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Energy Department Refuses To Give Trump Team Names of People Who Worked On Climate Change (businessinsider.com)

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by President-elect Donald Trump's transition team to name staffers who worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received "significant feedback" from workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked last week. From a Reuters story, syndicated on BusinessInsider: 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. "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," Eben Burnham-Snyder, Energy Department spokesman 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."

13 of 858 comments (clear)

  1. Good for them! by networkBoy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The management has to know this will get them sacked, and yet they still protected their team.
    Good on them, and may they be showered by job offers once sacked.

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    1. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, how I would love for EVERY department of the US Government to do this to Trump's team. Those people were hand-picked to destroy the very departments they will oversee. It would be glorious for every department of the government to simply rebel this way and refuse to acknowledge these new anti-leadership goons and just continue to do their jobs as if they don't exist.

    2. Re:Good for them! by JohnFen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its better to stay employed and do what you can from the inside.

      If the institution has turned against what you believe is right, then the odds of making any positive change "from the inside" are extremely low.

    3. Re:Good for them! by Lodragandraoidh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because this information is being used as a witch hunt to identify low level employees for removal. These low level employees may not have been the decision maker when it came to selection of who would go or not, and as a result, the questions in the questionaire may incorrectly represent actual responsibility or functionality of the employee beyond that single question. Additionally, you can't arbitrarily remove government employees from their jobs without a substantive reason - as opposed to an ideological one (last time I can think of was the air traffic controller's strike during Reagan years - which directly impacted public safety)

      As a result, the responsible leadership is saying "this is my responsibility; we can get into details at my level." This is the right thing to do, and also serves the people at the same time.

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      Lodragan Draoidh
      The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
    4. Re:Good for them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The strength of government comes largely from the fact that the civil servants who actually know their jobs and do the work do not change every four years. The skilled boots-on-the-ground can make up for the incompetence of the political-appointee-of-the-week. Government competence concentrates in the middle.

      It is very different from private industry, where (according to legend) people rise through the ranks based on skills and accomplishments, and you would never put someone in charge of a trillion dollar company on the basis of a Prom Queen contest. Corporate competence concentrates at the top. So they say.

      If Trump really does manage to turn the whole government into a top-to-bottom herd of bootlicking sycophants that completely reverses policy with every election, he will destroy the stability that makes USD the global currency.

    5. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is what these agencies are supposed to do - they're not supposed to be partisan tools for the current ruing party; they're supposed to be an impartial apparatus that does a job mandated by Congress to the best of their abilities.

      But they're currently partisan tools for the Obama administration. So you agree with replacing them?

      Howso? When did Obama go through and hand-pick every single employee, checking if they had any beliefs that disagreed with his worldview? At various points in his Presidency different agencies said and did things that weren't in 100% support of what he wanted. But no purges ever happened.

      Impartial does not mean "doesn't do what is asked of them". It means they do their job - and part of that includes doing what is asked of them by the President as long as it doesn't mean betraying their mandate . It also means not firing anyone simply for having differing opinions from the President - and especially not for conducting research that the President doesn't like when it's exactly what your department is mandated by Congress to do.

      There is a world of difference between shaping legislation to lead agencies into doing what you want, and destroying the agency if it doesn't do exactly what you demand, ethics be damned.

    6. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you can prove that a company intentionally polluted knowing that the pollutants were harmful then by all means, have the EPA bring a lawsuit against them. But I don't believe in punishing everyone because of the possibility of misdeeds by some. I especially don't believe in it if no one realized the pollution was dangerous when the pollution was occurring, unless you could somehow prove that they intentionally didn't look into it or blocked that research.

      Uh, this shit is PRECISELY what went on throughout the last century (and still continues to this day).

      It has been proven countless times that companies will do blatantly illegal and harmful things, knowing full well how harmful they are as long as they believe their risk:benefit ratio is good enough. (See: Flint, Bhopal, Love Canal, Hinkley CA, etc. etc. etc.)

      Oh, and as for the "if they knowingly use harmful pollutants use a lawsuit" is bullshit. The legal system is set up so that all they need to do is say they didn't know and they'll get off with a warning, or force the public into a long drawn-out civil legal battle that can take decades to decide. The point of all the EPA regulations is so that these companies can't claim that they "didn't know". These regulations are there so this shit doesn't have to turn into a decades long civil battle, with lots of "did they or didn't they know" going on.

      Your argument is like saying that food safety regulations aren't needed, because restaurants will figure out if they make people sick on their own, and we can TOTALLY trust them to stop doing something that does, even if it costs them extra money, right?

  2. Re:Is the EPA violating the establishment clause? by Ayanami_R · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Oh, and since the science is settled abuot climate change, the EPA obviously doesn't need anybody to research it... right?"

    Actually since so many are rejecting facts, we need to keep proving the fact as many times as possible until it gets through their thick heads or they give up. If those that reject facts would get out of their feelings and look at the data for what it is, not what they want it to be, we could have stopped researching "is it happening" and we could be on , "how do we fix it." But as usual, science deniers are holding all progress back, because it just does not feel real.

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    "Science is the power of man"
  3. Re:This is how you drain the swamp by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Science doesn't just stop. More research is always needed in virtually every area of research.

    There's no real trade off. Don't start curbing CO2 emissions substantially now, and the cost to national and global economies in fifty years will be beyond astronomical.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  4. 4 years from now by pablo_max · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder what the US situation with respect to international relationships will look like in 4 years time.
    When I first heard that Trump had won, my first thought was, how much damage could he really do?

    As I see what he is doing, it seems a lot.
    Take for example China. Most of the EU countries have already privately told China that they will follow the status quo regardless of that Trump does or says.
    Most of the world is pretty angry about the anti-climate change stuff and there is already talk about locking the US out of the market.
    Naturally this would have a huge impact on EU companies as well.
    The more I see what this ass hat is doing though, the more I think this is really a turning point for the US and its decline in prominence from the world stage. I guess that is natural. Countries come and go, rise a fall. I do not imagine that will stop just because it is the present.
    It is not just about climate change either. Heck, he is even gutting the FCC and forbidding them to protect consumers. Remember how the FCC made those carriers stop the millions in over billing? Those days are over.
    The carriers, under Trump will literally be able to do what ever they want.
    I have customers who cant wait for Trump because they think they can stop testing their devices for the US market and just sell it.
    Still, I really do wish those of you in the US the best of luck. There is a good chance though that you fuckballs screwed us all. At least we dont have to worry about your F35 shooting down our planes though ;)

  5. Re:Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the li by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is what losing an election like this means...it means your time of screwing over the other side is up and now you best lube up yourself. Then it will sawp back and be same as always.

    And this is what is wrong with America. So many people want to cheer and say "screw the other side" or "lube up" as you put it. Well, you realize the "other side" is a good 30-40% minimum of the population of America. You screw that many people over and what you are really doing is screwing the country over, yourself included. I mean hell, Americans didn't hate each other as much during the Civil War as they do now. We are on a downward path of animosity, fiery rhetoric, obstructionism, and retribution that would leave America in such a state that even Nero would put down his lyre. Make America great again? With the current state of our politics I'm not so sure we deserve to be great anymore.

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    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  6. Re:Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the li by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everyone seems to think they want this so they can blacklist them. Maybe they want this so they can hire the proper people for certain cabinet positions.

    Then why did he make a climate change denier the head of the EPA to start with?

  7. Re:Let's hope the Electoral College does their job by slimjim8094 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it does, then we probably need one I hate to say. The Founding Fathers were very smart and chose to make the Electoral College full of people who could vote however they chose. They knew full well they could simply do the numerical apportionment we all assume today's EC is, but they didn't - it's people. The only reason that could be is because they were expected to make their own choice, and the only time that's meaningful is if it's different from what the popular vote in their state was.

    If the Electoral College exercises their intended autonomy and doesn't elect Trump, they are doing the very thing they're there for. If that - following the letter and intent of the Constitution - causes a revolution then we are a very sick country indeed.

    On the other hand, if the EC rubber-stamps Trump's nomination, I have to ask: what purpose does the EC serve? Under what circumstances would they exercise that autonomy? Do we even need an EC at all in that case? And if we're changing things, how should we elect the president considering the urbanization of the country? The current system gives far more weight to citizens in rural states than urban ones, and we should have a conversation about that as well.

    Honestly the country is very, very ill. I sometimes wonder if the "liberal" and "conservative" areas would consent to a sort of a "trial separation" - say 6 or 10 years, something with a fixed end date that would result in a vote to continue or reunite. The details are extremely complex but it's the only thing I can come up with that might get people appreciating their countrymates.

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