What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

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Sarah Palin says she wants to eliminate the Department of Energy. This is a perennial conservative hobbyhorse, so let’s dig in a little bit. Just what does this bureaucratic tax sinkhole do, anyway? Here’s a brief summary:

Program Cost Comment
Nuclear weapons R&D and cleanup $18 billion Can’t do without this, can we?
National laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Yucca Mountain, etc.) $5 billion This is mostly basic science, including accelerators, fossil/nuclear/renewable energy research, and nuclear waste disposal. I don’t think Palin has anything against this, does she?
Dams and hydro power $0 Does Palin want to sell off all the dams we built over the past century? If not, we might as well pay for their upkeep by selling the hydro power they generate.
Energy efficiency $3 billion Perhaps this is what she wants to cut? Republicans hate energy efficiency.
Miscellaneous $3 billion Good luck finding anything of substance to get rid of here.

Hmmm. There might be some bits and pieces that Republicans object to here, but not much. So why all the hate for the Energy Department? Is it just because it was created by Jimmy Carter? Nah. Who would be childish enough to hold a grudge like that?

In any case, even Republicans agree that we need to do the vast majority of this stuff. So even if Palin managed to kill off the Department of Energy, its functions would just get dispersed to other departments. Would that make any difference? I suppose it means one less chair at cabinet meetings, but it’s hard to see the point otherwise.

One intriguing possibility, raised by Brad Plumer, is that Palin was actually thinking of the Interior Department. He makes a good case. But Palin told Jake Tapper, “I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby.” That being so, it seems unlikely she’d make a mistake so boneheaded. Right?

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that this is the same con behind nearly every call to eliminate the Department of ______. It sounds dynamic! It cuts the budget! It slashes red tape!

But departments don’t matter. Functions matter, and they just go somewhere else if their department is eliminated. Unless a presidential candidate is willing to specify exactly which functions they want to defund, they aren’t serious. They’re just hawking snake oil to the rubes.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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