A Brief Summary of James E. Hansen’s NASA Ethics File
If there were further correspondence about this demand it would be in NASA’s document production, but there are no such records. The only lawful scenario, therefore, is that Hansen quietly agreed to the demand, but did not inform NASA whether he complied. Otherwise, NASA, Hansen, or both have violated the ethics and/or transparency statutes and regulation.
Yet subsequent financial disclosure forms show Hansen attesting to accepting even more money, between $5,001 and $15,000, for a 2008 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University for which his file, according to NASA, contains no request for permission to engage in this outside employment, or approval to do so (each a condition precedent to lawfully engage in the activity, and to accepting the money).
There is no correspondence about these two glaring discrepancies in his filings reflecting more apparently improperly accepted outside income than most federal employees will ever see in their careers.
In order to continue his employment Hansen would therefore be required to bring himself back in compliance with the ethics rules by returning the money, between somewhere more than $10,000, and $26,000.
Although Hansen reported the income from both honoraria, he did not report receipt of travel expenses for him to get there. This omission is a pattern in his filings, to the tune of surely tens of thousands of dollars for airfare, meals and lodging to locations all around the country and Europe, all required by ethics laws to be reported.
For example, consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):
Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007
The following is an incomplete list of other travel apparently accepted to make paid speeches and/or receive cash awards but not reported on SF278 financial disclosures:
Boston, Washington, DC (twice); Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Wilmington, DE; Ithaca, NY (business class); Chapel Hill, NC; Deerfield, IL (Sierra Club “No Coal” campaign); Dartmouth, NH; Alberta, Canada (as consultant to a law firm helping run an anti-oil sands campaign), Stanford; Minneapolis; Missoula, MT
Other travel apparently accepted but not reported, to provide expert testimony including on cases involving federal policy:
California (Central Valley Chrysler-Jeep v. Witherspoon), Vermont (Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth etc v. Torti)
Failing to Report Gifts
World Wildlife Fund gave Hansen an engraved Montres Rolex watch, which typically run $8,000 and up (2006), but which was not reported by Hansen on his SF 278 under “gifts”, which must be reported if valued at more than $260.
Failure to Report Receipt of Free Legal Services
On his website Hansen said he began accepting free legal services in 2006. These are not reported on his financial disclosures, as they should be.
Also, NASA’s document production shows him attesting to receiving more, separate free legal services in the form of an amicus brief drafted for he and a few others to intervene before the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA. This was not reported on his SF278, as required.
These lapses on both Hansen’s part and NASA demand scrutiny to determine how laws designed to protect the taxpayer are, or are not, being respected.
When’s the last time the Left cared for conspicuously paying attention to societal ideas about law or morality?
They look at themselves like superheroes, the ends justifies the means. The Left thinks it’s in some kind of constant war but without an end game they can name other than “social justice.”
A more idiotic or corrupt group of pirates from a stereotype factory would be difficult to find outside of a “white privilege” conference.
You can bet that Hansen would welcome any forthcoming prosecution. He would immediately claim partisan persecution and could readily count on a compliant media and sycophantic, mindless, Alarmist followers to protect him. Screw him. Prosecute with extreme prejudice.
We see two great cards being played from the radical leftist hand – ‘It’s OK if I do it because I’m right!’ And the ‘helpradical help I’m being oppressed!’ What is it with these people and their persecution complexes?
How did that helpradical get in there? Clearly I brought this on my self by commenting from a DROID. How silly of me.
“What is it with these people and their persecution complexes?”
-No, it’s just we take exception to some who use our air & water as open sewers, for their profit, so society can clean up after them…
OK?
What utter nonsense. No one uses “our air and water” as an “open sewer”.
I would describe that as “brainless hyperbole” but that would imply that it is mere exaggeration.
It is utter piffle, a classic false dichotomy, which anyone who was born before 1960 (including Hansen) knows (or ought to know) full well.
OK?
So, there is no (more) pollution? Thank god for letting me know, how’d i miss the big clean-up….
-and who paid for it?
Continuing with the usual false dichotomy, I see.
I’ll throw in another concept: diminishing returns.
And I’ll add another: collateral benefits.
“….some who use our air & water as open sewers….”
You mean the HPs, Apples, IBMs, plastics manufacturers, Exxon-Mobils, Sonocos, auto manufacturers, steel manufacturers, energy producers, etc., who all conspired to manufacture your home toilets, PCs, cars, clothes and other luxuries to provide you and your family’s comfortable lifestyle? And let’s not forget there are 7 billion other we’s in this world who should have a say regarding what “pollution” should or shouldn’t be, and also have a stake in “our air & water”. Or, when you say “we”, is it a royal “we”, meaning environmentalists only?
The point is that Jim Hansen is a thief living on the taxpayer’s dime, and an alarmist AGW proponent to boot. And that’s OK with you, because you are trying to change the subject?
Oh, i’m to somehow feel guilty about certain industries profiting, by letting society at large absorb the clean up costs and other hidden health costs…
No, it doesn’t work that way my friend. And these same industries buy off key law makers at state and federal level to subsidize their pollution, now trying to cut out any regulation at all (…like it was prior Love Canal). No, it’s no hyperbole. It’s the old sleight of hand trick:
“…Look at how bad Hansen is…” while Koch Industries and Massey Energy profit at my expense.
NASA and ethics? After 28 years there I can say they have none. FWIW, Hansen did not fare well in an OIG investigation but any enforcement action entailed a very high politcal price so the Bush world left him alone…
Jimbo’s two months younger than me and it’s way past time he was put out to grass, he can definitely be classed as a daft old fart and greedy too.
I hope they throw the book at him, he should be made an example of, it might save the US a few trillion dollars in Glowbull warming costs.
First an objection anyone who has put so much of his life in to unethical behavior desirves more than a brief history. Two the amount that the country has suffered at the hands of Dr. Hanson deserves book treatment.
Don’t forget his initial gift of $750,00 from Soros and $250,000 from John Kerry’s wife’s Tides groop way back when this fiasco began……
This has always convinced me to distrust Hansen – that and the fact that he once upon a time advocated global cooling in the 1970′s.
But – I may be wrong…
Nah!