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Your tax dollars at work….wait, not “at work”, but, um…
Guest post by Christopher Horner, CEI
Funny how so many people at NOAA have the same hobby they work on on taxpayer-provided assets on taxpayer time directly related to their taxpayer-funded position.
But it’s OK. The American Meteorological Society is increasingly a sober, science-based organization, run by sober, apolitical science-types.
And, as I reminded NOAA in my appeal just denied today (see below), when seeking emails showing NOAA employees’ use of taxpayer assets to develop AMS’s advocacy documents, NOAA brags on its staff’s participation in and work for AMS. (NOAA waived this away as, well, ok, true, “at times”, apparently just not the times that matter).
Just as AMS touts their officers’ NOAA credential in presenting them to the world. But that’s not related to their work at AMS. Or NOAA. Except when it is.
But, despite these things and that, well, the documents were also created on agency time and held by the agency, always under the agency’s control (after all, how else did they inspect these 116 documents that are not under their control or obtained by them?), they really, well, erm…weren’t. Because NOAA was only “technically” able to pull and inspect them.
So, you see, our saying that possession “automatically” made them government records — which, ok, we didn’t actually say, but instead pointed to numerous factors including the above — is not persuasive.
You see, NOAA’s resident climate activists are like academics at public universities apparently getting a bit tired of having the “string” they agreed to of scrutiny, of how they use taxpayer time and assets, actually invoked. And have laid down the law to their nominal supervisors.
Which some of you may have been under the impression included us, the taxpayers. Well, you were wrong. Some employers have the right to see how their assets are being used. Just not you. When it comes to them.
So, no. No, these aren’t work-related records. Really. And as Attorney General Holder promised, FOIA will not, repeat not be used as ways to withhold records. It just won’t. Except when it is.
Evaluation of costs and benefits of suing to follow. But these contortions by the most transparent administration, ever (still claimed, as of yesterday! Let’s go to the evidence, here) are, on their own, priceless.