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

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

Posted by msmash on Tuesday December 13, 2016 @06:50AM from the taking-a-stand dept.

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."

23 of 858 comments (clear)

Good for them! by networkBoy · 2016-12-13 06:52 · 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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whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
1. Re:Good for them! by networkBoy · 2016-12-13 06:54 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Also, since te website won't render properly with basic security enabled in the browser, here's the page source copypasta:
  >
  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."
  Reuters reported late Monday that former Texas Governor Rick
  Perry is expected to be named by Trump to run the Energy
  Department. The agency employs more than 90,000 people working on
  nuclear weapons maintenance and research labs, nuclear energy,
  advanced renewable energy, batteries and climate science.
  The memo sought a list of all department employees or contractors
  who have attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a
  measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and
  benefits of new energy and environment regulations. It also asked
  for all publications written by employees at the department's 17
  national laboratories for the past three years.
  Trump transition officials declined to comment on the memo.
  "This feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies
  list," a Department of Energy employee, who asked not to be
  identified because he feared a reprisal by the Trump transition
  team, had told Reuters.
  Republican Trump said during his election campaign that climate
  change was a hoax perpetrated by China to damage U.S.
  manufacturing. He said he would rip up last year's landmark
  global climate deal struck in Paris that was signed by President
  Barack Obama.
  Since winning the Nov. 8 election, however, Trump has said he
  will keep an "open mind" about the Paris deal. He also met with
  former Vice President Al Gore, a strong advocate for action on
  climate change.
  (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
  
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  whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
2. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · 2016-12-13 06:56 · 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.
3. Re:Good for them! by JohnFen · 2016-12-13 07:21 · 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.
4. Re:Good for them! by Lodragandraoidh · 2016-12-13 07:22 · 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
5. Re:Good for them! by sl3xd · 2016-12-13 07:40 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Short version: There is more than a century of precedent to protect federal employees, both their privacy, as well as their employment.
  Longer version:
  From the US Merit System Protection Board
  Employees should be retained on the basis of adequacy of their performance, inadequate performance should be corrected, and employees should be separated who cannot or will not improve their performance to meet required standards.
  Employees should be protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes
  Also see the Wikipedia Article
  And for an even longer version, read up about the US "Spoils System", and how it lead to the assassination of a President. It was then replaced by the Merit System, in 1883.
  
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  -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
6. Re:Good for them! by ShanghaiBill · 2016-12-13 07:54 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I work in government IT. No one is worried about Trump. No one.
  The last president that promised to cut government and eliminate entire departments was Ronald Regan. He eliminated zero departments and greatly expanded the size of government. The only post-war president to cut the size of government, as a percentage of GDP, was Bill Clinton. But he had it easy after the bloat of the Reagan years. Conservatives didn't love Reagan because of what he did, but because of what he said. Same for liberals and Bill Clinton.
  The lesson Donald should learn from this is that what he says means a lot more than what he does. Talk big, do little, blame others, be popular. If he sticks to this formula, he should coast to reelection in 2020.
7. Re:Good for them! by slack_justyb · 2016-12-13 07:58 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Good point and brings up one of the rally cries Trump has made during the campaign. Reform of Federal employee rights. He's not been shy one bit about it either. He intends to remove the protections many of the civil servants enjoy under his soon to be purposed "Reduction on Government Waste and Spending" program. So yeah, they are protected like you said, but Trump is literally gunning to remove that very thing and fire anyone who isn't an ass kisser. So great point you bring up but already addressed. This proposal from Trump to Congress is all but a forgone conclusion. The bigger question will be if Congress will give the President this new power. Who knows, but if anything is for sure, it's that there will be massive amount of spin from every direction when it finally hits committee.
8. Re:Good for them! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-12-13 08:13 · 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.
9. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · 2016-12-13 08:26 · 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.
10. Re:Good for them! by Chris+Mattern · 2016-12-13 08:42 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I don't know, but I don't think they are even mandated to be created by law by congress...
  You don't know. All the Departments in the cabinet are established by Federal law as passed by Congress.
11. Re: Good for them! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-12-13 09:17 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I voted for Trump.
  
  I did not vote for idiotic anti science know nothing twerps...
  Sorry, but these two statements cannot both be true.
12. Re:Good for them! by The+Rizz · 2016-12-13 13:51 · 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?
Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the list? by Wycliffe · 2016-12-13 06:57 · Score: 5, Funny

Instead of just immediately refusing the request, has anyone bothered to ask the Trump Transition Team why they want the list? 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. Especially to ask for the list this early in the game, it seems weird that it would be for a blacklist. Generally you would wait until you were in office to go after the opposition.
Whatcha huntin' Doc? by istartedi · 2016-12-13 06:59 · Score: 5, Funny

Gov: Whatcha huntin' Doc?
Trump: Ducks.
Gov: This is wabbit season.
Trump: Why. You. Little.... Grrrr (steam comes out of ears).

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For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Re:Is the EPA violating the establishment clause? by Ayanami_R · 2016-12-13 07:05 · 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"
Re:Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the li by Ralgha · 2016-12-13 07:06 · Score: 5, Informative

Nothing Trump has said makes anybody think they would want this list for anything good. Trump is an ignorant, egotistical fool. I'm not even sure he means well, I think he's doing the whole president thing solely for his ego. While the backlash that would occur should the electoral college not install Trump would be massive, I think they would be fully justified in not voting for him. This is exactly why the electoral college exists, but it's unfortunate that there are no good alternatives to Trump right now. At least the alternatives wouldn't be doing it for their ego, and wouldn't be completely ignorant about pretty much everything.
Re:This is how you drain the swamp by MightyMartian · 2016-12-13 07:14 · 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.

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
4 years from now by pablo_max · 2016-12-13 07:22 · 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 ;)
Re:Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the li by Nidi62 · 2016-12-13 07:47 · 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
Re:Has anyone bothered to ask why they want the li by SeaFox · 2016-12-13 08:25 · 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?
Re:Reagan Air Traffic Controllers Strike again.... by crunchygranola · 2016-12-13 08:37 · Score: 5, Informative

How the fuck did this guy get modded up? Trump is NOT his employer. Trump is fucking civilian until he actually takes the office.
And even then he will NOT be their employer (and he will still be a civilian). He does not own the United States or Federal Government. He is temporary management hired by the voters, and lacks unlimited powers, even within the executive branch which he manages. We do not elect gods, or kings, or tyrants (only tyrant-wannabes).

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Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Re:Let's hope the Electoral College does their job by slimjim8094 · 2016-12-13 13:29 · 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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