The Obamacrats Strike Back

One of the hallmarks of the Trump/Pence regime has been its assault on environmental protection and health safety regulations which will leave the nation and world dirtier and Americans less safe and less healthy.  Part of the motivation is a contempt for average Americans and a desire to allow big business to operated unrestricted.  The other is Trump's obsession with destroying everything Barrack Obama - who occupied the White House for eight years without scandals and criminal convictions of members his administration - accomplished.  The threat to average Americans is real and, as a piece in The Atlantic notes, has caused a number of members of the Obama administration to leave the lucrative private sector and return to politics and activism and advocacy.  Their motivation?  To protect the environment and concern for their children and grandchildren.  Here are article excerpts:

Washington legend has it that bureaucrats and political operatives overwhelmingly stay in issue advocacy or politics after their bosses leave office. But that notion is decades out-of-date. These days, many top officials who leave the D.C. swamp go directly to the private sector—and are paid handsomely to do so.

More of former President Barack Obama’s top aides entered the private sector than from any other administration in the past four decades . . . . Yet as Trump’s aggressive rollback of Obama-administration policies has continued, several former Obama officials who went into academia or took private-sector jobs have since returned to politics or advocacy work.

Take Gina McCarthy, who spent seven chaotic years in Washington, four of them as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama. McCarthy was happy to pass the first years of the Trump administration in Boston, where she got to ride her bike to work every day as a professor at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Her Trump-appointed successors at the EPA announced changes to federal standards almost daily. By June 2019, they had done away with the Obama-era regulation to curb carbon emissions from power plants, and set their sights on redrafting a rule to allow cars to discharge more polluting gases—a change that the auto industry itself largely opposed. But late last year, when a rewrite of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, which limits the levels of mercury emitted from power plants, seemed imminent, McCarthy decided that she was ready to make a change.

So when the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental-advocacy nonprofit that had been searching for a new president, called her last fall, McCarthy said she was in.

McCarthy wasn’t alone: Last June, former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell became the interim head of the Nature Conservancy, the top environmental-lobbying spender, which takes in more money than the American Cancer Society. Tina Tchen, a former chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama, initially joined a law firm before taking a job leading the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund late last year. And former administration officials such as Elissa Slotkin and Lauren Underwood ran for congressional seats in 2018—and won.

The former officials who decided, instead, to stick it out in (or rejoin) the less remunerative world of politics and activism were likely spurred on by the dramatic operational and regulatory shifts seen in Trump’s White House, Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, told me.

“Many people recognize the existential threat to progressive issues and progressive values [caused] by the Trump administration,” Tanden said. “And it has called a lot of people into the battle.”

McCarthy’s NRDC, which has its own political-action committee, has emerged as one of the most aggressive challengers to the Trump administration’s environmental policies. The group plans to spend more than $5 million on federal-election efforts by June. It has donated more to candidates this election cycle than most other environmental organizations, topping the former Democratic candidate Tom Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate Action. Since Trump took office, the NRDC has sued his administration more than 100 times over a range of deregulatory actions and won more than 90 percent of the cases that have been resolved. Its victories include reinstating a ban on oil drilling in the Arctic and penalties for automakers who violate emissions rules.

The Trump administration’s actions on the mercury rule especially infuriated McCarthy. Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that can lead to impaired vision, muscle weakness, and changes in mental function. Children and unborn infants are the most vulnerable. As Obama’s last EPA head and a top air-pollution official at the agency before that, McCarthy was intimately involved in drafting the rule, which she said was broadly accepted by all parties.

The EPA finalized changes to the mercury rule on April 16, declaring it not “appropriate and necessary.” Industry groups and environmentalists alike had opposed alterations. There’s “no basis to repeal these important and long-overdue” protections, Exelon, a major utility company, wrote to regulators in a 2019 public comment.

The Trump administration’s squabbling over the rule drove McCarthy “absolutely nuts,” she said. “That’s when I realized what they were doing made no sense from a standard-setting process. It was just to destroy everything that had been done before. It had no explanation otherwise.”

NRDC certainly has the money to push its agenda. Through the group’s political arm, McCarthy will have millions to put toward endorsing and advertising for candidates in key 2020 races and promoting the ultimate goal: unseating Trump. The fund budgeted $6.2 million for election and lobbying efforts in fiscal 2018, ahead of the midterms. This money, which also supports voter-turnout efforts, can make a significant difference in close House and Senate races.

McCarthy doesn’t think of the rollbacks of her work at the EPA—or even the attacks from her critics—as a personal affront. But she sees her job as deeply personal nonetheless. . . . Everything that I thought I was working towards, which is really protecting my family and other families from damage from pollution, particularly—that was all at risk. And I couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”

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.

White House, EPA Block Release of Disturbing Chemical Pollution Study

If you haven't noticed, the Trump/Pence regime and its minions at the EPA are not exactly in favor of protecting the environment as displayed by an ongoing rollback of pollution control laws. Now, with the news of a White House/EPA effort to block the public from learning details of a study that shows dangerous chemical pollution problems, it is increasingly clear that protecting the lives and health of citizens are a similar low priority. Protecting chemical companies and polluters within the Department of Defense rates far higher than saving citizens from exposure to carcinogens.  The main DOD and EPA fear?  A "public relations nightmare" rather than concern for the lives of citizens and service members.  Particularly at risk of members of the military and their families on military bases. A piece in Politico broke the story which so far has remained largely under the radar.  The cover up - and the information in the blocked report - needs to be circulated and disseminated far and wide.  Given the number of military bases in Southeast, coastal Virginia, one cannot help but believe the study would have upsetting information for residents in the region. Here are highlights from the piece in Politico:

Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a "public relations nightmare," newly disclosed emails reveal.

The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia.

The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the OMB. The email added: “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”

Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) called the delay "deeply troubling" on Monday, urging Pruitt and President Donald Trump "to immediately release this important study."

"Families who have been exposed to emerging contaminants in their drinking water have a right to know about any health impacts, and keeping such information from the public threatens the safety, health, and vitality of communities across our country," Hassan said, citing POLITICO's reporting of the issue.

Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act. . . . . The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists. Pruitt has faced steady criticism for his handling of science at the agency, even before the recent spate of ethics investigations into his upscale travels and dealings with lobbyists. In his year leading EPA, he has overhauled several scientific advisory panels to include more industry representatives and recently ordered limits on the kinds of scientific studies the agency will consider on the health effects of pollution. The chemicals at issue in the HHS study have long been used in products like Teflon and firefighting foam, and are contaminating water systems around the country. Known as PFOA and PFOS, they have been linked with thyroid defects, problems in pregnancy and certain cancers, even at low levels of exposure. [S]ome of the biggest liabilities reside with the Defense Department, which used foam containing the chemicals in exercises at bases across the country. In a March report to Congress, the Defense Department listed 126 facilities where tests of nearby water supplies showed the substances exceeded the current safety guidelines. A government study concluding that the chemicals are more dangerous than previously thought could dramatically increase the cost of cleanups at sites like military bases and chemical manufacturing plants, and force neighboring communities to pour money into treating their drinking water supplies. The HHS document at issue is called a toxicological profile, which describes the dangers of a chemical based on a review of previous scientific studies. It would carry no regulatory weight itself, but could factor into cleanup requirements at Superfund sites. Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed he

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.  

Bubble Dwelling Trump Supporters Frustrated By Backlash

A piece in the Washington Post looks at the angst enveloping many Trump voters - excluding those who have benefited under Obamacare and suddenly realized their voted to cut their own throats - as Trump is pummeled for his corruption, possible treason, and chaotic regime.  Somehow these folks are baffled by the fact that they voted for a vile, lying, narcissistic sexual predator and are now facing a backlash by the majority that did not support an unfit, morally bankrupt candidate. Indeed, if they thought they and their retrograde, bigoted views were under attack during the Obama years, they now find themselves facing even more ridicule if not out right hostility.  Do I feel any sympathy for these folks?  Not one bit.  In fact, I hope Der Trumpenführer's time in office proves very short - impeachment and/or a treason trial followed by life in prison is a delicious thought - and that the majority of the nation rallies to crush the agenda of these selfish and misogynistic individuals.  Here are highlights from the Post piece:

 Many of President Trump’s most dedicated supporters — the sort who waited for hours in the Florida sun this weekend for his first post-inauguration campaign rally — say their lives changed on election night. Suddenly they felt like their views were actually respected and in the majority.

But less than one month into Trump’s term, many of his supporters say they once again feel under attack — perhaps even more so than before.

Those who journeyed to Trump’s Saturday evening event on Florida’s Space Coast said that since the election, they have unfriended some of their liberal relatives or friends on Facebook. They don’t understand why major media outlets don’t see the same successful administration they have been cheering on. And they’re increasingly frustrated that Democrats — and some Republicans — are too slow to approve some of the president’s nominees and too quick to protest his every utterance.

“There’s such hatred for the man,” she said. “I just don’t get it.” . . . It was a common sentiment at the rally in an airplane hangar here, flanked by Air Force One and attended by about 9,000 people. There were chants of “CNN sucks!” and “Tell the truth!”

Rally attendees panned coverage of the chaos within his administration, the cost of security for his family and the president’s now-halted executive order that briefly banned refugees and residents of seven Muslim-majority countries. Many acknowledged that the president’s first month could have been smoother, especially with the rollout of the travel ban, but they said the media has overblown those hiccups . . .

Several people said they would have liked to see more coverage of a measure that Trump signed Thursday that rolled back a last-minute Obama regulation that would have restricted coal mines from dumping debris in nearby streams. At the signing, Trump was joined by coal miners in hard hats.

“If he hadn’t gotten into office, 70,000 miners would have been put out of work,” Patricia Nana, a 42-year-old naturalized citizen from Cameroon. “I saw the ceremony where he signed that bill, giving them their jobs back, and he had miners with their hard hats and everything — you could see how happy they were.”

The regulation actually would have cost relatively few mining jobs and would have created nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side, according to a government report — an example of the frequent distance between Trump’s rhetoric, which many of his supporters wholeheartedly believe, and verifiable facts.

[She] gets most of her news from talk radio — “I listen to Herman Cain on my way into work, I have Sean [Hannity] on my way home,” she said — and Fox News. . . . But they didn’t know much about the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn on Monday amid accusations that he improperly discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador — and then withheld that information from Vice President Pence and other top officials.

The division that has consumed the country was on display outside Trump’s rally.

On one side of the street: Thousands of his supporters wearing campaign gear and vendors selling anti-Hillary Clinton merchandise and T-shirts showing a map of the 2016 election by county, with most of the country colored Trump-red and the legend: “We the Deplorable.”

On the other side of the street: Hundreds of protesters gathered in a “free speech zone” behind orange mesh fencing. Several wore pink knit hats, and some carried signs that focused on Trump’s alleged connections to Russia: “Impeach that puppet” and “I can see Russia.”

Note the cited news sources of Trump supporters.  Embracing ignorance is a conscious choice.  By limiting the "news" they receive to unreliable sources that in some cases are unhinged and/or little more than propaganda outlets.  Open your eyes and get off your ass and educate yourself.  The, and only then, will these folks understand why they are held in contempt or revulsion by so many. 

Oklahoma Concedes Role of Drilling and Fracking in Earthquakes

Earthquake damaged home - failed GOP policies at work

Despite what the American Petroleum Institute sponsored ads would lead you to believe - they typically start by blathering about the USA being the world's new top producer - fracking and secondary/tertiary disposal wells are dangerous and have very negative downsides: polluting the ground water and triggering earthquakes.  This is no new surprise to those in the oil industry as I once was some 30+ years ago.  Not that such matters are concerns for oil and gas companies based in distant cities.  For them and folks like the Koch brothers, it is ALL about making a buck off of increased oil and gas production. Now, the state of Oklahoma  has belatedly conceded that disposal wells and fracking are causing dire side effects.  Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times:

Abandoning years of official skepticism, Oklahoma’s government on Tuesday embraced a scientific consensus that earthquakes rocking the state are largely caused by the underground disposal of billions of barrels of wastewater from oil and gas wells.

The state’s energy and environment cabinet introduced a website detailing the evidence behind that conclusion Tuesday, including links to expert studies of Oklahoma’s quakes. The site includes an interactive map that plots not only earthquake locations, but also the sites of more than 3,000 active wastewater-injection wells.

The website coincided with a statement by the state-run Oklahoma Geological Survey that it “considers it very likely” that wastewater wells are causing the majority of the state’s earthquakes.

The statement and the website’s acknowledgment amount to a turnabout for a state government that has long played down the connection between earthquakes and an oil and gas industry that is Oklahoma’s economic linchpin.

As recently as last fall, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, indicated that suggestions of a relationship between oil and gas activity and seismicity were speculation, and that more study was needed.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Ms. Fallin called the Geological Survey’s endorsement of that relationship significant, and said the state was dealing with the problem.

Tuesday’s actions met a mixed response from the oil and gas industry and the governor’s critics. The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association disputed the Geological Survey’s conclusions, saying in a statement that further study of the state’s quakes remained necessary.

One of the most prominent advocates of stronger action on the earthquake issue, State Representative Cory Williams, a Democrat, said he had been pleasantly surprised by the change in what he called the state’s “head in the sand” approach to the quake problem.

But Mr. Williams, from earthquake-rattled Stillwater, criticized officials for failing to announce further steps to actually curtail the tremors.  Separately, he called on Tuesday for the state to halt wastewater disposal in a 16-county section of central and north-central Oklahoma that the Geological Survey has identified as posing the highest seismic risk.

In past decades, Oklahomans experienced only about one and a half earthquakes exceeding magnitude 3.0 in an average year. But since a boom in oil and gas exploration began in the mid-2000s, that number has mushroomed. The state recorded 585 quakes of 3.0 or greater last year, more than any state except Alaska, and is on course to register more than 900 such tremors this year.

Most of the quakes result in little more than cracked plaster and driveways, but residents in quake zones say the cumulative damage — to their property and to their nerves — is far greater.

Larger quakes have also occurred. A series of shocks in 2011 exceeding magnitude 5.0 caused millions of dollars in damage. Some seismologists have warned that the state is risking larger and more damaging quakes unless it acts to reduce the number of tremors.

The GOP's typical approach to such scientific conclusions?  Ignore them and move forward full speed ahead until the  damage and the evidence becomes too great to ignore.  Meanwhile, countless Americans suffer otherwise avoidable harm.

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? 

Natural Gas is Not America's Energy Solution

The oil and gas industry, rather than diversifying and investing heavily in solar and wind power, continues to chant a mantra of "drill, baby drill" like the cretin from Alaska so popular with brain dead Republicans.   A new part of that mantra is that natural gas is going to deliver America from foreign oil dependence and save the environment.  Like much of what comes out of the oil and gas industry the ads run by Exxon, BP, and the Petroleum Institute don't tell all of the story.  As I not in my not yet published October column in VEER Magazine, I was once an in-house lawyer for an oil company, so I understand the intricacies of oil and gas exploration and the side effects of secondary and tertiary recovery not t mention fracking.   A column in the Roanoke Times calls attention to some of the ignored costs of the natural gas obsession.  Here are highlights:

Natural gas is indisputably cleaner and cheaper than oil or coal, a factor that makes it desirable for a nation that, until now, has been fearful of being dependent on foreign energy sources. Our country has been energized by the natural gas boom, which may not peak until 2030, allowing us to sell some of this valuable fuel, whose smaller carbon footprint makes it desirable worldwide, especially to our European friends who are tied to Russian energy sources and their unpredictable reliability.

To find the true cost of natural gas, however, requires including ancillary costs that are not part of the business model: the cost that communities accrue in their doing or having done business with the power companies; the unbudgeted costs of disaster clean-up; reduced land values where pipelines cross; remediation of by-spills from leaking pipes that invade the water table.

Ryan Hankins, in his Aug. 21 commentary (“Don’t blindly oppose pipeline based on fear”), asks us not to “blindly oppose” the Mountain Valley Pipeline “based on fear.” It would be a blessing to be “blind,” to not know so much about the havoc being wrought by this industry The pipeline to which he refers is but one of many “straws” sucking from the Marcellus Shale, siphoning off the dwindling supply of natural gas.

The natural gas industry, in its hydraulic fracturing process, requires 2 billion gallons of water a day, according to the Government Accountability Office. Fear instructs me that once approved by the Federal Regulatory Commission, the proliferation of these natural gas pipelines will encourage the growth of fracking along its length, in spite of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s assurance that he will not allow it in the George Washington National Forest. And where will the water come from? And where will the toxic wastewater go?  . . . . Gov. Christie of New Jersey recently vetoed a law passed by his legislature that would have prevented importing and disposing of wastewater from other states.

Not mentioned in the column is the increased frequency of earthquakes in areas where fracking is active.  Too many Virginians forget the dangers of increasing earthquakes in central Virginia where the North Anna nuclear power plant sits near fault lines.  And lets not forget the vulnerability of the Lake Gaston watershed that provides a huge portion of the water for south Hampton Roads. The cost of expanded natural gas production in Virginia could be huge when these elements are factored in.

The Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire

Few figures in today's political scene represent a bigger threat to average Americans and a functioning democracy than Charles and David Koch.  Between trying to buy Congress, dismantle safety and environmental regulations, and restoring the worse excesses of the Gilded Age, they seek to make average Americans little better than serfs eking out a meager living while the Kochs luxuriate with their billions of dollars.  If there is such a thing as the sin of greed, the Kochs truly embody it.   A long piece in Rolling Stone looks at not only the Koch brothers' political machinations but also their toxic industries from which their wealth flows.  It also traces their family's racist and far right views over the years.  These men are despicable and any decent Christian ought to be opposing their policies rather than embracing them as the Christofascists have done.  Here are article highlights:

The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate.

What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Koch Industries is headquartered in a squat, smoked-glass building that rises above the prairie on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas. The building, like the brothers' fiercely private firm, is literally and figuratively a black box. Koch touts only one top-line financial figure: $115 billion in annual revenue, as estimated by Forbes. By that metric, it is larger than IBM, Honda or Hewlett-Packard and is America's second-largest private company after agribusiness colossus Cargill. The company's stock response to inquiries from reporters: "We are privately held and don't disclose this information."

But Koch Industries is not entirely opaque. The company's troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions – augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle­-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.

Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Koch's pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers.

The volume of Koch Industries' toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell.

The toxic history of Koch Industries is not limited to physical pollution. It also extends to the company's business practices, which have been the target of numerous federal investigations, resulting in several indictments and convictions, as well as a whole host of fines and penalties.

Koch Industries is not a major oil producer. Instead, the company has woven itself into every nook of the vast industrial web that transforms raw fossil fuels into usable goods. Koch-owned businesses trade, transport, refine and process fossil fuels, moving them across the world and up the value chain until they become things we forgot began with hydrocarbons: fertilizers, Lycra, the innards of our smartphones.
The company controls at least four oil refineries, six ethanol plants, a natural-gas-fired power plant and 4,000 miles of pipeline.

Koch's hunger for growth is insatiable: Since 1960, the company brags, the value of Koch Industries has grown 4,200-fold, outpacing the Standard & Poor's index by nearly 30 times. On average, Koch projects to double its revenue every six years. Koch is now a key player in the fracking boom that's vaulting the United States past Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer, even as it's endangering America's groundwater.

Koch is also long on the richest – but also the dirtiest and most carbon-polluting – oil deposits in North America: the tar sands of Alberta. . . . . Over the past dozen years, the company has quietly acquired leases for 1.1 million acres of Alberta oil fields, an area larger than Rhode Island. By some estimates, Koch's direct holdings nearly double ExxonMobil's and nearly triple Shell's.

Fred [David and Charles' father] also became a major benefactor and board member of the John Birch Society, the rabidly anti-communist organization founded in 1958 by candy magnate and virulent racist Robert Welch. Bircher publications warned that the Red endgame was the creation of the "Negro Soviet­ Republic" in the Deep South. In his own writing, Fred described integration as a Red plot to "enslave both the white and black man."

Koch wasn't just cutting corners on its pipelines. It was also violating federal environmental law in other corners of the empire. Through much of the 1990s at its Pine Bend refinery in Minnesota, Koch spilled up to 600,000 gallons of jet fuel into wetlands near the Mississippi River. Indeed, the company was treating the Mississippi as a sewer, illegally dumping ammonia-laced wastewater into the river – even increasing its discharges on weekends when it knew it wasn't being monitored. Koch Petroleum Group eventually pleaded guilty to "negligent discharge of a harmful quantity of oil" and "negligent violation of the Clean Water Act," was ordered to pay a $6 million fine and $2 million in remediation costs, and received three years' probation. This facility had already been declared a Superfund site in 1984.

The Smalley trial underscored something Bill Koch had said about the way his brothers ran the company: "Koch Industries has a philosophy that profits are above everything else." A former Koch manager, Kenoth Whitstine, testified to incidents in which Koch Industries placed profits over public safety. As one supervisor had told him, regulatory fines "usually didn't amount to much" and, besides, the company had "a stable full of lawyers in Wichita that handled those situations." When Whitstine told another manager he was concerned that unsafe pipelines could cause a deadly accident, this manager said that it was more profitable for the company to risk litigation than to repair faulty equipment. The company could "pay off a lawsuit from an incident and still be money ahead," he said, describing the principles of MBM to a T.

The jury was emphatic, awarding Smalley $296 million – then the largest wrongful-death judgment in American legal history. He later settled with Koch for an undisclosed sum and now runs a pipeline-safety foundation in his daughter's name. He declined to comment for this story. "It upsets him too much," says an associate.

There is much, much more.  Read the entire article and you will be both disgusted and outraged.

Don't Drink the Water in Toledo

America's infrastructure is crumbling and now a major American city enters the third day where residents cannot drink the water.  The story makes America sound like some backward country in Africa.  It's yet another example of what happens when spending on infrastructure is slashed and need regulation delayed to satisfy the demands of the Tea Party extremists who dominate the GOP.  Huffington Post looks at the plight of folks in Toledo, Ohio.  Here are highlights:

A water ban entered its third day in northwest Ohio after tests showed some toxins still contaminating Lake Erie, leaving residents to continue scrambling for water for drinking, cooking and bathing.


Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins said early Monday that most of the tests done by state and federal authorities on Sunday showed a positive trend, but that additional testing is necessary.

He told WTOL-TV that he was concerned by some of the results and didn't want to take any chances.

The city council was to review the test results at its regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.


Ohio's fourth-largest city warned residents not to use city water early Saturday after tests at one treatment plant showed readings for microcystin above the standard for consumption, most likely from algae on the lake. The advisory affected more than 400,000 residents in northwestern Ohio and southwestern Michigan. Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency.

Worried residents told not to drink, brush their teeth or wash dishes with the water descended on truckloads of bottled water delivered from across the state. The Ohio National Guard was using water purification systems to produce drinkable water.  Water distribution centers are scheduled reopen at 8 a.m. Monday.

Some hospitals canceled elective surgeries and were sending surgical equipment that needed sterilized to facilities outside the water emergency, said Bryan Biggie, disaster coordinator for ProMedica hospitals in Toledo.

Drinking the water could cause vomiting, cramps and rashes. But no serious illnesses had been reported by late Sunday. Health officials advised children and those with weak immune systems to avoid showering or bathing in the water.


Amid the emergency, discussion began to center around how to stop the pollutants fouling the lake that supplies drinking water for 11 million people.


"People are finally waking up to the fact that this is not acceptable," Collins said.


The toxins that contaminated the region's drinking water supply didn't just suddenly appear.  Water plant operators along western Lake Erie have long been worried about this very scenario as a growing number of algae blooms have turned the water into a pea soup color in recent summers, leaving behind toxins that can sicken people and kill pets.


In fact, the problems on the shallowest of the five Great Lakes brought on by farm runoff and sludge from sewage treatment plants have been building for more than a decade.

Researchers largely blame the algae's resurgence on manure and chemical fertilizer from farms that wash into the lake along with sewage treatment plants. Leaky septic tanks and stormwater drains have contributed, too. Combined, they flush huge amounts of phosphorus into the lake.


Environmental groups and water researchers have been calling on Ohio and other states in the Great Lakes region to drastically reduce the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake. Ohio lawmakers this past spring took a step toward tackling the algae problem when they enacted a law requiring most farmers to undergo training before they use commercial fertilizers on their fields. But they have stopped short of mandating restrictions on farmers.