h/t to WUWT reader Keith. Excerpts from:
NASA scientist pleads guilty to directing contracts to wife’s firm
By Robert Brodsky rbrodsky@govexec.com September 30, 2009
An award-winning NASA scientist has admitted to directing thousands of dollars in sole-source agency contracts to his wife’s firm and failing to report the income on a financial disclosure form.
Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, Md., a senior manager and scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to one count of felony conflict of interest.
Schoeberl, who has worked at NASA since the early 1980s, was charged last week after authorities completed an investigation run out of NASA inspector general’s office.
“When government officials direct business to themselves or their family members, other people are deprived of a fair chance to compete,” said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. “It is illegal for any federal employee to make an official decision that directly affects their financial interest, unless they disclose that conflict of interest and get approval from the government.”
…
At the time, Schoeberl was the chief scientist of Goddard’s earth sciences division — which conducts climate research — and the project scientist for the Aura project, a NASA mission to study the Earth’s ozone layer, air quality and climate.
…
Between fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2008, Animated Earth was awarded more than $190,000 in NASA contracts, all without competition, according to data on USASpending.gov, a federal Web site that aggregates contract spending data.
Schoeberl’s 2007 financial disclosure form did not include the more than $50,000 in contracts his wife’s firm earned that year.
Full story here.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is the agency that control the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) which is an adjunct of Columbia University in NYC.
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Here’s what all that government money bought us, impressive huh? Especially when you compare it to work already being seen at NASA’s Earth Observatory and Visible Earth.
The page of http://www.animated-earth.com is shown below. Note that the links to graphics don’t work on the original main web page, so please don’t complain to WUWT.
Welcome to Animated Earth
Animated Earth develops and distributes Earth Today, an exhibit displaying near-real-time Earth Science data sets displayed on a rotating globe.
Animated Earth also develops short movies that explain earth science processes and complement Earth Today. Movies are designed for viewing on plasma screens, over the web, or on museum kiosks.
The Animated Earth website is presently under construction. New features and additional information will be added over the next several months.
Part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and Maryland Science Center, 74 MB
Earth Observation Movies
Earth Observation Movies Page Link
(TRMM)
A series of animations about Measuring Rainfall and the Water & Energy Cycles
contact: barbara@animated-earth.com
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Eve (13:50:18) :
Gee Jeremy, what are you going to do when the earth continues to cool and you cannot afford heat? Freeze with your children?
In order to save our planet, YES – if needs be I will freeze. CO2 is a toxin – the EPA says so and the President is moving to enact federal laws against the evil factories and oil industry. I know it is all illegal stuff as the EPA does not have jurisdiction over CO2 but like I said the end justifies the means – if we save the planet then it will be all well worth it.
/sarc off
Ben M (12:36:12) : If NASA were a private company, no one would bat an eyelid over this. People in the commercial world give friends and families all sorts of deals. No one cares.
Um, that isn’t quite so clear… Many companies have policies about self dealing and conflict of interest. I’ve worked at several where such a deal would be a career ending event. (I’ve seen folks assigned to new departments and/or fired over such events). Maybe in your closely held mom & pop or in your Senator’s Private Slush company, but not in any publicly traded company or anything of size.
We do not have a directly equivalent law here in the UK, although we have some rather obscure laws that are rarely used but could apply to such a situation. The curious thing is that there are always two, cumulative, failings before a government contract can be awarded inappropriately, yet only one gains attention.
First there is the obvious human failing of greed that causes a government employee to overlook his responsibilities when dollar signs flash before his eyes. This is the one we hear about, with gaudy headlines along the lines of “greedy scientist feathers his nest”. Secondly, and equally seriously, there is a failure in the system so that his egregious conduct is not detected before it is too late.
The first failing can never be eliminated from any organisation because everything works through human beings, with all the frailties and errors of judgment that are a necessary part of the human condition. That does not mean that adults who succumb to temptation should avoid the full rigours of the law, they must take responsibilities for their mistakes.
The second failing is often brushed under the carpet because failing to supervise properly is not a crime. Yet no one would try a fraud unless they felt there was a good chance of getting away with it. Indeed, the vast majority of crimes, whether financial crimes or others, would not be committed if potential perpetrators knew they were very likely to be caught.
Within a commercial organisation, be it a trading company or a governmental organisation like NASA, the potential for financial jiggery-pokery is vast. In fact very little goes on because (i) the vast majority of employees are decent honest people who would never dream of cheating and (ii) those few who might be tempted know there is little chance of getting away with it.
What intrigues me is how this chap did get away with it. We must not overlook the fact that he didn’t get away with it for long, but he was able to place grossly over-priced contracts for pretty simple pieces of work with no one batting an eyelid at either the cost or the identity of the beneficiary.
There is another aspect to it. Placing a contract with a family member is not a problem provided you declare the connection. That’s all you have to do. Once you have done it you can argue your case as hard as you like and your argument will be heard in its proper context. This applies to tax-funded contracts and to private business. Transparency is the key. No one could even start to suggest there has been any form of cheating if the truth is out in the open.
Isn’t it strange how transparency is at the heart of avoiding corruption, at the heart of avoiding fraud and at the heart of good science? Well, no it isn’t strange at all. It’s just common sense.
Ben M (12:36:12) :
“……….
But I hardly expected this otherwise-excellent blog to get worked up over competition, transparency and fairness”
I would not presume to speak for Anthony or the Moderators, but in my opinion:
The focus of this blog is the science around Weather, Climate, and AGW. In the discussion here of the science, it is obvious to me that money and power have corrupted much of the science. As they said in Deep Throat: Follow the Money.
So, I am not at all surprised to see “competition, transparency and fairness“a hot topic here. It has been a lack thereof that has debased the science.
Steamboat Jack
Will someone please explain to me why he is spending 3.4 billion dollars of my money on carbon capture and storage (CCS)?
Rockefeller has consistently pushed to make CCS technologies part of the solution in making the United States more energy independent. He fought to make sure funding for CCS technologies was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – and as a result, $3.4 billion was secured for low carbon coal and carbon sequestration projects.
As discussions surrounding climate legislation move forward in the Senate, Rockefeller is fighting for even stronger investments in the technologies needed to secure a confident future for West Virginia coal.
http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=318456
How far would I get if I submitted a proposal to study Solar Cooling?
The advantage goes to those already inside the system, who can use thier knowledge of how things are awarded, and position. Pour billions into a generalized ‘climate study area’ and the pheromones get activated.
A large portion of the blame has to go to government, who should know better.
When I worked at a large defense contractor, I saw an engineer get fired for taking a partial box of typewriter carbon paper [see how old I am?] to his car. Stealing company property, even a few sheets of carbon paper, was not tolerated.
From the article:
“When government officials direct business to themselves or their family members, other people are deprived of a fair chance to compete,” said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. “It is illegal for any federal employee to make an official decision that directly affects their financial interest, unless they disclose that conflict of interest and get approval from the government.”
Oh, really?
That doesn’t seem to apply to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who resigned as Chair of the Senate’s Military Appropriations subcommittee after it was disclosed that she used her position to funnel contracts to her husband’s companies in illegal no-bid contracts: click.
And Sen. Barbara “Bouncer” Boxer kited over one hundred personal checks to the U.S. Post Office, made out to “Cash”. All the checks bounced, and Boxer never responded to the Post Office’s letters asking her to make them good.
Finally a Post Office employee called the newspaper, and Boxer immediately repaid the entire amount. The fact that she was facing re-election probably goosed her a little. What do you think would happen to you, if you kited even one bad check to the feds, and ignored their demands for repayment?
The government has abandoned its fiduciary duty to its citizens. Now, getting caught funneling tens of millions of dollars to your husband’s company results in only losing a subcommittee chairmanship — but no ethics or criminal charges. And she and her hubby got to keep all the money.
And now it appears that Keith Briffa has pocketed over a million dollars [£708,805] in grants that bought a brand new hokey stick to replace Michael Mann’s fabrication.
Question: who represents the hard-bitten taxpayers? Anyone?
How come the title bar says “Welcome to Adobe GoLive 6” when you follow the link to the Animated Earth home page?
According to Adobe, they have discontinued their GoLive product as of April 28, 2008 – and at that time the product was at version 9. Very sloppy work, but I guess that’s all you can get for that kind of money these days. ;->
It seems as though wuwt wants to have a private war with NASA and Gavin Schmidt. Even as an avid wuwt reader and AGW skeptic, the tone of this and some other posts about NASA and GS is becoming needlessly nasty, and IMO undermining wuwt’s message about skewed and biased climate science.
I want to be able to trust ‘published science’. These people have squandered government money and public trust to push a hypothesis that is over-simple and not supported by the facts. Rather than concede that observations invalidate their hypothesis they have diddled the data and attempted to hide behind bluster.
For Science to regain its credibility bad practices such as these must be rooted out with zeal by those who believe in the purity of Science.
The enormity of the crime of fiddling data must be understood.
Here’s an idea. How ’bout the guvmint just stop spending money, period? Think of all the investigative costs that would be saved!!!!!! No money, no scandals. We could start a referendum!
radar (17:37:20) ,
Try reading the masthead again.
Maryland, eh?
I wonder if this dude is friends with the “Energizer Bunny?”
REPLY: It’s about the huge amount of money being poured into climate science. For example, why replicate services for cost with outside contractors when NASA is fully capable of doing these simple animations themselves? – A
Just because it’s done in house doesn’t mean it’s free. $64,000 a year in a university environment (non-overheaded) usually amounts to ~$48000 in salary the rest consumables etc. About one third of the salary would be benefits so that leaves $32000 in direct pay (less than a grad student), so I’m guessing half a staff person at NASA? Or a low level SBIR Phase 2 contract.