Posted on 01/14/2025 5:18:23 AM PST by MtnClimber
When Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her staff of clowns bungled a four-day ramble in 2023 to show off the wonder of electric vehicles, the lasting impression would be the report of her advance team blocking an open charger so she wouldn’t have to wait for one. A federal report, however, reveals details that cast the entire charade in an even worse light.
The Granholm tour was to take her from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., and was intended to justify the billions of taxpayers’ dollars the Biden administration was pouring into green energy initiatives. The message was lost when it was learned, two months after the incident, that “an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle” by a charger “to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary,” according to National Public Radio reporter Camila Domonoske, who was along for the ride.
Granholm’s “caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150, and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Ga.,” said Domonoske. But “one of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied.”
It wouldn’t look good for the troupe to have to wait for a charge. After all, the entire purpose of the junket was to show the public that EVs are the way to travel. The optics became worse, though, when Granholm’s team “boxed out — on a sweltering day” a family “with a baby in the vehicle” using a car with an internal-combustion engine, Domonoske reported.
Upset by the outrageous manners and ugly display of entitlement by federal functionaries, the family called the police. Turns out Georgia had no law prohibiting non-EVs from parking in charging spaces.
But that staffer did not commit the only misdeed by a federal employee on the rolling celebration. The Energy Department inspector general found that the government workers who supported Granholm were not “conscientious stewards of taxpayer funds,” and further noted that “conscientious stewardship is particularly crucial for matters involving high publicity.” Such as a public relations campaign to push a politically preferred mode of transportation.
In the special report issued earlier this month, the Energy Department Office of the Inspector General determined that within Granholm’s troupe:
36 of the 42 travel vouchers (86 percent) contained lodging expenses that exceeded Government per diem rates. Additionally, we identified seven travel vouchers for which travel expenses exceeded 15 percent of the authorized cost. Further, we found four travel vouchers for which government-issued travel cards were not used for expenses, as required. Moreover, travel voucher warnings addressing potential policy deviations and issues were unaddressed or inadequately justified.
Seems there was more at work than just “a series of events and townhalls highlighting the Biden-Harris administration’s new and existing efforts to build a clean energy economy, create clean energy jobs, and cut costs for all Americans.”
It was, apparently, a pleasure cruise for some staffers.
“The total cost of the 42 travel vouchers was $124,823.94. The total amount by which lodging expenses exceeded per diem rates was $9,487.50, with excess costs per traveler ranging from $50 to $634 per trip,” says the IG report.
“Travelers could have chosen different nearby hotels to reduce travel costs at the government’s expense; however, department officials mentioned difficulties finding hotels with functioning EV chargers onsite or nearby.” The former is indicative of the entitlement mentality among Washington bureaucrats, while the latter underscores the perils of EV travel that activists and politicians want to cover up.
Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding. Maybe the employees were not properly advised on federal travel rules. But our combined decades of observations indicate that government, at all levels, tends to draw people who couldn’t be more unsuited for the jobs they have.
Why would the government care if they used their own credit cards for expenses?
Remember these are Democrats, they love spending other peoples money, not their own...........
Typical government “worker” idiocy.
And why go through a suburb of Augusta, GA? That route adds at least 70 miles to the trip. Why didn’t they go on the direct route through Atlanta? Hmmmm. What’s special about Grovetown? More investigation is necessary.
We should have pics of the Fed employees on that trip.
I should have written “why not go straight through on I-85 to Atlanta rather than out of the way through Augusta? Either route ends up through Atlanta, but I-85 is shorter by 70 miles.”
When they start requiring EV’s for emergency vehicles we are sunk.
Why would the government care if they used their own credit cards for expenses?
The idea was for the government to save money in the processing; for the government to get the benefits of mass purchase of credit (better rates) and for the government to get the benefit of things like airplane miles.
Used to work for a company that I had to travel from time to time doing repairs and installations of equipment that we made.
At the end of a trip I had to file a request for reimbursement for any costs above per diem that I felt were owed me.
On one trip, I had to stay longer than was originally anticipated. So I didn’t have enough clean clothes to wear for the entire job. I used the hotel’s laundry service to have my dirty clothes cleaned, which cost about $25, at the time, a pretty good sum.
I filed the report and was promptly denied the reimbursement.
Why? It seemed like a proper ‘travel expense’!
They said you could have gone to a laundromat and done it for $4!...............
That sort of response tends to backfire.
If an employee feels they have been cheated, they often figure to be recompensed some other way.
It is bad for moral.
Well, it did piss me off, but I just let it go...........
Why does Granholm need 42 staff to drive from DC to TN? Quite an entourage. Could she perhaps leave the grape peelers & pillow fluffers at home? This was nothing but a vacation for her & her staff.
An OUTRAGEOUS waste of taxpayer money.
I liked per diem. If I figured out how to economize, I pocketed the difference.
The federal system did away with per diem and replaced it with “approved” hotels and rates. They also required receipts for meal expenses.
A pain to do, compared to per diem (by the day) rates, for those who are wondering.
An EV? No tanks...not for me. Not in this lifetime...or the next one.
I figured out that if I skipped breakfast, just coffee, had a light lunch, I could have a very nice meal at dinner on that $25 a day per diem.
Nowadays, you can’t even have a meal for $25 in most big cities!................
Did you have to itemize items used for the per diem?
The whole idea of per diem is a simple per day rate.
Cuts down on paperwork and gives greater flexibility to the employee.
“An EV? No tanks...not for me. Not in this lifetime...or the next one.”
The technology is changing rapidly. Who knows what the next decade will bring?
I don’t, but rapid change is here, and much is market driven.
No, we just had a limit of $25 per day. You spent it as you saw fit, no receipts required except for travel expenses like gas or car rental or materials required for the job.........
Even with the massive resources of the federal tax base government fails and EVs fail.
What's gonna happen when it's 10% of cars? Or 25%?
Yes, and in six days, President Trump is embarking on an aggressive “more and cheaper” energy for the USA.
The vision includes more drilling, more refining capacity, and more nuclear power plants.
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