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Monday, February 15, 2016

Charlie's wife

Charlie's wife getting paid for a made up position at Occ Med?


And then there's Charlie's wife whose performances and absences go untold in her job at Occupational Medicine.

 COMMENT:


Will this turn out to be yet another Beth Sellers scandal?

34 comments:

Anonymous said...

If true, then someone is looking at another federal debarment.

Anonymous said...

I guess Charlie and his friends didn't have to sign those Conflict of Interest forms that they demanded everyone and their cousins sign at LANL two years ago.

Anonymous said...

http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Caroline-McMillan/-2040412207

Convenient. Incestuous. But purely coincidental and no conflict.

Anonymous said...

What are the duties of a communication specialist in the Occupational Medical department of a national laboratory. Edit the return to work instructions after illness/injury?

Anonymous said...

To kiss the boo-boo

Anonymous said...

"Charlie's wife getting paid for a made up position ... "

KInky.

Anonymous said...

If, um, she's a real "Communications Specialist" she needs, um, to do some, um, coaching of her , um, hubby.

Anonymous said...

If, um, she's a real "Communications Specialist" she needs, um, to do some, um, coaching of her , um, hubby.

February 21, 2016 at 4:15 PM

Ha, Charlie is doing way better than you financially. He can communicate any way he wants and still make millions. Rich Marquez may be gone but he can count his millions as well. It is time for you to learn the rules, there are only two types of people at the labs, lions and gazelles, Rich and Charlie are lions and lions are the kings of the jungle and gazelles like you are just lunch. Since the contract change the labs are only about making money and that is all and it will never ever...and I do mean ever go back, and the sooner you realize this the sooner you to can also turn into a lion. There is big money to made in the labs if you play the game right.

Anonymous said...

Since the contract change the labs are only about making money and that is all and it will never ever...

February 21, 2016 at 5:54 PM

I guess you didn't hear that it has already ended. The LLC model is dead, by DOE's own claim. Your trumpeting about "lions and gazelles" simply shows how simplistic and naive, and divorced from actual events, your tiny brain is. The real "lion" here is the American public, who are not as stupid as you, and who see a scam and mean to delete it.

Anonymous said...


"I guess you didn't hear that it has already ended. The LLC model is dead, by DOE's own claim"

No way, California and New Mexico will never allow the LLC model to die, too much money at stake. The lab bureaucracies will never allow the LLC model to die, again too much money at stake. In the end all they have to say is if the labs lose the LLC model the cowboy scientists will become completely out of control and the argument WILL work. You say the American public is not as stupid as we think, you are a fool, we made up the memes of a cultural of spies, a cultural of theft, and a cowboy culture, and guess what...they bought all of it and thus LLNL was turned into a for profit company, after that a bunch of lions/people got very rich and a bunch of others got marched out of the gates. As Charlie says follow the money because that is the only reason the labs exist and this will never change. There is no going back now.

Anonymous said...

There is no going back now.

February 21, 2016 at 10:40 PM

Actually, you are the one who is stuck while everyone else wants to go forward.

Anonymous said...

Back to the OP, no one has yet come forward to point out that Charlie's wife might have a position at LANL Occ Med and is paid for not showing up.

Anonymous said...

Well 5:54PM on 2/21, in case you've been on Mars for the last decade, you should know that lions' heads end up on dentists' walls. Gazelles, not so much.

Anonymous said...

It is hard making it as Lab Director at LANL. So it makes sense that McMillan's wife had a LANL job as a nurse and his daughter has a Bechtel job as a communications specialist. No conflicts there.

Anonymous said...

Just a few of the many questions to be answered in this potential scandal:

Was the Occ Med position posted as an external opening?
How many applicants were there for the position?
Was the PD custom designed for only one applicant?
Was it a new position, or a backfill on a recent vacancy?
Who was the hiring authority?
How many applicants were interviewed for the position?
Was the hiring package different from other comparable positions?
How were annual reviews of job performance handled?
What are the observations of co-workers on differential treatment within the peer group?

Anonymous said...

HR will answer all of your questions thusly: "We're not allowed to say."

Anonymous said...

Fortunately Bret Knapp's son has a good job working for LANS too. He practically ran the Group as a UGS. Who could tell such a nice young man no?

Anonymous said...

I've seen (and managed) a lot of sons and daughters of LANL non-manager employees in student programs. I've seen generations of families working at the lab. Is anyone shocked by this in a small town and frankly small population state? Now, if she is paid without working and they do not disclose properly then that is a violation of policy.

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of upper management family and friends getting jobs without any duties to perform. Look at the Tech Transfer roster at LANL. SOP for the bigwigs. Their children also need scholarships and summer jobs where they can be paid to talk on the phone and text their friends. No one has a problem with people who have real jobs and do real work, but all of the "special" jobs add to the difficulty for people who want to do good science and work for the country. It sends the overhead even higher increasing the burden on the few workers left. The fact it is a small town is really irrelevant. Honest management would insist on getting something for the money but the system at LANL is set up to get rid of any manager who is so stupid as to insist that one of the "special" employees be qualified or perform necessary duties. Everyone knows not to cross anyone up the chain at LANL, LANS has systems are services to fix those people.

Anonymous said...

What about the newly hired general manager of Centerra-LA? Is it a coincidence that he is a close and personal friend of the Safeguards AD? And that his wife was given the QPA DL position, in spite of having no experience in that at all?

Anonymous said...

Nepotism and unfair favoritism for management relatives at LANL??? OMG!!! This has never happened before!! And obviously it never happens in corporate America!! Hand out the torches, so we can all set our hair on fire and run around!! What an unwelcome upset to our naive idyllic view of our little island in the world.

Anonymous said...


Nepotism and unfair favoritism for management relatives at LANL??? OMG!!! This has never happened before!! And obviously it never happens in corporate America!! Hand out the torches, so we can all set our hair on fire and run around!! What an unwelcome upset to our naive idyllic view of our little island in the world.

February 26, 2016 at 7:23 PM

Look I understand good old fashioned nepotism where you fill the jobs with family and friends but LANL takes everything step further where you create a plethora of new jobs that never existed before just for these people. 2.00PM gives a fairly accurate picture of what often see, with excessive numbers of people who come in every summer that have absoutly nothing to do, so when they do come into work all they can do is text, talk, play games, google, tweet, shop or whatever. In many ways it would better if they do not show up since they would not get in the way. Mind you these are not STEM students but students in the bureaucratic part of the lab and every year there are more and more of them. One sad thing is that there are real students that come out to work hard and contribute but there less and less of these every year and the dead wood folks are deliberately driving them out.

Anonymous said...

I must be too low on the pole because I have only seen a handful of high level managers relatives working at the Lab. Generations of people work at the Lab to the point that we have 3 different disclosure forms and a freaking committee (no surprise there) to sign off on anyone working near anyone else.

Anonymous said...

No one has yet answered the charge that a position was created in Occ Med to pay Charlie's wife for made up work.

Anonymous said...

Charlie's wife is a nurse in Occupational Medicine. The position was a new position created as part of the hiring of McMillan as Lab Director; it was negotiated with Norm Pattiz and Glen Mara when he had his UCOP VP job. Dr. Scherer raised concerns but they were over ridden by AD Brandt. The rest is history. Unexcused absences, poor performance, and cookie baking in the Occ Med kitchen.

Anonymous said...

No one has yet answered the charge that a position was created in Occ Med to pay Charlie's wife for made up work.

March 1, 2016 at 10:10 AM

Look in the scheme of things this is nothing. She does not not need the money as Charlie must be making close to 1.5 million a year, so this must be a hobby job.
Also compare it to 1.5 million and it is in the noise. Does it really matter how money at LANL is spent? The public does not cares about what is done in LANL and it should be pretty obvious by now that government doe snot care either. In many ways the see the labs as a drain on the real defense work of the nation.

Anonymous said...

In many ways the see the labs as a drain on the real defense work of the nation.

March 1, 2016 at 7:53 PM

Well, you had it mostly correct until that last inane comment. If the public does not care, how can they see the labs as a drain? You contradict yourself and that always leads to invalidating ones entire viewpoint.

Anonymous said...

"Well, you had it mostly correct until that last inane comment. If the public does not care, how can they see the labs as a drain? You contradict yourself and that always leads to invalidating ones entire viewpoint.

March 1, 2016 at 8:54 PM"

Since when does contradicting oneself invalidate an argument on a blog?

Anonymous said...

Must every post be turned into a rant at anyone who implies in any way that LANL and LLNL do anything of importance to the country? Hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be spent over the next decade to refurbish weapons. Even if the country agreed to get rid of them there are many years of work to be done to dismantle them and take care of the SNM whether it is to blend it an use it as fuel or what. PBS has had a series of reports on the future of the weapons. Just because people don't come up to you on the street asking what great minds, like you, think about it does not mean people are not interested. Real money is being spent and there are real issues and lots of things like clean-up are going to go on for years in any case. The country spent enormous sums putting these weapons together and unfortunately we can't just throw them in a ditch when we decide we don't need them. This guaranteed commitment is why it is such a disaster to have for-profit management in the weapons labs. They can hold a gun to the heads of the taxpayers.

This post is about featherbedding workers which is a common method of graft used by organizations like the mafia who force people to use their services.

Anonymous said...

I want to know what any of this has to do with LLNL? Isn't this the LLNL blog? Looks like the LANL blog. Why don't you guys start your own blog and leave us alone.

Anonymous said...

Pasted! Yay for you!

Anonymous said...

I want to know what any of this has to do with LLNL? Isn't this the LLNL blog? Looks like the LANL blog. Why don't you guys start your own blog and leave us alone.

March 2, 2016 at 4:05 PM

Because we would rather take your lunch away from you, junior. Now give it to us, or we'll beat you up after school!

Anonymous said...

Now, now. His name is "Skippy."

Anonymous said...

"I want to know what any of this has to do with LLNL? Isn't this the LLNL blog? Looks like the LANL blog. Why don't you guys start your own blog and leave us alone.

March 2, 2016 at 4:05 PM"

I think we have discussed this before but what happens at LANL will happen at LLNL.
If LANL goes non-profit than LLNL will go non-profit. If LANL stays for profit than
LLNL will stay for profit. Remember that LANL was said to the be out of control cowboy culture lab that had to be punished, privatized, run by Bechtel/UC and the workforce reduced, so what happened to LLNL, that exact thing but only worse with the RIF. So it is written so it will be done. LLNL is just a reflection of LANL, so read this blog closely to see your future.

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