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Rome never looks where she treads
When Timothy Snyder's list of "twenty lessons from the twentieth century" went around first on Facebook and then the internet at large, remember how the first line of safeguarding a democracy against authoritarianism was "Do not obey in advance"?
In question after question, the document peppers Energy Department managers with pointed queries about climate science research, clean energy programs and the employees who work for those programs . . . The questionnaire requests "a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group meetings" to design a measurement known as the Social Cost of Carbon, a figure used by the Obama administration to measure the economic effects of carbon dioxide pollution, and to justify the economic cost of climate regulations. That question goes on to demand "a list of when those meetings were" as well as "emails associated with those meetings."
A separate question asks for "a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any" United Nations climate change conference "in the last five years." Still another inquires about which office led the department's efforts to complete the five-nation nuclear weapons deal with Iran . . . [F]ormer Energy Department employees and presidential transition officials said that while it is normal for presidential transition teams to ask policy questions, it is highly unusual to send out questionnaires. The requests for lists of specific employees involved in shaping climate policy is irregular and alarming, they said, given that on the campaign trail Mr. Trump clearly showed his skepticism of climate change science and his hostility to climate change policy.
Trump is the President-elect, not the President. The prospect of him having any control over the nation's energy policies and nuclear research is bad enough. (His EPA pick is disastrous and I assume designed to destroy the agency. These days, never ascribe to incompetence what you can chalk up to malice.) No one at the Department of Energy owes it to him to name names. If he wants that kind of personally targeting information, he should have to compel the department for it after he's in office and see how the laws fall, not trust its employees to do their informing in advance. It's irregular and alarming and nobody at the department can remember seeing anything like it from previous administrations? So don't fill it out!
(Senator Ed Markey has already published a strongly disapproving letter, so that's one phone call I don't have to make next week. It's kind of nice that my senators have been so on the ball, but then I have to find other things to do with my activism.)
I know that being a federal employee is different from working in the private sector. I am a little reassured to read that some of the information has already been refused—"DOE does not collect this information. This would require a call to the Labs, and the information is not available publicly"—and that officials are deciding how to respond regarding the rest. I hope it's a stonewall. I don't know if it will be. I don't know what people will feel required to do, whether or not they're legally obliged to. I don't like the idea of having to wait and see if employees of the DOE end up marginalized or penalized because of the information provided against them. By then it will have become just that edge more normal, to hand over this kind of information on colleagues, their affiliations, their associations. We did this before. I don't want to do it again.
This particular remix of the twentieth century is not the worst, but man, I've heard better.
In question after question, the document peppers Energy Department managers with pointed queries about climate science research, clean energy programs and the employees who work for those programs . . . The questionnaire requests "a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group meetings" to design a measurement known as the Social Cost of Carbon, a figure used by the Obama administration to measure the economic effects of carbon dioxide pollution, and to justify the economic cost of climate regulations. That question goes on to demand "a list of when those meetings were" as well as "emails associated with those meetings."
A separate question asks for "a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any" United Nations climate change conference "in the last five years." Still another inquires about which office led the department's efforts to complete the five-nation nuclear weapons deal with Iran . . . [F]ormer Energy Department employees and presidential transition officials said that while it is normal for presidential transition teams to ask policy questions, it is highly unusual to send out questionnaires. The requests for lists of specific employees involved in shaping climate policy is irregular and alarming, they said, given that on the campaign trail Mr. Trump clearly showed his skepticism of climate change science and his hostility to climate change policy.
Trump is the President-elect, not the President. The prospect of him having any control over the nation's energy policies and nuclear research is bad enough. (His EPA pick is disastrous and I assume designed to destroy the agency. These days, never ascribe to incompetence what you can chalk up to malice.) No one at the Department of Energy owes it to him to name names. If he wants that kind of personally targeting information, he should have to compel the department for it after he's in office and see how the laws fall, not trust its employees to do their informing in advance. It's irregular and alarming and nobody at the department can remember seeing anything like it from previous administrations? So don't fill it out!
(Senator Ed Markey has already published a strongly disapproving letter, so that's one phone call I don't have to make next week. It's kind of nice that my senators have been so on the ball, but then I have to find other things to do with my activism.)
I know that being a federal employee is different from working in the private sector. I am a little reassured to read that some of the information has already been refused—"DOE does not collect this information. This would require a call to the Labs, and the information is not available publicly"—and that officials are deciding how to respond regarding the rest. I hope it's a stonewall. I don't know if it will be. I don't know what people will feel required to do, whether or not they're legally obliged to. I don't like the idea of having to wait and see if employees of the DOE end up marginalized or penalized because of the information provided against them. By then it will have become just that edge more normal, to hand over this kind of information on colleagues, their affiliations, their associations. We did this before. I don't want to do it again.
This particular remix of the twentieth century is not the worst, but man, I've heard better.
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I hope so. There are just so many things wrong right now that people need to pay attention to and it's difficult when The Manchurian Candidate apparently just stopped being a satire.
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Yes. In general, waiting to see how bad something will get before acting never produces good results, and so far in this post-election season it has produced unilaterally horrifying ones.
And yes, about the unions - right now's the time for all public sector employees to join.
That's good to know! Thank you.