US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
THE TIP OF A MASSIVE WAVE OF GOVERNMENT WASTE!
Some people are Liberal because they are lazy, some because they are crooks, some because they are dumb, some because they were brainwashed and some because they are dead. I challenge any sane person on this earth to justify why we have a Department of Energy and especially why we allow what are likely thousands of other debacles like the one described in this article to exist? No one on earth can justify this insanity to continue but Congress and our Executive branch of government. These hidden waste are allowed by Congress to exist by just ignoring them. This is not just a Democratic problem and it will never be stopped until the people demand term limits for every elected official in America. If you are asleep read David Stockman’s latest article in the papers this weekend. Wake up America and scream.
Listening to the news this morning about another scandal within the DOE about how they skirt the salary limits for thousands of consultants that are used as employees peaked my interest. I have admitted that I gather most of my news from blogs as the national news media ignores 99% of wasteful spending by our government.
This snippet on Fox News enticed me to scour the blogosphere for tidbits of facts to pass on to my readers. The following is a summarization about just one facet of the total waste of having a US Department of Energy that is so bloated it should have been axed 30 years ago. I located these facts in a blog, “Maggie’s Notebook”, written on February 14, 2013. I suppose it was read locally but escaped notice from the media. Why would any American care how much is wasted by our government? Well, I do!
A Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Colorado, was forced to hand over documents requested by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filed by Watchdog.org and Judicial Watch. This laboratory is 100% funded by your and my tax dollars and provide a way to hide waste and pay above government scale salaries to outside consultants and political friends.
The Manager of (NERL) is Mr. Dan Arvizu is paid nearly $1,000,000.00 million per year, He has two others that report to him that are paid more than $500,000 each. There are nine other people who are paid more than $350,000 each.
According to Judicial Watch, “federal employees” at NREL are “encouraged to” use Twitter and Facebook. Kerrilee Ann Crosby, told employees of Watchdog.org they deserved to die.
In 2010, the funding for (NERL) was a $181 million, up $40 million from 2009. NERL is a laboratory for solar, wind, biomass and biorefinery, hydrogen, geothermal, and water power. In 2010, Ampulse Corp published “A Case Study on Technology Transfer in U.S. Department of Energy Laboratories.” NREL’s job is to transfer what they learn to private companies. Ampulse worked with NREL. Remember Abound Solar, one of the U.S. government-funded bankruptcies? Abound received $70 million of a $400 million DOE loan guarantee. When Abound closed shop, Ampulse hired Former Abound VP President of Global Sales Erik Mikysa and he is not the VP of Business Development at Ampulse.
Not only was the Abound solar project not profitable, the once-company was under investigation for “misleading investors and a bank.”
Company employees have since come forward saying Abound officials knew their solar panels were defective and sold them anyway in order to meet benchmarks, so the company could get the Department of Energy loan.
NREL delves into exciting research with our tax money. One project that we should all embrace was a “Feasibility Study of Anaerobic Digestion of Food Waste in St. Bernard, Louisiana.”
Feel free to visit their website to review more of these important projects that just “make work” for government leeches. Please remember that we were promised that waste in government would be eliminated with old “Trust me, Joe Biden”.
I wonder that if someone in Congress decided to really care about stopping this nonsense they would demand that the Department of Energy be eliminated. I feel certain that if details in each of the DOE bankruptcy scandals was made public the DOE would be gone. It would be interesting to know exactly how many cases just like Abound would we find connected in some way with the NREL. There must be hundreds of other DOE Laboratories like Sandia that was in the news today.
Does this bother anyone but me?
C Brewer 4-2-13
A Conservative View 
IT BOTHERS ME!!! I have been seeing this for years now and people just shake it off when I tell them that. People dont like to do their own research and like to listen to the media that is totally BIASED toward the liberal side.
I am really glad that at least one other person than myself is bothered. Thanks for expressing your feelings. I was hoping a liberal would take a cheap shot and really wind me up. This is unacceptable under any political condition
I just find it unacceptable that our government spends billions of dollars on Engergy projects that fail and pay these government workers more than most people.