The American Geophysical Union: the privileges of government-paid scientists must come above the Constitution and the ordinary citizens who pay the bills
The American Geophysical Union, where
science is no longer practiced
In a public letter issued late yesterday, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) announced it has joined a lawsuit attempting to make the salaries, jobs, and various research grants of scientists immune from cancellation or the budget cuts that have been ordered by the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump.
Plaintiffs assert that such a sweeping Executive Order — which would impact hundreds of thousands of federal workers — goes far beyond the authority of the President to direct, and that such a massive reorganization of federal agencies must be planned in accordance with law and approved by Congress. AGU’s role in the case will involve illustrating the extensive ways in which scientists and the public will be irreparably harmed by the execution of the President’s order, in particular through proposed mass terminations at NOAA, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, the Environmental Protectional Agency, and the National Science Foundation.
“This Executive Order is demanding layoffs on such a massive scale that they will have drastic, cascading effects on our members, the global scientific community, and the public,” said Janice R. Lachance, Interim Executive Director and CEO of AGU. “From forecasting severe weather and ensuring healthy crops to preventing uncontrollable wildfires and preparing communities for sea level rise, fully functioning federal scientific agencies are critical.” [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrases show the priorities. The public comes last. More important are “federal workers,” the “members” of the AGU, and “the global scientific community.” Moreover, the letter reeks of privilege and smug superiority. It assumes that the paychecks from the taxpayers must never end, no matter what. The very idea that the president — duly elected by the American people and whom the Constitution vests with the sole power to run the executive branch of the federal government — should actually do what he promised the voters during the campaign actually offends them. “We come first! To hell with what the public wants!”
None of this should surprise anyone. The AGU, along with most national scientific organizations, has been corrupted by leftist politics for decades. It threw out the fundamentals of objective science years ago when it declared that it will reject any paper that does not support the theory of human-caused global warming. Its PR department has consistently reinforced this unscientific bias, pushing global warming in practically every press release.
And if you still have doubts about its leftist agenda divorced from objective science, you need only read its own description at the end of yesterday’s letter, outlining the organization’s priorities:
AGU is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct. [emphasis mine]
The focus is not on pursuing the truth, which is the hallmark of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. Instead the AGU has replaced this with the Marxist mantras of critical race theory, focusing everything on aiding the “global community” under “net zero energy” policies that “foster a diverse and inclusive geoscience community.”
Now AGU is joining the rest of the swamp to protect its cash cow (the federal government) from being eliminated. And the members of that swamp — as listed by the AGU in the letter itself — includes all the usual union and Democratic Party operatives.
AGU is part of a coalition of plaintiffs with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and four AFGE locals, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and SEIU Local 1000, Alliance for Retired Americans, American Public Health Association, Center for Taxpayer Rights, Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, Common Defense, Main Street Alliance, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Northeast Organic Farming Association Inc., VoteVets, Western Watersheds Project, City and County of San Francisco, California; County of Santa Clara, California; City of Chicago, Illinois; City of Baltimore, Maryland; Harris County, Texas; and King County, Washington.
The goal: Cancelling the Constitution
None of these organizations care one whit for the American citizen and what he or she desires. What they care about solely are their own vested interests, almost all of which are very radically Marxist and focused on empowering the Democratic Party, which acts as its agent within the government.
The ultimate goal is to guarantee federal dollars, no matter what the general public wants. Elections must become irrelevant. What matters is keeping this wine-and-cheese crowd well fed with nice cocktail parties and luxuriant benefits and cushy jobs.
So far the federal courts have shown a disturbing reluctance to rein these lawsuits in, despite the fact that they have little merit in law. If the Supreme Court does not do so soon, the country will be faced with a Hobson’s choice: Either allow the federal courts unlimited ability to rule arbitrarily, which appears to be the goal of many judges in these cases, or ignore the courts entirely. This latter option carries with it horrible consequences, because until now the judicial branch of government acted as a wise check on the abuse of power by the other branches.
If either the executive or legislative branch establishes the precedent that it no longer need to obey the judicial branch, then all bets are off. We will be faced with a government of men, fighting each other for power with little to restrain them.
Of course, this is really what the AGU and its allies really want. Having to bend the knee to a lawful election and the will of the people is so humiliating! It is essential such practices against these superior beings end now!
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I think engineers and police do need some protection–a lot of citizen review boards make law enforcement’s job impossible.
The Faucis and Thunbergs of the world should have no such protection.
I remember a line from THE SPACE REVIEW a few years back where a French woman said “environmentalism is non consensual.”
Please, somebody look that up–Google has it buried.
The same people who say the President should have no authority over them want unquestioned authority over the masses.
Stories about this subject remind me of a wonderful moment in the Cheers TV series. Frazier was celebrating the renewal of his grant. His comment that is unforgettable: “Thank God, for a while I thought I just might have to go out and get a real job.”
Trump is not a king. If budgets are to be reduced or programs terminated, that has to be done by the Congress. Congress holds the power of the purse, not the President. The AGU letter is highly appropriate since the current President is acting like a king and is doing great harm to the scientific community in the process. If Congress passes legislation to reduce funding or terminate programs, so be it, but that is not in the purview of the executive branch.
Bill Farrand wrote: “If budgets are to be reduced or programs terminated, that has to be done by the Congress. Congress holds the power of the purse, not the President.”
This is not strictly true. Congress may not have specified every science study that is to be funded, so the executive branch would have discretion there, but the money allocated by Congress must be spent in the areas specified. The AGU has no claim to any money that Congress did not specify to be spent by the AGU scientists. However, any money specified to be spent on earth sciences must be spent on earth sciences, but the executive branch may choose which science studies to spend it on.
The actual savings in money spent comes with next year’s budget, five months from now.
Bill —
I’m sorry, but we are in an existential struggle for the survival of this country, cf, the national debt (and the unpayable interest charges associated with that) and the ongoing, accelerating devaluation of the dollar. Please be advised — assuming that that you have never thought about it in these terms — that the AGU’s cushy “entitlement” program (and much of the rest of what our government does) is increasingly funded with BORROWED MONEY, and I’d greatly appreciate hearing your explanation as to how this can continue to “work.”*
*Those who are enjoying the current series about the life and times of Marie Antoinette on PBS will surely have noted that deficit spending and government borrowing are not a modern invention. Nor will it work out any better for us today, though the people most responsible for our current predicament will probably keep their heads.
,
Sadly, Congress (although you are correct in theory) long ago effectively abdicated any responsibility for putting this country back on a sustainable fiscal path, and they are now a major component of the PROBLEM, not a solution. Like him or not, Donald Trump and the people around him would seem to be the only people in Washington who have any interest in actually halting this country’s slide into
penury, and — again — I’d love to hear your theories about why our present trajectory will work out well for us.
There is an old saying with respect to judicial interpretation that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” and — as in Lincoln’s case during the Civil War — adhering to all of the niceties of peacetime is neither advisable nor appropriate in a time of war. Bill, I honestly think that people ought to be down on their knees *thanking* Mr. Trump and his associates for at least having the audacity to believe that they *can* right the ship of state and save it from all of the people who believe in magical thinking and that history holds no lessons for us.
Just saying.
Well good luck with that wish list.
That is going nowhere fast, they will have to wait for the next all Democrat / Communist government that they control and that will not be happening any time soon given the ridiculous and fractured condition their leadership is in.
The “NEW” Democrat / Socialist party leader, AOC has already stated several years ago based on her extensive personal research that the planet only has 12 years left. And that was in 2019 so there is only 6 years to go. The Democrats will be out of political power of consequence for at least the next 15 to 20 years.
https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-climate-change-world-will-end-12-years-un-report-1300873
“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat from New York, called climate change “our World War II” and warned that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t address global warming on Monday.”
Over at threads.com/@geography is a depiction of the African coast if all ice melted–the hump of Africa (where the oil is conveniently) is flooded–but nothing else.
Now depictions of North America show the Deep Gulf South flooded, which has the ring of truth-
–but…
I also looked at images of Africa’s coastline back in the thick of the last ice age.
And the coastline was largely unchanged there too.
Gee–I didn’t know the whole African continent was atop a ginormous mess where the sea levels could rise and fall half a kilometer and it make no difference.
For those of you with better computer skills–please do some screensaves before the maps disappear.
I suppose if you want to scare Republicans, having a shot of the flooded Southeast is like the fear of contagion that allowed Faucis to shut down America.
Jeff Wright,
While I generally regard government employee unions as one of the worst things the left ever saddled us with, the last few years have demonstrated that first responders do need institutional protection from the deranged Democrat wokesters still in charge of most major US cities.
Bill Farrand,
The academic and corporate fraudsters and grifters who benefit most from “science” funding – and who are, of course, wailing the loudest about their ill-gotten rice bowls being kicked over – are the same ones who contribute almost entirely to Democrat Congresscritters who, when they are in a suitable majority, keep the goodies coming. The entire system is corrupt from top to bottom.
If the Congress stays Republican for awhile – and the eminently corruptible RINOs are primaried out – Congress will make a lot of these cuts a matter of law as well as executive order. What, I wonder, will be your sob story then?
As the town grew larger, and the traffic heavier, it was determined that the traffic crossing guard was necessary near the school. They quickly found out that schedules must be made, and replacements for the traffic guard when they’re sick or on vacation must be arranged for. There was also the matter of time keeping , paychecks, tax records so a secretary was hired. A executive was hired to make the hard decisions that arise. Personnel department for hiring and the soothing of grievances. Etc.
When the town went over its budget they found that their expenditures exceeded the budget projections and they knew they had to make cuts… so they’ve fired the crossing guard.
Essential services must be maintained, society cannot function without them. The twisting of the services into leftist social reengineering death cult it’s not sustainable. Those who made the programs work have been fired or replaced with DEI entitlements that think themselves beyond reach… many do no work in no-show jobs.
It’s been described that the country is like a train heading for a cliff, with all those with golden parachutes and injection seats ready to jump train and let the rest of us in our “build back better caboose” crash and burn. (billions and billions are missing, and the build back better crowd are still waiting for the building permits to be approved)
Trump and the DOGE teams are attempting to apply the brakes… The ones that haven’t been sabotaged. Any government organization (like the department of education) that was created by executive order can be shut down by executive order. Government averages “two” new federal agencies “per year” have been created by the administrative state… Not Congress which can’t find “you know what” with with both hands. any government agency that has no value, or works against the constitution in the well-being of the country should not be funded… (The funds are being created out of nothing causing inflation)
I see this group as the fifth column of the “death cult” supported by this nations enemies, who relish in the “destruction of everything that’s been built” and are doing their best to stop trump (us) from saving the country.
The oath our servants take is to “protect this country from all enemies foreign and domestic”. Failure to do your sworn duty should result and loss of rights including citizenship. Actions performed that out right contradict this oath is “treason” that should be dealt with likewise. A house divided cannot stand.
A presidential candidate Bo Grits had a great idea, he would have the treasury issue $1 trillion coin and give it to the federal reserve to pay off the national debt.
Now that National debt is $35 trillion… Trump Treasury should issue a $50 trillion coin, legal tender, give it to the federal reserve and reverse charge interest on the outstanding balance allowing federal taxes to be abolished. (Allowing the existing debt to make money, instead of draining it) The banks will borrow from the federal reserve which will pay that interest, and would have to do so fiscally responsible with no more bale outs for gambling with other peoples money.
This will only work if socialism is brought to a minimum… I long ago learned that social programs are not for the needy who receive it, but the majority of the money is spent on those agencies whom hand it out.
All government agencies need tax money to survive… Imagine how productive this nation would become if these federal workers were to “create wealth” instead of absorbing it and squandering it.
That would be more money for education, science, and technology that will drive all of our futures into tomorrow responsibly… creating an off world future that will drive the hopes and dreams of tomorrow beyond our atmosphere.
Hello Robert —
Per your post about the AGU and the responses to it, am I the only person not so steeped in mormalcy bias that I am seeing the larger danger to this country?
As you observe, quite correctly —
“None of these organizations care one whit for the American citizen and what he or she desires.
What they care about solely are their own vested interests, almost all of which are very radically
Marxist and focused on empowering the Democratic Party, which acts as its agent within the
government.”
Going beyond that, however, there is the question of whether or not any of these people have the faintest glimmer of awareness that the future of the country / culture / civilization that they so thoughtlessly inhabit is up for grabs. Indeed, absent a functioning economy and a dollar that retains any semblance of purchasing power, how, exactly, do they imagine that they would be paid for their work or the infrastructure that supports it be maintained?
True enough, in a command society like Communist China, they would probably continue to have nice lives, but not so much in places like Cuba or Venezuela. In the present case, it seems to me that they are so unaware of how they are “supported” in their society — and what makes their work possible — that they haven’t a clue about just how ephemeral a moment in human history they reside in. And these are supposedly the best and the brightest among us?
Again, if we are very lucky, we will continue to have the kind of civilization and culture that makes such scientific investigation possible and we will have the wherewithal to deploy such knowledge in the context of a free, open, and prosperous society. Human history, however, says “don’t count on it.”
Hummmm. I stand corrected. Max *does* get it.
PS — I am not sure that issuing a 50 trillion coin is the answer to our current dilemma, but “something” must be done with respect to rethinking our reliance on a debt-based fiat currency*. At present, our system rests on the illusion of an ever growing national IOU (with compounding interest) that never needs to be repaid, and virtually every member of Congress is a participant** in such magical thinking. Indeed, “What, me worry?” (“I’ve got mine.”) might well be their official Congressional motto.
*A good starting place for understanding how our present monetary system “works” can be found in Ellen Brown’s illuminating book, Web of Debt. Without doubt, we can do better.
**And, like the lovely and charming Rep. Pelosi, profiting hugely from the current corrupt system.
Donald Trump — again., love him or hate him — seems to be almost the sole example of someone in power (with a legitimate national mandate) saying that this can’ go on, and we need to begin addressing this.
What’s the alternative?
Congress has no possible way of governing all the projects it funds. None what so ever.
It does not even have the authority to do it. All it can do is hand piles of cash out to each department and it lets them decide where the cash is to go.
This government has needed a DOGE for the last 100 years or more. The real problem with DOGE is when the bad guys get hold of it and just do not use it for its intended purpose. To remove questionable programs not directly authorized by Congress, Senate and the president together and in many cases to claw the cash back to the general fund.
To essentially counter the ever expanding Government programs.
If our governments expansion could be stopped we would be fine and we would then stand a chance at paying down the debt.
If we even just start to pay it down we would prove to the rest of world we do actually have the strongest economy and we would be the nation to invest in.
Re: $50 Trillion Coin
Oh, MY! Reminds me of when I still traveled and worked in Mexico. In the 1990s, the Mexican economy was in bad shape. They had actually printed/used 25,000 peso bills. It was crazy. So, one day the Mexican Wizards of Smart came up with a plan. They would issue new currency. A 25,000 paper peso bill became a 25 peso bill. 10,000 became 10.
For a while, most businesses created signs to reflect the new reality. Many people still had many of the “pesos viejos” (old pesos). So, the price signs each business created had two lists of prices side by side: Pesos Viejos – Pesos Nuevos.
In the 1930s during the Depression, States issued their own money script for a time. Today, I wonder if the Atlas Shrugged areas, New York, Kalifornia, Oregon, etc will attempt to issue their own script.
I remember those days.
The US dollar was king just over the border.
When I was working in one company’s space sciences department, making spacecraft instruments to study the environment around the Earth, most of the scientists in the department were members of the AGU and many went to the conferences. It is sad that the AGU has degraded so badly over the past decade or two.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “until now the judicial branch of government acted as a wise check on the abuse of power by the other branches.”
And now the judicial branch of government wants its own turn to abuse power over the other branches.
Max suggested: “Trump Treasury should issue a $50 trillion coin, legal tender, give it to the federal reserve and reverse charge interest on the outstanding balance allowing federal taxes to be abolished.”
How Weimar Republic is that idea? Remember what happened there? Printing money to pay down an un-payable debt does not work out well. On the other hand, we could try doing what the U.S. did to avoid the depression of the 1920s, when the debt of from WWI (the war to end all wars) was even more overwhelming than today’s debt.
https://fee.org/articles/the-depression-youve-never-heard-of-1920-1921/
More was done, too. The response was to make doing business easier and less expensive, allowing for the expansion in the Roaring Twenties. In essence, it was similar to what Reagan did after Carter’s disastrous presidency, what we did with the great Savings and Loan crisis in the late 1980s, and the opposite of what we did in 1929 and 2008, both of which brought disaster.
So if we have to greatly reduce government spending on science, then that is a good thing. Let We the People fund for ourselves what science is needed and what inventions are useful. We are, after all, the best arbiters of what is best for us. When we are paying for it from our own pockets, we are likely to demand better science and better scientists than the government has allowed to run roughshod over us (ouch).
To Milt
China’s longevity is due to a cultural differences…same with Sweden, until they opened up their borders.
“Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920”
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Mises Institute Media April 2009
https://youtu.be/czcUmnsprQI
49:11
Jeff Wright,
You’re right about Africa’s topography. It’s one of the biggest reasons Africa has stayed poor. The cliff-like coastline along much of the continent’s periphery makes for very few good sites for port cities, even where river mouths exist. It also makes it nearly impossible to build road and rail nets to connect the interior to the coast – a truly insane volume of soil and rock would have to be removed along almost any such proposed transport corridor in Africa to make the grade angle even marginally acceptable. Trucks and trains both use air brakes and one cannot be riding the brakes continuously for a couple hundred miles on every trip to the coast. Climbing those same grades on the backhaul would also be very hard on conventional truck hardware. Maybe the regenerative braking and high torque of Tesla Semis and other EV long-haul trucks will someday change this calculus. The same might even prove true for future electric train tech.
China’s “longevity” includes a lot of politco-military turbulence and territorial expansion/contraction over the millennia. During all of that time, though, it has been a basically subsistence agricultural peasant nation. But it has industrialized and urbanized hugely in recent decades and the accompanying drastic drop in fertility rates has now doomed it to effective extinction in only a few decades more.
You correctly identify the Swedish problem. It was slowly dying of a terminally low fertility rate like most of the rest of Western Europe and the long-ruling leftists thought that letting in a lot of immigrants could fix things. If they had found a suitable population of would-be immigrants who actually wanted to be culturally Swedish, perhaps this might have worked. What they got, of course, was a jihadi invasion of Islamic gangsters who settle disputes with hand grenades and intend to stand up the Islamic Republic of Sweden as soon as they outnumber the native Swedes. In the United States, we have long since found that multiculturalism that extends beyond old-country food, festivals, cute ethnic costumes and dances on special occasions just doesn’t work. Diversity, beyond rather narrow behavioral and core-belief standards, is not strength, it’s chaos. At leftist insistence, we gave up acculturating newcomers to American norms and that has proven borderline disastrous.
Milt,
“What’s the alternative?” The only realistic alternative is to feed entitlement spending from a source that is linked to the expansion of the American economy, not to something that diminishes that expansion. We need, in short, to rely on corporate equity appreciation as the basis of entitlements and not on taxation. We need to establish a National Entitlements Market Index Mutual Fund. It could be started by outlawing all government employee unions – except first responders – and confiscating their pension funds. We could also confiscate all college and university endowments over, say, $50 million dollars. I’m also thinking an excellent case could now be made for confiscating the holdings of hedge funds. Tariff receipts should also go into the pot. I call this plan “Social Security for All” as most government employees would no longer get both fatter salaries and fatter pensions than their private sector counterparts.
Dick Eagleson wrote, “We could also confiscate all college and university endowments over, say, $50 million dollars. I’m also thinking an excellent case could now be made for confiscating the holdings of hedge funds.”
Um, as much as I think your analysis on many things to be smart, educated, and thoughtful, I think you have decided here to make yourself a lefty. There is something called the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights that outlaws our government from confiscating private property, no matter how “right” and “proper” you think that confiscation might be.
If we are to fix the mess we got ourselves into in the past seven decades, the last thing we need to do is more of the same.
This is funny
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-bureaucrats-bad-rap-credit-sociologist.html
Thing is China abused America’s Laissez-faire to yank farmland—and libertarians let them do it…. proving Randian thought flawed.