The Trump/Pence Regime Continues Its War on Science

Science is the way of the future.  It also has the ability to show the falsity and/or wrongness of past ways of doing things, including the manner in which humans - especially large greed driven corporations - have ravaged the environment.  For Trump's far right Christian base, it also has shown more and more the falsity of their world view and shown aspects of their faith to be false.  The Trump/Pence solution?  Gut environmental laws and drive scientists from government agencies.  Meanwhile, of course, the rest of the world presses on with scientific research and China may soon pull ahead of the United States in the realm of science - and the future. Gutting wetlands protections and clean air and water regulations will not make for a better future - not that Trump and his sycophants care. Its a mindset reminiscent of post WWI Britain which failed to adapt to the changing world and ultimately lost its empire as a consequence. A piece in the Washington Post looks at this war on science and the potential long term consequences for America's future.  Here are excerpts:

Dozens of government computers sit in a nondescript building here, able to connect to a data model that could help farmers manage the impact of a changing climate on their crops.

But no one in this federal agency would know how to access the model, or, if they did, what to do with the data.  That’s because the ambitious federal researcher who created it in Washington quit rather than move when the Agriculture Department relocated his agency to an office park here last fall.

He is one of hundreds of scientists across the federal government who have been forced out, sidelined or muted since President Trump took office.

The exodus has been fueled broadly by administration policies that have diminished the role of science as well as more specific steps, such as the relocation of agencies away from the nation’s capital.

While the administration has come under fire for prioritizing the concerns of industry at the expense of science in government decisions, the cumulative effects are just beginning to appear after three years of Trump in the White House.

Some farmers said the USDA staff upheaval has made it harder to access information they need.

Torrential rains last spring dashed the plans of Liz Brownlee, who runs a livestock farm with her husband, to expand her pasture in Crothersville, Ind. Then an unseasonably dry autumn brought 90-degree days that baked the farmers’ seeds. “With all this uncertainty from climate change, I need the best data possible” to know when to plant, she said. “I’m worried I’m not going to have it.”

In the first two years of the Trump administration, more than 1,600 federal scientists left government, according to Office of Personnel Management employment data analyzed by The Washington Post. That represents a 1.5 percent drop, compared with the 8 percent increase during the same period in the Obama administration.

One-fifth of the high-level appointee positions in science are vacant — normally filled by experts who shape policy and ensure research integrity.

Of those who departed, the numbers were greatest among social scientists, soil conservationists, hydrologists and experts in the physical sciences — chemistry, geology, astronomy and physics.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 700 scientists have left in the past three years, according to The Post analysis. . . . . the loss of expertise weakens the government’s ability to make sound decisions.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump called climate change a “hoax.” Once in office, he began dismantling much of President Barack Obama’s climate plan. He has installed industry figures in regulatory roles and rolled back scores of rules and policies that he considers harmful to the fossil-fuel industry. Trump’s actions spurred scientists into the streets, joining protesters for a March for Science rally on the Mall in 2017 and again in 2018.

After historic rainfall last spring swept away livestock and grain in the Midwest, crop planting was delayed by weeks. Andrew Crane-Droesch, 38, a researcher at the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, started work on a data tool that could predict months in advance the impact of, say, heavy rainfall on crop prices or planted fields. He hoped that knowledge could help farmers, commodity traders and government disaster planners prepare.

But when Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue moved forward with his controversial plan to relocate the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture — two key research agencies — to Kansas City, Crane-Droesch headed for the exit.

He joined two-thirds of affected employees in his division who either retired or found other jobs rather than move to the greater Kansas City region. At the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which oversees $1.7 billion in scientific funding for researchers, nearly 8 of every 10 employees have left.

The move to Kansas City has also meant dozens of reports and millions in research funding have been delayed or scuttled as the Agriculture Department scrambled to keep up with departures.

Current and former employees interviewed said they felt the move to Kansas City was intended to diminish research areas such as trade policy, farm income and climate change; Perdue is a climate skeptic who recently described the problem as “weather patterns, frankly.”

Some federal researchers said they left the Trump administration after concluding their work was being undermined.

The study found that long-term exposure to levels of soot and smog lower than current national standards can cause premature death among older Americans. Such a finding suggests that current standards don’t adequately protect public health, which would have implications for industries that pollute. An unidentified EPA spokesman attacked the study in an interview with the Washington Times, an act Costa called “scientifically unethical.”

Elsewhere in the government, political appointees have delayed grants for scientific work.

Across the government, the administration is scaling back advisory committees that offer input to policymakers from scientists and other experts. Last year, Trump required agencies to eliminate one-third of their advisory panels, with a few exceptions.

Much of the impact of the federal government's shrinking science capacity will not be felt for years, observers said.

"If we're gone, is the world going to be a worse place?" he mused. "I like to think so. But it's not going to be immediate."

Is the Trump/Pence Regime Trying to Kill Americans?

The title of this post might seem extreme, but when one factors in the consequence of the Trump/Pence regime's agenda - and that of the GOP in general - the inescapable conclusion is that some Americans will die as a result of this regime's policies.  Through its quest to eliminate regulations that protect everything from clean air and water to the safety of the food we eat, the agenda is to bring back some of the worse aspects of the Gilded Age.  The purpose?  To allow large corporations and certain preferred industries to rake in more money while the health of average Americans is harmed.  Throw in the goal of eliminating the Affordable Health Care Act while proposing no meaningful replacement, and the death toll soars. Meanwhile, the wealthiest Americans only care about increasing their obscene wealth and evangelical Christians fixated on imposing a Christian version of Sharia Law think that they will somehow be exempt from the deadly effects of the Trump/Pence agenda.  A column in the New York Times looks at the real harm being done.  Here are excerpts:

Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.

Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”

Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)

Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.

But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.

Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.

One is the administration’s plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It’s not as if we’ve seen safety problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? . . . Or as if there was a reason the U.S. government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?

Now, you could see the Trump administration’s willingness to trust the meat industry to keep our meat safe as part of an overall attack on government regulation, a willingness to trust profit-making businesses to do the right thing and let the market rule.

[W]e normally think of Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, as people who minimize or deny the “negative externalities” imposed by some business activities — the uncompensated costs they impose on other people or businesses.

[T]he Trump administration wants to roll back rules that limit emissions of mercury from power plants. And in pursuit of that goal, it wants to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from taking account of many of the benefits from reduced mercury emissions, such as an associated reduction in nitrogen oxide.

But when it comes to renewable energy, Trump and company are suddenly very worried about supposed negative side effects, which generally exist only in their imagination.

So it’s deregulation for some, but dire warnings about imaginary threats for others. What’s going on?

Part of the answer is, follow the money. Political contributions from the meat-processing industry overwhelmingly favor Republicans. Coal mining supports the G.O.P. almost exclusively. Alternative energy, on the other hand, generally favors Democrats.

Whatever the drivers of Trump policy, the fact, as I said, is that it will kill people. Wind turbines don’t cause cancer, but coal-burning power plants do — along with many other ailments. The Trump administration’s own estimates indicate that its relaxation of coal pollution rules will kill more than 1,000 Americans every year. If the administration gets to implement its full agenda — not just deregulation of many industries, but discrimination against industries it doesn’t like, such as renewable energy — the toll will be much higher.

So if you eat meat — or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air — there’s a real sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he’s turned out of office next year, for many Americans it will be too late.

Moron Donald Trump Says Wind Turbines “Cause Cancer”

Ever the malignant narcissist, Donald Trump thinks he knows everything about every subject and never hesitates to shoot off his mouth spewing idiocy.  The behavior says a lot about Trump - none of it good - but even more about the morons in his base who believe the falsehoods he routinely shouts out (evangelical Christians are the least educated of any religious group, which may explain their continued allegiance to a pathological liar). Indeed, its to a point where if Trump makes a claim, the safest course is to presume he is lying until proven otherwise (which will not happen often).  A case in point is Trump's attacks on wind power even as he supports coal, perhaps the dirtiest and one of the most toxic energy sources on the planet.  Vanity Fair looks at Trump's idiocy and lies.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump has a long history of attacking wind energy, which he views as a threat to coal and his campaign to transform the planet into a truck-stop urinal, the kind you have to unlock with a key attached to a giant steering wheel. “It’s Friday,” he tweeted one innocent afternoon in August 2012. “How many bald eagles did wind turbines kill today?” A couple months later, he opined: “If Obama keeps pushing wind turbines our country will go down the tubes economically, environmentally & aesthetically,” not mentioning that his own personal aesthetic could be best described as “Louis XIV projectile vomit.” He spent most of 2013 and 2014 fighting Scotland‘s First Minister over plans to build an offshore wind farm near his Aberdeenshire golf course, telling an Irish paper that “wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103 . . . Returning to his avian anxieties, the noted animal-rights activist told a West Virginia crowd last summer, “You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field [for] birds.” 

His concerns, it seems, aren’t limited to wildlife. “If Hillary got in. . . you’d be doing wind. Windmills. Weee,” he told the crowd at a rally in Michigan last week during an aside that, were he not president, would be submitted as evidence to have him committed. “If it doesn’t blow, you can forget about television for that night. ‘Darling, I want to watch television.’ ‘I’m sorry! The wind isn’t blowing.’ I know a lot about wind.”

[O]n Tuesday [Trump] launched his latest wild attack on wind turbines, an energy source that has long attracted his ire.  “They say the noise causes cancer,” [Trump] the president remarked of the turbines at the National Republican Congressional Committee fund-raiser in Washington, D.C. “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations—your house just went down 75 percent in value.”

As virtually everyone on the Internet was quick to point out, out here, on planet Earth, cancer is not caused by noise, wind-induced or otherwise. Meanwhile, an energy source that does tend to cause health issues, as New York’s Jonathan Chait notes, “is coal, an extremely dirty fuel Trump loves and has attempted to bolster, with almost no success. Aside from costing more to produce than other sources of power, and in addition to enormous air-pollution side effects, coal also emits greenhouse gases in large amounts.”

“Wind turbines cause cancer” isn’t the first piece of medical advice Dr. Trump has dispensed to his followers. In April 2012, he tweeted a story claiming that “people who live up to 2 miles away from the turbines develop such things as sleep, stress and mood disorders once wind farms go up.” (More likely, experts say, the symptoms are psychosomatic.) That same year, he warned that L.E.D. light bulbs cause cancer, and that one must “be careful,” because “the idiots who came up with this stuff don’t care.” Meanwhile, he believes fracking poses “ZERO health risks” and is, in fact, good for you.

Trump is a moron and liar.  His followers are even worse when it comes to stupidity.

Governors Ralph Northam and Larry Hogan: States Can Lead the Way on Climate Change

Ralph Northam being sworn in as Governor of Virginia.

With the Trump/Pence regime openly attacking environmental regulations and seeking to undo decades of clean water and clean air policies that have greatly reduced water and air pollution, states are increasingly seeking to step in and protect their own environments and the well being of their citizens.  Indeed, 17 governors are now members of the U.S. Climate Alliance which aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris agreement.  A joint editorial by Governors Ralph Northam and Larry Hogan of Virginia and Maryland (one Democrat and one Republican), respectively lays out efforts states can take to blunt the damage being done by the rogue Trump/Pence regime and to protect the air and water quality of their states.  Here are column highlights from the Virginian Pilot:  

THE TRUMP administration’s pursuit of policies to reverse or supplant environmental laws that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions has made combating climate change difficult. But where the federal government refuses to lead, state governments will.

For the sake of our future and the future of our children, it is time to put aside partisan interests and get to work.

Today, nations from around the world are in Poland working on a common set of rules that will govern the implementation of the Paris climate agreement and report on their progress. The residents of Virginia and Maryland, as well as all those of other states across the country, have a stake in ensuring that the agreement succeeds.

That is why we support the elected officials and leaders from cities, tribes, businesses, universities, hospitals and churches who represent U.S. support for the Paris climate agreement. Together, this delegation of leaders will make it clear to the world that we are doing our part to keep the United States on track to fulfill the promise it made in Paris.

We are already experiencing the negative effects of climate change, as the recent National Climate Assessment from 13 federal agencies made painfully clear. . . . . This new report from the federal government confirms what we already know: Climate change can hurt public health and cripple our economy.

Our most important job as governors is ensuring the safety of our constituents. So when we face a threat to people’s livelihoods and way of life, showing leadership means acknowledging the risks and addressing them.

This is why a bipartisan group of governors joined to form the U.S. Climate Alliance. After starting with three governors, the alliance has now grown to 17 state leaders who have committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris agreement. We are united in our belief that smart, coordinated state action can ensure that the United States continues to contribute to the global effort to address climate change. Together, we are taking action to implement a range of climate policies — such as lowering the cost of renewable energy and promoting the use of electric vehicles.

In our home states of Maryland and Virginia, we are experiencing rising seas, more extreme weather events, regular high-tide flooding and a changing Chesapeake Bay. That’s why Maryland has become a leader in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and passed a law to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent, creating a model for others to follow. Maryland also has an active, bipartisan Commission on Climate Change and is a leader in climate resilience and preparedness, as well as in championing green infrastructure, open spaces, and a climate academy for local officials and citizens. Recently, the state has announced its intention to ban the manufacture and use of hydrofluorocarbons, a super-polluting greenhouse gas.

And just to the south, Virginia has begun the process to reduce carbon pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030 and recently announced its intention to significantly reduce emissions of methane — a greenhouse gas that is more than 80 times more damaging than carbon dioxide in the short term. Virginia also issued an executive order last month detailing steps to address extreme weather, including the creation of a Coastal Resilience Master Plan to protect private property and critical public assets, using nature-based infrastructure whenever possible.

[W]e will make plans to adapt and protect our residents and our coastlines. These steps will help slow climate change, but we need help. We call on leaders of all political persuasions to get to work and cooperate across aisles and across borders — both national and international — to meet the challenge of climate change.

Elections have consequences.  Had Northam not won in 2017, there is little doubt that Ed Gillespie would be taking a very different approach and joining in with the Trump/Pence regime and hastening the willful degradation the environment. 

Florida Senate Race Highlights GOP Failure on Protecting the Environment

Photo of a red tide by John Moran. 

Nationally, the Republican Party's agenda is to create a new Gilded Age where the rich live the lives of old word aristocrats and the rest of us are peasants and serfs.  Environmentally, they want to eliminate environmental regulations that block corporate interests from polluting the air and the water. Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has rolled back Obama era regulations that would have lowered air and water pollution. Here in Virginia, for the last eight years Democrat governors have sought to mitigate the efforts of Republicans who in some cases have banned even the utterance of the words "climate change."  Red states under Republican control have not fared as well.  Florida under GOP governor Rick Scott is a case in point.  Scott has worked to roll back environmental protections and now Florida finds itself in a crisis separate and apart for the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.  Thankfully, as laid out in a long Politico Magazine piece, Scott's anti-environment efforts are coming back to haunt him as he runs for the U.S. Senate.  Here are article highlights: 

John Moran is a Florida nature photographer, but lately he sees himself as a Florida crime photographer. The crime, he likes to say, is the slime.

But one of Moran’s most popular images, a grinning man relaxing on a pink inner tube with his feet slathered in algae, is considerably less artsy. The man’s face is a crudely Photoshopped Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, with a speech bubble that reads: “Come on in. The water’s fine!” Scott is running for U.S. Senate, and Moran wants to make sure voters associate him with the nasty mess that is sickening puppies and beachgoers, forcing lifeguards to wear gas masks, and imperiling the coastal tourist economy that makes Florida go.

“Scott has been so terrible on these issues, he’s really promoted the cause of environmental awareness in Florida,” says Moran, whose more serious work on the devastation is on display at a “Summer of Slime” exhibit at Gainesville’s Florida Museum. “It takes a moment like this and a person like that to wake people up.”

The ecological meltdown of Florida’s waters — a toxic rainbow coalition of red tide, blue-green algae and a touch of brown algae — has been very bad news for Scott, or, as he’s been dubbed on social media, #RedTideRick. Before scenic beaches in snowbird meccas like Sanibel and Sarasota were inundated with dead manatees, dolphins and turtles, most polls had Scott ahead of Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, even as other Republican candidates struggled in more safely Republican states. The prediction model at FiveThirtyEight now gives Nelson a slight lead, a shift that seems to owe more to biological red tide than any political blue wave.

Scott would prefer to focus the race on Florida’s low unemployment rate, Nelson’s low profile in Washington, and his own leadership handling storms like Hurricane Michael. But the putrid slime befouling his state has been difficult to avoid — Hurricane Michael actually blew the red tide back into Tampa Bay, where it littered the area's beaches with dead mullet — and Scott has found it difficult to change the subject.

He recently cut short a statewide bus tour after eco-protesters chanting about Red Tide Rick chased him out of an event in heavily Republican Venice on Florida’s west coast. In August, he dodged a much larger crowd of disgruntled homeowners after taking a private boat tour of the algae-choked St. Lucie River in heavily Republican Stuart on the east coast.

[W]ater quality is a state responsibility, and while Scott has made occasional eco-friendly moves during his eight years in office, he has consistently weakened regulation and enforcement of the nutrients that fuel algae blooms. And even though warmer water can supercharge those blooms, as well as hurricanes like Michael that can spread those blooms, Scott has done nothing to deal with climate change. State employees in his administration were even cautioned not to say those two words. Florida’s politicians have a long and sordid history of promoting the exploitation rather than the conservation of the state’s unique natural resources. But it’s become a real political problem for Scott now that Florida’s waters, its economic golden goose, are in such a conspicuous state of crisis. National publications keep running bad-for-the-brand headlines like “Toxic Slime Is Ruining Florida’s Gulf Coast” (in Bloomberg BusinessWeek) and “A Toxic Tide Is Killing Florida Wildlife” (in the New York Times).

After red tide unexpectedly showed up Thursday in Miami, shutting down beaches and threatening a multibillion-dollar hospitality industry, local filmmaker Billy Corben tweeted a parody of the state tourism bureau’s Visit Florida ads, featuring footage of poisoned marine life interspersed with footage of Scott assuring the public Florida is open for business, over the pounding beat of Pitbull’s “Sexy Beaches.”

“Nothing ever stuck to Teflon Rick, but pardon the pun, the algae is sticking,” Corben says. “It’s such a rich irony that he’s going to be done in by Mother Nature.”

The problem for Scott is that his victories were 1-point squeakers during the Republican landslides of 2010 and 2014, while 2018 looks like a much more Democratic year. And even loyal Republicans don’t seem to enjoy slime in their backyards. People come to Florida to enjoy the outdoors, and the recurring water crises of recent years—in the Everglades, Florida Bay, Lake Okeechobee, the springs of north Florida, and the near-shore estuaries along the east and west coast—have inspired a new movement of digitally savvy activists determined to punish politicians who neglect the state’s natural jewels. Bullsugar.org, a local group formed a few years ago to counter the sugar industry’s influence on water decisions, now has 330,000 followers on Facebook, and it’s using its own influence to support Nelson.

“His [incumbent Senator Nelson] greatest asset,” says Bullsugar co-founder Chris Maroney, a retired internet entrepreneur, “is that he’s not Rick Scott.”

Since becoming in governor in 2011, Scott has pushed to evade even that limited scrutiny. One of his early moves was to petition the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to drop its push for specific numerical limits on nutrient pollution in Florida; he argued that the feds should leave nutrient control entirely to the state. At the same time, Scott was gutting the budgets and staffs of state environmental agencies and water management districts, shifting their focus from enforcement of pollution violations to reduction of regulatory burdens, and eliminating the state’s growth management agency entirely. He would later repeal a law requiring routine inspections of septic tanks to make sure they weren’t leaking untreated waste into state waters. In a recent debate, Nelson described the mess as a direct result of Scott “systematically disassembling the environmental agencies of this state … You put pollution in the water, it will grow the algae in the heat of summer.” His ads are just as blunt: “The water is murky, but the fact is clear: Rick Scott caused this problem.”

Kimberly Mitchell, executive director of the Everglades Trust, is also a Republican who served as a city commissioner in West Palm Beach. She thinks the toxic nightmare seeping around the state will hurt her party in November — and after two decades of using its control of Tallahassee to help agricultural interests and other polluters, she thinks that hurt will be well-deserved. “People see the death and destruction on their social media, and they realize they’ve got to do something,” she says. “They’re awake now, and I think a lot of Republicans don’t want that.”

In surveys, Americans rarely cite the environment as a top priority, even though most voters support strict environmental regulations. But nature is so intimately connected to Florida’s economy and culture that green issues can tilt elections here.

Now, nature is having another political moment in the Sunshine State. The activist Erin Brockovich was in Fort Myers last week to raise awareness about the crisis. Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for governor, attracted an astonishing crowd of more than 1,200 to an environmental rally in Stuart over the weekend, promising to “put the word ‘protection’ back into the Department of Environmental Protection.” His opponent, Congressman Ron DeSantis, has been a reliable vote for the House Republican war on environmental regulation, but he’s running as a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist; his first general-election ad touted his determination to take on Big Sugar and save the Everglades. In some ways, though, the situation is simple. Scott has spent eight years portraying himself as the jobs-jobs-jobs governor, rolling back environmental rules and enforcement that job creators didn’t like, and now he’s having trouble convincing Floridians he’s also been a nature-nature-nature governor. Whether Mother Nature helps knock him off, or whether he manages to win despite the slime spreading on his watch, the race could send a national message about the environment’s power or lack thereof to take revenge on politicians who mistreat it.

The situation has also provided a timely reminder that in Florida, nature-nature-nature creates jobs. . . . And if they [algae blooms and red tides] become an annual phenomenon, they could scare away out-of-state visitors who spend more than $100 billion in Florida every year.

If you care about the quality of the air you breathe and the water you drink - or, in my own case, have in your backyard - there's really no choice but to vote Democrat.  To do otherwise is environmental suicide.

Trump's War on Millennials

Donald Trump - Der Trumpenführer on this blog - and his Republican sycophants are waging war on many elements of society that range from women, to gays, to racial minorities to non-Christians, with Muslims bear much of the brunt in the latter category.  But, as a column in the Washington Post argues, the Trump/GOP policies are also waging war on Millennials. The weapons range from tax plans that will shift billions in tax cuts to older, wealthy citizens, to allowing loan shark like student loan lenders to again rapaciously prey on college students, to trashing the environment in ways that will long haunt younger Americans which will be stuck with a more polluted, less healthy country.  Like so much of the Trump/GOP agenda, the war on Millennials is short sighted and hopefully will convince Millennial voters that they need to truly get out and vote in force to remove hostile Republicans from office.  Staying home on election day only enables your enemies. Here are column highlights:

Trumpcare is, on the whole, terrible. But if you’re a millennial, it does have one thing going for it: It’s virtually the only piece of the Trump platform that advantages the young at the expense of the old.

The rest of the Trump agenda could be broadly characterized as full-on generational warfare against the young. If enacted, it will rob millennials and subsequent generations of earnings, benefits, consumer protections and even — if you look far enough into the future — a habitable place to live.

Let’s start with the Trump tax plan.

But based on proposals President Trump released during the campaign, and comments made in recent weeks by both administration officials and Republican legislators, the coming overhaul will almost certainly be heavily weighted toward the wealthy. An earlier version of the plan directed about half the value of tax cuts to the top 1 percent of earners, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis.

These tax cuts also look likely to add trillions to the debt, again based on analyses of earlier plan versions. (Despite administration promises, virtually no serious economistsbelieve the plan would “pay for itself” through additional economic growth.)
All this amounts to a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth, one that hits millennials in at least two ways. The first has to do with who benefits most from a top-heavy tax cut.

A marginal rate cut is most valuable when you’re in your peak earning years, which tend to come around middle age. That’s because when your income is highest, so is your tax liability.

Millennials are at the beginning of their careers, and both their wages and taxes are low relative to what they will earn, and remit to Uncle Sam, as they gain work experience. All this means that a tax cut today, particularly one tilted toward the highest earners, would not help young people as much as it would mid-career people in their 40s and 50s.

The second is that an unfunded tax cut — like anything else that increases the federal debt — is not free. Eventually someone has to pay for it.

[Y]ounger Americans will pick up the tab, through higher taxes, fewer government services or both. Already millennials worry that their entitlements have been irreparably endangered by fiscal profligacy; a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that half believe there won’t be anything left in the Social Security system by the time they retire.

Taxes are hardly the only way the Trump administration is giving millennials the shaft. A host of changes to the student lending industry are doing the same.

But perhaps the Trump agenda plank that harms the largest swath of millennials is the administration’s climate change policy. Or lack thereof.

 The White House is weighing whether to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, which requires the United States to sharply reduce its carbon output by 2025. In the meantime, the Trump administration has already been undermining climate policy by disappearing public data, firing academic scientistsand rewriting rules designed to curb emissions.

If you take the long view, even the Trumpcare proposal doesn’t truly promote millennials’ interests. Yes, it allows insurers to vary their premiums by a factor of 5 to 1 due to age, which helps today’s young (at least, today’s young and healthy). But it doesn’t shield us from rate hikes as we ourselves age.

Not voting has serious negative consequences as Millennials are hopefully coming to realize.  You may not have a dream candidate to support, but you need to always vote for the less toxic candidate no matter what.  That did not happen in 2016 and we are all now paying the price.  

Trump's Terrifying Climate Policy

The Hampton Roads region is finally coming out of a period of widespread flooding on the par with what one would normally expect during a hurricane direct hit or close encounter.  Yet, there was no hurricane.  Just steady rain for numerous days in a row combined with high tides - combined with rising sea levels - that block storm drainage systems from doing their jobs.  And it was just Norfolk that suffered major flooding.  Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and other cities were stricken. Indeed, schools were closed because of the impassable nature of many roads.  All is proof positive of the reality of climate change.  Despite such objective proof, Republicans and Donald Trump in particular continue to push policies that will lead to climate disaster.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the terrifying policies favored by liar and vulgarian in chief, Donald Trump.  Here are excerpts:

On Thursday, Donald Trump spoke before an audience full of natural gas and energy industry leaders — and the message was exactly the same as his economic policy proposal from last week: fewer environmental regulations and more land available to fossil fuel companies.

“We need an America-First energy plan,” Trump said. “This means opening federal lands for oil and gas production; opening offshore areas; and revoking policies that are imposing unnecessary restrictions on innovative new exploration technologies.”

If elected president, Trump has pledged to revoke both the Clean Power Planand President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the cornerstones of Obama’s domestic climate agenda, and important signals to the international community of the United States’ commitment to climate action.

 

Trump has also promised to roll back the Waters of the United States Rule, which would extend drinking water protections for millions of Americans. Instead, he said that he would redirect the EPA to “refocus…on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans.”

Trump does not seem to understand that regulations he so deeply wants to cut are crucial to preserving clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans.

A recent Harvard study found that the public health benefits of the Clean Power Plan are so robust that they outweigh the costs of the carbon standard in 13 out of 14 power sectors within five years of implementation. The same study estimated that the plan could save some 3,500 lives every year. Similarly, the Waters of the United States rule would protect the drinking water for a third of Americans that currently get their water from unprotected sources.

Beyond rolling back crucial protections, Trump’s speech on Thursday showed that he does not intend to back down on his policy proposal that would open up vast regions of the United States to fossil fuel production. 

After Trump’s speech, Sierra Club Political Director Khalid Pitts criticized the Republican presidential candidate’s policies, calling them polluter “talking points.”

“Trump’s dirty-fuels-first plan is pretty simple: drill enough off our coasts to threaten beaches from Maine to Florida, frack enough to spoil groundwater across the nation, and burn enough coal to cook the planet and make our kids sick,” Pitts said in a statement. “In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in this race who is committed to grow the booming clean energy economy to create jobs and help tackle the climate crisis.”

The Koch Brothers Launch A Surrogate War Against Pope Francis

I remain skeptical as to whether Pope Francis can bring modernization and change to the Roman Catholic Church.  Meanwhile, however, Francis continues to make statements that cause Republicans set on creating a new Gilded Age and vulture capitalists cringe.  And rightly so since the GOP agenda is the 180 degree opposite of the Gospel message.  Now, the Koch brothers - who personify  Republican greed and contempt for the less fortunate - are reportedly waging a war against Francis.  Here are highlights from Politicususa.com:

One of the greatest things to happen over the past year is the remarkable revelation that there is finally, at long last, a major Christian leader, and member of the clergy, who espouses, embraces, and promotes the teachings of Jesus Christ. Even for an avowed secular humanist, this is a stunning, and welcomed, development if for no other reason than one of the world’s leading religions appears to be adopting Christ’s regard for the world’s poor and downtrodden. Of course, the Catholic Pope has garnered nothing but serious opposition and pushback from America’s evangelical and Catholic Republican movement, and now the Koch brothers and their dirty energy cabal have joined what is developing into a dirty oil-evangelical war against Pope Francis.

The Pope already drew the wrath of both evangelical and Catholic Republicans in Congress for criticizing the greed and income inequality championed by the GOP, but now he has the undivided attention of the Koch brothers, Exxon, and their dirty energy cohorts. The cause célèbre for the Koch-funded evangelical movement is the Pope’s recent announcement that it is beyond high time for the world, and “all Catholics” to join the fight to reduce the existential threat to human beings from anthropogenic climate change.

"Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.” 

Those words, although accurate, were toxic to a Koch-funded evangelical Christian group made up of pastors and Christian leaders, the Cornwall Alliance, that considers the devastating effects and great cataclysms we witness from the effects of anthropogenic (manmade) climate change the will of almighty god and biblical. A godly will that no man, much less the Vicar of Christ, dares speak out against or attempt to change. 

The Cornwall Alliance was quick to lash out at the Pope this week when he announced he would be issuing a “rare encyclical on the environment and climate change” early this year, as well as convene a summit of the world’s religious leaders to address climate change. Pope Francis will also address the United Nations General Assembly with a view toward influencing the upcoming U.N. meeting on climate change in Paris this year.

The Koch-funded “Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation” had previously issued a biblical declaration labeling the American environmental movement a dirty false religion and “unbiblical.”

[Cornwall Alliance spokesman] Beisner also warned the Pope that he had better “back off” talking about combating climate change saying that although “The Catholic church is correct on ethical principles, it has been misled on science. It follows that the policies the Vatican is promoting are incorrect. Our position reflects the views of millions of evangelical Christians in the US” as well as the Koch brothers who fund the Cornwall Alliance.

The only “ethical principle evangelicals agree with Catholic doctrine on is controlling women by banning all forms of “unnatural birth control.” Other than that one abominable concurrence, this new Pope’s adherence to the biblical Jesus Christ’s teachings that “millions of evangelical Christians” reject is a major source of angst and ire to Republicans, the religious right, and their funding machine the Koch brothers. That the Pope embraces the obvious science and empirical truth about anthropogenic climate change, and is joining the battle to assuage its destruction, is why the Kochs and their dirty energy cabal are funding the evangelical war against the Pope; to perpetuate the damage from climate change and their ungodly profits.

According to Cornwall’s pastors and Christian leaders, the Kochs’ oil industry campaign against efforts to combat climate change is the evangelical movement’s  “biblical response to one of the greatest deceptions of our day” against what they have labeled “a false religion.” The group claims the entire climate change movement is a “nefarious conspiracy to empower eugenicists and create a global government” and portrays even the idea of climate change as the work of Satan the Devil.

The relationship between the Kochs and Cornwall is symbiotic in that the Kochs get a ready-made batch of religious sycophants dedicated to supporting the destruction of the environment to hasten the onset of their cherished end time “rapture,” and the Cornwall Alliance evangelical pastors and leaders get an endless supply of Koch, Exxon, and oil industry cash.

Climate Deniers Get Even Crazier and More Dishonest

Just when you thought the Koch brothers and their sycophants and paid liars could not possible get any more insane in their opposition to accepting the reality of climate change, they roll out a new lie: carbon dioxide is good and that we need even more of it in the atmosphere.  What's equally disgusting is the fact that there are some who for a buck will tell any lie regardless of the long term harm that will be done.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this newest insanity.  Here are excerpts:

For years, the fossil-fuel industries have been telling us that global warming is a hoax based on junk science.

But now these industries are floating an intriguing new argument: They’re admitting that human use of coal, oil and gas is causing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise — but they’re saying this is a good thing. We need more CO2 in our lives, not less. 

“CO2 is basically plant food, and the more CO2 in the environment the better plants do,” proclaimed Roger Bezdek, a consultant to energy companies, at an event hosted Monday by the United States Energy Association, an industry trade group. 

This was some creative thinking, and it took a page from the gun lobby, which argues that the way to curb firearm violence is for more people to be armed. 

Another questioner at the event asked Bezdek if he had considered ocean acidification, the release of methane gases, pollution and other side effects of rising CO2. This did not trouble him. “As you develop and you become wealthier,” he explained, “you have the wealth to clean up the mess.” He went on to point out that “35,000 people every year in the United States die in automobile accidents, but the solution is not to ban automobiles. You try to make them safer.”

The U.S. Energy Association membership comes from various sectors but includes big petroleum companies and utilities. Bezdek seemed to have a special place in his heart for coal, “the major world energy source of the past, present and future . . . lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.”

The presentation began as a standard recitation of the climate-change denial position, that “there’s been no global warming for almost two decades” and that forecasts are “based on flawed science.”

Expect these folks to be major donors to Republican candidates.  Note that the threat rising sea levels pose to many American cities was not even mentioned.

Keystone Pipeline Goes Down to Defeat in U.S. Senate

While tonight's vote may seal the fate of Mary Landrieu (D-La.)in her upcoming run off election, the at least temporary defeat of the Keystone Pipeline is a win for the American people despite the PR efforts of the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel industry hacks and their political prostitutes.  The tar sands from which hydrocarbons to be transported by the Keystone Pipeline are produced are among the most environmentally damaging.  Yes, Canada and foul individuals like the Kochs would benefit from the pipeline, but if one cares anything about air pollution not to mention the dangers of pipelines in general, this is NOT something sane Americans should want.  And I say this as a former in-house attorney for an large oil company with knowledge of the oil and gas industry.  I would further add that America needs to reduce its dependence on oil and gas, not increase it. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on tonight's vote:

In a dramatic vote, the Senate rejected a controversial new energy pipeline Tuesday evening, dealing a serious blow to the re-election prospects of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and leaving Republicans itching for a fight next year on the issue. 

On a 59 to 41 vote, Landrieu lost her bid to pass legislation meant to compel the Obama White House to approve the nearly 1,700-mile, $7.6 billion Keystone XL pipeline, which if built would deliver 830,000 barrels of oil a day from western Canada into the American heartland.

Already six years in the making, the Keystone fight has become the rallying cry for Landrieu, a three-term senator facing a run-off election Dec. 6. For the past week she has placed a political bet on her ability to pass the legislation as a demonstration of her clout in the Senate.

Supporters said the new pipeline would lead to a more efficient delivery of oil into the domestic markets, helping boost the national economy by creating tens of thousands of jobs along the construction of the pipeline. Opponents said that the project would be harvesting oil from the environmentally dirty tar sands in Canada, leading to too many health risks and coming at a time when other domestic oil production has already shrunk gas prices to less than $3 a gallon in many regions.

A man identified as Greg Graycloud, with the Lakota Tribe in South Dakota, began chanting loudly after the vote ended. He was removed from the Senate Chamber by U.S. Capitol Police officers. Four other people opposed to the pipeline were also removed for speaking out.

Before Tuesday night’s vote, the White House was careful not to issue a veto threat even as officials made it clear Obama was likely to invoke one should the measure pass the Senate.

“It certainly is a piece of legislation that the president doesn’t support, because the president believes that this is something that should be determined through the State Department – a process that is in place to evaluate projects like this,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest, adding that Obama’s senior advisers have recommended a veto on “similar pieces of legislation” that have been introduced in the past.

Coal is a Dead End for Southwest Virginia

Southwest Virginia continues to be the basket case of Virginia.  Unemployment is high, too much reliance exists on the coal industry - which does anything but give back to the community - and the region remains educationally and socially/culturally backwards.  Not surprisingly, other than a few of the cities, the region remains a Republican bastion even as GOP policies help hold the area back economically and socially.  Parts of the region are truly beautiful - e.g., the Blue Ridge Parkway and some of the national forests - but many people choose not to travel to a region that in someways still fits the mold of something out of the movie Deliverance.  An editorial in the Roanoke Times by a Catholic nun makes the case for change in what is a vicious downward spiral.  Here are excerpts:

The Oct. 29 commentary (“New carbon rules are all pain, no gain”) from Kevin Crutchfield, Steve Smith, Jim McGlothlin and John Tickle continues to miss the mark about “the disconnect.” The disconnect isn’t with D.C. It is within us.

We continue to underappreciate our full Appalachian culture, the incredible biodiversity of our coalfield region. We are more than the coal in the coalfields. We have survived a climatic extinction twice; yet, we continue to be led in a cycle of singular, over-reliance on coal as the solution to our economic and cultural survival.

This is a dead end and much of the reason we are facing the current and future losses named in the energy magnates’ letter and blamed on the EPA. We need a new landscape and business leaders with broader vision. Decisions today cannot be taken solely from geological perspectives or the possible economic benefits for investors and for the states in which the companies are based.

We need an honest acknowledgment, by business and local political leaders and ourselves, of what we far Southwest Virginians know, deep down, to be true. It will only be in restoring the land that we will restore the people and the economy of our area, and our state. A restoring the land, restoring the people initiative happens when we advance practical solutions that integrate simultaneously both ecologically sustainable and economically viable practices. These practices require giving priority to ecological economics as the means to creating a culture of sustainability.

We cannot continue with a “do the damage now and reclaim it later mentality.” Principles of reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim and restore are necessary at every stage of the economic development plans. Practicing an ecological economics includes a commitment to going green, doing green.

Our IDA plans and commitments require more than promoting discrete projects like Appalachian Culture, music and crafts, tourism, ATV trails and outdoor activities. These are important, but in addition to their promotion there needs to be a link to how that content contributes to the total restoration of our region. In practice, whatever initiatives we take, they need — from start to finish, in every aspect of the business plans — to follow principles that are friendly to the natural environment and sustainable for the Earth.

Stop blaming D.C., EPA and the proposed clean energy power plan. Stop using “traditional air emissions” to buttress the argument that says the coal industry is lessening carbon pollution.

In fact, the coal industry has done little if anything to reduce its carbon pollution despite its contribution to global warming. When the production of our goods and services depends on the extraction of material from our ecosystems, then that dependence causes resource depletion on the one hand, and excess pollution on the other.

The disconnect we are experiencing in far Southwest Virginia is that we continue to ignore the biophysical basis that underpins the economy. We need to conserve resources, conserve energy, reduce waste, reduce pollution and the release of harmful substances into the environment and protect the Earth’s ecological balance with other living things. Anything or anyone who undermines this reality undermines us.

Southwest Virginia has lived in the past for far too long.  Of course, the Christofascists and the GOP like it that way.  However, it is a dead end for the local residents.  When will more of them open their eyes to this reality? 

Kansas, Wind Energy and the Koch Brothers

Among the most toxic and reactionary elements in politics today are the Koch brothers who seem happy to take America back to the Gilded Age, trash the environment, and hasten climate change through their love for carbon emitting energy sources.  Ironically, in Kansas these horrid individuals and their Republican sycophants  - perhaps political whores is a better term - are facing a blow back as their policies seek to undo efforts to push renewable energy sources, especially wind energy.  The insatiable greed of the Koch brothers and their utter lack of concern for others and/or the environment are all symptomatic of today's GOP which feigns support for "Christian values" even as it pursues policies that are the exact opposite of what the social gospel commands.  Think Progress looks at the surprising struggle in Kansas.  Here are highlights:

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback once supported wind energy, but that was before petrochemical billionaires and Kansas natives Charles and David Koch became his largest campaign donors. Now, Brownback and the Kochs find themselves enmeshed in a highly competitive governor’s race, one that has become a referendum on the much-heralded notion that scaling back government and slashing taxes for the wealthy will lead to economic growth.

A key aspect of this debate hinges on the role of renewable energy in the state and the future of the Kansas’ Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), a law requiring a certain portion of a state’s energy mix come from renewable sources. The Koch brothers have devoted a significant amount of time and money into repealing the standard and as of late, Brownback has wavered in his support. His Democratic opponent, Paul Davis, has taken a stand, saying he would “veto a bill that repeals our RPS” during the first gubernatorial debate.

Davis said the RPS repeal is being championed by a very narrow group of far right special interests with heavy investments in the oil industry. He said this is despite the fact that the policy remains incredibly popular among everyday Kansans and public and private sector leaders who understand the importance of diversifying the state’s energy portfolio. In fact, Kansas’ RPS — which requires investor-owned utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020 — is almost entirely fulfilled several years ahead of schedule.

“Frankly, the RPS has become controversial because those who want to repeal the RPS have poured millions into Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign, which has caused him to suddenly change his position,” said Davis.

The wind blows through Kansas powerfully enough to meet the state’s electricity needs more than 90 times over. However, neighboring Iowa — with a lesser wind resource — is currently far outpacing Kansas in wind power capacity. 

Wind advocates in Kansas say their competitive disadvantage comes from political attacks on policies that would boost clean energy development. For Kansas is not only home to plentiful wind resources, it is also home to the ultraconservative Kochs, whose affiliated groups have spearheaded many of the attacks on clean energy across the country. 

“We’ve had this policy on the books for five years and it’s been extremely successful,” said Kimberly Gencur Svaty, owner of Gencur Svaty Public Affairs and board member at the Kansas-based Climate + Energy Project. “Kansas is desperately trying to get back on the right economic track and we have lots of large companies like Walmart, Kroger, and Google that want to invest in a state that shows commitment to renewable energy.”

There was a push to repeal Kansas’ clean energy standard in the last legislative session and Koch Industries lobbied hard for the measure. In the end, the bill passed the Senate but not the House. Dr. Michael Smith, associate professor of political science at Emporia State University in Kansas, said that “some ‘strong arm’ tactics were used to get it passed in the Senate.”

The ultimate failure of the latest repeal effort may have damaged the governor’s standing with his largest donors. Smith said an elected official recently told him that Koch Industries is not supporting Brownback’s re-election campaign because the RPS repeal effort was unsuccessful. This would follow the pattern of the Kochs lashing out at even very conservative state legislators who didn’t support the repeal.

91 percent of Kansas voters are strongly supportive of using renewable energy, with 88 percent responding that they believe boosting renewable energy will lead to new investments in Kansas and help grow the state’s economy, according to a poll conducted by North Star Opinion Research in early 2014. It also found that 73 percent of Republicans support the 2009 RPS.

Kansans who don’t want four more years of Brownback’s extremely conservative policies, and who see merit in the RPS, are rallying behind Davis. . . . According to the Davis campaign, Republicans for Kansas Values, a group representing Republicans who support Davis’ candidacy, has over 500 current and former elected Republican leaders’ endorsements. 

[T]he Koch brothers, at 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, their climate pollution outpaces oil giants such as Valero, Chevron and Shell.