The Trump Regime's War on Public Health

Science and fact based policy decisions pose a problem for the Trump/Pence regime in its effort to roll back public health protections and destroy clean air and clean water regulations.  Why?  Because they support the regulations that Trump/Pence seeks to gut to aid big business, especially the fossil fuel industry. What's the solution when one wants to aid polluters and industry dangerous to public health?  One limits the use of science in setting regulatory policies. While the results may line corporate pockets, it will not be a win for the public and long term safety standards.   Between universal health care and an embrace, rather than a rejection of science, are among the reasons Europeans increasingly enjoy longer life spans than Americans, not that any of this matters to Trump and the vulture capitalists he champions.   The latest assault on public health care policy comes in efforts to limit the role of science in the EPA's policy making process.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this aspect of the Trump/Pence regimes effort to restore the worse aspects of the Gilded Age.  Here are excerpts which also suggests that opposing these efforts should be part of the Democrats' 2020 agenda:

There are essentially two fronts in the Trump administration’s long battle to dismantle EPA protections and deregulate industry to allow increased pollution in the pursuit of short-term profit: the rolling back of specific laws that ensure access to clean air and water, and an attack on the science that informs the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy decisions.

On that second front, the White House has undermined individual targets, like the 2017 establishment of veto power over scientific studies produced by the EPA, and the recent massaging of information to suggest pollution from coal plants kill less Americans every year than is the case. But a new draft of an EPA proposal published Monday suggests that the Trump administration is preparing a comprehensive assault on the ability for scientists funded by the agency to suggest policy with accurate data. Under the guise of transparency, the proposal will allow the EPA to reject any academic findings unless all raw data from the study — including confidential medical records — is handed over.

As the New York Times notes, the inclusion of confidential records will severely hinder the ability of researchers to propose new clean air and water legislation, as “many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements.” The proposal would also apply retroactively, meaning that a practice that has been built into public health research could nullify current policies built off of established studies — including findings proving that mercury discharge from power plants affects brain development, and that lead in paint dust is associated with childhood behavioral disorders. “This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” Paul Billings, a senior vice president at the American Lung Association, told the Times. Other advocacy groups to condemn a previous draft of the proposal — which was less exacting than the current one — include the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Medical Library Association, the Association of Academic Health Science Libraries, and the National Center for Science Education, which claimed that the policy “would send a deeply misleading message, ignoring the thoughtful processes that scientists use to ensure that all relevant evidence is considered.” [I]t’s strange that 2020 Democrats have yet to push Trump’s failure to ensure Americans’ access to clean air and water — concerns that are broadly supported across the political spectrum. In a recent analysis on the popularity of strong anti-pollution enforcement, New York’s Eric Levitz argued that “it would be in the Democratic Party’s interest to increase the salience of environmental issues even if Trump hadn’t spent the past two years letting Big Coal and Dow Chemical run the EPA.”

Put another way, if Democrats aren’t able to leverage the popularity of environmental protections, Trump could be able to undermine the research underpinning the EPA for close to a decade.

EPA Is Hiding Proof That a Widely Used Chemical Causes Leukemia

Under the Trump/Pence regime, the EPA has ceased worrying about protecting the environment and the health of American citizens.  Instead, its focus has become one of protecting industries and allowing the destruction of the environment.  Now, endangering the lives of citizens can be added to the EPA's agenda.  While Scott Pruitt has resigned as head of the agency, do not expect things to improve as long as Trump/Pence remain in power. As a number of news outlets are reporting, the EPA is suppressing the release of its finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers.  Better to protect industry and chemical companies than the lives of both American children and adults.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this disturbing malice towards the safety of citizens.   Here are article highlights:

During a Senate hearing in late January, Ed Markey asked then-EPA director Scott Pruitt about a little rumor that he’d overheard. “It’s my understanding,” the Massachusetts senator said, “that the EPA has finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers and that [the] completed new assessment is ready to be released for public review, but is being held up.”

Formaldehyde is one of the most ubiquitous industrial chemicals in the United States. It’s in much of the wooden furniture that Americans sit in, the body wash they clean themselves with — and, for those who live in the vicinity of a major refinery, the air that they breathe. And here, the director of the agency responsible for protecting the American people from toxic chemicals was saying, under oath, that he was vaguely aware of a report linking formaldehyde to a variety of terminal illnesses.

If that report were released — and its findings independently verified by the National Academies of Sciences — then the EPA would strengthen restrictions on the chemical’s use, while cancer patients could draw on the findings in class-action lawsuits. The effect of all this would be to force industry to reduce its reliance on formaldehyde — and thus, to reduce the number of Americans who suffer from the ravages of Leukemia, nose and throat cancer, and a variety of less severe respiratory ailments.

[O]n Friday, a blockbuster report from Politico offered some insight into the cause of the EPA’s silence.

On January 24, the EPA’s top officials took a meeting with the American Chemistry Council’s Formaldehyde Panel — an industry group representing a variety of firms, including Exxon Mobil and a Koch Industries’ subsidiary. Two days later, the panel’s leader Kimberly Wise White wrote the EPA a letter, saying, “As stated in our meeting, a premature release of a draft assessment … will cause irreparable harm to the companies represented by the Panel and to the many companies and jobs that depend on the broad use of the chemical.”

In November 2017, Pruitt had removed multiple academic scientists from the EPA’s influential Science Advisory Board. He replaced with industry advocates — among them, Kimberly Wise White.

EPA officials who spoke with Politico say that the “scientific advice” of White and her ilk has led the agency to suppress the draft report on formaldehyde, as part of a broader “campaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.”

That campaign has included a proposal to limit the EPA’s use of certain kinds of data on human health — while maintaining a special exemption for confidential, industry-funded studies that contain such data. Pruitt and his aides have also sought to postpone the release of a Health department study that suggests nonstick chemicals pose health risks, even at levels that the EPA had previously deemed safe — and, last May, the passionately “pro-life” EPA director overruled his agency’s scientists, and declined to ban a pesticide that’s been linked to fetal brain damage.

Trump’s appointees aren’t trying to subject the EPA’s report to independent scrutiny — they’re trying to prevent such scrutiny. As Politico explains: By blocking the report at the first step of the IRIS review process, political appointees are keeping it from being reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, an independent panel of the country’s top scientists that must weigh in on all such risk assessments.

Pruitt is, of course, gone; his personal corruption having become too much of a distraction from his agency’s vital mission of helping the Republican Party’s donors evade financial responsibility for poisoning Americans.

But that mission is safe in the hands of the EPA’s new acting director, Andrew Wheeler. As staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, Wheeler worked to delay an earlier version of the EPA’s formaldehyde analysis – and went on to profitable career as chemical industry lobbyist.

[A] recent Gallup poll found a supermajority of voters saying that the government is doing “too little” to protect the environment, while 57 percent of respondents said the government should prioritize environmental protection over economic growth.

[T]he public is already inclined to believe that Republicans are too deferential to polluters. Thus, Democrats would be wise to campaign against the GOP’s policy of “giving more Americans cancer and fetal defects for the sake of keeping chemical manufacturers’ regulatory compliance costs low” this fall.

Conspiracies, Corruption and Climate

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the head of Der  Trumpenführer's EPA said that it was "insensitive" to discuss climate change - and that was before the damage wrought by hurricane Irma.  Then, of course right wing blow hard Rush Limbaugh said that hurricanes were a "liberal conspiracy" - before he evacuated his very ample ass out of south Florida.  Indeed, almost everywhere on the right side of the political spectrum, one sees denial of climate changes reality and even any admission that warming temperatures and oceans are perhaps making storms more fearsome than in the past.  Why? Here's what  Leonard Pitts noted in a recent Miami Herald column:

So conservatives pretend science is somehow suspect when it says the planet is warming because of fossil fuels. And we should accept it as just — What? Coincidence? — that the fossil fuels industry donated $55.1 million to the Republicans in 2016 alone?

Once upon a time, the GOP and Republicans prided themselves on being the party of science, education and knowledge.  Then came the rise of the Christofascists - typically the least educated and most inclined to ignore objective reality - within the Party base.  Now what we see is grumblings about conspiracies and even the lunacy of blaming natural disasters on gays (I would counter, perhaps Trump voting states are being punished if god is so vengeful).  A column in the New York Times looks at the insane asylum that has become the Republican Party and the right wing political sphere. Here are excerpts:

After the devastation wreaked by Harvey on Houston — devastation that was right in line with meteorologists’ predictions — you might have expected everyone to take heed when the same experts warned about the danger posed by Hurricane Irma. But you would have been wrong.

On Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh accused weather scientists of inventing Irma’s threat for political and financial reasons: “There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it,” he declared, adding that “fear and panic” help sell batteries, bottled water, and TV advertising.

He evacuated his Palm Beach mansion soon afterward.

In a way, we should be grateful to Limbaugh for at least raising the subject of climate change and its relationship to hurricanes, if only because it’s a topic the Trump administration is trying desperately to avoid. For example, Scott Pruitt, the pollution- and polluter-friendly head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says that now is not the time to bring up the subject — that doing so is “insensitive” to the people of Florida. Needless to say, for people like Pruitt there will never be a good time to talk about climate.

So what should we learn from Limbaugh’s outburst? Well, he’s a terrible person — but we knew that already. The important point is that he’s not an outlier. True, there weren’t many other influential people specifically rejecting warnings about Irma, but denying science while attacking scientists as politically motivated and venal is standard operating procedure on the American right. When Donald Trump declared climate change a “hoax,” he was just being an ordinary Republican.

And thanks to Trump’s electoral victory, know-nothing, anti-science conservatives are now running the U.S. government. . . . . Almost every senior figure in the Trump administration dealing with the environment or energy is both an establishment Republican and a denier of climate change and of scientific evidence in general. [T]here is, after all, an overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are warming the planet. When conservative politicians and pundits challenge that consensus, they do so not on the basis of careful consideration of the evidence — come on, who are we kidding? — but by impugning the motives of thousands of scientists around the world. All of these scientists, they insist, motivated by peer pressure and financial rewards, are falsifying data and suppressing contrary views. This is crazy talk. But it’s utterly mainstream on the modern right . . . . Why are U.S. conservatives so willing to disbelieve science and buy into tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about scientists? Part of the answer is that they’re engaged in projection: That’s the way things work in their world. . . . . there was a time when some conservative intellectuals had interesting, independent ideas. But those days are long past: Today’s right-wing intellectual universe, such as it is, is dominated by hired guns who are essentially propagandists rather than researchers.

And right-wing politicians harass and persecute actual researchers whose conclusions they don’t like — an effort that has been vastly empowered now that Trump is in power.

[C]onservatives have grown increasingly hostile to science in general. Surveys show a steady decline in conservatives’ trust in science since the 1970s, which is clearly politically motivated — it’s not as if science has stopped working. The bottom line is that we are now ruled by people who are completely alienated not just from the scientific community, but from the scientific idea — the notion that objective assessment of evidence is the way to understand the world. And this willful ignorance is deeply frightening. Indeed, it may end up destroying civilization.

Trump Moves to Increase Pollution and Disease and HIV/AIDS Deaths

Sitting on the shores of Hampton Roads harbor facing rising sea levels and worries of flooding during tropical storms/hurricanes, global warming and a polluted Chesapeake Bay hit very close to home.  Similarly, as a member of the LGBT community who also worries about the growing epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the black community, medical research to find a cure for HIV/AIDS - and other diseases - is a real concern.  Sadly, such is not the case for Der Trumpenführer who today reversed Obama administration regulations to protect water and air quality and address the very real issue of global warming.  While posturing with oil and gas and coal company executives and miners (the latter refuse to accept the reality that the coal industry is moribund no matter what Trump does) Der Trumpenführer basically gave every other American the middle finger and said "go f*ck yourselves."  Reuters looks at this travesty.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order to undo Obama-era climate change regulations, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry and calling into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming.

Flanked by coal miners and coal company executives, Trump proclaimed his "Energy Independence" executive order at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The move drew swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states and local governments, as well as environmental groups, which called the decree a threat to public health and vowed to fight it in court.

The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.

Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.

Environmental groups heaped scorn on Trump's order, arguing it was dangerous and went against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies. A coalition of mostly Democrat-led states and local governments issued a statement saying they would oppose the order in court.

"We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve — including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change," the coalition, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said in a statement.

The coalition includes states such as California, Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Boulder, Colorado.

 Not content with trashing the environment and endangering the health of Americans, Der Trumpenführer has also proposed drastic cuts to HIV/AIDS and other medical research.  No doubt, his white evangelical Christian supporters (who are responsible for putting him in office) will cheer if these cuts are realized since I suspect a majority of them would love to see gays - and the HIV ravaged black community - simply die off.  Suffice it to say, I am beginning to understand that Trump is an evil person.  Bloomberg looks at Trump's proposals to slash medical research spending.  Here are excerpts:

    President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed cutting $1.23 billion this fiscal year from research funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to a White House document sent to congressional appropriators.

    The reduction is part of $18 billion in cuts that the administration wants in fiscal 2017, which ends in October. Most of the proposed reductions at NIH would come from research grants, with $50 million specifically taken from a program meant to support biomedical research in states that typically get less agency money. 

     A worldwide initiative to help people with HIV and AIDS, known as PEPFARand heavily focused on patient treatment in Africa, would be slashed by almost $300 million under the plan. The savings would be found by slowing the rate of new patients put on treatment and reducing support to “low-performing countries.” States also would face a $50 million cut that would target “less effective HIV research and prevention activities.”

     The Trump administration is requesting $65.1 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services in fiscal 2018, down from $84.6 billion in 2016.

     Other proposed health cuts for the current year include:·        $40 million from staffing funds at the Food and Drug Administration, achieved in part with “slower than anticipated hiring.”
·        $50 million from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which may delay missions and reduce grants.
·        $350 million from research grants at the National Science Foundation for biology, information science and engineering.
·        $372 million from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps people heat their homes.

If there is a god, many of Trump's working class white supporters will find themselves hard hit from the proposed cut backs.  Frankly, they deserve to suffer since they were stupid enough to vote for this foul, pathologically lying, amoral man. 

Trump's America: Dumber, Dirtier, Sicker and More Destitute

click image to enlarge

In keeping with the Republican Party's goal of restoring the worse aspects of the Gilded Age, Der Trumpenführer's proposed budget slashes budgets for programs that aid the less fortunate - even Meals on Wheels would be eliminated - and cut education spending while pouring money into the military.  The Washington Post described the budget as follows:

President Trump on Thursday will unveil a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad. . . . . would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies. Some would be hit particularly hard, with reductions of more than 20 percent at the Agriculture, Labor and State departments and of more than 30 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It would also propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Within EPA alone, 50 programs and 3,200 positions would be eliminated.

The Hill list some of the programs to be cut and the only redeeming factor - if one is a cynic and believe that actions need to have consequences - is that many Trump voters will be severely hurt by the proposals, underscoring the dangers of voting based on calls to racism, religious extremism and general misogyny.   Here are a dew of the programs:

The Appalachian Regional Commission, which funds projects meant to bolster businesses, education, culture, and economic development in Appalachia.

The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates accidents in the chemical industry and makes safety recommendations.

The Denali Commission, which supports utilities and infrastructure in Alaska.
 The Legal Services Corporation, which provides civil legal aid for low-income Americans.
 The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, which funds community development project throughout the U.S.

The Northern Border Regional Commission, which supports economic development in poor areas near the Canadian border.

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates efforts to fight homelessness among nearly 20 federal agencies.

Add these to the assault on the EPA, allowing coal mining wastes to be dump into rivers and streams, and the proposed curtailments to Medicaid and the message to poorer Americans is just go ahead and die.  The thing to remember through all of this is that the GOP claims to be the party of "Christian values."  The fact that 81% of evangelicals voted for this underscores the reality that conservative Christianity is toxic to the general welfare.  A column in the Washington Post aptly describes Der Trumpenführer's concept of "Making America Great Again."  Here are excerpts:

President Trump’s first budget is an attempt to reshape the federal government in his own image — crass, bellicose, shortsighted, unserious and ultimately hollow.

 

The reality is that if Congress were to accept these numbers — which it can’t possibly do — America would be made dumber, dirtier, hungrier and sicker. That may be Trump’s idea of greatness, but it’s certainly not mine.

Would we at least be safer? I doubt it. Trump wants to boost defense spending by $54 billion, or about 9 percent. But at the same time, he proposes cutting funding for the State Department by an incredible 28 percent, slashing the relatively modest hands-across-the-sea assistance and advice the United States gives to other nations. Most of the generals and admirals I know believe in projecting U.S. strength through soft power as well as hard power. Trump apparently disagrees.

[T]he proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent can only be seen as a first step toward dismemberment. “The president wants a smaller EPA,” Mulvaney explained. “He thinks they overreach.”

Trump wants to eliminate more than 3,200 EPA jobs, representing more than 20 percent of the workforce. It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who founded the agency, and it is another Republican president who apparently wants to end the federal government’s role in protecting the environment. It is perhaps no surprise that Trump wants to end EPA programs and regulations aimed at halting global warming, since he has ventured the opinion that climate change is a Chinese hoax; NASA programs to study warming would be cut as well. But the budget would also eliminate federal funding for efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes. Make America’s Water Dirty Again!

The National Institutes of Health would suffer a 19 percent cut, sharply reducing the amount of federal money available for research grants to universities.

There’s barely a peep in Trump’s budget about Medicare or Medicaid. Given the angry reaction to the Republican health-care plan, Trump must have decided — for once — that silence was the best choice.

The GOP's "War on Coal" Myth

In coal producing states, including Southwest Virginia, one hears the myth that Obama is destroying the coal industry in his quest to deal with climate change, something the GOP largely refuses to admit is happening in order to pander to its ignorant base and, of course, polluters like the Koch brothers.  The real truth is very different - not that the truth figures very high in the GOP agenda and standard demagoguery.  The coal industry has been in decline for decades and in areas like Southwest Virginia, it has ravaged the country side and kept the population and local economy depressed.  And now, with more plentiful supplies of natural gas in particular, the demand for coal has plummeted.  The GOP wants open, unfettered markets and coal's demise is an out growth of what the GOP otherwise lauds.  A piece in Salon looks at the economic as opposed to political and regulatory forces that are killing the coal industry.  Here are highlights:

[Republicans claim] the EPA has written a death sentence for King Coal, which, without the federal government’s intervention, would be thriving right now. Again, that’s a pretty premature argument, as the rules have yet to take effect. And it’s one that singles out a scapegoat — big ol’ coal-hating Obama — over the much more mundane reality. Yes, U.S. coal is dying: a recent Duke University study found that between 2008 and 2012, the industry lost nearly 50,000 jobs. But the downturn isn’t new. Coal country’s been on the decline for decades, and for reasons that go far beyond politics.

“What’s killing the coal industry is not federal regulation — it’s market forces,” energy analyst and journalist Richard Martin, whose book “Coal Wars“ provides an in-depth look at this decline, told Salon. “The shale gas revolution has erased coal’s traditional position as the low-cost fuel for power generation, and given a choice, utilities today will choose the cleaner option.”

Even Murray Energy acknowledged that the natural gas boom is partially responsible for displacing coal. Technology, too, has played a role in the decline of coal jobs, as new innovations allow companies to achieve the same output with fewer workers. The best coal in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky has already been mined out; the region faces increased competition from Western states.
[A]nalysts with the U.S. Energy Information Administration project that the industry is set in its downward path — a conclusion they reached without even taking the anticipated impact of the Clean Power Plan into account.

All of these factors, Martin added, have been accompanied by a broader shift toward renewable energy. A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, for example, found that as of 2013, the world is adding more energy capacity from renewables than natural gas, oil and coal — combined. According to Martin, “There’s no turning back from that shift.”

It is a shift, unfortunately, from which coal country has yet to benefit. The aforementioned Duke study found that over the same time period in which coal jobs plummeted, nearly four times as many jobs were created by the combined natural gas, solar and wind industries — but that few were added in the regions hit hardest by the loss.

“We are in the midst of a pretty dramatic energy transition in this country that is producing a lot of very good things, from cleaner air to healthier communities to new jobs and new industries,” Jason Walsh, a senior policy adviser at the White House, told the Charleston Gazette. “While policymakers can disagree about the reasons why the coal industry is struggling, all Americans should be able to agree that these workers and communities, who are in some of the most economically distressed parts of the country, deserve help from the federal government.”

“When people like Mitch McConnell stand up in the U.S. Senate and decry the Obama administration’s war on coal,” he said, “they’re not really helping their constituents. Every hour or dollar spent on fighting the war on coal is a resource that doesn’t go to really helping these people in places where the coal industry is not coming back.”

McConnell, of course, has built his entire political platform on this [war on coal] premise. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he remains “absolutely convinced” that coal has a future in the U.S., and has vowed to do “everything I can to try to stop” the EPA from interfering with this imaginary renaissance.

[C]oal’s best days are undeniably behind it. We can fight it, at the expense of clean air and mitigating climate change. Or we can gently, but firmly, help see it out.

One reason the new clean energy jobs tend to NOT locate in coal producing areas is the cultural and social backwardness of the areas.  Embracing racism, homophobia, and extremist religion do NOT make an area attractive to new and progressive businesses.  The GOP's God, guns and gays agenda is helping to kill coal producing areas as much as market forces.  Embracing ignorance and bigotry carries an economic price.

The GOP: A party That Cannot Be Saved

Faces of insanity - Rueters

As a former Republican I have reached a point where I no longer believe the GOP can be saved and brought back into the sane world.  The metastasizing cancer that afflicts the GOP - i.e., control by Christofascists, Tea Party lunatics, and those who glory in embracing ignorance - cannot be cured and/or driven from the Party.  Death or permanent fringe party minority status of the GOP seemingly are the only cures for the nation's political landscape.  A piece in Salon looks at the struggle for the GOP's soul that does not promise any positive revival or reform.  Here are excerpts:

The last couple of weeks have been a coming out party of sorts for the “Reformicons,” the group of conservative intellectuals who have taken it upon themselves to reform the Republican Party into something less dogmatic and more electable. They were the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile and countless think pieces. 

It all came down to variations of the same question: “Can ‘reformicons’ save the Republican Party?”

As if to answer that question and underline the challenges facing the conservative reform movement, the cranks and the dead-enders rose up as one this past week to put on a muscular demonstration of political stupidity.

Let’s start with Ted Cruz, since there’s no better avatar of the modern Republican Party’s aversion to responsible governance than the junior senator from Texas.

Ever since McDaniel narrowly lost the primary runoff to Cochran, the whole situation has spiraled into chaos. McDaniel has been angrily disputing the election results and making allegations of voter fraud. His supporters are claiming Cochran bought the votes of black Democrats. It’s desperate and obscene and a rolling calamity for the GOP – and Ted Cruz just made it worse.

On Mark Levin’s radio program yesterday, Cruz called for an investigation into the allegations of voter fraud in Mississippi, giving a boost to McDaniel and challenging the legitimacy of the candidate backed by the campaign committee he serves on.
On the policy front, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee took the first step toward what could be yet another partial government shutdown. When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled its new rule limiting the amount of carbon that can be emitted from existing coal-fired power plants, Republicans (and a few Democrats from coal country) vowed to oppose it.

And that’s exactly what they’ve done. The Appropriations Committee unveiled a bill yesterday that would prevent any money from being spent on developing or enforcing the EPA’s power plant rule. Senate Republicans are also spoiling for an appropriations fight, and Democrats are lining up behind the EPA and the president.

Whether we actually arrive at the point of shutting down the government (funding runs out on Sept. 30) depends largely on how far the Republicans would be willing to take this game of chicken. Shutdown politics tend not to favor the GOP and common sense would suggest that they won’t precipitate yet another government crisis a month before Election Day, but common sense is, we’ve learned, a poor predictor of Republican performance.

And then there’s Sarah Palin, whose latest bid to reclaim her faded relevance was to toss up a word salad for Breitbart.com calling for President Obama’s impeachment. The piece itself is largely incomprehensible, but it’s nonetheless an interesting political artifact. Six years ago, Palin was the duly elected governor of a state and on her way to becoming the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Now she’s writing barely coherent, mixed metaphor-laden columns for the website responsible for “Friends of Hamas.”

But as fast and far as she’s sunk, there are still lots of people out there who think Sarah Palin is the very soul of conservatism.
[Y]ou get a clear picture of what the conservative reform movement is facing. How can they convince candidates and elected officials to embrace non-dogmatic policy ideas when the party is tearing itself to pieces in a futile quest for ideological purity? How can they get the difficult work of policymaking done when Republicans are constantly looking to force crisis situations and score political victories? How can Republicans quit antiquated modes of thinking when they can’t even quit Sarah Palin?

In other words: How can the reformicons “save” the GOP when the party clearly doesn’t want to be saved?

The GOP base has become one big insane asylum.  And many of its so-called leaders are just as insane as the base.

Supreme Court Upholds Most of Obama's Climate Plan

The climate deniers in the GOP suffered another defeat at the hands of the United States Supreme Court when the court ruled yesterday and upheld the bulk of the Obama administration/EPA's rules to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.  Despite the spin of those knuckle dragging elements in the far right to disguise the fact that they suffered a major defeat, the reality is that the new rules will largely proceed intact.  A piece in Mother Jones looks at the Court's ruling and where we go from this point forward.  The ultimate irony?  Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion. Here are highlights:

"Supreme Court Limits EPA's Global Warming Rules."

"Supreme Court Ruling Backs Most EPA Emission Controls."

These are just a couple of the many contradictory headlines in response to Monday's US Supreme Court ruling in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, a case filed by industry groups and several states challenging some of the environmental agency's efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. So what's going on here?

Despite some applauding headlines from the right—"Supreme Court Hits Obama's Global Warming Agenda," claimed the Washington Times—the ruling actually had very little effect. "This is not doing much of anything to hobble EPA," explains Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, adding: "Nothing that is being done today calls into question the EPA's ability to regulate power plants, both new and existing, under section 111 of the Clean Air Act."

The decision, authored by Antonin Scalia, is actually the latest in a series of rulings by the Supreme Court on the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The most important of these, 2007's Massachusetts v. EPA, found that the agency had the authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act. In 2011, the court went further in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, ruling that states, cities, and other entities could not independently sue greenhouse gas emitters because the Clean Air Act and the EPA "displace" their ability to do so. It's on the basis of such rulings that President Obama's EPA has stepped forward to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of sources, including automobiles, newly constructed power plants, and, most recently, existing or older power plants.

The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can't target emitters based on their greenhouse gases under this program, but the court also said the agency can require major emitters already permitted under the PSD program for other types of emissions to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions, too. And by these lights, the EPA can still regulate 83 percent of all stationary sources of these emissions.

Supreme Court Hands Obama a Victory - and Cuccinelli a Defeat - on EPA Rules

Of late the U.S. Supreme Court seems almost schizophrenic as it hands down socially liberal rulings such as United States v. Windsor  yet then swings toward reactionary rulings such as those striking down provisions of the Voting Rights Act or most recently eliminating affirmative action.  Now, the Court has again handed down a ruling that slams Republicans - including failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli - while handing Barack Obama a victory.  The ruling?   The justices upheld the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the smog from coal plants.  The New York Times looks at the ruling.  Here are highlights:

In a major victory for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the smog from coal plants that drifts across state lines from more than two dozen Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast.

The 6-to-2 ruling bolsters the centerpiece of President Obama’s environmental agenda: a series of new regulations aimed at cutting pollution from coal-fired power plants. Republicans and the coal industry have criticized the regulations, which use the Clean Air Act as their legal authority, as a “war on coal.” The industry has waged an aggressive legal battle to undo the rules.

Legal experts said the decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, signals that the Obama administration’s efforts to use the Clean Air Act to fight global warming could withstand legal challenges.

In June, the E.P.A. is expected to propose a sweeping new Clean Air Act regulation to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that scientists say is the chief cause of climate change. Coal plants are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

“It’s a big win for the E.P.A., and not just because it has to do with this rule,” said Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard. “It’s the fact that it’s setting the stage and creating momentum for what’s to come.”

The Supreme Court decision is only the latest blow to coal. Also on Tuesday, a Federal District Court ordered the E.P.A. to propose by Dec. 1 a new nationwide regulation to rein in smog pollution from coal-fired power plants and other major polluters. This rule would come on top of the regulation covering cross-state air pollution.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a resounding victory for public health and a key component of E.P.A.’s efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to breathe,” Gina McCarthy, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a statement. She added that “the court’s finding also underscores the importance of basing the agency’s efforts on strong legal foundations and sound science.”

The interstate air pollution regulation, also known as the “good neighbor” rule, has pitted Rust Belt and Appalachian states like Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky against East Coast states like New York and Connecticut.

Republicans in Congress denounced the decision.  “This is just the latest blow to jobs and affordable energy,” Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative Edward Whitfield, Republican of Kentucky, said in a statement. Both are from states that rely heavily on cheap coal-fired electricity.

Kudos to the Court.  For years the Adirondacks in New York where my family has a summer home have suffered from acid rain and negative effects arising from air pollution generated by out of state coal fired plants.  Hopefully, the EPA regulations will make a positive difference.

The Myth of Cuccinelli the “Straight Shooter”

The all but crowned GOP nominee for Governor of Virginia, Keen "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli likes to tell the Tea Party crowd and far right Christofascists who attend his book signings and campaign gatherings that he's a "straight shooter" and that he tells them it like it is.  Except, of course he doesn't.  Inconvenient facts simply get edited out of his biography as do previous statements for his past pronouncements.  Kookinelli's behavior in this regard is all too in keeping with the incessant lies disseminated by the far right Christian elements of the GOP base and the untethered from objective reality Tea Party Neanderthals.  A piece in Bacon's Rebellion provides a few examples of Kookinelli's intentional dishonesty.  Here are some excerpts:

Ken Cuccinelli spends a lot of time admiring himself. He’s long on portraying himself as a heroic figure fighting federal over-reach and short on the self-deprecating humor that evinces a certain level of humility. This habit is particularly notable when it comes to being a “straight shooter.” At the recent CPAC conference Cuccinelli gave a keynote speech. He almost threw his shoulder out of joint patting himself on the back and congratulating himself on being a “straight shooter.” But is he?

 There is little doubt that Cuccinelli and his henchmen short circuited the democratic process in order to make sure he was the Republican nominee for governor. Cuccinelli used a deal from the smoke-filled back rooms of the Republican Party of Virginia to avoid an open primary in favor of a convention. Cuccinelli knew that the extremists who frequent Republican conventions would put him on the ballot. Apparently, he was less sure of the rank and file Republicans who would have voted in an open primary. 

Cuccinelli’s web site, on the education section of the issues page, has this sentence:”I was raised in Fairfax County and attended public schools.” One is led to believe that Mr. Cuccinelli’s views on education in Virginia are well formed since he is a product of Virginia’s public school system. Not so fast. Which one of Fairfax County’s many fine public high schools counts Cuccinelli as an alumnus? None of them. He went to high school at a very private, very expensive school in Washington, D.C.: Gonzaga College High School. Interestingly, the reference to Cuccinelli graduating from Gonzaga has been removed from his official biography.

One of Cuccinelli’s rare victories against the federal government came from a case where the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to force Fairfax County and Virginia to cut back on sediment pollution caused by runoff into the Accotink Creek. Cuccinelli derisively accused the EPA of trying to regulate water as a pollutant. That statement is an outright lie.  .  .  .  .  I guess “straight shooters” can take a little liberty with the truth when it suits their needs.

Then there's this nice summation:

Cuccinelli is as slippery as a greased eel. He uses back- room deals to stab members of his own party in the back. He ignores the teachings of the Jesuits at Gonzaga High School and lies through omission about his own educational background. He knowingly lies about the EPA in his comments regarding the Accotink case. Cuccinelli a straight shooter? 

The man's not only clinically insane, in my opinion, but he's also a pathological liar.