Only The Best People Communicate For NASA
Keith’s note: Looks like Trump boarding party/transition team member Jonathan Dimock has burrowed into the depths of NASA HQ. He’s landed at the NASA HQ Space Technology Mission Directorate Communications and Operations Code OD00) with a job title of “Public Outreach/Partnership”. It is somewhat odd that NASA would give a job that seemingly requires interacting with the public to a former campaign staffer who sent a job audition email to the White House stating:
“National Aeronautic Space Administration (NASA or Deep Space Exploration Administration or DESA) – Aside from the fact this is based very heavily in science, there is also a large cry to reduce their $105.5b budget and even movements to roll our space program into DSEA. With the help of, and to the credit of, the administration there can be drastic cost cuttings for big wins for the administration. … Aside from understanding the technical aspect of NASA and the components that goes into it. I can also understand the economics of launching satellites and supplies into space for both private and government entities. We all know that Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk with Space-X and various investors including Shaun Coleman with Vector Space are racing for more contacts with NASA and others. This is a time when NASA can scale back without huge loss to their operation and we can continue to provide suitable funding for suitable research that benefits the citizens both scientifically and economically. It is not outrageous to believe that a small cut in the $105.5b budget cannot be cut by even a small percentage for a large gain to the taxpayers while providing a big win for the administration.”
One would hope that Dimock now has his budget facts straight and that he knows the actual name of the agency where he works – now that his job is to communicate all of that technology stuff to the public.
Oh yes: Although Dimock is not formally a White House Liaison for NASA and is buried multiple levels down in the org charts he regularly does the liaison thing with the White House – directly – just not through the normal channels.
How Jonathan Dimock Auditioned To Be NASA White House Liaison, earlier post
The grammar in that email is appalling. Was it written by a third grader?
I dunno. Given some of the “official” stuff Keith posts, he might fit right in .
Only the best people.
At least the first three letters of his last name appear to be accurate.
Until a few hundred years ago, there were three cornerstones of early, European education: Grammar, logic and rhetoric. That email doesn’t display an understanding of any of them.
That NASA can spend its money more efficiently is an easy shot. But it can also spend its money more effectively…meaning in part that any money saved through cost-cutting measures should be turned around and applied back toward planetary science.
Half a penny, people, half a penny out of every $100 dollars of the Federal budget. All that NASA does, they do with .5% of the budget.
So much is wrong in that email it’s hard to even know where to start.
OK. So this guy is landing a federal job as a reward for political service. Shocking? I don’t know. And I read this morning in USA Today that any research grant at EPA >$50k was reviewed by a political appointment, not a scientist.
I mean that I REALLY don’t know. Just how prevalent is it for a dicknose like this to be involved at whatever level, and/or at this level?
I also wonder just how much interest he lost when he found out NASA’s real budget was a fraction of what he thought. Prestige is proportional to budget/ head count, as I understand it.
Political appointments are noting new, even of totally unqualified people. But there is a tendency to put them somewhere harmless. By implication, Public Outreach/Partnership for Space Technology Mission Directorate Communications and Operations is somewhere down there with the person at the US embassy in Switzerland who handles our relations with Liechtenstein. (Which actually makes sense to me; I think I’d like that job and living in Bern more than I’d like doing outreach in Washington…)
As for the grant approvals and how much influence a political appointee has, it varies and I’m not familiar with the EPA process. But there are rules about who can approve awards of a certain size, and $50,000 sounds like roughly the right figure. A fair amount of the NASA research grant process involves scientists. They get pulled in as reviewers, who rate proposals but do not decide which to fund, and on a longer-term basis managing the process (either as contractors or as a two or three year temporary, non-civil service employee.) Those people can’t, legally, make the funding decisions for significant amounts. They just make recommendations on what to fund. The actual decision has to be done by a civil servant, and one at a sufficiently high level. In some cases, that could be a political appointee. But it’s also not uncommon for the recommendations to be rubber stamped by the appropriate civil servant.
However the funding that each NASA or other agency program has available is driven by political goals, whether for programs like SBIR under which science is justified by the more politically apealling goal of creating (frequently illusory) small businesses, to massive programs like JWST which are championed by legislators representing districts or states that will benefit. I agree that some technically unqualified political appointees are given jobs that are considered of little real consequence, but recent events at EPA and other agencies show that there is no way we can count on this being the case.
“Entrepreneur extraordinaire” is what’s on his Linked In profile. I could say the same of the drug dealers in my old neighborhood.
Purely political appointments are nothing new. But sometimes folks end up in places where they can do real damage. In the age of Trump, it is quite obvious that anything out of the company line is a no-no. So what happens when we get further proof of the man-made effect on climate change? Buried? Surpressed?
To Infinity and Beyond!
I particularly enjoy the false precision of the .5 on the budget number. Sounds sciency!
Of course, and all of us need to do a better job of doing that. The return numbers are out there too.
Try this one…I did the math on it once but I don’t recall the exact number now…two or three days of interest on the National debt.
Closer to a month. I get 27 days, based on $19.5 billion for NASA and $263 billion in debt maintenance in FY17.
That person unlikely pays taxes, covers by those of us more fortunate.