Propagandizing Science – Trump Transition Team Questions Department of Energy

Summary:  President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team for the Department of Energy has submitted a detailed questionnaire to the Department.  Many of the requests solicit personal information on department employees and consultants relating to the role, if any, they may have played in activities that the transition team appears to be questioning.

The Department correctly has refused to provide answers that identify individuals and their activites, and will furnish only information that is available to the public.

Seeking such information on individuals appears to be propagandizing the scientific activities of the Department.  By soliciting this information the transition team implicitly chills the activities of the staff, intimidating them as they carry out their professional duties and casting a pall on their job security.  Such behavior is intolerable and must be put to an immediate end.

 

Introduction. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s dictatorial regime controlled political expression or dissent from the party line by encouraging citizens to inform on their neighbors; even family members would inform on their relatives.  Mark Osiel writes of citizens of former Soviet bloc countries who still struggle with memories of “neighbors informing on neighbors, friends on friends and husbands on wives….People watch one another, in even the most private settings, with hair-trigger sensitivity to the possibility of betrayal” (“Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory and the Law”, 1997, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ).  

Such domestic espionage was not confined to foreign lands.  In the U. S. “the Red Scare took a virulent form as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover conducted the dreaded COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic subversion.  During the McCarthy communist hunts of the 1950s, widespread illegal surveillance resulted in thousands being jailed, blacklisted, or fired” (Anne M. Wittman, “Talking Conflict: the Loaded Language of Genocide, Political Violence, Terrorism and Warfare”, © 2017 by ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA).

As President-Elect Donald Trump prepares to assume the awesome powers of the U.S. presidency he expressed a view eerily consonant with those above.  As reported in Time on Nov. 25, 2016 he told a rally in Myrtle Beach, SC “[p]eople move into a house a block down the road, you know who’s going in. You can see and you report them to the local police.”  He understood that in most cases such informing on one’s neighbors would be unfounded and so “be wrong, but that’s OK.”  President-Elect Trump, it appears, is perfectly comfortable with this remarkable invasion of our right to privacy.  He condones neighbor-on-neighbor espionage, one of the means that police-state dictatorships have used in the past to maintain power.

 

Trump Transition Team’s Questionnaire to the Department of Energy.  The Trump administration’s transition team for the Department of Energy has issued a detailed set of 74 questions directed to the Department’s employees, requesting detailed information on programs and staffing related to climate change and nuclear energy, and other operations as well.  Among the questions are certain ones asking employees to name colleagues engaged in climate science activities, and their funding, and to list other individual professional activities.  Such questions are transcribed here verbatim, identified by the number used in the document:

·        13. Can you provide a list of all Department of energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings?  [The social cost of carbon relates to secondary costs to society as a result of carbon-induced global warming.  These include damages from extreme climate events, loss of agricultural yield, wildfires, and adverse health effects, for example.]  Can you provide a list of when those meetings were and any materials distributed at those meetings, emails associated with those meetings, or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation of or as a result of those meetings?

·        15. What is the Department’s role with respect to JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear agreement)? Which office has the lead for the Department?

·        19. Can you provide a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCCC) in the last fiv years?  [A Conference of the Parties (COP) is one of the annual meetings held under the UNFCCC (U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change) that negotiates international climate treaties.  The meeting that resulted in the Paris Agreement of December 2015 was COP21.]

·        69. Can you provide a list of the top twenty salaried employees of the lab, with total remuneration and the portion funded by DOE?

·        70. Can you provide a list of all peer-reviewed publications by lab staff for the past three years?

·        71. Can you provide a list of current professional society memberships of lab staff?

·        72. Can you provide a list of publications by lab staff for the past three years?

·        73. Can you provide a list of all websites maintained by or contributed to by laboratory staff during work hours for the past three years?

·        74. Can you provide a list of all other positions currently held by lab staff, paid and unpaid, including faculties, boards, and consultancies?

Questions 13, 19, and 69-74 are troubling because they ask agency personnel to point the finger at their colleagues, and to identify their work products and their communications, in ways that are potentially threatening to the named  employee’s status within the Department or to his/her employment security.  This chilling effect arises because it is widely known that President-elect Trump and the nominee for Secretary of Energy oppose action to address climate change.  Any request for information on particular Department employees must be considered threatening under these circumstances.

(In passing, it should be noted that part of the answer to Question 15 is that the current Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, is a nuclear physicist who left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become the Secretary.  He was directly involved at the highest levels of the negotiations leading to the Iran nuclear agreements.)

On December 13, 2016 the Department of Energy responded to the questionnaire by refusing to provide information on the personal activities of its staff to the Trump transition team.   The Department will limit its responses to information that is already available to the public.

Propagandizing Science.  Personnel in Federal agencies are hired because of their technical expertise in their fields, not for their political views.  They are career government employees, who serve under administrations of both parties, carrying out their duties and responsibilities as professionals, not as political appointees.  The requests for information in this questionnaire undermine this premise of federal employment.  Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said the questionnaire “suggests the Trump administration plans a witch hunt for civil servants who’ve simply been doing their jobs….Democrats and Republicans alike should unite to condemn any action that intimidates, threatens or retaliates against civil servants” professionally carrying out the duties of their positions. 

The troublesome questions above are easily interpreted as attempts to intimidate the Department’s employees, perhaps leading to a purge of their positions with the Department.  This cannot be tolerated.  Our government can never be run as a propagandistic enterprise that dismisses meritocracy in its employment policies.  Career departmental employees must be respected for the professional expertise they bring to their work.

 

© 2016 Henry Auer

U. S. Federal Spending Proposals for Energy R&D – 2011 and 2012

Summary:   Global warming due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, arising from burning fossil fuels and other sources, threatens to cause large scale disruptions in our planetary agricultural and economic activities, and of the ecological balance across the face of the earth.  In the past two years the U. S. Department of Energy has implemented new programs and expanded others directed toward identifying new technologies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Most recently, however, the funding environment for these programs has grown uncertain due to a change in the political landscape in the U. S. Congress.  At this writing the situation is in flux. This post summarizes the present uncertain status of funding for energy programs.

Introduction.  On Nov. 29, 2010 U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed the National Press Club (see the post reporting this speech here).  He advocated support for new federal programs to create domestic U. S. industries in the fields of alternative and sustainable energy, and energy efficiency.  This theme was reinforced by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Speech in January 2011.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the anti-recession fiscal  “stimulus” bill) the Department of Energy received considerable one-time funding, with a duration of two years, to support new research and development in the areas of renewable and sustainable energy, and energy conservation research, among others.  As an example of the programs established, a recent post reported on the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) support for new startup companies, many of which have progressed to receiving additional venture capital funding to expand their activities.  This is considered to be a significant achievement that helps vindicate the ARPA-E program, since the venture capital firms made their decisions as little as one year after the initial ARPA-E awards.  As noted, the federal budget support for these programs ends after two years, i.e., more or less at the present time.

Fiscal Year 2011.  The U. S. fiscal year 2011 runs from Oct. 1, 2010 to Sept. 30, 2011.  Every year the President and his Administration submit a proposed budget for a given fiscal year more than six months before it begins, so that the Congress can consider it and prepare the various appropriations.  The Congress, however, (repeating a pattern common in recent years) failed to enact any appropriations before Oct. 1, 2010.  When this happens, Congress typically passes one or more of a series of “continuing resolutions” (CRs) that continue federal spending levels from the preceding fiscal year into the actual fiscal year whose budget has not yet been acted on.  This has happened for the present fiscal year, 2011; no federal budget has passed Congress.  At this writing, the current CR expires March 4, 2011.

The U. S. Congressional elections of Nov. 2, 2010 resulted in a new Congress, the 112^th Congress.  It took office in January 2011. The majority in the House of Representatives changed from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, and the Senate Democratic Party majority was narrowed.  Since fiscal year 2011 is almost half over, the new Republican majority in the House has introduced a proposal for an extended CR to last through the rest of the fiscal year, one which involves drastic reductions in many programs. 

The Republican CR addresses so-called “discretionary funding” in the budget, and focuses on that portion, about 15% of the total, to which it proposes to apply pronounced reductions.  (The CR leaves Social Security and Medicare, whose expenditures are governed by the legal rights of the recipients, as well as spending for the Department of Defense, untouched.)   In this 15% slice of the overall Federal budget, the CR now proposes to reduce spending by $60 billion in the remaining 6 months or so of the fiscal year, compared to the spending rates extended from the previous fiscal year. 

For programs in the Department of Energy related generally to addressing global warming and energy efficiency, the proposed reductions in the various programs are very severe, as included in the table presented below:

                              gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/cfo/reports/2011/main_toc; “FY 2011 Budget

                              and Related Information”, available at http://www.usgs.gov/budget/2011/2011Index.asp.

                              Source: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/budget_cuts_innovation.html

Chairman Hal Rogers of the House Appropriations Committee, in a press release dated February 11, 2011, summarized the reductions proposed for the FY 2011 CR.  In it, he states in part, concerning energy-related reductions,

“Funding for non-core research … have been reduced in the bill, and most agencies are prohibited from starting new programs without Committee approval. The Committee also sought to reduce excess and unnecessary spending by cutting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and Science accounts – both of which received huge funding levels in the stimulus bill.” 

This proposed CR is almost certain to pass the House of Representatives with little or no change.  It is not likely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, however, in its present form.  And even if it does, President Obama will most likely veto it. 

As noted above, the present situation must be resolved by March 4, 2011.  It is not clear at this time how this apparent impasse will be resolved.  One solution would be to extend the FY 2010 CR unchanged to the end of this fiscal year.

Fiscal Year 2012.  President Obama has presented a proposed budget for FY 2012, which begins Oct. 1, 2011.  Overall, he proposes budget reductions of $1.1 trillion over 10 years, as a start to addressing growing annual deficits and the expanding U. S. national debt.  However, in the face of this effort, the President proposes increasing funding for renewable energy and related programs in the Department of Energy, according to Platts.com's web site.  The overall budget for the department is proposed to increase by 12% over 2010 levels to $29.5 billion.  Importantly, renewable energy research and development programs are proposed to increase by 70% -- almost $1 billion -- for renewable energy R&D, such as solar, biomass, geothermal, and building and industrial energy efficiency, compared to FY 2010 levels. 

According to Platt.com, the Energy budget proposes funding of $550 million for ARPA-E, identified above.  ARPA-E has so far only received $400 million in the 2009 stimulus bill, since the program was not supported by the Republican Party at that time.  The proposal also seeks $5.4 billion for the Department’s Office of Science, a $500 million increase about 2010 levels. This is contrary to Chairman Rogers’ proposal (see above). 

For those who support the need to address global warming, reduce America’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, and stimulate new economic activity based on renewable energy and energy conservation, the President’s budget proposal is truly heartening.  It is clear that the President and his administration whole-heartedly support expanding these programs in face of the overall atmosphere of reducing federal expenditures.  This budget proposal is only the first step in arriving at actual spending levels, however.  The actual appropriations bill must be written and an identical version agreed to in each chamber of the Congress.  Then the President has to sign the result, if he agrees to its terms.  As seen from recent experience and the fact that the Congress is divided between Republicans and Democrats, considerable hurdles remain to be overcome before the proposed programs are supported by actual expenditures.

Conclusion.  The appropriations that could support federal research and development projects in renewable energy and energy conservation, and related clean energy projects, are in a high state of flux at present.  The funding levels both for current spending and for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2011 remain to be determined.  This is highly disadvantageous for creating new enterprises in this field, because the high level of uncertainty hinders private equity investors from committing to supporting these innovations.  Yet the participation of private funding is critical for development of alternative energy regimes.

© 2011 Henry Auer