Not good:
http://news.yahoo.com/house-passes-energy-bill-6b-below-obamas-request-174844659.html
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LGBT intolerance problem at Sandia? I was just checking glassdoor.com and noticed several comments suggesting intolerance to LGBT at Sandia...
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So did you SSVSP and why? Give details.
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“Raise a concern, get blackballed then lose your job and benefits…” “…instead of raising your concerns just leverage on your skills and go t...
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The odds for layoffs at LLNL and LANL during 2012 are rapidly increasing. Yes, this is not good.
Ha....in the group where I work they are now re-hiring people to help catch up with the work that was pushed to the bottom of the pile after the last RIF. Seems that some slack jawed mouth breather from DOE (maintenance management) wanted to know how things got so backed up.
6 billion less across the complex....yeah what could possibly go wrong?
The simple fix to the fiscal mess is a 10% - 15% permanant salary reduction for all federal workers and contractors and social security recipients. Expenses exceed collections. Its time to return to the expense profile of 10 years ago. That shares the burden of equally among all beneficiaries.
This would include all military and
contractors and medicare recipients.
This, with the elimination of the stimulus, will rapidly and fairly close the yearly deficit.
We are living a lie that we can afford this unsupportable lifestyle. Time for personal discipline from all sucking the public teat.
One accountant's opinion.
Accountant (3:20), I couldn't agree with you more. Yes, this nation is living a lie about the poor state of our federal finances. We are currently borrowing about 40 cents of every federal dollar spent. This can't go on!
I'm game for a 15% cut in salary if it stops layoffs and allows us to keep most of our benefits. Most workers at the NNSA labs are making very high salaries that people outside of the labs can only dream of. It's time to wake up and rejoin reality. Dropping the average lab employees' salary by 15% would put most salaries back were they stood in 2001 (regular staff raises have been meager for years).
As an act of solidarity with employees, the managers of our for-profit labs -- who have seen their salaries soar since the LLCs -- should also agree to have their salaries rolled back to the levels of 10 years ago. No $1 million for lab Director. Salaries of around $350 k for lab Director were seen as appropriate back in 2001. And no perks like a LLC leased car and free tickets back to California each weekend for upper management.
Some extremely hard choices are going to be made involving federal employees and their contractors and those hard choices are coming much faster than most people realize. Unfortunately, given what I seen so far from the lab's LLC executive team, most of the financial pain that is coming will only be felt outside of the NNSA lab executive suites.
"As an act of solidarity with employees, the managers of our for-profit labs -- who have seen their salaries soar since the LLCs -- should also agree to have their salaries rolled back to the levels of 10 years ago. No $1 million for lab Director. Salaries of around $350 k for lab Director were seen as appropriate back in 2001. And no perks like a LLC leased car and free tickets back to California each weekend for upper management."
Ha, we will see a 15% cut in salary and a 15% RIF. The number of managers will grow and they will be paid even more! We are now a LLC and we are never going back.
I don't know if it's trolls or what, but I have never seen a site do plagued with people positively desperate to be negative. About anything and everything.
If it's news in any way less than wonderful, expect to find it exaggerated to the end of the world here.
Some extremely hard choices are going to be made involving federal employees and their contractors and those hard choices are coming much faster than most people realize. Unfortunately, given what I seen so far from the lab's LLC executive team, most of the financial pain that is coming will only be felt outside of the NNSA lab executive suites.
July 16, 2011 6:16 PM
Let's turn turn the clock back a few months. Secretary Chu froze the salaries of Department of Energy employees, INCLUDING the LABS! It's all in the name of "shared sacrifice". Lab employees cried like babies. The first thing the BIG THREE LAB Directors do is defy Chu, fight this freeze, and give Lab employees raises. We couldn't even take the first step. We just don't get it!
Ok, there is another way to do this without a "real" salary reduction. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Raise the age for medicare. Get rid of those silly deductions. Level the playing field in terms of taxes. That is more fair than balancing the budget on the back of Fed/contract workers
Poster 7:09 AM, the solution is very simple. Don't come here to read the posts. Is that too hard for you to understand?
Forget the House energy bill cuts. Time is running out on the debt ceiling issue and it looks like it is about to get extremely ugly:
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Domenici Sounding Debt Alarm
ABQ Journal, Sunday, July 17th
...The study states that at the beginning of August, unless the debt ceiling is raised, the federal government will be unable to meet all of its spending obligations. After the Aug. 2 due date, federal spending would be reduced by as much as 44 percent for the remainder of August, as the Treasury prioritizes payments to remain under the debt limit.
Current revenue streams could pay interest on America’s existing debt, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance and defense contracts, the Center found. After that, there would be no cash to pay the budgets of entire federal agencies, such as the Justice, Labor, Energy and Commerce departments. There would be no money to pay veterans’ benefits, IRS refunds, military active duty pay, federal salaries and benefits, special education programs, Pell Grants for college students or food and rent payments for the poor.
In short, it could ugly. Really ugly.
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http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/07/17/
politics/domenici-sounding-debt-alarm.html
Poster July 17, 2011 7:09 AM
I agree there are trolls in this BLOG. It is freedom of speech, as long as the BLOG rules are not violated.
You say that:
[I have never seen a site do plagued with people positively desperate to be negative. About anything and everything.]
This BLOG is far from winning the Guinness Book of records on this one.
There are doomsdayers everywhere!
Do what I do: I skip those comments after the 1st sentence!
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. --
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) The clock is winding down for the federal government to decide whether to renew Lockheed Martin's contract to manage Sandia National Laboratories or hold a bidding competition to pick a corporate manager.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that the contract for the nuclear weapons lab expires at the end of September 2012, and records suggest that the federal government has run out of options to easily grant the company a one-year extension.
A joint venture of Boeing and Fluor has already gone public with its desire to bid on a Sandia contract. Other possible contenders are believed to be waiting in the wings.
Sandia National Laboratories is one of the nation's three nuclear weapons design and maintenance laboratories.
The most recent nuclear weapons lab bidding process for the contract for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory took nearly 17 months. Before that, it took 18 months between the initial announcement of a bidding competition and implementation of the contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The current Sandia contract has less than 15 months until it ends.
A 2010 member written by federal officials said Lockheed Martin has done an outstanding job managing Sandia, which has earned it a series of single-year contract extensions, but "the terms of the management contract do not allow any further such extensions."
The National Nuclear Security Administration is running short of time to issue a call for bids.
There is recent precedent for the agency to grant what it called a "noncompetitive extension" of a major management contract. In 2010, the federal agency gave Honeywell Federal Manufacturing Technologies a five-year, no-bid extension to manage the Kansas City Plant, where nuclear weapon parts are made, under basically the same terms as its existing contract.
One widely discussed possibility is a one-year deal to keep Lockheed Martin as Sandia's manager to allow more time for a full contract competition.
Critics question the wisdom of a bidding process because of the results of the last two, in which consortia led by industrial giant Bechtel won management contracts for both Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos.
In both cases, the new contracts have been substantially more expensive for taxpayers than Lockheed Martin's contract to manage Sandia.
The government paid the Bechtel team $46 million last year to manage Livermore, while the Los Alamos management team received $74 million.
Lockheed Martin, by comparison, received just $26 million to manage Sandia, despite receiving higher management performance ratings than the management teams at Los Alamos and Livermore.
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Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com
"July 17, 2011 9:13 PM"
Bechtel will get it.
Today, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) released a new report that supposedly outlines how the federal government can reduce the deficit by $9 trillion over the next ten years and balance the federal budget.
From his press release ..."The 614-page plan was the result of a thorough and exhaustive review of thousands of federal programs."
Well out of the 614 pages that his all knowing staff put together, here's all it says about NNSA...
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"Maintain the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and consolidate the Office of Environmental Management and reduce funding by 20 percent
This program was created in 2000 as a semi-autonomous agency to consolidate three existing program components. Its mission is to maintain the nation‘s stockpile of nuclear weapons, prevent nuclear terrorism, provide the U.S. Navy with nuclear propulsion, and respond to nuclear and radiological emergencies.
After the damage witnessed from atomic energy in World War II, Congress directed federal efforts to address nuclear weapons stockpiles and the management of waste and contamination generated by nuclear facilities and other materials. These responsibilities were transitioned from defense authority to civilian authority where the Office of Environmental Management (EM) was eventually created. EM is tasked with the cleanup and waste management at Cold War legacy sites. Although separate form NNSA, EM performs activities similar in nature to NNSA and sometimes at the same locations, such as at the Savannah River.
Both NNSA and EM conduct similar work relating to nuclear weapons and facilities and should be consolidated to improve management and performance. Since 1990, GAO has placed EM on its High Risk federal programs that are vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse.79 Reports have repeatedly shown both NNSA and EM continue to be cited for mismanagement and for failing to meet cost requirements and agency goals. EM‘s own agency reorganization plan proposes to move the agency to within NNSA. Consolidating the two would prevent confusion and streamline DOE‘s broader efforts. These agencies should be consolidated to achieve better coordination and efficiency.
NNSA received $9.2 billion in FY 2010 while EM received $5.9 billion for a total of $15.10 billion. This proposal would combine the two agencies and reduce funding by 20 percent for $12.08 billion annually and a ten year cost of $134.09 billion."
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So EM is actually carrying stockpile stewardship and weapons research, who knew?!
Dear lord, just further conformation that Congress is full of C- students with staffs composed of High School interns.
"Ok, there is another way to do this without a "real" salary reduction. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. .... That is more fair than balancing the budget on the back of Fed/contract workers....".
OK, we can try this idea, but since the US government needs to raise revenues by 40% to cover the yearly deficit, it means that all tax rates need to go up by 40%. I don't think the economy will ever recover with such a massive drag as $4T per year in taxes.
Even a 10% surtax increase in all tax rates (income, fica, medicare, corporate) to increase federal revenues only brings in $260B or only 20% of the 2011-2012 federal deficit.
No BS, big expenditure cuts must come. And since medicare, social security and defense are 60% or $2.4T of the federal expenditures and another $600B goes to national debt payments, there is no way to cut $1T per year without big cuts in federal outflows in all categories, probably averaging a 20% austerity program in each area.
Yes. It is very simple to understand the crisis, and will be hard on all who benefit from federal largesse, as well as all taxpayers.
Our leaders know we are in a pickle, but are not being honest or forthright. The one real service that the tea party has served is to keep this crucial issue front and center.
Current ineffective leaders who are concerned with their personal re-election rather that solving this crisis need to be replaced.
EM should be suspended completely until budget conditions improve. There is no hurry. This stuff can wait 10-20 years until we are back on out feet.
Take 10%-20% from NNSA, and close EM completely. Some real savings and little impact.
Similar savings can be gained from the nearly, useless and totally confused DHS, and from DoD, from social security payment reductions and from lowering federal workers salaries.
Closing the EPA entirely is another good idea, cleanup measures can wait until the economy improves. We should also stop builiding and repairing roads and bridges until the economy improves.
I postpone house painting until I can afford it, so it is with federal maintenance.
The NSF can take a 30% hit, as can Pell grants and Department of education, Department of State and foreign aid. Congress and DoJ can take a 20% haircut as well.
We simply are not rich enough to continue to spending as we have been. It is time to accept that the baby boomers ( me included) are self interested, moralizing, profligate failures that have ruined the country for a generation.
EM should be suspended completely until budget conditions improve. There is no hurry. This stuff can wait 10-20 years until we are back on out feet.
Take 10%-20% from NNSA, and close EM completely. Some real savings and little impact.
July 19, 2011 1:17 AM
Interesting idea, however, in some cases there are legally binding agreements. For example, LANL has the signed the Consent Order Agreement with NM Environmental Department (NMED) to close Area G by a timeline which LANL is already likely to not meet. On the other hand, now that D'Ago owns EM, he is likely to give all the EM money to his baby, the weapons program.
"Interesting idea, however, in some cases there are legally binding agreements..."
When broke, who can take seriously the plethora of unfunded legal agreements written by a profligate and financially irresponsible series of Congresses, who promised everything to everybody?
We are broke, so ordinary business is curtailed. If it were a broke pension it would be in ERISA; a broke person, Chapter 7 or 11. For a broke country, we get idiotic self-centered, cupidic politicians beholden to interest groups to try to fix the problem they caused. ( Ha, Ha, Ha. < like a hooker in the confessional)
We are now entering the triage mode, time to cut back, to pick the urgent and important stuff from the Christmas list, and delay all else. To balance this years federal budget requires an average 40% haircut for all expenditures. ($4T planned expenditures vs. $2.6B projected income -- what a bunch of monkeys)
Legal agreements in this climate are just peices of paper. Guidance.
So we should simply postpone EM cleanup until it is again affordable, perhaps in 2055.
Sensible accountant
So we should simply postpone EM cleanup until it is again affordable, perhaps in 2055.
Sensible accountant
July 20, 2011 12:02 PM
Go for it! Let us know when you make this all happen.
Can't you knuckleheads read? At least the whole article? Which says:
"The legislation slightly increased spending on nuclear security programs, to $10.6 billion..."
Oh wait, this is a Livermore blog !
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