cea cncl econ advisors
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some resignations b/c of djt wingnuttery?
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060713373
The proposed White House panel that would conduct an "adversarial" review of climate science is dead for now, as President Trump grapples with negative perceptions of his environmental record at the outset of his reelection campaign.
The months-long push from within the National Security Council to review established science on climate change divided White House advisers and generated sharp opposition from researchers across the country. The effort, led by a physicist overseeing technology issues at the NSC, William Happer, stalled indefinitely amid internal disagreements within the White House, according to two sources.
"It's been totally stymied by the forces of darkness within the administration, but also by the looming election campaign," said Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute who led the EPA transition team under Trump.
Happer has consulted conservative groups that attack climate science in an attempt to recruit members for the proposed panel. He's spoken with policy analysts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and CO2 Coalition, a group Happer founded and that claims that the world would be better off with higher levels of carbon dioxide emissions. The theories promoted by those groups are rejected by NASA, NOAA and the world's top science academies.
Happer initially wanted Trump to issue an executive order to create the "Presidential Committee on Climate Security." He wanted the panel to review assertions within the National Climate Assessment related to risks from climate change on national security. Happer briefed Trump on climate science at least twice (Climatewire, June 24).
:{:{The idea to create the panel has caused strife within the White House. Among its critics are deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell; Kevin Hassett, the outgoing chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council;and Kelvin Droegemeier, the president's science adviser.}:
Those supporting the plan include Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins, assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation.}:
An official at NSC disputed the characterization that the panel was dead, even while confirming that it had been indefinitely delayed. The plan has suffered several downgrades over the months. It was initially proposed as a rapid response team of climate science critics who would challenge government publications on human-caused warming.
:Recent discussions have centered on the idea of forcing government climate scientists to participate in a debate with critics of their work who deny that humans are causing widespread changes on Earth (Climatewire, June 6). Most recently, the plan was diminished to creating dueling white papers that would elevate climate denialism to the level of consensus science.
Those in talks to participate as critics of mainstream science include John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Judith Curry, former head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. A potential leader of the exercise was Paul Robinson, a former Department of Energy official who oversaw talks about nuclear weapons tests with the Soviet Union, but who is not trained in climate science.
Trump supporters who want the administration to be more aggressive in its rejection of climate science were frustrated that the climate review panel had been sidelined. Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute sees it as a sign that the Trump campaign is sensitive to Democratic attacks on climate change.
"The reelect campaign has been completely taken over by the usual cast of Republican establishment consultants who are primarily concerned with making very large amounts of money on the campaign," Ebell said.
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...Just a year ago, McConnell, Trump & Company rammed into law a trillion-dollar tax giveaway for corporate elites, saying they didn't care that it would wildly inflate the deficit. Now, though, they say all of that red ink is suddenly of grave concern to them. So, to stem the flow caused by their boondoggle for the rich, Republicans intend to cut off the Social Security and health care payments that middle-class and poor families rely on.}:
This is not just diabolical; it's deliberately evil. And all politicians who support it should be condemned to the most hellish fate imaginable.
In keeping with the spirit of the season, Trump's White House seems to be both spooked and spooky.
Check out a 72-page report issued right before Halloween by his Council of Economic Advisers. While the Council's documents usually cast each of the president's policies in the best light, they do so in sober, quasi-academic language focused on the incumbent's policies. But the Council's Halloween report reads like an endless Trump tweet, focused on his perceived political enemies and riddled with fantasies, lies and paranoia about their policies.
In antiquated Joe McCarthy-style, the Trump advisers spew conspiracy theories about the proposals of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and other Democrats, frantically linking them with "Failed Socialist Policies" of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other communist dictators. Bernie's common-sense ideas of "Medicare-for-All" and free college education, for example, are hysterically decried as totalitarian designs from China and the USSR.
Likewise, the report compares Warren's true assertion that corporate giants are dodging their tax obligations to Lenin's demonization and killing of yeoman farmers.
In this ludicrous, right-ring political screed -- paid for by us taxpayers -- the fraidy-cat Trump scaremongers toss in the supposedly spooky word "socialism" 144 times -- an average of twice per page. Among the horrors the Trumpistas cite is that senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have stated that large corporations "exploit human misery and insecurity, and turn them into huge profits" and "giant corporations ... exploit workers just to boost their own profits."
Excuse me, learned scholars, but all of that happens to be true, as the great majority of Americans know from experience. Trump's economists also inform us that if the U.S. adopted Venezuelan policies -- o, the horror! -- our economy would shrink by 40 percent. Well, perhaps, but here's the thing: No one is proposing we do that.
What's really spooky is that these know-nothing ideologues are actually advisers to a president of the United States. To boost the economy and help balance the budget, let's eliminate them with our votes.
Populist author, public speakerandradio commentator Jim Hightowerwrites"The Hightower Lowdown," a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites
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