Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Scientific American, The US Department of Energy has refused a request from President-elect Trump’s Energy Department Transition Team for information about what their people do on their work time.
Energy Department Refuses Trump’s Request for Names on Climate Change
Trump’s transition team asked for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers.
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Energy Department said on Tuesday it will not comply with a request from President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers.
The response from the Energy Department could signal a rocky transition for the president-elect’s energy team and potential friction between the new leadership and the staffers who remain in place.
The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters last week contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years.
Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the department will not comply.
“Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people,” Burnham-Snyder said.
“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” he added. “We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.”
He added that the request “left many in our workforce unsettled.”
…
In my opinion this outrageous response is the very epitome of a government department which is out of control. Refusing to provide information to the new administration about what staff do with their work time, to me suggests the US Department of Energy believes they are a law unto themselves – they think they are above politicians and political cycles, and intend to continue wasting money on climate programmes, regardless of what the new Trump administration wants.
I say defund the lot of them. The few important roles they perform, such as overseeing the handling of nuclear material and nuclear waste, can be transferred to other departments.
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@ur momisugly all scientists-for-hire (by enviroprofiteers):
“You’re fired! — Donald Trump
lolol
The Energy Dept. employees have nothing to fear — if they have been doing honest, bona fide, science.
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ANOTHER GREAT ARTICLE — THANKS, ERIC WORRALL!
Looks like the firings start at the top!
If the head of the Foxes sent a formal request to the Hens to document how many eggs they had laid in the last year, the above is what we might expect from the Roosters.
Heh, they’ve laid eggs alright, and they sit on them, and they still rot.
============
The fox isn’t in charge of the hen house.
No, but the farmer soon will be, and is expecting his chickens to produce.
==============
Word on the street is that Rick Perry is in line to become Secretary of Energy. Amusing since 4 years ago he recommended abolishing the DOE.
J Patrick,
More portentous than amusing I think.
It will be amusing when what is coming…comes.
It’s VERY difficult to get fired from a public-sector job, however, blatant insubordination of a lawful order is one action sufficient for immediate termination.
Trump and his administration must immediately fire anyone that’s insubordinate, and soon the message will be understood…
Trump and his administrators must also issue orders with very tight timelines or Leftist minions will just run the delay game.. Anyone that doesn’t comply with timelines also gets fired.
There is a new sheriff in town: comply or your career will die…
Make my day…. I hope many millions of public-sector employees quit or take early retirement and are not replaced. Attrition alone could balance the federal budget.
” I hope many millions of public-sector employees quit or take early retirement…”
They do not have the intellectual/moral integrity to quit. Furthermore, they do not perceive that they are “off base”. Rather, they believe that the president-elect is the one who is “off base.”
Most (not all) of government bureaucrats are in their cushy jobs because the pay, high job security and benefits are excellent with little concern about productivity, efficiency or merit as demanded by the private sector…
Yes, in the private sector, one has to show results or you’re fired…. What a concept…
Trump will try to create a private-sector meritocracy environment within the public sector, which many bureaucrats will find difficult, if not impossible, to work under.
Again, Trump’s new public-sector raison d’etre will be: comply to meritocracy or your career will die…
It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out.
The usual sequence is to offer a buy-out to induce people to take early retirement. If too few accept, the next step is to do a Reduction in Force (RIF). See my comment at 8:53 pm, 13 Dec. for more info.
SRI, it is only money. I am not exaggerating: Money is the cheapest thing you have as a manager.
Spend anything you can to get rid of a poor employee. They destroy any chance you might have to satisfy your customers. In the public arena, customers are citizens.
More on this later.
Frankly, I think that President Trump should eliminate all positions created since 2016 and RIF the current holders of those positions.
Are we sure there’s been any insubordination yet? Seems to me all this public noise is just posturing as long as it’s just a “transition team” in action. Does this team have any real authority at all? The DOE still works for Obama’s team, right?
Come January we may see a bit more cooperation from the career bureaucrats. The political warriors won’t last very long.
I wonder if the travel vouchers etc. have record retention requirements.
Actually they do. They are, after all, the basis on which payments are made and essential in demonstrating correct decisions in any possible audit.
huh? Did he just provide ‘For cause’ in writing?
I think he just provided some very nice evidence for “not a team player**.” Heh, heh.
** one of the approaches employment law attorneys use to get rid of difficult-to-fire bad apples in the U.S.
I’m excited to see what changes their mind on Jan 21st.
You better think twice, have you been naughty or nice? The lumps of coal in the stockings on the 25th may change a few minds earlier.
What? You think Santa doesn’t know?
===============
“the department will not comply.”
Demonstrating the need to Fire a whole lot of Bureaucrats.
Smart professional response would have been, we respectfully delay answering questions until Mr. Trump is sworn as President. At which time we will provide answers to all questions.
Absolutely agree with this one. And it would be justified, since there is clearly a very large amount of work involved in preparing correct answers to each of the 74 questions.
To just flat-out refuse was clearly intended to publicly antagonize the transition team.
Spot on! They show themselves up as blatantly unprofessional. They need to go.
“Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the department will not comply.”
From
http://congressional-staff.insidegov.com/l/3817/Eben-W-Burnham-Snyder
Details
Name Eben W Burnham-Snyder
Office Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA)
I was shocked to find Eben working for a liberal progressive democrat.
It’s worse than you think. Not only was he speechwriter for that buffoon and global warming blowhard Markey, prior to that he was Senior Communications Associate at NRDC (National Resources Defence Council – think board members Leo DiCaprio, Robert Redford and Wendy Schmidt, wife of Google CEO Eric Schmidt – and before that account executive at Fenton Communications (famous host of the infamous Real Climate). An experienced propagandist. Time for him to hit the road.
“I say defund the lot of them.”
I second that.
President Reagan said government was the problem, but he was just too nice of a guy to really do anything about it. Not so Trump. We are in for an internal government cat fight of epic proportions.
Reagan never had a Republican majority in congress.
The crucial difference.
Trump is proposing more federal spending, not less.
Chris, please go away. U R a troll.
F O O L.
He ain’t perfect. Here we are talking about the Good Trump. Hopefully we can reign in the Bad Trump on other issues.
Also, not all spending is equal. Get rid of the waste and fraud. Make sure the employees are actually contributing something. Basically, each department has a mission – a job to do. Anything else is unnecessary and hopefully eliminated.
Stan, thanks for expressing the power of your intellect for all to see.
catweazle – I’m hurt, just crushed, by what you’ve said.
/sarc off
Although not surprising, this seem to be an arrogant reply especially to someone is soon to become your boss. Looks like an awful start to your new manager. It would seem that the reply would have been better if they proposed what they could provide in reply to the request and give a better reason why it is difficult to reply to the specific request, the reason given is arrogant.
For example I assume their must be an organization chart with names on it which describes the various department and functions of the entire organization and sub organization charts giving more specifics for each sub department.
Furthermore working for a well managed engineering company, we were required to submit every year a comprehensive list of accomplishments for an annual review with our supervisor including goals for next year. These documents should be available for review
Also when I was an officer in the Army Engineers, I was in charge of a branch in the School of Engineers teaching maintenance and repair of some specific equipment and we went through a comprehensive audit where we had to justify the number of personnel in our branch considering the workload and number of classroom hours we were expected to provide.
Am I naive about how the government currently runs it’s various departments today? Based on my work in alternative fuels it seems to me that there are too many conferences going on with massive attendance such that the employees in the government have no time left to do any useful work. Apparently they want to cover this up?
“the reason given is arrogant”
They assume they have public support, but they don’t.
Heh, JMH at another blog just reminded me of President Reagan and the air traffic controllers.
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First we had “Hope and Change”. Now we have Donald “Climate Change” and his socially liberal picks for cabinet positions. Yet y’all insist he’s some kind of monster conservative. Some kind of New York liberal.
Which are those Harold?
This is exactly the right response. Public servants need to be protected from political processes so that
they can do what they are directed to do so without fear of reprisals from the next incoming administration.
If Trump wants officials who will do their best to implement new policies then he needs to ensure that they
feel secure in their positions and not subject to a witch hunt for doing what the previous administration told
them to do.
It should be noted that the transition team asked a list of 74 questions and the department is only refusing
to answer one. And ultimately Trump will have a better civil service as a result.
SCrew that, they should follow truth, not the lies they were told to “prove”
What if the “Public servants” are part and parcel of the political process? What protection should they have?
I suggest that model is well and truly broken, if it ever existed. Consider the punitive IRS attacks against Conservatives – if President Obama had not been able to fire specific people, had not been able to investigate what was happening, it would have been difficult to tackle that particular mess.
Somehow the stables did not get cleaned out and Lois Lerner got away with contempt of Congress:
QUOTE
“On May 7, 2014, on a near party-line vote (with six Democrats joining all Republicans) the House of Representatives voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the Congressional investigation.[139] House Republicans dismissed Lerner’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment as ineffective, with Issa stating: “You don’t get to use a public hearing to tell the public and press your side of the story and then invoke the Fifth.”[140] Democrats characterized the contempt proceeding as a “witch hunt” geared toward the 2014 midterm elections.[140]”
UNQUOTE
The above quote is from Wikepedia.
But he could and did fire the people in charge. So what you implied could not be dealt with was in fact dealt with.
The incoming admin has the responsability to know every employee and their function. Not informing them of this basic information is ridiculous.
Geronimo, do you even read what you post? “they can do what they are directed to do so without fear of reprisals from the next incoming administration”
So it is OK to do what the old administration tells them to do, but not the incoming?
I’ll remember your intelligence level next time I see one of your posts.
Yes, “I was just obeying orders” covers a multitude of sins doesn’t it.
Political processes such as the enabling legislation which spells out their roles? Or do they just reinterpret legislation and do their own thing?
Congress writes the laws which defines the scope. The Chief Executive, through his Secretaries, implements his policies within the law.
So it’s fine for one president to “fundamentally transform” things, but not for his elected replacement to decide to do things in a different direction?
Three words: Air. Traffic. Controllers. Buh-bye
Well guess what Department of Energy people? Your power as an agency is subordinate to the powers of Congress and the President. Under the separation of powers, all power is divided among the 3 branches of government. Agencies are not a branch of the government and can be dismantled at any time. They cannot deny the president the information he seeks because they don’t have the power to do so. They can be fired and replaced at will.
Well since Obama ordered complete cooperation, firing the persons responsible for non-cooperation would be appropriate even after Obama leaves office, unless of course Obama instructs them its OK to not cooperate.
Pat Frank: December 13, 2016 at 7:43 pm
A physics PhD who says he believes in AGW is either: lazy (never investigated for himself), incompetent (can’t understand physics, the subject he is supposedly trained in), insane (lives in another world), or dishonest (knows the truth and says otherwise).
Ron, the long-standing acquiescence of the APS and AIP in AGW still flummoxes me.
Swamp critters.
I’m betting this will cause a flood of whistle blowers and that is the intent. The defense against AGW that has been denied for the past 8 years has begun. The debate that never happened but was settled will take place and be unsettled. Who and how complicity is determined and at what level will be what everyone worries about and that will drive the whistle blowers from the bottom up with everyone trying to save their skins. Can’t say I feel for any of them even though many were just protecting themselves and their families. This will be a nasty purge and I’m looking forward to it.
+ a whole big bunch
US Energy Dept., Born under Carter in 1977 and quickly had 20, 000 employees. Today 93, 000 employees and in 2015 a budget of $28 billion. Per wikipedia. Goal was to make the US energy independent and started off right away subsidizing alternative energy. So, how has that worked out? Let’s hope Perry can drain that end of the swamp.
If they were all full time, that would be $301,000 per full time employee.
If some are part time, then the FTE rate is even higher. That is effing absurd!
$28 billion per year here, $28 billion per year there, and pretty soon your talking about real money!
Government employee FTE (full-time-equivalent) is not the issue. It is how many contractor employees there are.
The Federal government lies to us about how many people work for the government. The numbers have exploded with off the books people.
The numbers cover overhead. $300k per employee is not out of the ordinary.
I think most of it went to Solyndra and Elon Mush.
@stock
They fund lots of energy projects with loans — that’s where much of the money goes.
There are also many fellowships granted to researchers.
@Karl Horrex, but they should also have a stream of incomes coming in also. So that doesn’t explain a very high Full Time Equivalent Cost
Gak! Another Carter boondoggle…. just say no to the loony legacy.
Most Western nations have departments of energy.
Yes they do and they are ruining the countries they are in, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia to name but a few.
Do you have any evidence that any of these DOEs do any good?
Or do you actually feel that everyone else is doing is doing it, is actually a valid defense of anything?
You do understand that research into fracking, which has given the US near energy independence, was funded by DoE when the private sector had given up, correct? DoE also looks after the nation’s nuclear arsenal, in addition to research in that area – 60% of the funding of DoE is in that area.
@ur momisugly Jim — astounding in how you present information
DOE simply combined FEA, ERDA, FPC and several other orgs.
BTW — 12 Billion is Spent on Nuclear Security (think mainly weapons)
The only goal for any government bureaucracy, is to spend every penny allocated for their budget so the next years budget can be inflated. Each promotion generally results in multiple hires as the newly promoted “director” needs to replace him/her self with an entire department to justify the promotion. Good friend use to sell computers for Dell—just before the end of the fiscal year, government orders for hardware would skyrocket–year after year.. Read recently that the DoD cannot account for some 6 trillion in funding–gone, lost in space, whatever. Would love to see the new POTUS reduce the size of the USG by about 50% if not more. Government should be run as any successful business is–no dead wood, no unproductive employees, no unproductive waste of funds.
Yep, near zero duplication of effort.
Eric,
If each of the readers out here were to adopt ONE of the 74 questions included in
Willis’s report of 4 days ago:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/the-doe-vs-ugly-reality/
and turn that question into a Freedom of Information request to our Department of
Energy, the Department MIGHT have the answers by the time Trump makes the
transition from just a citizen to President.
Be polite. The FOI personnel at Energy are obliged by law to comply except when
secrecy laws are involved.
Actually, a helluva great idea! Grab one at random and go for it.
Thanks, R.S.
In 1204 Pope Innocent III commissioned Arnaud (or Arnau) Amalric (died 1225), a Cistercian abbot, papal legate and inquisitor and tasked Amalric with the Albigensian Crusade. Cistercian friar, Caesar of Heisterbach wrote that, Amalric, when asked by a Crusader how to distinguish the Cathars from the Catholics, answered:
“Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius”
“Kill everybody! Surely the Lord knows who are his”.
I just love the Albigensian crusade and for that matter anyone who has heard of it, but I am fairly sure that quote is apocryphal. It is a bit like one of the Simon de Montfort’s famous last words, ” They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist….”
To be fair, it was General John Sedgwick who really said that, but Simon (5th Earl of Leicester, not the more famous 6th Earl) was killed by a stone from a mangonel on 25 June 1218 during the seige of Toulouse (during the crusade) and it would have been an appropriate line to go out on. Bringing myself back on topic, The boys and girls at the DOE are about to be on the receiving end of a metaphorical attack from a trumptastic trebuchet. Not some candy-assed mangonel. Alea jacta est.
Apocryphal or not, it is on point.
How about this quote:
“You’re fired.”
— Donald J. Trump
I can picture Trump recording a video to the American people, outlining the insubordination at the Department of Energy – and then saying, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
That quote and other versions that express the same sentiment indicate that that was indeed the policy during the crusade.
Washington DC is having a party while America is in recession. It is time for America to party and DC to be in recession. And Yes the two are related.