Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – Denying President Trump funds to fulfil his promise to build the wall appears to be a higher priority for Democrats than allowing US Scientists the funds they need to attend key climate conferences.
Scientists despair as US government shutdown drags on
Space missions can continue to collect data, but thousands of federal researchers are forced to stay at home without pay.
…
Empty chairs
Organizers of several major conferences are scrambling to replace whole fleets of government researchers who were set to present their work or lead discussion panels.
The American Astronomical Society expects that 10–15% of the 4,200 people who registered for its meeting in Seattle, Washington, from 6 to 10 January will be unable to attend because of the shutdown, says Kevin Marvel, the society’s chief executive. They include the AAS’s immediate past president, Christine Jones, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is run jointly by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. Another Smithsonian astronomer, David DeVorkin of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, is supposed to give a plenary talk at the meeting; plans are being made to find a replacement.
The AAS is looking for ways to lessen the disruption to its meeting, Marvel says, such as webcasting plenary sessions and allowing non-government researchers to give talks on behalf of their federal collaborators. And the American Meteorological Society is soliciting volunteers to replace government researchers who are scheduled to lead sessions or unveil findings at its meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, from 6 to 10 January. The society estimates that roughly 800 federal scientists, mostly from NOAA, have registered for the 4,300-person meeting.
Then there is the Plant and Animal Genome meeting set to take place in San Diego, California, from 12 to 16 January. Many of its organizers and presenters are USDA employees. The meeting gives experienced researchers opportunities to vet potential PhD students and find collaborators, and students a chance to network.
“I don’t really do resolutions for the new year, but it would be nice if the furlough would end so that we can get back to feeding the world,” said John Cole, a geneticist at the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland, who studies dairy cattle, in a tweet on 31 December. “The program committee at PAG [Plant and Animal Genome meeting] would also be grateful.”
Lean times
But many federal scientists are grappling with more existential worries. No government employees at affected agencies are being paid during the shutdown — even those who have been deemed essential, and ordered to keep working. Congress has historically passed legislation authorizing retroactive pay after a shutdown ends, but that is cold comfort to many federal employees trying to survive without a regular salary.
“Today I had to apply for unemployment,” Leslie Rissler, an evolutionary biologist and programme director at the NSF, tweeted on 3 January. “This is a ridiculous shutdown unnecessarily affecting thousands of federal employees and families. Wishing all of them, and this country, better days ahead.”
…
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00008-0
A scientist working on AR6 claims the shutdown is affecting climate conferences.
Sadly, scientists from US federal agencies cannot join the @IPCC_CH second lead author meeting taking place this week in Vancouver to prepare the Working Group I #AR6 report.
Scientists despair as US government shutdown drags on https://t.co/Bc6SPjazhL
— Val. Masson-Delmotte (@valmasdel) January 6, 2019
Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently suggested that Climate Change is an existential threat.
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The lead sentence in the featured report at the top is flat out incorrect. Or, in the vernacular of late, “Fake News.” Nobody is being forced to stay at home. They make it sound like they are wearing an ankle monitor on electronic home detention. Help me out here, as I have not been in the military since 2003, but even way back then we were issued government credit cards (i.e. Visa) for reimbursable expenses related to travel. Do the cards still exist? If so, were they deactivated? Are government employees who were going to travel, capable of fronting the expense on their personal credit cards, with the hope they would be reimbursed? Surely scientists in the SES, or at pay grade “GS-99” /s/ can afford to get to Phoenix or Seattle. Since there are some unfilled days of late, put two people in an SUV and drive, and (gasp) share a hotel room. Skip the Hertz counter on this trip. If this shutdown ends the way others have, nobody would be out of pocket anything.
They certainly would not be allowed to use corporate travel cards during the shutdown. Funding approval has expired. It doesn’t matter if the government has money in the bank, or spare money before the credit limit on Visa. You can’t use it, it’s unconstitutional.
The cards are issued in the name of the employee. Charges incurred on the card, whether truly business related or not, were the sole responsibility of the employee to repay. The expectation, of course, was with the money repaid after submitting a travel voucher for reimbursement. Many government employees of all kinds have run into trouble with their issued cards.
A further point, Australia had the same problem in the Whitlam constitutional crisis, when he tried to keep spending money without control of the Senate, which was blocking supply. The Governor-General sacked him and instituted a new Prime Minister that had control of the Senate and could guarantee supply.
I don’t know why the American constitution doesn’t have similar provisions.
“I don’t know why the American constitution doesn’t have similar provisions.”
The answer is contained in your own remedy:
“The Governor-General sacked him and instituted a new Prime Minister that had control of the Senate and could guarantee supply. “
The winning, it just keeps coming!!!!!! I ain’t no ways tired, to quote Hitlery Clintoon.
If there will be fewer attendees, why can’t they cut the number of sessions?
They could, but typically programs, rooms, etc. are set well in advance. They used to physically print programs, some conferences still do but certainly electronics allow changes to be made more easily. For those vendors who have government clients, this situation is not good.
I was at a scientific conference that began on 9-11-2001. I got one of the first planes out of town when the airport opened and it was really weird. The plane was almost completely empty.
The inconvenience being experience now is really trivial by comparison to 9-11.
Excellent. It’s an ideological gong show in any event. Sounds like Scientology.
Basically they all get paid for not working at the end of the day. For those collecting unemployment I imagine their back pay deducts what they collect .
“…This is a ridiculous shutdown unnecessarily affecting thousands of federal employees and families. Wishing all of them, and this country, better days ahead…”
I agree, this is a ridiculous shutdown. Hopefully she sent this tweet to Pelosi and the other Dems opposed to a tiny amount of wall funding so that this country can move-on to better days and federal employees and their families can return to their normal lives.
As for all conference attending “over Head” inconvenienced by the shut down
I offer this,
michael
Sounds great to me. The fewer people that do to such meetings, the more fossil fuel will not be burned adding CO2 to our atmosphere. These meetings should be held on the Internet anyway to conserve on the use of fossil fuels. The technology to do so has been in place for many wears.
The Astrophysics Conference is actually quite valuable. Especially with all the upcoming NASA missions like Webb space telescope needing to get the word out on how data is to be handled and collaborations are setup.
The Weather/Metreorology/Climate one… and epecially the AR6 planning, those could go away and no one would be worse off except the hotel bar tenders tip jar and the hookers.
I thought Trump was going to force the Mexicans to fund the wall !!
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/28/donald-trump-mexico-going-to-pay-for-wall.html
Once the Democrats have been publicly demonstrated to be anti-border security we can move on to that juicy nugget. Occasional-Cortex’s 70% tax applied to all the wire transfers from America to Mexican Nationals will fully fund it, plus a sweet chunk-O-change left over. Remittance money, seems to me England had that problem for awhile, then they “solved” it.
I thought he effectively paid for it many times over when he renegotiated the trade agreements with Mexico and Canada. That is at least how it was reported by most analysts he then just needed to get his hands on the revenues are you saying that isn’t correct?
One might think, if the future of the world is at stake and AGW is such a doomsday scenario, the ‘scientists’ might actually buy their OWN tickets to conferences.
And there’s not a Govt Dept I have ever heard of where you cannot claim back legit expenses for such junkets so WTF?
I guess it makes another stick to beat Trump with if they pretend they are bereft of opportunity to promote the end of the world in luxury.
And of course we all just ignore all the Dems who have ACTUALLY shut down the Govt – most of the leaders called for closing borders, fence building and increased guards before Trump came along but now it’s suddenly an ‘issue’ – which makes it clear the issue is the restrictions on getting new and illegal Dem voters into the USA.
One might think, if the future of the world is at stake and AGW is such a doomsday scenario, the ‘scientists’ might actually buy their OWN tickets to conferences.
Actually, if “the future of the world is at stake and AGW is such a doomsday scenario” you’d think those “scientists” would forgo the flying off (using “evil” fossil fuels emitting even more “evil” CO2) to various far away locales and simple attend via skype.
And there’s not a Govt Dept I have ever heard of where you cannot claim back legit expenses for such junkets so WTF?
with their departments shut down, so too is their expense accounts for such junkets. However, they very likely could charge their own credit cards and then fill out the appropriate forms in order to get those expenses reimbursed once the government is back open for business. Not everyone in every company I’ve ever worked for has a corporate credit card, and there has always been a method for the employee to use their own and then claim reimbursement afterwards, so I doubt the government is much different. Granted it’s a lot more hassel to claim reimbursement than it is to charge the company card, but that’s what’s known as a 1st world problem.
Those people who are worried about the government shutdown should contact Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer and tell them to stop holding the government hostage to their partisan political ambitions.
It won’t do any good to complain to Trump because I don’t think he is going to give in, so Pelosi and Shumer are your best bets.
Complain to Trump!?!? I called and congratulated him! Then I emailed and congratulated him! If I had the money, and it was not restricted airspace, I would hire a sky writer to put it over DC every day for a week!
And if I was on twitter, I’d gladly tweet to congratulate him as well. But I can’t stand twitter, so that won’t be happening.
I’m not worried about the shutdown in the least, in fact I say keep it shut for as long as it takes to get the border secure. If I was one of the government employees of one of the shut down departments, I’d be very afraid of the shutdown lasting long enough for people to realize most of those departments/employees are surplus to requirements and simply not needed.
Each time this game gets played more citizens get wise to just how many “nonessential” employees are in government. THAT is a point DJT and his surrogates need to be hammering home.
It won’t do any good to complain to Trump because I don’t think he is going to give in, so Pelosi and Shumer are your best bets.
If Trump is smart and wants to get re-elected he won’t give in. It was his signature promise on the campaign trail, it’s one of the main reasons people voted for him. It’s his “read my lips” issue. If he caves, he can expect to be a 1-term president just like the guy for whom the “read my lips” phase came from. (and that’s before we even get into all the reasons why a border wall is desperately needed on the southern border).
800 NOAA scientists were going to attend an Astronomical Society event? Drain the swamp.
What do you call 800 federal scientists missing a meeting of the AMS which has endorsed the unscientific claims of AGW?
A good start.
Missed in all the rhetoric about “border security” is the real reason for the shutdown. And federal employees should recognize this as a perk of their job. The Federal Government spends more money than they receive in taxes, and fees. So they have to periodically agree to borrow enough money to fund the difference. If they balanced their budget, they would not shut down the government over policy differences. There is no mechanism for doing that, other than failure to obtain the required outlay money through borrowing.
In the private sector, when you run deficits for years on end, with no ability to change that situation, the employers have to lay off workers until they can return the company to financial stability.
So those that are impacted by this shutdown, can be thankful that it is not a forced layoff. I would gladly take some additional time-off with pay, even if I had to charge some things that I normally wouldn’t. It is better than job hunting, with no idea of when you will get another job.
In my first years as a mining consultant in the early 1980s, I took some long boring bus rides, to conserve my newly formed company’s cash! These people have nothing else to do right now. Indeed, what do they have to do anytime really? They just write stuff and talk a lot. They already learned all they needed to know in grade/highschool. Its not as if they are on the cutting edge of their settled science. They have “received wisdom” they daren’t question and their marching orders. The only difference in their lives is they are not receiving pay. Okay, that’s a bit tough. Pack a lunch and jump on the bus. The scenery on the way to Vancouver is the finest you will ever see. Get a backbone and have some adventure. I had to do it with no guarantee that I would ever land a contract and it was dog eat dog and competition with some of the smartest people in the country.
Are the president and senators getting their wages during a shutdown? Question from a European.
Hans Erren
President Trump is getting no income at all during his presidency, nor during the shutdown. (It is all being donated to charities for the Armed Forces dependents/fire and police dependents.) By the way, to date, more than half of this “shutdown” has been on weekends or government holidays or pre-planned vacation days.
Sat, Sun, Christmas Eve, Christmas, sd, sd, sd, Sat, Sun, New Years Eve, New Years Day, sd, sd, sd, Sat, Sun, sd. Ain’t no big loss, eh?
The democrat senators and representatives (half of them millionaires, or married to millionaires) are getting paid for shutting down the government.
As RA said, Trump doesn’t get a salary, he denotes it to charity.
I believe the workers in the White House were all due for a big pay increase after Jan. 1, but that has been put on hold because of the shutdown.
Congress still gets paid, but I heard yesterday that a bill is being introduced in Congress to halt Congressional pay during any government shutdown until the shutdown is resolved. I think that’s a great idea. 🙂 Not that it will pass.
When a New York post reporter asked ocrazio-cortex about her salary during the shutdown, her response was “gotta run”.
Another thing Europeans should realize is that this is a shut down of the Federal Government only. Most government services that matter are provided by state and city governments. Most of us are not affected.
Indeed. And on top of that, it’s not the entire federal government, it’s only a handful of federal departments that most people don’t deal with on a frequent basis. And within those departments, the areas that are considered of “critical importance” are still in operation (albeit with the workers working unpaid for the time being, they’ll eventually get back pay). Other than the employees of those departments, the vast majority of the people are not affected at all.
Trump has not been taking pay since elected. As for Democrat Senators and Reps, they are not only taking their pay they double to amounts of their kickbacks and pay-to-play fees during a government shutdown. Democrat Party motto, never let a good crisis go to waste.
Isn’t the real anguish caused by the realisation that it will be obvious that attendence or non-attendence at such meetings does not make one iota of a difference to the running of the real world. Some sponsors might take notice.
“Key Climate Conference”…surely and oxymoron or is that a conference for morons.
Sorry, I’m Italian so I don’t know much about American Politic, so I’ve a question.
Who approved the Wall that’s right now on place?
Congress actually approved the wall in 2005 or 2006. Since then, Democrats have blocked funding to pay for its construction.
That was just the latest series in this kabuki dance. Never forget Simpson–Mazzoli Act, or the repeated blocking actions through the 1990s.
“Who approved the Wall that’s right now on place?”
Let’s see: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Shumer, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Derbin and on and on. When Obama was president border security passed overwhelmingly in the House and got 26 Democrat votes in the Senate.
Now that Trump has established securing the southern U.S. border as one of his major projects, all the Democrats who voted in the past for a wall, fence, barrier, are now saying the wall is unnecessary, there is no border crisis, and a wall is immoral. It’s all politics to keep Trump from getting a win on one of his signature promises, one that got him elected. This is an effort to damage Trump. They are going to lose.
And let me say something about “The Wall”. The Democrats are playing an old familiar game: They are misconstruing what Trump said, and then when he doesn’t say exactly what they say he said, they claim he has changed his position, or has backed down, or was lying the first time.
With respect to the wall, the Democrats claim that Trump originally insisted on a CONCRETE wall. This is a lie. Trump never specified a concrete wall. The examples of proposed walls to be built on the border are of varying kinds, some all concrete, some concrete and steel, and Trump up to this point has not picked one design over another.
Trump’s supporters did not chant: Build that concrete wall! Build that concrete wall! No, they said: Build the Wall! Build the Wall! They don’t care what kind of wall is built, as long as it does the job of keeping illegal aliens and criminals out of the United States.
So the Democrats apparently have said to Trump we might go along with a wall but it has to be a steel wall. And as soon as Trump says, Ok, it doesn’t matter to me what it is built from, the Democrats run out and say Trump has backed down, and Trump is changing his tune, and Trump isn’t really sure what he wants.
It’s a semantics game which the Democrats play very well with the help of the Leftwing Media, and even the Rightwing Media gets sucked into the fake debate.
Section by section it has been forced through Congress against heavy Democrat Party resistance over the years. Many times Democrats and RINOs(Republicans In Name Only) will vote for border security spending and then slow walk it, sandbag it, join nuisance environmental law suits against it, and sign on to ACLU law suits against border security and enforcing existing emigration laws. It is a never ending war against leftists of all types.
Mariano,
Just know this about the wall politics. If Trump gets his way he will have a much greater chance of re-election in 2020. The Democrat leadership knows this, they cannot afford to let him win no matter the consequences to our Country.
My question is simple: Will we not see immediate results from building the wall? (unlike climate change science where none of us will actually be here in 2100 to see if the modelers were correct) Those results could be good or they could be status quo. So what are the Democrats worried about? If they believe the wall will do nothing they should embrace that position, build the wall and use the nothing results to their advantage. But I think we and they all know the wall will work and the Dems would have to credit Trump with getting it done making themselves look the fools for their opposition.
This is as bad as geologists not being able to attend the 2016 AAPG Annual Conference & Exposition because oil prices had collapsed. Except, rather than despairing, they were thankful to still have jobs… if they still had jobs.
“Today I had to apply for unemployment,” Leslie Rissler, an evolutionary biologist and programme director at the NSF, tweeted on 3 January. “This is a ridiculous shutdown unnecessarily affecting thousands of federal employees and families. Wishing all of them, and this country, better days ahead.”
___________________________________________________
Abstruse, dadaistic – he’s a federal employee and unable to get over 10 days without payment. Because of government shutdown –
– which does not stop him from applying for unemployment.
– and from receiving unemployment benefits.
Abstruse, dadaistic.
Evolutionary biologist is probably the perfect example of a nonessential government employee.
Yeah.
Wanna bet that after collecting unemployment during the shutdown, Leslie will be one of the first in line with their hands out to collect back pay once the shutdown is over?
It would benefit the economy if every four years, the incoming Administration would start fresh by looking at all functions of the government, and determining their cost / benefit ratio, to the taxpayers who are compelled to fund their activities.
Best estimate (by me), is you could cut back on 40% of the current non-essential workforce, and the public would not notice. Unfortunately unionization of the federal workforce makes this unnecessarily difficult. No organization supports inefficiency, waste, and duplication, more than the government workers union. And when you have legally obligated taxpayers on the hook for it, that is a situation that will eventually have to be fixed, either rationally or irrationally. It violates everything we know about human nature, and valuation of employee contribution to a product.
What? And take the mystery out of how it all works so that the average Joe would actually have a clue how these robber barons have been lying all these years?
Truthfulness is no way to go through political life, son.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmLg52Bcxs
🙂