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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I suspect that the response was formulated by employees with political appointments. So they will soon be out of a job in any case. All this does is delay the inevitable as the questions are completely legitimate for the new appointees to ask.
In the long run, Mr. Burnham-Snyder and whoever tells him what to say, may end up costing a great many people their jobs. The President-elect has apparently chosen Governor Rick Perry to be the new Secretary of Energy; Governor Perry may be more than happy to eliminate entire components of the Department. And if I were an employee of the various contractors, they will find out that it is not impossible to issue new contracts to new contractors. As noted, this may take some time, but in four years time, it can probably be accomplished. The arrogance and unaccountability of these folks is amazing. No surprising, but amazing nonetheless.
It would be amusing to ask exactly these questions through FOIA. Which attempt would end up getting the information first? 🙂
The standard form for Department of Energy FOI requests is here:
http://energy.gov/doe-headquarters-foia-request-form
You may also mail in your FOIA request to the following address:
FOIA Requester Service Center
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Mail Stop MA-46
Washington, DC 20585
Or by facsimile at (202) 586-0575. If you have any questions, please give
them a call at (202) 586-5955.
Please be polite and keep it simple.
And have the money on hand to sue them for non-compliance.
You are such a fool, Charlie Brown.
Exempt because it relates to pre-decisional deliberations:
“predecisional” materials written as part of the decision making process in federal agencies.
The Department of Energy is near the top of the list of useless federal government organizations. The country would be much better off without this dinosaur. There are plenty of other organizations that harm the economy while wasting tax dollars and most of them are unconstitutional.
Out of 16 cabinet level appointments only four are constitutional, namely the State Department, the Department of Defence, the US Treasury and the Attorney General.
The other twelve need to be closed down ASAP and especially these:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Please listen to an explanation by constitutional scholars that concentrates on just one of these federal departments:
https://secure.hillsdale.edu/hillsdales-barney-charter-school-initiative-2016/?utm_source=housefile&utm_medium=phone&utm_content=bcsi&utm_campaign=tele_townhall
ALL are constitutional
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
— Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution
duh!
Apparently not many on this thread have seen a corporate killer in action. Ask for answers and see who jumps. Not many guvment employees have experienced a takeover as that just doesn’t happen to them, until now. Those who are doing their jobs and well down the food chain are safe. The top, with attitude, ha, heads will roll. This could be like nothing seen before in our government.
+1 It will be business as unusual. Brings to mind the “efficiency experts” hired to improve the profitability of a company before it’s put on the block.
I think you have it right, Steve! +1
@ur momisugly Steve
The top as you say are political appointees — they expected to not be re-appointed they are the 4000 that need to be hired.
The POTUS-Elect can’t do anything remotely like a takeover. Line-item veto is UNCONSTITUTIONAL per SCOTUS, so it’s sign the budget or don’t.
The statutes that protect the civilian federal employee, also protect the military federal employee — FAT CHANCE CHANGING THEM.
@ur momisugly Steve
Please list the corporations the POTUS Elect has taken over.
He threatened take-over (greenmailed) Holiday Inn, Bally’s, and several others — but never engineered a takeover.
Then his luck ran out with American Airlines.
Shut the whole department down. It serves no important function.
Replace “important” with “useful”.
The DOE provides the budgets to all 20 National Labs, such as Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, and all the rest. They provide very important work, including basic science and R&D on technological ideas that are too far out to be in the grasp of for-profit companies.
Presumably, if the DOE is closed, these labs will be transferred to another Department; perhaps Interior.
I can’t imagine getting rid of the entire DOE without re-creating some parts of it. Isn’t the DOE is responsible for producing all the nuclear fuels used by military and civilian government agencies? Hanford, INEEL/INL, and Oak Ridge are under DOE I think? NASA depends on DOE for the plutonium is uses to power deep space missions. Not sure about the Navy? Does the DOE produces fuel for them too or do they have their own facilities?
Someone would need to do that anyway.
To anyone with half a brain ! Do you seriously believe that there are not government departments (in any country) that have found a way to cheat the system and over inflate their worth and usefulness?
Anything that DOE pays for in the realm of professional society memberships and conferences attended are pretty much a matter of Department record. All refusing to respond does is slow down the process. However, professional society memberships that are neither required by nor paid for by DOE would, in my mind, come under none of your business.
“Trump’s transition team asked for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers”.
Iv’e done that in UK as a Govt Auditor (Software Systems – not IT) of a UK Defence Contractor. Its in the procurement contract and within the scope of an audit at anytime. The list of project staff working are easily known and of course an auditor will meet them in the course of a series of audits. However, on an occasion where I asked for Professional Quals the roof almost fell in and it took 2 weeks of head cooling to get to view the their CV’s mainly. Lucky perhaps (for me) that I didn’t drill into the CV’s. Its actually part of the contracted Quality Systems Standard in UK – ISO 9000. Will be same in US with DOD standards or similar/related.
You don’t go for a personal or money hit…Quality is enough to reveal all.
Another question comes to mind in respect to America , how many government and non government agencies are studying / researching climate change ?
If it was looking for a cure for something fatal like cancer maybe duplicity is ok but for something that’s only a theory has had untold billions spent on it for zero human benefit and zero empirical evidence when is it time to say enough is enough get back to real world problems .
Off with their heads!!! Yells the Queen of Hearts.
Well, if they don’t want to comply with this simple request, what about closing the department altogether? I don’t think anyone really had any objections when my own details where handed over to the wolves, for them to pressure all azimuth on my life, like a futile attempt to make me change opinion about climate change. It’s high time to give them a taste of their own medecine.
Scallawags.
Reminds me of a situation with a former employer. The corporation used to reorganize every five years or so. In one reorganization a new senior manager took over the department I was in. He asked for an organization chart and saw one individual whose role wasn’t well-defined. He asked about him and was told, “Leave him alone–he has friends in high places.” The senior manager didn’t follow up.
The scenario repeated in the next reorganization. Except this time, the senior manager asked, “Who are the friends?” It turned out the sponsor had left the company years before. The protected employee disappeared soon after.
I hope the new administration handles the Energy Department like the second senior manager did where I was working.
By the way, how did this refusal get into the public domain? Press release? Oh dear.
Could someone please advise the difference between the DOE (Department of Energy) and DOE (Department of the Environment)? Many of the responses seem to indicate that the DOE (Department of Energy) is responsible for various environmental matters.
See:
Phil December 14, 2016 at 12:18 am;
AndyE December 13, 2016 at 9:35 pm;
Chris Hanley December 13, 2016 at 9:44 pm
for instance.
The generation of energy is deemed to be the cause of CAGW. Surely, that is obvious. Very expensive changes in public policy are being justified by this theory. Nuclear energy has the benefit of no so-called greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear energy is regulated by the Department of Energy. The economic impact of changes in how energy is generated is not trivial. It is central to the economy and the profitability of businesses, who may have reason to re-locate somewhere else that may have lower costs, including energy costs. Decisions being made today about energy generation will have an impact on the economy, jobs, the viability of businesses and on geo-political events far into the future. Therefore, the Department of Energy is very much at the center of the environmental issues.
+1 That’s why the Marx Bros. want to control it.
Isn’t it just fantastic
Here in the UK, by Government order, there are cameras everywhere watching every move we make on the streets, public places and in the shops, more cameras recording our vehicles number plates, all our phone call, texts, emails and website visits are recorded by the NSA and GCHQ and how many others?
– and its all done on the premise of ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear’
Plus countless more cameras set up (and carried around in phones) by individuals on the same premise.
But now, when Government employees are asked to justify themselves, they describe themselves as ‘unsettled’
Scary
Didn’t George Orwell predict those cameras more than half a century ago?
Here’s what British Prime Minister Jim Hacker (Yes Minister) decided when he had a problem with the DOE (Department of Education).
https://youtu.be/0DIy-C4cQ-M
As the swamp drains, in the muck left behind will be found thousands of keyboards with missing Ts.
And it will be a pleasing sight.
If I were the new DOE Secretary, I would demand from all DOE employees to voluntarily give these information about themselves individually. All those who don’t comply with the demand for information will be included in a massive retrenchment program. They will be all fired or reassigned to Antarctica to study climate change.
Really, and what pressing need does the government have to know which professional societies the National Lab employees belong to?
If you are doing a good job, there is nothing to hide. If you are wasting government resources on alarmist propaganda and conferences, keep it secret. I don’t have to ask if you are wasting government resources. Just tell me what you have been doing for eight years. The good ones have no problem with that.
No accountability. They then become a law unto themselves. Sharpen up the axe(s).
I did not expect the refuse. As usual i expected they would form a comity to gather the informations. First start to set up statutes and choose a word leader .. and so on and so on….
Methinks that E. M. Smith (fourth comment on this thread) has it about right. Well said indeed.
He added that the request “left many in our workforce unsettled.”
I bet it does , they had years of easy times and fat living , many know they could never get a job anywhere else and they have so looked forward to the little ‘trips ‘ to IPCC conference etc , staying in some rather nice hotels and seeing some of the worlds greatest cities on the tax payers dim . I be ‘unsettled’ to in their position .
What’s to hide if you’ve been doing your job and not wasting public (it isn’t the governments) money. But if you’ve been doing wrong and you know it you’re never going to want to tell are you!!!
James Bull