SCOTUS and the Conclusions

 

It's really not hard to draw an obvious and unpleasant conclusion regarding the conservative justices' rulings regarding effectively legalizing bribery and privileging the opinions of courts over subject matter experts in government agencies with respects to regulatory matters, and to keep this blog post terribly brief, let me just sum it up this way:

The Republican-appointed justices have shown us what they are, and all that's left is billionaires haggling over the price. I'm sure putting it this way would offend Sam Alito and his missus, so to also keep this blog post brief, I will refrain from suggesting what else they can run up a flagpole if they don't like it.

I really shudder at conservative justices using their slapdash "textural" approach to the law as a "public service" to overrule agency decisions based on science. What this means for climate change, curbing pollution, food and drug regulation....

Aw, Screw it, Fire Pruitt!

One might have expected that there was something a little weird about Pruitt when he wanted the $43k soundproof booth in his office, or when he alleged that he really needed to fly first class because people said mean things to him when he flew coach. But I really think this past few days' worth of revelations has exceeded all expectations regarding a man and his grift. The sweetheart condo rental deal made between Pruitt and the wife of a lobbyist who had projects subject to the approval of Pruitt's office is pretty dodgy once the details come into focus, and his deliberate staff manipulations look an awful lot like an abuse of power. Little details like wanting to use the sirens on his motorcade to get through traffic more quickly when he was running late, or noting that he not only had a deep discount on his Capitol Hill digs, but fell behind on paying for it, seem almost comical, but point to a truly cavalier attitude towards government service. 

But what is frankly amazing is that, despite all this, Pruitt's effectiveness in dismantling the EPA's regulatory abilities outweighs what one might suppose would seem an embarrassing appearance of corruption. All in all, a touch of corruption doesn't seem to be all that new a detail in Pruitt's bio, to the extent that it becomes clear that the Trump Administration and it's admirers may feel that Pruitt's corruptibility is a feature, not a bug. What else can one make of the rumor that Trump is considering not just not firing Pruitt, but considering him as a replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

Because if a person is not merely corrupt, but almost comically so, why wouldn't someone with Trump's obvious baggage want to have him running the Department of Justice?

I could be wrong--Fridays are made for firings in TrumpWorld, after all, and many an official has found themselves getting the axe after getting the "full confidence of the President" guarantee. It's possible that the Samantha Dravin/Rob Porter leaking angle will eventually do Pruitt in in a way that the misuse of taxpayer funds has not. But seeing Senators Cruz and Paul come to Pruitt's defense and blame his scandals on the media makes me wonder if we might be about to see an experiment in just seeing if this can be "weathered out". 

This is pretty terrible--the guy definitely seems shady as hell and should be out! But if Trump starts tossing every shady person working for him...who is he going to have left?

Climate Sunday: Fire, Water and Other Things

 The tragedy of Hurricane Harvey is not even beginning to be over, because the nature of water is to go everywhere, and there are many places where it isn't very nice for water to go.  Consider Superfund sites, or active chemical plants or petroleum refineries, where who knows what could get into the water--and, well, that too, will go wherever the water goes. (Rural run-offs are also fairly disgusting and serious.) There will be mold, mildew, mosquitos, and the possibility of cholera and who knows what all else? But added to the natural dangers are those unnatural, chemical additives--asthma? Heart failure? Kidney problems? Cancer?

We don't exactly know, and without regulations explicitly telling us what chemicals are being leeched into the flood water, and deposited in backyards, athletic fields, schoolyards and playgrounds, well, I guess people will have to assume the best--because obviously if these materials were harmful, the multi-million dollar corps involved would feel obliged to make that information transparent?

Sure! (I'm skeptical!) But there is that silly old thing I've noticed about the Trump Administration--they don't give a right rat's ass. And they are doubling down on not caring about science in the least.

But let's not center the problem on the US. Other places on this earth are weather-drenched and suffering.  So let's just get it out there--while floods are natural enough--the extremity of the floods we are seeing might very well be fueled by climate change.

But let's not just talk about wet things--there is a terrible wildfire on the West Coast. That too, can be possibly chalked up to climate change. These types of fires have their own, chemical consequences as well.

We can't afford to have non-scientists at the lead of agencies that rely on science to do their missions, and we can't ignore science just because someone somewhere is making bank on human misery. This is one of the many reasons why I despise this Trump Maladministration.

Climate Sunday: What's up with the EPA?

You know, I worry a little bit about an agency charged with protecting the environment when it is now being headed by someone who made many lawsuits against it. I'm funny that way. So when I hear that a number of folks have been forced off of the EPA advisory board, I feel like it's good odds they'll be replaced by people like Mandy Gunesekara, who is totally there for the coal industry, or folks who don't really care if a pesticide is shown to be detrimental to children's development.

I really don't have anything to add to that--there are just some pretty worrying signs, right there.

Climate Sunday: How About those Marches?

Time-lapse, bird's-eye video shows thousands of protesters marching toward White House during climate change march https://t.co/yhOcdt6iHR pic.twitter.com/YqhsCxvvaA

— CNN (@CNN) April 30, 2017

Another weekend, another massive turnout in protests against the policies of Donald Trump. There is one thing you can say about his first 100 days--he's definitely set an anti-environmentalist tone. He has signed an executive order to expand offshore drilling (so we can expect more Deepwater Horizon-like spills, I suspect) and to mine and drill and log at national monuments. His EPA is conveniently killing the pretty solid Energy Star program that, it turns out, hasn't been working for his businesses. The EPA has also taken useful climate science data from its website. And as for investing in environmental security measures against the ravages from the effects of global warming? Well, this Administration won't be bothering with that sort of prudent and timely material protection, either.

What frustrates me most about all of this is that this Administration is informed by a kind of penny-wise and dollar-foolish short-sightedness that tries to frame environmentalism as a concern of elitist privilege that costs unnecessary fortunes to address, while ignoring the reality that the people who seem to agitate against green measures are often connected to fossil fuel money, and the communities that bear the brunt of a changing climate are often the poorest. I can't respect a person who is ready to tilt at windmills if they deface the view from one of his properties, and then wants to build a great, huge, beautiful wall...a sea wall, that is, to protect another one from the sea-level rise that per Himself is just a hoax. Situational much?

Just as President Trump has learned (although, to be quite honest, not as fully as he needs to) that dealing with things like health care, taxation, trade, and handling crazy little tin-pot dictators with effective nukes and not-terribly effective missiles, are harder than he once believed them to be, I would sincerely like him to acknowledge that maybe there is a pretty good reason to pay attention to scientists and reasonably concerned individuals who are trying to alert him to the realities that environmental hazards pose. I hope that he would try to actually go out of his way to find the experts who can help him respond to a Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy-level weather event, or a directly man-made threat like the Deepwater Horizon spill. I think it would be great to know that he could listen to people talk about their environmental concerns, and take them seriously. But his rhetoric and the actions of the past 100 days don't give me an awful lot of encouragement.

How do you even tell this guy that CDC disease research and Coast Guard interdiction and the environmental measures taken by the Pentagon are all more essential to national security than his fakakta Mexican border wall is ever going to be? (I don't know! Do you?)

Maybe pictures of these amazing, engaged, motivated crowds can do what mere words don't.

HATAWL 2: The Celebrity Apprentice Cabinet

I think "How a Trump Administration Will Look" is going to be a regular feature at this blog as we see the incoming administration take place, so pardon my awkward title: "HATAWL" is just a necessary acronym so my blog titles don't become too unwieldy. Before I launch into the current going-on, I just wanted to link to this fine recap of all the many ways in which Donald Trump the candidate and his campaign were simply not what we think of a "normal". Keeping this concept of "abnormality" in mind is probably a useful way to understand how his position-filling process is just naturally going to also be "abnormal".

See, after all, the above Tweet (screen-capped on the off-chance that it will be deleted as having been ill-advised--or perhaps better said, "unadvised"). "Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!" it reads, for those whose setting don't enable images, and it is sent from Trump's own verified account. It's hard to know how to take it--is he just responding genuinely to counter claims that this process is "bonkers" or a "total mess".  But does he legitimately see his potential selections for important cabinent roles as "finalists" as if he was still running "The Celebrity Apprentice"? Or is it possible he is having us on, a little? (As for as presidentin' goes, this is probably not good form--not that he has respect for such things.)

But word that there has been an actual "purge" of Trump transition folks with ties to Bridgegate-impacted Gov. Chris Christie does seem awkward--how much of this choice has to do with Trump's own actual distaste over how Christies handled the scandal, and how much has to do with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's pay-back over Christie's prosecution of his father and uncle? One of the reasons I find this alarming is because someone like former MI Rep. Mike Rogers seemed like a pretty competent guy--the sort of knowledgeable and reasonable sort that even Democratic presidents might consider for something like CIA chief. This kind of decision-making doesn't seem really helpful.

But he is being replaced by Frank Gaffney, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra and CA Rep. Devin Nunes--welp, that's still kind of alarming. Gaffney was banned from CPAC a few years back for having an oddball conspiracy theory that Grover Norquist had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.  (I have questioned Norquist over his economic ideas, but give me a break! Not a closet creeping sharia guy, ok?) Hoekstra totally Chaffetz-ed up regarding some classified info which kind of makes me wonder if he's altogether an s.m.a.r.t. choice. And Nunes? Eh, he fits right in.

But some of the other eyebrow-raising picks? A possible selection of Kris Kobach, anti-immigration and anti-civil rights SOB, for Trump's AG?  Laura Ingraham, radio host and awful person, for press secretary?  Peter Thiel for anything. Any damn thing at all. Gay vampires are very cool according to 1990 goth Anne Rice fan me, but this dude is something else.  And as an environmentalist, I am not even ready to talk about Myron Ebell having anything to do with the EPA. He's thinking Sago Mine owner Wilbur Ross for Commerce (huh! I guess Don Blankenship is unavailable, right?) 

It almost feels like a series of threats that wouldn't just challenge a liberal's stomach, but that of many a conservative as well. Maybe a case of showing us the worst scenario so his eventual actual picks don't seem as bad as they could have been? (That's a known negotiating tactic.) 

But I just think it's weird, right? That his cabinet discussions should even make you wonder if this is real life or a game. Maybe that Tweet means something--but I don't think these decisions should be treated like a reality show.

Climate Sunday: Mike Huckabee's Sunburn Edition

They believe climate change is a greater threat than Islamic extremism, that a sunburn is worse than a beheading. It's nonsense! #DemDebate

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 14, 2015

Welcome to another edition of our Sunday Climate Round-up, this time named after Mike Huckabee's go-to "hot take" on how terrorism is scarier than...a sunburn, which is what absolutely no one who is discussing climate change is seriously talking about, ever. But I'll bite, because I've hit this one before, poll your friends and neighbors and see who can admit to having had a really terrible sunburn. Go on to see how many of them have had a skin lesion looked at or removed.

Now think about how many of your friends and neighbors have been beheaded. Statistically, it is way more likely for a US American that everyone you know has had sunburn, and a few of them have had something suspicious scraped. Skin cancer is pretty scary. But you are less likely to know someone who was beheaded by terrorists--which isn't to minimize the threat of terror at all, only to put it in perspective.

SCOTUS Decides EPA can Kind of Do Its Job

So, it turns out that the EPA can actually have authority to protect the environment (its raison d'être ) according to most of SCOTUS justices. Such a happy-ish day!

Regulating greenhouse gases does conditionally fall under the purview of government authority--because among others, Justice Scalia allows it.

Seems pretty solid to me.

And I like that it means we don't have to wait for Congress to absorb basic facts to see any agency actually address this urgent issue. Because when it comes to absorbing basic facts...these cats are taking a while.

Climate Sunday:EPA Chief Lisa Jackson is Leaving

Via The Guardian:

The most prominent member of Barack Obama's environmental team announced she was stepping down on Thursday, after four years of running battles with industry and Republicans in Congress opposed to stricter pollution controls. 

Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will leave the cabinet after Obama's state of the union address in January, she said in a statement. 

Under Jackson, a chemist by training, the EPA produced nearly all of Obama's main environmental decisions, enacting stricter controls on coal-fired power plants and the first standards on mercury pollution. 

In a brief statement Jackson, 50, said: "I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference."

Given Republican opposition to even the existence of the EPA on some days, it strikes me that getting a replacement for Jackson may be contentious.  As in, they'll look for reasons to block a replacement. I know I haven't heard anything about any such intent to do that. I just, you know, have suspicions.