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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 11 2016, @03:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the about-turn? dept.

On Friday morning, Bloomberg reported that it had seen a copy of a questionnaire sent by the Trump transition team to the Department of Energy (DOE). The questionnaire includes 75 questions directed at the DOE and the Energy Information Agency (EIA), as well as any labs underneath the DOE's purview. The New York Times then obtained and published a copy of the document.

Although the questions are broad in nature, they seem to set the department up for budget and staffing cuts. They also appear to favor nuclear power and fossil fuel.

Questions that address cuts to the DOE's mission include: "Which Assistant Secretary positions are rooted in statute and which exist at the discretion and delegation of the Secretary?", as well as "If the DOE's topline budget in accounts other than the 050 account were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years (from the FY17 request and starting in FY18), does the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?" A 050 account indicates national defense spending.

With respect to renewables and research, the questionnaire asks the DOE to provide a complete list of the projects shouldered by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which funds early-stage energy technology that would otherwise not be funded on the private market. ARPA-E opened its doors in 2009 under President Obama and works on battery research, biofuel production, and wind turbine projects.

Efforts to modernize the US' aging and inefficient grids also seemed to get a critical eye. "What is the goal of the grid modernization effort?" the questionnaire asks. "Is there some terminal point to this effort? Is its genesis statutory or something else?"

[Continues...]

[...] While divining the motivations behind the questions is difficult, some of them have potentially nefarious undertones. One of the questions asks for a list of all employees or contractors who attended meetings about the social cost of carbon, as well as a list of materials distributed at those meetings. Another asks "Can you provide a list of Department employees who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCCC) in the last five years?" According to the Washington Post , one unnamed Energy Department official expressed concern that "the Trump transition team was trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama." Scientists have asked the administration to "refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration's policy goals."

[...] The questionnaire also has pointed questions for the EIA, an independent agency under the DOE umbrella that provides energy market analysis. The questionnaire seemingly accuses the EIA of overlooking the costs of renewable energy when comparing it to fossil fuels. "Renewable and solar technologies are expected to need additional transmission costs above what fossil technologies need," the questionnaire states. "How has EIA represented this in the AEO [Annual Energy Outlook] forecasts? What is the magnitude of those transmission costs?"

Thomas Pyle, the head of the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance, is leading Trump's Department of Energy Transition team, and he likely had a hand in assembling these questions. According to the Washington Post, Pyle recently wrote a fundraising pitch decrying "the Obama administration's divisive energy and environmental policies" and promising that "the Trump administration will adopt pro-energy and pro-market policies."


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  • (Score: 2) by BK on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:43AM

    by BK (4868) on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:43AM (#439892)

    Although the questions are broad in nature, they seem to set the department up for budget and staffing cuts.

    OK. This sounds about right. (not that I like all of it but it's about what one should expect.)

    Trump has new priorities as he comes into office. We all know about walls he wants to build. We may have also heard that he wants to invest in 'infrastructure [politico.com]'. But, he ran as a Republican and has genuine fiscal conservatives in his camp... they're gonna want to cut those dollars from someplace else. It's no surprise that some of it is going to come from the DOE.

    The questions boil down to:
    What do you do?
    Is it important? Have you ever looked at this issue that *I* think is important?
    Who said you should do it? (Congress directly, the President, maybe some undersecretary wrote a memo once?)
    Where does your money come from?
    Oh! And by the way, have you been involved in the political aspects of policy (as opposed to just the functional)?

    Trump has promised to 'drain the swamp' in Washington. This could mean almost anything... but it won't mean anything good for folks on the fringes of the swamp. Anyone working on anything beloved by the loony left and SJWs but hated by the wacko right is on the chopping block. Donating [thehill.com] to the wrong candidate won't help them now... It makes them part of the swamp...

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:47AM (#439895)

    Draining the swamp, directly into his cabinet. And threatening the hard working professionals of the civil service who are tasked with keeping country running despite the political insanity that goes on constantly? Oh, yeah! This is gonna end well!

    • (Score: 2) by BK on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:17AM

      by BK (4868) on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:17AM (#439900)

      Oh, yeah! This is gonna end well!

      Didn't say I agreed with it. Just that it should be no surprise. And that for the federal bureaucracy, this will be the first real 'change' since WJC went looking in the DOD for a 'Peace Dividend' in the 90s.

      hard working professionals of the civil service

      Whatever your political stripe, if you spot more than 3 or 4 of these in a lifetime of looking, you should count yourself lucky.

      --
      ...but you HAVE heard of me.
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 11 2016, @10:42AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday December 11 2016, @10:42AM (#439947) Journal

        How do you know? Have you installed web cams in their offices, ot what? I'm pretty sure most of them are hard-working to fill out lots of unnecessary but required fields in lots of unnecessary but required forms in order to get something dome. And a few are hard-working creating even more unnecessary forms filled with even more unnecessary fields.

        Remember, just because they are not doing useful work doesn't mean they are not working hard.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @11:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @11:55PM (#440127)

        Didn't say I agreed with it. Just that it should be no surprise. And that for the federal bureaucracy, this will be the first real 'change' since WJC went looking in the DOD for a 'Peace Dividend' in the 90s.

        Except that WJC didn't use his hunt for a "Peace Dividend" as an excuse to punish those who were working on policies that that he found objectionable/embarrassing to the incoming administration. That is rather a significant difference. And we should point out that not just government workers are being searched for "improper policy thinking" but contractors as well. Why would they do that? The most obvious answer appears to be so that these contractors can be black balled. Can you honestly not see how this will usher in a brave new world in which all must properly genuflect to the Dear Leader? As a government employee I am not at all looking forward to the possibility that soon I could be constantly threatened with losing my job if I should ever displease Der Führer by not toeing the party line.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:50AM

    by Whoever (4524) on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:50AM (#439896) Journal

    Republicans talk about cutting the budget, but history suggests that all they want to do is to cut areas that benefit the poor and allow regulations and laws (tax laws in particular) to be enforced. Inability to enforce tax laws provides more opportunities for the wealthy to increase their wealth.

    Cutting the welfare state has the effect of removing any safety net for the poor, so pay rates can be reduced and the poor do not have the ability to fight back.

    Ultimately, what Republicans are interested in is class warfare. If they were really interested in cutting the budget, they should start with the military.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by BK on Sunday December 11 2016, @06:48AM

      by BK (4868) on Sunday December 11 2016, @06:48AM (#439918)

      Democrats talk about benefiting the poor, but history suggests that they build programs that entrap and enslave the poor in the long term and use the threat of the removal of these programs, of change, to ensure that they can remain in power.

      What were you talking about?

      --
      ...but you HAVE heard of me.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday December 11 2016, @06:54AM

        by Whoever (4524) on Sunday December 11 2016, @06:54AM (#439921) Journal

        History suggests that you are just spouting a Republican talking point and not fact.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by BK on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:08AM

          by BK (4868) on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:08AM (#439926)

          History suggests that you went first with the talking points.

          History also suggests that yo momma so fat that when she sat on Home Depot it became Lowes.

          What I enjoy most about SN is the maturity of the topics and the commenters.

          --
          ...but you HAVE heard of me.
      • (Score: 2) by rondon on Monday December 12 2016, @02:48PM

        by rondon (5167) on Monday December 12 2016, @02:48PM (#440371)

        I don't always agree with BK, but this time I do.

        Welfare has been structured so that the local maxima in terms of income is for a person to NOT have a job. In fact, getting a part time job decreases benefits by more than the income of the job in question.

        This is a trap, which is designed to guide poor people to the local maxima which is detrimental to them in the long term. I would welcome someone who modded BK as a troll to please refute my statements with facts. If I am wrong, please inform me.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by goody on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:42AM

    by goody (2135) on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:42AM (#439904)

    Draining the swamp. Right. He's basically filling it up again with billionaires, Goldman-Sachs people, and agency head nominations that basically despise the agencies that they're going to run, or have no clue how to run (like Ben Carson). This has been a huge bait-and-switch for the people who voted for him. Yuge. If they actually cared who he was nominating to his cabinet.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:45AM (#439905)

      This page is going to be invaluable in analyzing the Trump Presidency:

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/quotes [imdb.com]

      Sample Text

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:26PM (#439965)

      I occasionally dip into /r/The_Donald and it is hilarious in the most sad, pathetic way, to see the groupthink over there.
      It basically comes down to "all of these swampbeasts are going to do exactly what donald wants because he's god emperror so they are gonna be working for us!"