 2011. Hours: 11 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 22 August 2011. Hours: 11 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 12 September 2011. Hours: 10 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £3,750, 7 October 2011. Hours: 8 hrs. (Registered 17 November 2011)
Received payment of £5,000, 14 November 2011. Hours: 10 hrs. (Registered 13 December 2011)
Received payment of £5,000, 13 December 2011. Hours: 12 hrs. (Registered 2 February 2012)
Received payment of £5,000, 10 January 2012. Hours: 9 hrs. (Registered 9 February 2012)
Groupe Eurotunnel SA (non-executive) (of which Eurotunnel plc is a wholly owned subsidiary); company managing the Channel Tunnel. Address: Cheriton Parc, Cheriton High Street, Folkestone, Kent, CT19 4QS. My duties as a non-executive director include attendance at meetings of the Board and of the Environment and Safety Committee and advising senior management on a range of issues.
Received payment of £3,622.57, 9 May 2011. Hours: 6 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £3,569.33, 31 May 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £7,238.97, 28 July 2011. Hours: 11 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £6,440.62, 12 September 2011. Hours: 16 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £4,245.20, 14 October 2011. Hours: 4 hrs. (Registered 17 November 2011)
Received payment of £3,526.97, 21 November 2011. Hours: 4 hrs. (Registered 13 December 2011)
Received payment of £6,885.38, 31 January 2012. Hours: 8 hrs. (Registered 9 February 2012)
Eco City Vehicles plc, Hemming House, Hemming Street, London, E1 5BL; distributes and services London taxis. Duties include chairing board meetings and keeping in touch with senior management.
Received payment of £3,333.33. Hours: 10hrs. (Registered 20 March 2011)
Received payment of £3,333.33, 23 May 2011. Hours: 9 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £3,333.33, 22 June 2011. Hours: 9 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £3,333.33, 22 August 2011. Hours: 8 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £3,333.33, 22 September 2011. Hours: 8 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £3,333.33, 24 October 2011. Hours: 6 hrs. (Registered 17 November 2011)
Chairman of TMO Renewables Limited, 40 Alan Turing Road, Surrey Research Park, Guilford, Surrey GU2 7YF. The company is developing and supplying technology for second generation biofuels. My duties involve chairing board meetings and keeping in touch with senior management.
Received payment of £4,987.75. Hours: 14 hrs. (Registered 20 March 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 21 February 2011. Hours: 12 hrs. (Registered 29 March 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 25 May 2011. Hours: 4 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 27 May 2011. Hours: 11 hrs. (Registered 14 June 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 24 June 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 27 June 2011. Hours: 14 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 22 July 2011. Hours: 13 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.53, 25 July 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 3 September 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 22 August 2011. Hours: 14 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 25 August 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 22 September 2011. Hours: 14 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 23 September 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 12 October 2011)
Received payment of £4,166, 23 October 2011. Hours: 13 hrs. (Registered 17 November 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 25 October 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 17 November 2011)
Received payment of £4,166, 24 November 2011. Hours: 13 hrs. (Registered 13 December 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 25 November 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 13 December 2011)
Received payment of £1,666.73, 12 December 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 2 February 2012)
Received payment of £4,166.66, 22 December 2011. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 2 February 2012)
Politicians can always say one thing and do the other so long as they are the only voice being heard. You need publicity and a short, catchy phrase to explain the problem. Something that will play on TV and in newspaper headlines. “What is the government trying to hide”?
A demonstration in Washington of near naked people (young, female) holding FOI signs with strategically placed black-out to avoid overstepping the law, with tip offs to all the TV stations, something like that is required to get action. Have an important building in the background. Place an add in the local universities for participants. transport and lunch provided. a chance to appear on TV. pick your weather. 20 young gals would be more than enough to make the evening news across the country. the whole thing could be done for $1000 and yield $1 million in publicity.
President Obama’s directive to government agencies is being completely ignored. Government agencies are treating Obama’s memo completely opposite of its intent. FOIA is still being denied to “avoid embarrassment” and to “protect the personal interests of Government officials.” Agency officials are not acting promptly and in a spirit of cooperation (unless the request is from an environmental organization). And In the face of doubt, openness does not prevail! For a good laugh, read the relevant paragraph from the Presidential Memorandum below:
“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.”
Louis,
I notice a weasel word [“should”] is used 3 times in that paragraph. Weasel words negate the meaning.
Ultimately, we may have to take a leaf from Glieck’s manual. Impersonate a Greenpeace official – universities and other research institutions cough up emails and data to them that they won’t cough up to such as McIntyre.
D.B. Stealey,
You’re right. The use of “should” leaves room for all kinds of possible exceptions. But what about the “should never” used in the sentence “Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials…”? The use of “never” seems to leave no exception to the rule. I’m curious how a lawyer would interpret “should never” in a legal document. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if the FOIA memo was written entirely for show and was never intended to have any legal teeth. We should have learned by now that the modus operandi of politicians is to do everything for appearance with no actual consequences intended.
Chris, why don’t you attack a different way … FOI request the travel and reimbursement records for dates of known AMS events or appearances? And perhaps FOI NOAA spending records for any AMS related activities.
Well that settles it then, the work they do is private work.
So why is their salary coming out of the taxpayers pocket?
Keep up the good work, each defence of the indefensible by these people helps expose them.
It is pretty clear, that the politicians, bureaucrats and phoney NGOs need cleansed.
@Gary Young Pearse: …we may have to take a leaf from Glieck’s manual.
I think I share your feelings. On the other hand, whether you think it authoritative or not, this is pretty good advice: Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
I think we also need to have a site to track all of our comments that we’ve posted and that were censored. Be nice to have one site where people from all over the world can read them and see the sites that blocked them.
“Gary Pearse says:
February 16, 2013 at 11:39 am
Ultimately, we may have to take a leaf from Glieck’s manual. Impersonate a Greenpeace official – universities and other research institutions cough up emails and data to them that they won’t cough up to such as McIntyre.”
What we need is a “scientist” working for NASA or NOAA whom want redeem his/her soul willing risk his/her soles and become a whistle blower or at least a “deep throat”.
Chris , can you link your ordinal FOIA request?
The NOAA argument rests on a notion unreferred to by Chris Horner.
“Just because documents can be located in NOAA’s computer system does not mean that the records cannot be personal.”
Just because postal employees work for the government does not mean that their letters should be public property, whether they wrote the letters at work or elsewhere. Not should any emails of a personal or private nature be the property of government or Joe Public just because they happen to have been created on, reside in, or have passed through, a government (publicly) owned conduit. What is needed is an independent assessment of whether the correspondence is personal or work-related.
Whistleblowers. The only way to gain access to the inside of the fraud.
It’s virtually the only way a white-collar conspiracy can be cracked.
http://howtoreportfraud.com/examples-of-federal-fraud/grant-fraud
http://howtoreportfraud.com/do-i-have-a-case
Kent Clizbe said:
February 16, 2013 at 5:00 pm
Whistleblowers. The only way to gain access to the inside of the fraud.
—————————————
Whistleblowers are only called that when they expose something the left thinks is naughty.
If someone blows whistle against something the left likes, it is a criminal act.
Barbara Boxer (D, Calif) championed the Military Whistleblower Protection Act of 1988 that insulates those in the military who reveal derelictions of their superiors against reprisal, but called for legal action against the Climategate leaker.
“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘e-mail-theft-gate'”
“Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter”
“This is a crime”
-Boxer
Dec 2009
How she had the standing to assert jurisdiction, I do not know. Guess that doesn’t matter to her, nor those of her ilk.
Louis says:
February 16, 2013 at 11:54 am
” … But what about the “should never” used in the sentence … ”
better would have been to just put the word “shall” were “should” wast used
then it f.ex looks thus :
“The Freedom of Information Act shall be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government shall not keep information confidential merely because public officials …. ”
Leaves no room for multiple interpretations that way does it ?
barry says:
February 16, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Just because postal employees work for the government does not mean that their letters should be public property, whether they wrote the letters at work or elsewhere. Not should any emails of a personal or private nature be the property of government or Joe Public just because they happen to have been created on, reside in, or have passed through, a government (publicly) owned conduit. What is needed is an independent assessment of whether the correspondence is personal or work-related.
This sounds like bs to me. If you’re an employee of either a private or public company and create any document using the resources of that company, whether in their time or your own, that document automatically becomes the property of the company. This also applies to any document created on ones own resources and in ones own time but which has any connection to the company. How could it possibly be any different?